Francesca Anita Gigli

Buried Secrets. The Murlo Archaeological Museum and ancient Etruscan civilization.

The roads along the Tuscan territory, those traced by the Etruscans, do not heavily modify nature, but rather go along with it, delicately following its boundaries, and gracefully fit into a landscape cradled in the past that, only at times and for a...
Read more...

Lorenzo Lotto and those anti-heretical paintings that perhaps inspired Pellegrino Tibaldi

A snow-white and almost lunar arm attempts to grasp a hand beneath him: it is thearchangel Michael, shrouded in the divine glow of a cloud, seemingly in a last desperate and vain attempt to save the brazen morning star, still in human and harmonious ...
Read more...

A very ancient labyrinth -- nuragic. The labyrinth of the Domus de Janas of Luzzanas.

There are countless places in Italy that hold ancient legends and hide magical creatures of all kinds, but only in Sardinia are Domus de Janas found. They look like tiny houses carved into the rock and, according to the oldest folk tales, they are sa...
Read more...

San Pietro al Monte in Civate, an ancient abbey in the solitude of the forest

1. Two. Three. Four. Thus begin, with one foot in front of the other, all discoveries in the mountains. They begin by counting the beats of one's heart, the breaths, the steps that follow one another and the minutes or hours that have passed since on...
Read more...

Unusual and little-known Sardinia: 10 places to discover

Hidden among the turquoise waves of the sea and sculpted by the strong wind, stands wild and guardian of raw legends, the island of Sardinia. A land, this one, that possesses an untamed beauty, where the waves crash with unprecedented force against t...
Read more...

Today's art? Too commercial: real talent looks ahead. Roberto Casamonti speaks.

Gallery owner Roberto Casamonti has devoted almost his entire life to discovering and encouraging visionary artists, and his Tornabuoni gallery, founded in 1981 in Florence, has become an essential stop for art lovers, exhibiting works by the masters...
Read more...

The Scaliger Castle in Sirmione, a medieval jewel on Lake Garda

Like a gem set in the southern side of Lake Garda, rises Sirmione, a small village celebrated over the centuries by the dreamy pens of important literary figures from Catullus to Goethe. The lake water skims the millennia-old walls of the Scaliger Ca...
Read more...

The fierce and scandalous realism of Gustave Courbet's Origine du Monde

Among the works representing female bodies, bearers of more or less erotic messages, L'Origine du Monde by Gustave Courbet (Ornans, 1819 - La-Tour-de-Peilz, 1877) is the one that more than any other engages with fierce realism: it is a work that help...
Read more...

The great photographer Giovanna Dal Magro tells her story. It's five photographers in one

When we begin to grow up we are often instructed to draw one straight line and slavishly follow it containing any smears, second thoughts or deviations. We are taught that we can be one thing and one thing only if we plan to take part in the world of...
Read more...

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...
Read more...

The Strada Collection: the beauty and fragility of antique glass, a world that enchants

There are countless human discoveries whose history is shrouded in magic and mystery, and one of them is that of the origins of glass, which has its roots in the 3rd millennium B.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia and is reflected among the pieces in the St...
Read more...

Like Andy Warhol's Flowers. Lightness versus what is ephemeral

We live in a world of porous and unstable boundaries, in which everything seems to ruefully slip out of our hands in the name of a destiny that cannot be completely controlled. Everything cracks and at times inexorably breaks every certainty of our c...
Read more...

Le déjeuner sur lherbe, the scandalous work of Édouard Manet

Human beings are constantly and auburnly searching for something throughout their lives, hoping that this something will leave even an insignificant scratch in the world. We want to be remembered: there are those who seek fame, those who seek full an...
Read more...

Escaping death: the return of Nero with stitches by Alberto Burri

We harbor, mostly unconsciously, the fierce belief that the works of art kept within the walls of museums will remain available to the world forever that they will somehow survive us by escaping old age and escaping the inexorable decline typical of ...
Read more...

Bosch and another Renaissance: visions from hell at Milan exhibition

A dreamlike dimension teeming with devils, monsters, visions and apocalyptic fires is what distinguishes the disturbing art of Dutchman Hieronymus Bosch. A vision, his, that helped shape a different Renaissance, one that opposed a passion for classic...
Read more...

When the dentist is scary: dentistry in the art of the seventeenth century

Immobilized to a wooden chair in a room in the half-light, while onlookers watch with ill-concealed voyeurism. The unfortunate man is writhing in pain and almost seems to hear them, the screams. Behind him is the apathetic executioner carrying out hi...
Read more...

The KMSKA, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp: a new museum idea

Is it pure utopia to imagine a place where art is closely mixed, almost not recognizing its boundaries, with play and curious discovery? Habit leads, oftentimes, to conceive of the museum space as a majestic silent temple, where art is sacred, unatta...
Read more...

Giuseppe Iannaccone: Here's how I promote the art of young people

OnSeptember 17, 2022 opened at Studio Iannaccone in Milan, with the exhibition Caos Calmo by young Chiara Di Luca and Aronne Pleuteri, the eighth edition of the project In pratica, which offers emerging artists the opportunity to exhibit through a pr...
Read more...

Annalisa Zanni: The Poldi Pezzoli? I hope to have made it a museum that listens, dialogues and entertains

It is impossible not to succumb to the charm, energy, and deep, almost palpable love that Annalisa Zanni, director of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum, has for the walls of this building, for the figure of its founder, and for all the people who have worked ...
Read more...

Spectacles in art history, from the origins to the seventeenth century

Looking at ancient works of art and catching sight of its protagonists wearing glasses always seems funny and almost anachronistic. Sight problems, however, have plagued human beings since the dawn of time, and they mainly affected those who performe...
Read more...

Titian's Averoldi Polyptych, "la migliore pictura ch'el facesse mai"

Not the Venus of Urbino, not theAmor sacro e amor profano: it was the Averoldi Polyptych, a large oil-on-poplar-wood altarpiece, the work that Titian Vecellio loved more than any of his other creations. Or at least that is what Alfonso I d'Es...
Read more...