Oriental Spiritual Paintings

The Third Stop of the International Tour Exhibition

·Florence·

Tour Exhibition Time: Expected to be in July 2025

The Market in Medieval Florence

In the early morning of Florence, the wool market was already bustling with noise. Merchants tapped on the Flemish woolen cloth with their fingers stained with dyes, arguing loudly about the exchange rate. Meanwhile, the scribe next door was jotting down a line of poetry at the edge of the ledger with a quill pen. In this city built by both money and art, Dante's Divine Comedy circulated just like the bank drafts. The dawn of the Renaissance was shining through the cracks of these ordinary market scenes. 

Wool and Ink

Giovanni de' Medici finished counting the last bag of gold coins and looked up to see the poet Dante being expelled from the council by his political enemies. The former recorded this bad debt in the account book, while the latter wrote Inferno during his exile. Many years later, the descendants of the Medici family would sponsor the copying of this epic. And the Purgatory described by Dante mirrored the souls of the usurers in Florence.

On the steps of the Church of San Michele, the fishmonger used Aristotle's logic to prove that the salmon was fresh: "Look, the eyes of this fish are as clear as the Prime Mover!" Not far away, a woman who was carding wool was reciting the love poems from La Vita Nuova in the local dialect. She couldn't read at all and had memorized them only by listening to the street storytellers' recitations.

In the second year after the Black Death claimed the lives of half of the city's population, a silk merchant ordered a painting from Botticelli for his daughter's wedding. When the funeral procession and the wedding entourage crossed paths in the Piazza della Signoria, someone noticed that the grapevines carved on the coffin and the golden thread pattern on the bride's skirt were from the same workshop.

Merchants either wandered through the streets and alleys, sailed on inland rivers or set sail on the sea to meet the various needs of these new consumers, and in doing so, they were able to live a comfortable life themselves.

As we delve deep into this historical realm, we can not only feel the ancient prosperity and hustle and bustle, but also understand the people's longing for and pursuit of wealth and power in that era.

This is a place where dreams and reality intertwine, and a stage where courage and wisdom clash.

Appreciation of works