Parma – Rothko a Firenze

We are in Firenze (pop 361,624 in 2026) to meet with a cousin at lunchtime and see an art show. The show is a retrospective of the work of Mark Rothko; we have reserved tickets this morning to see his work inside the Basilica di San Lorenzo (Filippo Brunelleschi, 15th century) at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Michelangelo, 1524-71).

We recall our most recent experience with Rothko at the Tate Modern last year, where we were privileged to see the "Seagram Murals" (1958-59). The same quote from that gallery is on the introductory panel of this show:

After I had been at work for some time, I realized that I was much influenced subconsciously by Michelangelo's walls in the staircase room of the Medicean Library in Florence. He achieved just the kind of feeling I'm after-he makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall.

(Rothko, 1959)

The show at the Biblioteca involves only two "Seagram Murals Studies" (watercolor and oil on paper, 1958 & 59). They are on display on the empty wall surfaces at the bottom of the stairs below the belt course that aligns to the floor of the Sala di Lettura. This places a bright red-on-scarlet image and a black-on-red image between the over-sized brackets. And we immediately see why: the shadows of the brackets play with the tonalities of Studies to build the sensation of 'containment' that Rothko mentions.

But, there seems to be a missed opportunity with the wall surface above the belt course, especially from the top of the stairs. The way the images play with the brackets – well the recessed columns are right there.

The Sala di Lettura is also open today, though the doors on the opposite side are closed. SO that's it, no more Rothko's. In the small passage to the "La Tribuna Elci" there is a display case with a handful of illustrated manuscripts.

The display includes: "Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis Secundum Usum Romanum" (Bruges, for sale); "Sant’Antonio Abate: La Vita e le Opere" (Francia, for sale); Francesco di Giorgio Martini, "Trattato di Achitecttura" (Toscana); and Francesco Petrarca, "I Trionfi" (all manoscritto membranaceo, 15th century).

These volumes are listed on the Bliblioteca's facsimili page, and some of the are listed for sale. So, this is the gift shop.

In the way the brackets create a counterpoint, the ceiling and the floor also play against each other. Even the opposite paneled walls play the same way – total three-dimensional yin-yang. Still, there is no stronger example than the corners of Il Vestibolo.

The show, "Rothko a Firenze", continues at the Palazzo Strozzi (Benedetto da Maiano, 1489-1538). The early paintings of the 1930s and 1940's stay close to the Expressionists and move from figurative works toward the well-known "color field" work.

These are reminiscent of the OMCA's Rothko "Untitled" (1947) that we know well.

In the 1950's, the architecture of Rothko's paintings takes form. Two or three roughly rectangular area of contrasting colors seem to simultaneously emerge and fade on the surface. The colors are vibrant, but their application is mottled, with zones of transparency and foggy borders. There is tension between the colors and pressure along the edges of the rectangles.

The energy in these rooms is strangely reminiscent of the streetscapes of Parma.

In the side rooms, more studies for the Seagram Murals and the "Harvard Murals" (1962) are on display and illustrate Rothko's experiments with both form and color. We can easily relate the small ink studies to architectural details; they have the proportions and a sense of shadow that might be a triglyph or a dentil, a column bay, or a classically detailed window. Here is the narrative from the wall label:

In 1958, Rothko was commissioned to create a series of murals for the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York, designed by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe. To fully conceive the paintings, he rented a former gymnasium on the Bowery, where he built scaffolding to match the proportions of the restaurant's walls. Working on this scale led him to think of painting as a kind of architecture, an environment that could surround and absorb the viewer.

Though he would ultimately withdraw from the commission, the paintings carry the architectural imprint of his earlier encounter with Florence. Rothko had been deeply influenced by Michelangelo's Vestibule of the Laurentian Library, whose blocked windows and heavy stillness conveyed, for him, a distinct kind of emotional intensity.

By the late 1950's and early 1960's, the time of the Seagram Murals and the Harvard Murals, Rothko's color are murky, with earth tones, greys, and ember-like reds. Even the edges of the canvas peel back, but the architecture is as firm as ever.

The works in this room, executed in the years surrounding the Seagram project, share that same sense of compression and inward pressure. Broad fields of maroon, umber, and black seem to contain their own restrained force, as if light was struggling to breathe beneath the surface. Untitled, 1962 is, in fact, an early vision of the compositional format for the Harvard mural commission of that year.

Rothko pushes further in the mid and late 1960's and into 1970. Certainly, Rothko's mood is heavier, as the images turn leaden and charcoal with the "Black and Gray" series (1970).

The artist turns color and light into tools for meditation. From the studies for the 'Seagram Murals' to the 'Black and Gray' series, the paintings become progressively more essential and austere, attaining a synthesis of intense introspection.

The artist's special connection with Florence [makes] an ideal setting in which to explore how his painting expresses the tension between classical measure and expressive freedom, generating through color a renewed perception of space that transcends the two-dimensional surface of the canvas.

We have lunch in the Piazza Duomo. We joke with our cousin how we've had such good luck with the trains, but we should know better than to temp the travel gods. We transfer to a regional spur at Firenze Rifredi and catch our train north to Bologna Centrale. On the way, we intercept another north-bound train that has broken down on the way to Trieste.

As there are no more late trains to Trieste, our train is rerouted, and we must catch the midnight local to Parma. Luckily (?) Trenitalia arranges a taxi to take a group of us back to Parma; unfortunately, the highway to Parma is shutdown.

Rothko's words come back to haunt: "all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall". By the time we get home it's nearly two in the morning.