This traditional view of the Ponte Vecchio in Firenze is one of a set of prints depicting scenes throughout Tuscany, Urbino, and Rome made by Celestino Celestini, an Italian artist reknowned in the period before World War II. It shows the bridge, looking south towards the Via de Guicciardini on the south side of the River Arno, as it looked in the middle fo the 20th Century.

The idiosyncrosies of vernacular architecture are always a charming and welcome surprise, challenging our preconceptions about how people lived in the past. Bridges often served as commercial gateways into cities - they were one place everyone had to go; and the Ponte Vecchio is one of history's most cherished examples. The bridge, damaged countless times by war, civil strife, floods, and random acts of municipal vandalism, still stands, more or less as it did fifty years ago, minus, of course, the rooftop air conditioners now visible above some of the shops.

Celestini's style, not unusual for the time, nonetheless represents a stylistic break with the once-fashionable treatment of classical European architectural subjects. His nervous pointillism, the staccato patterns of stippled dots, the naive approach to linear perspective, all these give the print a more subjective, contemporary affect, placing him firmly in the Modern Movement. He worked under the Fascist regime for most of his career, and in his own way reflected the prevailing, and often contradictory, fusion of Classical and Modernist themes characterizing the period.