Brevissime: in Florence lectures on the history of the arts by the publishing house Centro Di

Painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, design, photography, landscape history, costume and fashion-in a word, the subject matter that makes up Italy’s history and current affairs and whose excellence is universally recognized. These are the topics of Brevissime, Lessons in the History of the Arts, the new initiative of the Centro Di publishing house focused on popularizing topics concerning the arts. The main purpose is to disseminate knowledge of arts-related topics to a lay audience, that is, to convey high-level content by adopting an accessible language, even in the form of a short story: a way of disseminating knowledge outside the strictly academic and institutional world specializing in education, but related to it.

For the creators, the goal of the lectures is to create a palimpsest that develops a kind of ecosystem of “communication of culture” aimed at translating purely scientific vocabulary into appealing, fast-paced and brilliant yet authoritative language for a cross-sectional audience, ’hungry’ for knowledge but often, on this side, neglected in favor of communication that is too superficial or, conversely, too specialized. Brevissime will embrace a wide range of topics, with focus on artists, movements, materials, monuments, and more: ancient, modern, and contemporary art history, architecture, landscape and botany, decorative arts and design, history of costume and fashion. For each of the topics, renowned professors, authors, and experts in the field will be invited from all over Italy and even abroad, with a special penchant for brilliant popularization. The main language of the lectures will be Italian; in the case of a lecture with a foreign lecturer, simultaneous translation will be provided.

The lectures will be divided into two main cycles that will take place between late September and early June. Except for the inaugural cycle, classes will take place in-person twice a month, mostly on Fridays. They will have a duration of 45 minutes, with a time from 6:45 to 7:30 p.m.

The first cycle, organized in collaboration with Crossmedia Group, will be held between March 31 and May 2022 at 6:45 p.m. and will feature Andrea G. De Marchi and Luca Scarlini as speakers.

This is the program: History of Art / Art: spirit or body?,from March 31 to April 14, 2022. Three meetings are scheduled with speaker Andrea G. De Marchi.

Thursday, March 31: Art: spirit without body The idealizing perspective, from Platonic thought to nineteenth-century idealism, will be briefly summarized. So too about the efforts to rehabilitate works: from brute mechanical things to texts rich in immaterial content. This process led first artists and then scholars to carve out a purely intellectual role, unrelated to physicality. In this perspective certain Renaissance artists had attitudes comparable to those of international protagonists in contemporary art. While matter plays a leading role even with the most intimate characters of the works. The issue will be exemplified through cases of famous authors: from the Italian Primitives to masters of later periods such as Annibale Carracci.

Thursday, April 7: The colors of the Ancient and their censorship. The second session will be devoted to the reasons why the vibrant colors of Roman antiquity have found little space in the various re-enactments organized around the era-model throughout the West. The phenomenon, which primarily concerns the Renaissance and Florence, resurfaces in several subsequent revivals. It induces us to ask questions about the existence of widely shared mechanisms for indicating and imagining the coloring of the past. A very stimulating viewpoint is offered by the colored marbles, brought to the capital of the Roman Empire from distant places with immense economic and logistical effort. They document well a slice of the rich coloration of that antiquity. Recognizing their reflections in painting, sculpture and architecture from the Middle Ages onward leads to entirely new results about those disciplines.

Thursday, April 14: Art and Money A third session will illustrate how the dynamic between idealistic projections and works in the flesh has influenced the historical discipline, starting with the controversial relationship between art and money, long subject to contradictions, scandalism and widespread hypocrisy. The whole history of art is traversed by this relationship censored or artificially mellowed by anecdotes from ancient and modern history. Condemnation has passed from artists, accused of venality, to connoisseurs. The latter, beginning in post-World War I England, suffered a deafening condemnation, linked to the relationship with money, which led to a gradual extinction of that expert figure. This is the stage of a dissociative path that has led to a kind of divorce of art history from actual works.

From April 29 to May 2022, Luca Scarlini in the meetings on Gli Sconfitti. Stories of Tuscan artists outside the canon, tells paradoxical fates, stories of greatness in life and disappearance in death, against the backdrop of a Tuscany that sometimes in less traveled places reveals admirable surprises.

First up is Friday, April 29: Bartolomeo della Gatta (1448-1502). Devotion was his territory, his choice, his way of life. In Laurentian Florence, a resounding machine for the recreation of myth, the painter-frate was quick to choose places of residence secluded from the Medici capital: in the Casentino, where he painted exquisite and admirable works that told of a withdrawn existence devoted to mysticism.

Friday, May 6: Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588). A nun and painter, in the convents around Prato she carried on in devotional paintings, composed by herself and her sisters and pupils, a quest for spirituality that confronted the forbidden legacy of Savonarola. A legacy long concealed that has only recently been rediscovered in all its seductiveness.

Finally, Friday, May 20: Francesco Mochi (1580-1654). A supreme sculptor of the seventeenth century, he was crushed by Bernini in the creation of the resounding image of Baroque Rome. He worked under the banner of the Farnese family in Orvieto, especially in the wonderful sculptures of the cathedral, and in Piacenza, where his equestrian statues had the effect of determining the city’s image. A shadowy life between talent and escapes. The 2nd cycle dedicated to art history will take place between September 30 and December 9, 2022.

Lecture titles, dates and location will be announced by summer 2022 at www.centrodi.it.

The lectures will be held at the Cathedral of the Image, Church of Santo Stefano al Ponte, Piazza di Santo Stefano 5, Florence. full price ticket: €13 student ticket: €5 subscriptions are provided for individual series reservations: edizioni@centrodi.it / info@cattedraledellimmagine.it info and ticket purchase: www.centrodi.it

Brevissime: in Florence lectures on the history of the arts by the publishing house Centro Di

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