To his contemporaries, the frescoes that Pontormo painted in Florence on the walls of the choir of San Lorenzo must have seemed an extreme, laborious expression of defiance— that “negative Sistine Chapel,” as Luciano Berti had…
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The Renaissance man is guided by certain absolutes toward which he also strives through the liberal and practical arts, but he ultimately discovers a new dimension—that of the aesthetic value of ugliness—which asserts itself through…
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The exhibition in Cento is truly dazzling, focusing on that ancient and fascinating technique that over the centuries came to be known as “painting with colored glass”: that is, an extremely refined method of producing color images that…
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Every year in Italy, there are countless exhibitions—in almost incalculable numbers. In each exhibition, there is almost always something interesting: an adventure, a comparison of works and styles, or even the chance to see how different…
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The ceiling of the Bagatti Valsecchi library is right before our eyes: if you try to lift your chin, you’ll see the frescoes and grotesques in their proper places, motionless, exactly where they’re supposed to be. Then, as you…
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These are silences that permeate the Maremma countryside, the result of a mind that viewed those fields, those pine trees, those rivulets, and those marshes as one might view a gold ground, a painting by Piero della Francesca, or a…
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Contemporary American society is rife with deep-seated structural tensions. On the political front, with Trump’s second term and the contradictory emergence of the MAGA movement, the fragmentation of the two historic political…
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Today, overindulgence in food is no longer the joyful Rabelaisian utopia of the “Land of Plenty”; rather, it represents a symptom of inner turmoil, an emotional void, or a pathology linked to consumption and control over the…
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Born in New England in 1834 and having moved to Europe at a very young age, James McNeill Whistler was not only a key figure in European painting during the Post-Impressionist era, but also a theatrical character, witty and irreverent, a…
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Once upon a time, there was the Renaissance. Once upon a time, there was drawing; once upon a time, there was painting understood as an architecture of figures and perspectives. Then Titian came along and everything changed: a new…
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Exhibition reviews Assisi Saint Francis Tourism Travel
It’s only natural, when standing before the works of Francesco Gioli and his brother Luigi, to feel a sense of calm—a fresh, fragrant calm. It’s like inhaling the scent of freshly cut grass, hearing the clatter of a…
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Exhibition reviews BIAF 2026 Florence International Antiques Biennale
While in recent decades the center of gravity of the global contemporary art world has consistently gravitated toward New York—where multinational galleries such as Gagosian, Pace Gallery, David Zwirner, and Marian Goodman Gallery, and…
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Exhibition reviews Contemporary art Naples
It will happen—no one knows when, but we can predict it with a certain degree of certainty—that Franco Vaccari will cease to be regarded merely as an excellent photographer and will begin to be recognized for what he truly was, namely, a…
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Exhibition reviews Diamond Palace Ferrara Holland Modern Art Museums Netherlands
Starting in the 1960s, the structural crisis in the mining and steel industries profoundly reshaped the economy and geography of those European countries that had most closely based their industrial identity on that model. Oil, which was…
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Exhibition reviews Contemporary art Contemporary Art Criticism
Through August 26, as part of the sixth edition of Art Together Now—an event running concurrently with the celebrations for the patron saint’s day of Sant’Alessandro—four venues in Bergamo’s Upper Town will feature…
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Exhibition reviews Ancient art Brands Federico Barocci Five hundred Renaissance Urbino
How big can an idea be? The mind can give birth to something infinitesimally small as well as something infinitesimally large. Even the most monumental work ever created can always be infinitely larger in concept, so that the idea itself…
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