SNOWMADE

I remember as the 20 of January 1493, the day of St. Bastien, there was such a huge snowfall in Florence, that the streets were filled with snow.
And that year there was a great cold, so that you could see people throwing out from the windows one bowl of warm water and, as soon it touched land, it became ice; and the snow remained for more than a month in Florence; and the River Arno iced between a bridge and the other; and in the same year all the vines of the area dried; and so happened to olive trees, laurels and oranges, of which survived in a few. The ancients say that they do not remember having seen snowing in Florence in a one-time so much snow as that time.

By the chronicle of Bartolomeo Masi on the wave of cold of 1493 in Florence.


And with so much snow on the ground there was certainly no lack of the raw material for the puppets that were made by the most young people and not only: Vasari tells, for example, that after the great snowfall of 1493, Piero de' Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, turned nothing less than to Michelangelo to ask him to make a statue of snow in the courtyard of his palace in Larga Avenue at Florence.

"...And in a winter in which there was much snow in Florence, he asked him to make a statue of snow in his courtyard, which was very beautiful..."

Giorgio Vasari: "The lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architect"