FLORENS 2010….It’s the FLORENCE you do not expect!
The innovative urban decoration project, the Miracle of Saint Zenobius, was a spectacular event, representation and symbolic message during Florens 2010, International Week on Cultural Heritage and Landscape involving the transformation of the pavement in Piazza San Giovanni into a green meadow. The urban exhibit designed by the Florens 2010 artistic management has historical, iconographical and symbolic inspiration: the connection between the city of Florence with Flora, plants, flowers and seasonal renewal (perceived in the name Florentia and in fiorino, the citys’ currency on which the economy and political power of the medieval and renaissance city grew).
The iconographical relationship between the shapes and decorations of the Cathedral and the flower or offshoot of the tree of Jesse from which Florence’s cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower) gets its name. It is a precise and detailed reference to the story of the Miracle of Saint Zenobius, called to mind by the column located near the Battistero di San Giovanni. Finally, there is a more fantastic and imaginative relationship with the philosophical and moral contents of Botticelli’s Primavera, a work of art that is a symbol of the Renaissance and of the neoplatonic culture that flourished at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The marble column near the Bel San Giovanni (as the Baptistry is called) to this day reminds the Florentines and tourists from all over the world of the flowering of a tree in the depths of winter: the miracle of San Zenobius, which occured when the Saint’s body was moved to the location where the current symbolic monument is located. The installation of green grass in contrast with the white and dark marble of the Cathedral, the Steeple and the Baptistry engrossed thousands of citizens who discovered, at dawn on November 13, 2010, a new urban landscape, a new spiritual place: the white marble of the holy buildings suspended above a soft carpet of annew grass. Citizens and tourists, big and small, were enchanted by this extraordinary appearance in a moment of silence that was filled with joy and wonder. Poetry and spirituality, feelings and memories, a concert of emotions amplified in this monumental context from the pedestrian Square. The “Bandierai degli Uffizi” (Uffizi Flag Bearers) started the day off with an exhibition. In the afternoon, the events culminated with the reading of the chronicles of the life of Saint Zenobius (the Homily) interspersed with music from the Florentine 1300s on the “Legend of Messer Saint Zenobius” performed by the Maggio Fiorentino Formazione directed by Giovan Battista Varoli.
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