Today, I have something special for you…
I present Travels with Tavel’s FIRST mystery snapshot contributor! Jessi White has provided us with this beautiful photograph:
Please make Jessi feel right at home by guessing:
1) Where the photograph was taken. (City, country, specific building if you can.)
2) What is represented in the photograph? (Artist, work of art, subject matter of the art, style, etc.)
3) If you really know your stuff, give any more information you can about what you see. Teach us something!
As a reminder, I’m always looking for mystery snapshot contributors, so please dig through the photographs from your last trip and find an image that has just enough mystery and just enough hints to make the guessing game fun.
Travels with Tavel 
ok, i’m going out on a limb here… but:
1) Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence, Italy
2) Brunelleschi, renaissance, something Bible-y
3) Florence has a lot of Albanians pretending to be Italians!
Ha! I know this one definitely the Piazza del Duomo in Florence.
Didn’t spend the summer in Italy photographing domes (whiplash) for nothing!
1. I think it’s the rotunda of Il Duomo in Florence, Italy.
2. I don’t know the artist (eek), but the subject matter is Dante Allegretti’s The Divine Comedy. The bottom left corner is the Inferno (hell), whereas the bottom middle section is, I believe, Purgatorio (Purgatory). In the center of the picture is the Virgin Mary, who occupies the Celestial Rose, the highest rung of heaven.
3. Florence played a major part in the development of the modern financial system. At the advent of the Renaissance, bankers were not allowed to charge interest on loans (due to usury, a sin under Catholism). The patriarch of what was to become the Medicis dealt with foreign exports and imports, and thus foreign exchange. Ingeniously, he was able to circumvent the usury laws by charging essentially a commission on his foreign exchange transactions that got buried in the basis of the transaction. Riskier transactions received a higher commission, the first to link return to risk, a fundamental principle of modern finance. The Medicis created their massive wealth this way, which they then used to finance the Renaissance (among other things, such as the creation of the first bond markets, but that’s for another photo) which brought us such treasures as Il Duomo.
Il Duomo.
I didn’t have a clue, but now I know. Does that count?
Loved the other comments. I’m learning a lot!