mark rothko + florence

 
And so I flew to Flo­rence

in the mid­dle of yet an­oth­er heatwave 

to see Rothko’s work in the city that pro­found­ly in­flu­enced him.
 

Rather than be­ing housed in a sin­gle museum, 

the ex­hi­bi­tion un­folds across San Mar­co,

Michelangelo’s Bib­liote­ca Medicea Lau­ren­ziana,

and Palaz­zo Strozzi.

 

I be­gan at San Marco, 

where five Rothko paint­ings are in­stalled in the Do­mini­can monks’ cells along­side Fra An­geli­co’s fres­coes.

Rothko spent an en­tire af­ter­noon there dur­ing his first vis­it to Flo­rence in 1950 and re­turned the fol­low­ing day. 

Af­ter­wards, he told a friend that 

“he had seen some­thing to­tal there,”

de­scrib­ing the monks’ cells as 

“a trea­sure.”

 

The sec­ond stop was the Vestibule of Michelangelo’s Bib­liote­ca Medicea Lau­ren­ziana, where two Rothko works are dis­played with­in one of the most ex­tra­or­di­nary ar­chi­tec­tur­al in­te­ri­ors of the Renaissance. 

 

Rothko

re­gard­ed

Michelangelo’s

vestibule

as a pro­found source of inspiration, 

say­ing:

“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.”
 

The emo­tion­al in­ten­si­ty of the space would lat­er in­form the at­mos­phere he sought in works such as the Sea­gram Mu­rals – a se­ries I of­ten re­turn to with guests on my NEJA’s Art Walks in the Rothko Room at Tate Mod­ern.

 

Only then did I vis­it the main ex­hi­bi­tion at Palaz­zo Strozzi, where more than 70 works trace Rothko’s artis­tic jour­ney – from his ear­ly fig­u­ra­tive paint­ings to the mon­u­men­tal colour-field paint­ings and late works. 

 

The ex­hi­bi­tion is co-cu­rat­ed by his son, Christo­pher Rothko.

The venue it­self feels per­fect­ly suit­ed to the ex­hi­bi­tion, with sun­light pour­ing through the Re­nais­sance win­dows and cast­ing broad planes of light and shad­ow through­out the space.

 

 

My favourite part of the ex­hi­bi­tion was the pair of rooms ded­i­cat­ed to stud­ies for the Sea­gram Mu­rals and the Har­vard Mu­rals.

See­ing these prepara­to­ry works of­fered a rare glimpse into Rothko’s work­ing process and the evo­lu­tion of two of his most im­por­tant commissions.

 

 

 

—juli­ja svetlova

Flom­mist Juli­ja Svet­lo­va is an art his­to­ri­an, free­lance re­searcher and a founder of Neja’s Art Walks, a be­spoke provider of art and his­to­ry-re­lat­ed tours and ex­pe­ri­ences in Lon­don. Juli­ja pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a col­lec­tion re­search as­sis­tant at the Tate. Copy­right © 2026 Juli­ja Svetlova.

PLEASE   SUPPORT   FLOMM
DONATIONS  DISCREETLY  ACCEPTED

FLOMM
promotes learning  +  education worldwide
drawing attention to works by nü  +  upcoming artists,
designers, writers, musicians  +  MOR

OUR INVOLVEMENT
– however –
is mostly paid for out of pocket or in trade

IF YOU ENJOY
wat  FLOMM  is doing here, please consider


1.   A DONATION  :
large or small, use our tip jar whenever the mood hits



2.   BUY OUR SWAG  :
our approach is semi-green —
                all our  FLOMMHAUS  merch is made to order



3.   HELP US OUT  :
use our hashtags  #flomm  #flommus  #whereisflomm  #nüflommart  #flommist
when posting on ur socials —
or drop us a note and offer to help in some way
everything we do is on a volunteer basis —
             when we say  YOU CAN BE A FLOMMIST TOO  this is wat we mean

THANK YOU
your support helps our continued efforts
to create content across numerous platforms

clic 「 HIER   」 to return to the DER TUNG front page