Which male artist will have the bedroom next to Sofonisba? Discover the charm of our artist-themed rooms during your art holidays in Tuscany.
The façade of the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Public domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Santa_Maria_Novella_(Florence).jpg)
While Lois and the Watermill team ponder on the renovation and refurbishment of the new guest bedrooms we are creating on the first floor of the 17th-century Watermill, Bill has been busy thinking of names. These unique spaces enhance your experience of our painting holidays in Tuscany.
As you probably know, we name our bedrooms after famous artists, normally male and Florentine, with notable exceptions like the Gentileschi, named after that feminist icon, Artemisia Gentileschi.
We’ve almost homed in on another woman artist, Sofonisba Anguissola, as the nominee for one of the bedroom but have lingering doubts whether people will be able to pronounce her name (An-gwis-ola). Maybe we’ll break the rules and use her first name: The Sofonisba Bedroom? We’ll see. We invite you to plan ahead to stay in this room during your next creative retreat in Tuscany.
Whatever the name, it’s going to be a sumptuous double bedroom (the bed can be made into two singles if desired) with its own roof terrace overlooking the river and the village.
Who’ll be next door?
Portrait of Leon Battista Albert-Florentine School Uffizi Gallery, Public domain, Commonists, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
At present, Bill favours Leon Battista Alberti to be the nominee next door. Alberti (1404 t0 1472) was an extraordinary Renaissance polymath: among other things, architect, artist, mathematician, poet, priest, philosopher and author. His De re aedificatoria (Ten books on architecture) became the ‘bible’ of Renaissance architecture. You can read all about him in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Here in Florence, where we spend our Winter months, his masterwork is the façade of the church of Santa Maria Novella (at the top), a symphony of harmony and proportion. The scrolls on either side were soon widely copied.
If you’re inspired by our blog stories of and would like to immerse yourself in art and creativity, explore our creative retreats in Tuscany, where we celebrate Italian art, culture, and history.