Works and artists

The Lilac Room: an immersive masterpiece by ERK14 at the latest edition of ArtVerona

In the world ofcontemporary art, where the boundaries between real and virtual are becoming increasingly blurred, The Lilac Room, the new project by artist ERK14, curated by Raffaella A. Caruso and presented in collaboration with Eidos Gallery on the...
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Is there heat and eros behind op art? The case of Marina Apollonio

Behind the work of Marina Apollonio, a leading artist in internationaloptical and kinetic art, unimaginable hot urges stir. This is what Marianna Gelussi writes in her essay that opens the catalog of the exhibition Marina Apollonio. Beyond the Circle...
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Death and Rebirth. Among the Halls of the Fortress of Fontanellato.

Misinformation, easy to find in some early twentieth-century articles, reports that a masterpiece by Parmigianino, the portrait of Galeazzo Sanvitale that today can be admired at the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples, was seized by the Farnese...
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From Paolo Guinigi to Lorenzo Trenta: patronage in fifteenth-century Lucca

The ancient history of Lucca is closely linked to the Guinigi, one of the most important and influential families of merchants and bankers in the city. Consider, for example, the famous tower that bears their name, the Guinigi Tower, erected at the ...
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Michelangelo's Madonna and other masterpieces at Our Lady's Church in Bruges

The city of Bruges is a must-see for all art enthusiasts on a trip to Belgium. The capital of West Flanders is a resplendent jewel, with its medieval old town that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000, embellished with sumptuous palaces, ...
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In Montmartre, inside the apartment where Suzanne Valadon, the painter of the infernal trio lived.

On the second floor of the Musée de Montmartre, a museum I recently visited during a stay in Paris almost by chance, since it is not (fortunately or unfortunately) on the usual tourist circuits of the French capital, I had a pleasant surprise:...
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Roberto Cuoghi's art, a challenge to staticity

Contemporary art, by its very nature, is a terrain of constant experimentation and redefinition of the boundaries of self and creativity. Few artists have been able to explore these boundaries with the intensity and radicality of Roberto Cuoghi, a ma...
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The Palau de la Música Catalana, a masterpiece of modernism

In the heart of Barcelona stands a masterpiece that is a symbol of Catalan modernism, often overshadowed by better-known works such as the Sagrada Família or Casa Batlló, but of equal, extraordinary beauty. The site of a cultural renais...
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The lands of Pisa in the paintings of the Macchiaioli.

Landscape painting represents one of the most heartfelt subjects of the Macchiaiolo movement, which has left us pieces of great intensity on the genre that can testify to that new approach that the Tuscan group, proponents of a reborn realism, was ab...
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The Lion of St. Mark was a Chinese monster: what are the implications of the Venetian discovery

La news is so surprising and unsettling that, a week after the announcement (which took place June 11 an international conference in Venice) the world of historians and art historians still kept comments to a minimum. The statue of the lion of St. Ma...
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Matteo Pannocchia's painting, between slowness and lightness

According to the Buddhist view, the fundamental law of the universe finds its manifestation in every single living being. "All life forms," says Daisaku Ikeda, who is among the most influential Buddhist masters of our time, "are not isolated elements...
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Extraordinary Guercino. If a painter at age 60 in the 1600s continues to experiment.

The two Forli paintings discussed in this article can be seen at the exhibition Guercino, a New Look, in Cento, Church of San Lorenzo, from Sept. 21, 2024 to Dec. 31, 2025. During the nineteenth century, at two different times, two of the three larg...
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Who were Hitler's favorite artists? The list of the "blessed by God"

In the run-up to the start of World War II, the Reich Ministry of Public Education and Propaganda under the leadership of Joseph Goebbels (Rheydt, 1897 - Berlin, 1945) created a list, the so-called Gottbegnadeten-Liste ("List of God's Blessings"), of...
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History of the restitutions to Italy of works requisitioned by Napoleon

On June 18, 1815, Napoleon was defeated by the Duke of Wellington at the end of a fierce confrontation that pitted France against the Seventh Coalition. In history, the Battle of Waterloo is considered one of the watershed events between different e...
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For a critical reconsideration of Antonio Ligabue, a Swiss shaman on the Po.

An exhibition celebrating this extraordinary motorcycle born in the 1930s opened at the Guzzi Motoraduno in Mandello, featuring Antonio Ligabue's GTV500. Apparently, artist Antonio Ligabue (Zurich, 1899 - Gualtieri 1965) owned many of them, as many a...
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How many and what are the Italian paintings requisitioned by the French today exhibited in the Louvre?

How many and what are the Italian paintings that were looted by the French in Italy at the time of the Napoleonic plundering that are now on display in the Louvre? There are a total of about fifty canvases and panels by Italian artists requisitioned ...
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