Works and artists

When William Blake painted the ghost of a flea--after a vision

The work we discuss in this article can be seen at the exhibition Blake and His Age. Travels in Dreamtime, curated by Alice Insley, at the Reggia di Venaria Reale, Turin, through Feb. 2, 2025. For more info read here. "Here he comes! With his eager ...
Read more...

The patronage of Pius II, the humanist pope

Building the ideal city at the height of the Renaissance was an ambitious project, to say the least, although the great passion for the arts and the high intellectual knowledge of one man, one of the greatest patrons of his time, had made this dream ...
Read more...

Masterpieces of the Flemish world at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

Brussels is said to be a capital city to which its own state goes, wanting to emphasize the city's imposing scale in size and population in the context of a relatively small country. The same cliché might also marry for its Royal Museum of Fin...
Read more...

Keil Space's artistic revolution in Florence: the observer at the center as co-creator

To visit Keil Space in Florence, the space conceived by British artist Samantha Keil, is to glimpse the future, to experience and savor what we would like the future to be. The space, founded by Samantha Keil, a master of bronze from a long line of c...
Read more...

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, history and transformations of a symbol of Venice

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a building of thirteenth-century origins overlooking the Grand Canal, next to the Rialto Bridge, stands at one of the nerve centers of central Venice, and is not only an architectural masterpiece and a symbol of the Sereniss...
Read more...

Andrea Pozzo's masterpiece: the Glory of St. Ignatius in Rome

The saint is above a cloud, borne in flight by a swarm of angels, moving over a sky that illusionistically breaks through the vault of the church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, in the heart of Rome: in front of him Jesus with the cross, in the corners th...
Read more...

The art of stopping time: the portraits of Ugo Mulas

Since time immemorial, in human history, hands have made themselves eternal protagonists, ancient and irreplaceable tools that shape, transform, create and destroy by the mere force of gesture. In the photographic workshop of Ugo Mulas, these very sk...
Read more...

Sumptuous and cloistered. The Castle of Moncalieri

A half-meter hole in the woodwork, plaster surfacing under the wood, the jambs blackened by the marks of the flames that rise and engulf, engulf, devastate. Restorers wanted to leave clearly visible, in the room that precedes Victor Emmanuel II's dre...
Read more...

Chanel No. 5: history and design of the most famous perfume ever

The year was 1921 when Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, already known for some years as the great Coco, was preparing to present her new product to a select few in her apartment-studio at 31 Rue Cambon in Paris. A product that was completely different from ...
Read more...

That time Andy Warhol worked for Trump (who didn't pay him).

Theestablished artist and the rampant young millionaire. A figure who was already marking the history of art and one who would mark the history of finance and politics. A brief encounter, probably of little significance to either, but one that certai...
Read more...

Lazzaro Bastiani. An artist on the margins of the greats of the early Venetian Renaissance.

Roberto Longhi-in an essay written between 1925 and 1926, but published posthumously-was able to summarize with a proposition of unusual clarity the critical history of Lazzaro Bastiani, documented as a depentor from 1456 to 1512, when in the list of...
Read more...

If Jupiter paints butterflies: the magical painting by Dosso Dossi

Dosso Dossi had a boundless imagination: his whimsical, versatile, ingenious, imaginative flair is among the most celebrated in the history of art, and few in his era could come close to his visionary imagination. A myth, a literary text, a biblical ...
Read more...

Eight works of art to celebrate the horror of Halloween Day

When we talk about Halloween, it is impossible not to analyze art that cites themes ofhorror and the macabre. Especially during the Gothic period of the nineteenth century, a fright narrative developed that influenced literature, with authors such as...
Read more...

From Samhain to Halloween. Five witch sabbaths in art history.

Witchcraft and the sabbath have influenced art throughout the centuries, arousing in humans the classic images of mystery, fear and transgression. Flemish paintings and Renaissance engravings portray witches as characters of folk beliefs, but also as...
Read more...

The human being is organic and artificial and coexists with these two aspects. The art of Paolo Grassino

Paolo Grassino, one of the most interesting contemporary Italian sculptors, proposes high-impact research that makes use of the most varied materials, from concrete to polystyrene, from wood to rubber, investigating themes such as the precariousness ...
Read more...

The Treasure of the Grand Dukes and the collecting of the Tuscan court

The visitor who, being in Florence, wants to get as complete an idea as possible of the collecting interests of the Tuscan court in the 290 years of the Grand Duchy's life, cannot limit himself to admiring the bombastic pictorial masterpieces of the ...
Read more...