A cup containing a magic potion, Ulysses and Circe: one of the most enigmatic episodesof the Odyssey takes place right in the sorceress’s home, where seduction, metamorphosis, and deception intertwine, captivating and inspiring the paintings of many...
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To speak of the Camera di San Paolo, frescoed by Correggio in Parma in 1518, would first and foremost lead to the vast body of literature that this famous painted room has inspired, featuring the names of celebrated authors and themes spanning a wide...
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It is one of the most famous deceptions in history, and for over two thousand years it has continued to intrigue artists, scholars, and—why not?—even audiences: the Trojan Horse, a symbol of cunning and betrayal, has become one of the most powerful i...
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During the final decade of his long career in Florence, Jacopo Ligozzi—who was one of the most original painters active between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—devoted himself to an undertaking that at first glance seems far remove...
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When standing before a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, something specific—almost automatic—often happens: the gaze tries to make sense of it. It doesn’t just look; it behaves as it would when faced with a page. It draws closer, searching for ...
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“Although largely overlooked by critics for a time, Giovanni Bartolena has recently been ‘rediscovered’ by several scholars who have rightly highlighted his solid artistic talents.” So wrote journalist Mario Lepore in 1966, re...
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A profusion of gold floods Gustav Klimt’s *Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I* , sweeping through the entire composition like a river of precious metal and immersing the viewer in a dazzling vision. Gold is the undisputed protagonist of the entire...
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There is a silence you don’t truly perceive until you stand before a work by Lee Ufan. It is not stillness; it is a dense suspension, made of matter, distance, and breath. A steel plate captures the light and reflects it back coldly; an irregul...
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“It is unforgivable—except for those who are ignorant of every aspect of the arts of drawing—to claim that an ignorant person […] can, in a single month, become a wax modeler capable of imitating all of nature’s creations. One&rsqu...
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These days, it seems that the public’s interest in Caravaggio tends to overshadow that directed at every other genius of painting, driven by the constant stream of solo exhibitions popping up just about everywhere, the endless films and documen...
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Ferrara is a magnificent and enchanting city: it never fails to offer new thrills to visitors who tirelessly plan their returns to the historic realm of art’s embrace, where they are enveloped by the continuous, almost miraculous resurgence of the tr...
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If there is one place where, at the dawn of the 20th century, popular social life revealed all its ambiguity, it is the tavern. Trattoria, tavern, wine bar, and inn: different names for spaces that we today tend to associate solely with conviviality,...
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When one thinks of Michelangelo Buonarroti ( Capri, 1475 – Rome, 1564), one’s imagination inevitably turns to the great masterpieces that have shaped the history of Western art. The Vatican Pietà housed in St. Peter’s Basilic...
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The landscapes of his homeland would always remain etched in Guercino’s mind: the woods along the banks of the Rhine, the countryside around his hometown of Cento, and the dusty roads that cut through this stretch of the Po Valley halfway betwe...
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The career of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, better known as Sodoma (Vercelli, 1477 – Siena, 1549) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating and complex chapters of the High Renaissance, that transitional period between the 15th and 16th centuries, a...
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Enrico Minguzzi's cabinet of curiosities is a humble and shy little doodle, a shrine half a meter or so high, with a lock that struggles to close, a glass cabinet hidden in the white half-light of an antechamber of his house in Bagnacavallo. A house ...
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