Works and artists

Savoldo incognito at Palazzo dei Diamanti

The recent exhibition on the sixteenth century in Ferrara curated by Vittorio Sgarbi and Michele Danieli brought back to attention once again the Madonna and Child in Glory, Musician Angels and Saints Paul, a Saint, Matthew, Catherine of Alexandria a...
Read more...

Giuseppe Veneziano, Beyond provocation. When art is profound without being obscure

There is a widespread idea, almost a stereotype, about Giuseppe Veneziano. He is often labeled as a provocateur, an artist who uses simple, direct, almost populist images. But all you have to do is sit with him, talk to him, listen to his take on art...
Read more...

Ten things to know about Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe (New York, 1946 - Boston, 1989), an emblematic and provocative figure of 20th-century photography (on view at the Stanze della Fotografia in Venice with Robert Mapplethorpe. The Forms of the Classic, from April 10, 2025 to January...
Read more...

The secret pleasure of looking: voyeurism, between art and forbidden books

Pleasure is a game of shadows and reflections that has always climbed into the impalpable fabrics of art, enveloping each work in veils of mystery and desire in which the gaze sneaks furtively from a curtain raised with studied lightness, from a smal...
Read more...

When artists dissected corpses (and anticipated science)

In a paper preserved at the Royal Library, Leonardo da Vinci writes that, in order to be able to accurately draw the veins of the human body and have "full knowledge of them," he had "disposed of more than ten human bodies, destroying every other mem...
Read more...

What are the trends in young contemporary painting today? A quick overview

Those who are used to flipping through art magazines know that art magazines like to offer their audiences looks and analysis in the form of rankings. The ten best booths at the fair, the twenty artists to watch out for, the thirty exhibitions of the...
Read more...

The Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi, the Savoy residence of unexpected wonders

What is a deer doing on the dome of one of Piedmont's most fascinating Savoy residences ? Imposing and regal with its stage of well-branched antlers, the animal that has become the symbol of the Stupinigi Hunting Lodge stands out in the sky as if it ...
Read more...

Ten things to know about Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is undoubtedly one of the most influential and controversial artists on the contemporary scene, capable of transforming her life into art with a raw, direct and deeply emotional language. Born in Croydon, England, in 1963 and raised in th...
Read more...

In Lucca, among the splendors of Palazzo Mansi and its National Museum.

He had been to Lucca, the father of American realist literature. William Dean Howells had arrived in Lucca one day in April, leaving from Pisa under a sun that already at eight o'clock in the morning seemed hot and sickening, he who was used to the c...
Read more...

The upside-down world of Yayoi Kusama

"Alice was dying of boredom [...], she had peeked a few times at the book her sister was reading, but there were no figures or dialogue." Yayoi Kusama was also bored to death as a child, forced to read a life not her own through lenses tarnished by o...
Read more...

Clio, the enigmatic muse of Artemisia Gentileschi's story.

One of the few works by Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome, 1593 - Naples, c. 1656) to be found in Pisa, the city of origin of the painter's family, Clio, muse of history, a work executed in 1632 in Naples and now housed in the Palazzo Blu in Pisa, is not, ...
Read more...

A novel technique in the history of mosaics: the Annunciation in Pisa Cathedral

Entering Pisa Cathedral through the main door, we are greeted by the large apsidal mosaic that stands out imposingly at the end of the nave. In the center, Christ Pantocrator by Francesco da Pisa stands out, while on the right we find the figure of S...
Read more...

Gaudenzian cartoons in Turin's Pinacoteca Albertina, a unique Renaissance treasure in the world

It makes no noise, the brush brushing against the canvas. Not even a slight rustle, not even the faintest crinkle. The bristles distribute the color caressing the surface of the canvas without making themselves heard. The paintings are born in silenc...
Read more...

Ten things to know about Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1938), a pivotal figure inconceptual art since the 1960s, has changed the way the work of art is conceived, challenging the conventions of the museum and the art market. His stylistic signature, the iconic vertical...
Read more...

A Pierrot and a Harlequin: artists' children also disguised themselves

We have all been children and all of us at least once in our lives have dressed up at Carnival as we liked. I always loved dressing up as a princess or fairy, because even as a child I had a romantic, dreamy, fairy tale-loving soul, as I do now, and ...
Read more...

The mild abstractionism of Gabriele Landi

For some time now, Gabriele Landi has taken to making cardboard or aluminum sculptures that always start from thin, light, simple sheets. They have inaugurated a new strand in his research, a refined, constant quest, always striving to explore the bo...
Read more...