Villa Vignamaggio is a charming restored renaissance villa just outside the town of Greve in Chianti. It’s a beautiful location, is exceptionally photogenic and they make great wine… what more could you ask for? How about also being the birthplace of perhaps the most famous portrait sitter ever: Mona Lisa / Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo (a wealthy Florentine silk merchant).  Yes, the owners of Vignamaggio crown the exceptional qualities of their property with the claim that their villa is the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – an assertion that I have repeated on this website. The history of that part of the world and the background information provided by Vignamaggio on its chain of ownership appears to back up the assertion. However, there’s just one problem: I don’t believe it any more.

Farmhouse at Vignamaggio, Greve in Chianti

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Chateau de Biron is in the Dordogne region of France, south of Bordeaux in the South-Western corner of the country. Started in the 12th century, the chateau was in the hands of one family for 800 years, the Gontaut-Biron, and enhanced and expanded until the 18th century.

Chateau de Biron, Dordogne, France

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The chateau of Clos de Vougeot is nestled in the vineyards of Burgundy, the area of Eastern France close to Dijon that brings us delightful red wines. Lighter than the more famous Bordeaux, I like Burgundies because of their delicacy and the way they complement and flatter food. The photograph you see here is of the original 12th century monastery building, built by Cistercian monks from nearby Citeaux (Da Vinci Code fans note: the abbot of Citeaux is supposedly the person who convinced the Pope to create the Templar order to protect the Priory of Scion).

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Eagle (Aquilla) contrade members and their shadows, Siena, Tuscany 

You might be forgiven for wondering what is going on in this photograph. It is a vertical view down onto the heads of a bunch of grown men in medieval yellow silk outfits waving large flags. You can only tell they’re men and flags by the shadows, which is part of what appealed to me in taking this photograph. But what on earth is going on?

Flag throwing is a very serious business in Siena — it is part of a much larger social structure called Contrade that has lasted for hundreds of years. The city is divided into regions, each one the territory of a Contrade — originally these had a military purpose: to help defend against the hated Florentines. In modern Siena there are 17 contrade, but in medieval Siena there were more: six are remembered as the “suppressed contrade”. Every citizen of Siena is associated with a contrade, determined by location of birth or ”inherited” from the parents.

As one Sienese tried to explain it to me, a contrade is like a large extended family. I was also told that non-Senesi cannot really comprehend what it means to be a member! Contrade have a church or chapel, a headquarters (where Palio trophies are jealously guarded), a patron saint, a symbol or insignia and, of course, colors and a flag.

Active members are passionate about their contrade, and flag throwing is a way of expressing this. It’s part of the ceremony around the famous horse race, Il Palio, and quite simply a way for contrade to show off. In the picture, you see members of the Aquilla (Eagle) Contrade practicing in mid June, getting ready for the Palio. The photo was taken from the top of Siena’s town hall tower with a long lens to get the angle and shadows. Luck played a major part in this as I’d just reached the top when I leard the drum beat of the Aquilla as they marched from their part of the city into Il Campo, the main square.

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On the front page of Lodge Photo is a crop from a photo showing a man on a horse with a lance, tilting at a strange target. It’s one of a sequence of four:

This is the Giostra del Saracino - Joust of the Saracens - held twice a year in Arezzo, Tuscany.

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It has to be one of the most famous places on Earth, never mind the United Kingdom — the prehistoric stone circle that is Stonehenge. But if you have ever been there, you’ll have found yourself behind a low fence on a paved path, well away from the stones themselves and far enough away to make good photographs difficult.

It’s hard to blame English Heritage, who own the site and are responsible for maintaining Stonehenge. Over the years, visitors have chipped off pieces of stone and carved their initials. Today, you can still see graffiti carved in the 1800s, when the stones were simply sitting in a corner of a lumpy field on the edge of Salisbury plain rather than a protected monument.

So, how is it that I am so special that I got to go right into the centre of the circle to get the angles and photos you see on the site?

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Every great photograph tells a story, but I often find it interesting to read the story behind the photograph — and hence this occasional series of posts. This time it is the turn of one of the most popular photographs on LodgePhoto.com, the farmhouse at Vignamaggio in Tuscany:

First of all, an answer to a frequently asked question: Yes, it’s a true photograph and the haze behind the farmhouse has not been “photoshopped” into the image! Vignamaggio is a charming Tuscan renaissance villa clinging to the hillside above the town of Greve in Chianti. We first found it while renting a villa a short distance away, further up the road. We saw it was a winery and that was enough by itself for us to stop — but we also knew that Vignamaggio was the location for Kenneth Brannagh’s joyous 1993 Shakespeare film adaptation, Much Ado About Nothing.

