Elena Guidotti

I hold a PhD in Renaissance art history from the University of Florence, and I spent a year as a visiting researcher in Kyoto, which is why I guide in Japanese as well as English and Italian. My research was on workshop practice: how Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and their assistants actually produced paintings, who ground the pigments, who painted the hands. That is still my favourite way to look at a picture, and it is how I run my tours of the Uffizi and the Accademia. I choose ten or twelve works and we look at them properly, including the backs of panels where you can sometimes see a carpenter's marks. I also run a small tour of the Brancacci Chapel and Santo Spirito, where Masaccio and Brunelleschi changed how painting and architecture worked. Now I show Florence live on a video call, phone in hand, and I answer questions as they come.