Livorno

FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE MEDICI’S.

Tthe first historical evidence concerning Leghorn dates back to the 9th century,when the settlement was only a part of the port of Pisa.Its development began at the end of the 12th century,when,with the Pisa Statutes of 1284,it was decided that the captain of the port had to live in Leghorn.Those same statutes,in order to people the harbour village,provided special custom facilities and advantages to all those who decided within the following ten years to live and work in Leghorn were attacked by the inhabitants of Genoa and Lucca,which caused a lot of damage to the towers and to the Castle of Leghorn.After having signed the peace treaty in 1299,a period of reconstruction began that finished with the fortification of the port of Leghorn.Indissolubly bound to Pisa,Leghorn lived its same destiny.After the murder of Pietro Gambacorta in 1392,who had been Lord of Pisa since 1370,the village and its port were for some years under the domination of the Duke of Milan,Gian Galeazzo Visconti.In 1405 Pisa rose against the Visconti domination,but the year after it had to surrender to a new enemy:Florence.In the meantime,Leghorn had passed under the rule of Genoa,and this lasted until 1421,when the inhabitants of Genoa made up their minds to consent to the repeated request of Florence wich wanted to buy Leghorn.The Doge,Tommaso Fregoso,being short of money to defend the Republic of Genoa from the armed forces of Milan,sold Leghorn to Florence in June 1421 at the price of of 100,000 golden florins.For the Florentine Republic thi meant having its own port available for that international trade that had produced its fame.Exactly as Pisa had done in 1284,Florence too decided to facilitate the populating of Leghorn.Several Florentine artisans settled there to built the galleys ordered by the Republic for the transportation of goods.1200 florins were allocated each year for the construction of a galley every six months.The Republic decided moreover to maintain a certain number of tax facilities at Leghorn,to permit development of the harbour town,which after the silting up of the port of Pisa soon became the most important Tuscan seaport.But it was thanks to the rise to power of the Medici’s that the history of Leghorn knew a real turning point.Already at the beginning of the sixteenth century,Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici,whothen ascended to the papal throne in 1523 with the name of Pope Clemente VII ,commissioned of Antonio da Sangallo the Elder the design for a defensive fortress.The dates of the construction of what is nowadays called Fortezza Vecchia are not certain.According to some historians in fact,the defensive building was constructed between 1521 and 1524,while according to others,the works progressed until and even after 1530.What is certain is that Sangallo included in the fortress some of the pre-existing structures such as Matilde’s Tower and the “Pisans’ Perspective”.

Leghorn under the reign of the Tuscan Grand Duke.
In 1548 the first Tuscan Grand Duke,Cosimo I,promulgated a law that granted to anybody who decided to settle in Leghorn the cancellation of any previously-contracted debts.Thanks to this law,already in the middle of the sixteenth century Leghorn was acquainted with the phenomenon of immigration ,tha became more and more important with the following laws of 1593.
Moreover,Cosimo I gave a commission to Giorgio Vasari to design the construction of a new dock,and in the meantime he increase the fortification of the town that continued to become more and more important.After the death of Cosimo I,his son Francesco carried on the work.asking the architect Bernardo Buontalenti for the plan of a new Leghorn,a sort of fortified townwith the Cathedral in the middle.On 28th March 1577,Francesco I himself,during a solemn ceremony,set the
First brick of the new city-wall.Howevwe,the Medici Grand Duke who had the most importance for the future of this town was Ferdinando I,the brother of FrancescoI,who ascended to the throne in 1587.In fact,it was Ferdinando who executed Buontalenti’s design. Leghorn thus became a town
Surrounded by strong walls and by a navigable canal,a town withseveral palaces,shops,barracks and customs service.But what contributed more than anything else to the rapid development of the port town was the promulgation of the well-known “Leghorn Laws” .These laws,published on 10th June 1593,were in favour of the merchants of every place and every religion.It was in practice,a real pardon with which the populating of the town was facilitaded by giving right of asylum to all those who wished to settle in Leghorn and to work there. The law supported in particular the Jews who landed at the Tuscan port from almost all the European countries.In 1606,three years before his death,Ferdinando I wanted to crown his work by raising Leghorn to the rank of city. The son of Ferdinando,who ascended to the throne with the name of Cosimo II,found himself administering a flourishing town,abounding in artisansand merchants; a town where several races and many different cultures all met together.Leghorn in the 18th century thus represented a rare example of the living togeter of many races,and at the end of the 18th century it had already become the second town of Tuscany,with 80,000 inhabitants.Under Cosimo II,the Medici port was built and the town was declared a free port.