The second most frequently asked question: is it really, truly the birthplace of Mona Lisa, sitter for perhaps the most famous portrait ever? Yes, it is: Lisa Gherardini was born at Vignamaggio in 1479, the daughter of a wealthy Tuscan merchant. There has been intense speculation over the “actual” identity of the model for Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, though the renaissance art historian Vasari states that it was Lisa Giocondo (nee Gherardini) in his “Lives of the artists”. The only problem was that Vasari was writing 30 years after Leonardo’s death, which was enough wiggle room for some to suggest that Vasari was mistaken and that the sitter was Leonardo himself, or Isabella of Aragon, or Leonardo’s mother, or… you get the picture.

In 2005, an academic at the University of Heidelberg discovered a note scribbled in the margin of a book that is contemporary with the time of the painting. It positively identifies the sitter as Lisa Giocondo. Lisa was married to a wealthy Florentine silk merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, and this gave rise to the other name of the painting: La Gioconda — also a pun on the jovial expression Leonardo painted.

Today, a visit to Villa Vignamaggio is primarily about wine and/or olive oil, or to stay in its Bed & Breakfast accomodation. The villa’s Mona Lisa chianti classico riserva is excellent, and they also make a range of “Super Tuscans” — wines grown locally that don’t meet the technical criteria to qualify as Chianti Classico. Don’t let that put you off: only wines made almost entirely from Sangiovese can be Chiantis, so a really good Tuscan cabernet has to be called something else!

The picture was taken with a long lens late on a summer afternoon looking down from the villa itself. One of the things that makes this picture is the quality of light, a natural gift in that part of the world, which is largely responsible for the saturated color of the tile and stone. The atmospheric conditions common at that time of year (September) cause the haze, making for a pleasing contrast between the foreground and the background. Quality of light is one of the most important ingredients in “available light” photography, and is one reason why waiting for the right light can make a huge difference to a picture. That’s also my excuse for enjoying a leisurely Italian lunch with a glass or two of wine: the light’s too strong! Finally, the long lens is important because it helps to blur the background, improving the contrast and composition.

Vignamaggio is a magical place to visit or stay, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. There are more photographs of the villa available on the website. Enjoy!

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Exterior of Temple Church, London

(c) Copyright 2006-2008 Mathew Lodge / www.lodgephoto.com

Temple Church is a remarkable building because it has survived intact in pretty much its original form in the centre of a major city for 800 years, and because it has been the scene of key events in British history. Its role in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and subsequent surge of popularity is merely the most recent chapter in a long and distinguished history.

Temple Church has survived the crushing of the Knights Templar by the Pope in 1307, the disbanding of the Knights Hospitallier (its subsequent owners) by Henry VIII during the reformation of 1540, the Great Fire Of London in 1666, unwarranted “restoration” by the architect Wren in the aftermath of the fire, Victorian remodeling in 1841, and a 1941 incendiary bomb attack during World War II. It is one of the oldest buildings in London (only Westminster Abbey and the White Tower at the Tower Of London are older), and is the only remaining example of Romanesque architecture left in the city.

The building’s architecture is the most striking feature when you first approach the church, which is found by navigating a series of narrow alleyways between Fleet Street and the Embankment alongside the river Thames. Suddenly, you find yourself in an open square right next to a round crenulated building of honey-colored sandstone, attached to a larger rectangular structure.

The round section of Temple Church was built first and is based on the church on the temple mount in Jerusalem. In keeping with the The Da Vinci Code’s plotline, Dan Brown attaches some significance to the fact that the design doesn’t follow the typical cross-shaped plan of nearly every Christian church, implying that it was a deliberately pagan design. This ignores the fact that the design is a copy of a Roman building in Jerusalem, later converted to the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre in what was (at that time) the Christian Holy Land, and the site where the Templar order was founded. Temple Church in London was consecrated in 1185 by none less than the Patriarch of Jerusalem and in the presence of King Henry II.

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North-by-North-west of Toulouse, the Lot and Dordogne departmentare a joy to behold: well-preserved medieval towns called Bastides with their neat churches, gridiron layouts and square covered markets cling to the limestone banks of the rivers for which the regions are named. One of life’s pleasures in this region is to sit comfortably in a café in the shade of a Bastide’s covered market on a summer’s day, enjoying a glass of the local Cahors wine. What the tour guides fail to mention is that these picture-perfect villages are the result of 13^th
and 14^th century global economic forces, technological innovation and plain old real-estate speculation.

Belves market square - a classic Bastide layout

The first clue to the commercial purpose of the Bastide is its layout- specifically, the location of the church. Elsewhere in France and other European countries, the church usually occupies a strong or central position in the town or village. Often it had its own square, vying for attention with the market square. But in Bastides, the market occupies the center of the village, with the church pushed off to one side. In this photo of Belves in the Dordogne (left), you can see the church is off a side-street from the main market square.

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