When Art becomes Education to Safety

The core idea is to promote the usage of Personal Protective Equipment through unconventional images that do not highlight feelings of fear and concern, but rather beauty, care and consideration of ourselves. We combined together some of the most iconic and worldwide notorious art masterpieces with top-notch PPE tools to turn the perspective of PPEs upside down:
“not an uncomfortable and annoying tool anymore but a trusted friend that will help you to get a better and safer life”

Giovanni Stradano

Synopsis of the original painting
Jan Van der Straet – also known as Giovanni Stradano or Stradanus – (Bruges, 1523 – Florence, 1605) was a Flemish painter, active mainly in Florence at the court of the Grand Duke Cosimo I and, later on, of his successor Francesco I. It was for the latter that Stradano realised the paint “The Alchemist’s Laboratory” as a decoration for the Grand Duke’s study.

The study of Francesco I
The Studiolo of Francesco I is one of the most famous rooms of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence; it is one of the iconic and most original creations of Florentine Mannerism and the result of the collaboration between the intellectual like Vincenzo Borghini and the team of artists led by Giorgio Vasari.

It is a small room where the Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici loved to retire in solitude, cultivating his scientific and magical-alchemical interests. The studio, in particular, was conceived as a sort of Wunderkammer, a place to catalogue the various materials collected by Francesco I.

One of the most interesting panels of the iconographic cycle that enriches the walls of the study is the Alchemist’s Laboratory or Fucina. The Stradano’s panel introduces us to a 16th-century alchemy laboratory (Schaefer), with its stills, presses, hearths and utensils, and represents the research on this field carried out in the Florentine laboratories in which Francesco I himself took part.

Fun Fact: Francesco I is himself portrayed in the panel. He is the character in the foreground on the right, represented as a craftsman stirring a pan under the guidance of an expert mentor. In the mentor, scholars have recognized the portrait of the court botanist and herbalist Giovanni Benincasa.

Marco Rindori