Leghorn today.
With Cosimo II the period of maximum developmentof Leghorn closed,even if trade in the town continued to flourish.In fact,none of the following Grand Dukes of the town removed the customs facilities that allowed it a very rapid evolution.
With the annexation of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to the Kingdom of Italy,Leghorn knew another evolution.Thi time it was not only due to commercial trade,but also to industrial activities. In addition to the shipyards,other industrial productions slowly begun;those industrial activities that
Nowadays make Leghorn a modern and very active centre.Even the tourist activity was born at the end of the nineteenth century,and it transformed Leghorn by the beginning of our century into a very famous seaside resort.The town also knew a very important cultural season,animated by writers such as Marradi,painters such as Fattori and Modigliani and musicians such as Pietro Mascagni,all of whom were born in Leghorn.
The second World War caused much damage to Leghorn,wich however was able to recover very
Rapidly Nowadays,the town has more than 170.000 inhabitans and its province,includes 20 towns.Among the seven islands that form the Tuscan archipelago,five are under the administration of Leghorn: Gorgona,Capraia,Elba,Pianosa and Montecristo.

Art.

Churces and palaces.
The hearth of the ancient town designed by Buontalenti is represented by Piazza Grande,where there is the Cathedral dedicated to St Francis and built between 1594 and 1606 to the design by Alessandro Pieroni.The Duomo was then enlarged during 1700.Bombing during the Second War caused severe damage to the Leghorn cathedral,that was rebuilt afterwards according to the original design.The interior is in theshape of a Latin cross shaped with a single nave,and houses works of great value,such as the Our Lady of the Assumption by Passignano and St Francis receiving the Child from Mary by Empoli.To the right of the entrance it is possible to admire the monument to Marquis Marco Alessandro del Borro,sculpted by the florentine artist Giovan Battista Foggini.Piazza Grande was completely rebuilt after the last World War,and therefore the palaces around it are all modern in style.Behind Palazzo Grande,which is in front of the Cathedral,there is the large building of the town hall with the Palazzo Comunale,built in 1720 to the design by Giovanni del Fantasia.Inside the palace is kept a beautiful painting by Sustermans showing the Grand Duke Ferdinando II receiving the Merchants.

The Medicean town
The hearth of the ancient town is the Duomo.Bernardo Buontalenti planned it at the centre of the pentagonof walls that surrounded the Leghorn of Renaissance times.The Fosso Reale marks the boundary of the ancient centre southwards,while to the north-west and north-east there are,respectively,the Old Fortress and the New Fortress.Ordered by the duke Alessandro dè Medici the old fortress was designed by Antonio da sangallo.The works for the construction of the fortress began in 1531 and continued until 1537.The walls of the fortress have a circumference of 500 metres;there are three raparts.On one of the two entrance doors is the coat of arms of Duke Alessandro.The New Fortress,on the contrary ,was built in 1590,under Duke Ferdinando I,according the design by Giovanni de’ Medici,Vincenzo Bonanni and Bernardo Buontalenti.

THE macchiaioli AND THE Giovanni Fattori Museum.
Around the middle of the last century,the most important and active movement of Italian nineteenth century was born in Florence:that of the Macchiaioli.The school of the Macchiaioli was begun as a contraposition to the academicism that had characterised the first half of the century,with its historical paintings.The theory was that the philosophy of this pictorial movement,that chronologically preceded French impressionism,and that for certain aspects was similar to it, was that of the “spot”.The Macchiaioli thought that the painter should reproduce exactly what the human eye can see:therefore,coloured spots made of light and shadows.The greatest representative of the movement was the painter Giovanni Fattori,born in Leghorn in 1825.And it was for the most representative painter of the “spot” that Leghorn named a museum.The Giovanni Fattori Municipal Museum is situated inside the park of Villa Fabbricotti,in a nineteenthcentury palace.The museum
Hoses a collection of paintings by Fattori,among which Pagliaio,I Buoi,Antignano,Sulla Spiaggia,Torre Rossa,Butteri,Battaglia di San Martino,La Signora Martelli,Ritratto della Moglie.
The museum also displays works of other Macchiaioli painters,such as Telemaco Signorini and Silvestro Lega.In the museum are also such works as Ritratto by Arturo Conti,Il Fienaiolo,,and Testa di Ciociaro by Plinio Novellini,a painter from Leghorn and a pupil of Fattori,who left the Macchiaioli movement to go to “divisionism”.
Apart from the nineteenth-century painters,the museum owns some ancient works such as La Madonna col Bambino that is attributed to Sandro Botticelli and the Crocifissione by Neri di Bicci.

Giovanni Fattori Art Gallery

Villa Mimbelli
Via San Jacopo in Acquaviva
Telephone: 0586/808001-804847
The important collection of paintings by Giovanni Fattori and the other "macchiaioli" and "post-macchiaioli" painters kept in Livorno - which was the city of Fattori's birth - has been rationally organised and given a worthy arrangement in the prestigious Villa Mimbelli.
The exhibition route, along which there are 135 works by Fattori and by painters prevalently connected to the "macchia" school, encounters the special beauty of richly decorated and furnished rooms, giving life to an extraordinary cultural event.
As well as the great paintings of battles and the other works by Fattori that constitute the main nucleus of the gallery, one can admire paintings by Pollastrini, Gambogi, Nomellini, Capiello, Lega, by the Tommasi, by Signorini, by Ulvi Liegi and by many others, in an ideal and precious anthology.