Exhibition reviews - Finestre sull'Arte

The ceramics of a great artist who did not like ceramics. Fausto Melotti's exhibition in Lucca

Perhaps, in Fausto Melotti's intentions, an exhibition such as the one the Fondazione Ragghianti in Lucca is dedicating to him this year should never have been held. The project, curated by Ilaria Bernardi, brings to the halls of the San Micheletto c...
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That disastrous pope who loved the arts. What the exhibition on Urban VIII at Palazzo Barberini looks like.

Seventeenth-century Romans did not hold Urban VIII in high esteem, despite the fact that even today traces of his pontificate can be found scattered all over Rome, and despite the fact that the twenty-one years of his reign, from 1623 to 1644, are pr...
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Perugino, Italy's best master. Here's what the Perugia exhibition looks like

In the eyes of Agostino Chigi, Perugino was the "best master in Italy." He wrote this in a letter sent to his father Mariano on November 7, 1500, discussing the possibility of commissioning him to paint an altarpiece for the family altar in the churc...
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Ugo Mulas, a total photographer. What the exhibition that opens the Rooms of Photography looks like.

"The eyes, this magical meeting point between us and the world, no longer come to terms with this world, with reality, with nature: we see more and more through the eyes of others. This could also be an advantage but it is not so simple. Of these tho...
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Rediscovering John March, cosmopolitan painter. The Livorno exhibition (30 years after the last one).

Giovanni March - The Painter of Light and Atmosphere is the interesting exhibition dedicated to Giovanni March, one of the protagonists of Leghorn and Tuscan painting, open at the Castagneto Banca 1910 representative office in Leghorn until May 27. A...
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All the humanity of the poor by Giacomo Ceruti. What the Miseria&Nobiltà exhibition in Brescia looks like.

To think of eighteenth-century art, images of vast heavenly expanses, frivolous worldly amusements, large airy and terse halls, mirrors, gardens, wigs, feathers, and swings immediately come to mind. One tends to think less of an art that depicted the...
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Caravaggio's Cecco rugged and sensual. What the Bergamo exhibition on Caravaggio's pupil-lover looks like.

There are artists of whom, thanks to historical biographies and documentary evidence, we know with certainty theentire existence, including their movements, their frequentations, their commissions, and sometimes even their thoughts, even if these liv...
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Duchess, patron, influencer: all the faces of Eleanor of Toledo on display in Florence

The first image that rushes to mind when one thinks of Eleanor of Toledo can only inevitably be Bronzino's sumptuous portrait in which the splendid duchess of Florence, clad in one of the most material and evocative dresses in the history of art, is ...
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A journey through time with photography in Venice. Chronorama, photographic treasures of the 20th century

The name "chronorama" suggests one of those devices designed until the nineteenth century to reproduce moving images. Chrono, the god of time, and -rama, the Greek suffix that brings back vision, give the idea of a sequence of pictures scrolled quick...
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Journey to Renoir's Italy. The discovery of a new classicism at the Rovigo exhibition

It was November 21, 1881, when Pierre-Auguste Renoir wrote his dealer Paul Durand Ruel a letter from Naples imbued with melancholy doubts, uncertainties, and deep awareness. Awareness of which only great artists and the most humble minds eager for di...
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Ferrara great capital of the Renaissance. What the exhibition on Ercole de' Roberti and Lorenzo Costa looks like.

Against the simplifications of a scholastic vulgata that often tends to trivialize the events of the fifteenth century in Ferrara, leading one to consider them almost a sort of vernacular emanation of a broader "Renaissance" centered on Tuscany, one ...
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From Pasquale Rotondi to Fernanda Wittgens, our monuments men who saved art: the exhibition in Rome

Without a true love of art, which also goes beyond what an insider's profession requires, and sometimes without a courageous spirit, numerous masterpieces that we can still admire in our museums today would most likely no longer be in Italy. This is ...
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Surprise: the one on Van Gogh in Rome is not the usual box office exhibition

It is difficult to avoid the risk of setting up an exhibition that has already been seen when dealing with Vincent van Gogh. That is, one of the artists whose name recurs most often in the exhibition palimpsests of half the world: it will suffice to ...
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Artemisia Gentileschi in Naples: here's what the exhibition on the artist's Neapolitan period looks like

The Gallerie d'Italia in Naples has inaugurated the exhibition history of the new venue of Palazzo del Banco, in the central Via Toledo, with an exhibition dedicated to the Neapolitan period of Artemisia Gentileschi, which thus focuses on the works t...
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All about the young John Paul Panini: the exhibition-dossier in Piacenza

Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that Giovanni Paolo Panini is rightfully among that select group of artists who can claim to have not one, but two dates of birth. In Panini's case, the first is the date on which he was born in Piacenza, June 17,...
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The reconstruction of the Herrera Chapel: Annibale Carracci is given back his last feat

The facade of the church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, so smooth, sober, spartan, rigid in its geometric tripartition, does not say much to the millions of people who wander around Piazza Navona and pass by it without paying too much attention. Ye...
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