Three painters who shaped the history of Italian art — Giotto, Fra Angelico, Andrea del Castagno — were born in three Mugello villages, all within a thirty-minute drive of the property. A dense geography between Vespignano, Vicchio and San Godenzo.
Book the property →Vespignano, Vicchio and San Godenzo are three villages in the Mugello, all within a half-hour drive of the property. Each is the birthplace of one of the painters who renewed Italian art between the 14th and 15th centuries.
Giotto di Bondone (Vespignano, c. 1267 – Florence, 1337) is the author of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1303–1305), the design of the bell tower of Florence Cathedral (begun 1334) and the Franciscan cycle in the Upper Basilica of Assisi (attributed). The episode of his meeting with Cimabue, recounted by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists (1550), is set on the hills of Vespignano. The Casa di Giotto at Colle di Vespignano is open to visitors free of charge.
Fra Angelico, born Guido di Pietro (Vicchio, c. 1395 – Rome, 1455), was a Dominican friar at San Domenico in Fiesole and painted the frescoes of the San Marco convent in Florence (1440–1445), the Coronation of the Virgin at the Louvre and the Cortona Annunciation. In Vicchio the civic museum "Beato Angelico" holds documentary materials and school works.
Andrea del Castagno, born Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla (Castagno d'Andrea, c. 1421 – Florence, 1457), signed the cycle of Famous Men and Women at Villa Carducci Pandolfini in Legnaia (now at the Uffizi) and the Last Supper at Sant'Apollonia in Florence (c. 1447). His anatomical, dramatic style sets him apart from his Angelican contemporaries. A small house-museum is located in his home village, inside the Casentinesi Forests National Park.
The concentration of three major names within a 20-kilometre radius is the subject of studies such as Il Mugello culla del Rinascimento, edited by Rosanna Caterina Proto Pisani (Edifir, 2008), which examines the workshop–patronage network between Florence and the Mugello parishes.
Among the stones of Vespignano walked a young shepherd boy who drew on the rocks.— Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 1550
One of the five rooms of the Leopoldina is named after Giotto. Double bed, first floor, south-west exposure, bathroom shared with the Tagliatella room.