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Piazza S.Croce, Florence

Artist: Camps-Campins, Isabelle · b. 1971

Piazza S.Croce, Florence

The artist, an architecture graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, was in Italy in September 1997 on a 1996 RSA John Kinross Travel…

The artist, an architecture graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, was in Italy in September 1997 on a 1996 RSA John Kinross Travel Scholarship.

As its names suggests, the Piazza is dominated at one end by the facade of the great church of Santa Croce, seen here to the right.

The texture of the hand made paper gives the impression of it being a drawing of some antiquity. The use of blue rather than brown ink however marks this clearly as of more recent execution.

Indeed despite the great antiquity of the Piazza, the prominent to right of centre statue is of more recent date. It was erected only in 1865 and commemorates the Italian writer Dante Alighieri dressed in toga and garlanded with a laurel wreath in the manner of a Roman Emperor, protected at his feet by a huge eagle.

The statue was originally placed in the very centre of the Piazza and was unveiled to mark the 600th anniversary of Dante's birth. Following the Florence Flood of 1966 however it was relocated to its present position.

© The Artist