The ways of silence - Finestre sull'Arte

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...
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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...
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Vallo di Nera, between Franciscan frescoes and movements of ancient popular devotion

Sunday morning of a cold and strange December, and the alleys of Black Wall are empty. There is no travel guidebook that forgets to mention this sandstone village in the lists of must-see places in the Valnerina. Orange flag, Borghi più belli ...
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The Malatesta Temple in Rimini, the Renaissance dream of Sigismondo Malatesta

It feels like entering a pagan temple. Or a sumptuous noble residence, if you prefer. When one enters the Malatesta Temple, one immediately gets the distinct impression that the glory of the Christian pantheon was not exactly high on the list of prio...
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Viboldone Abbey, monastic peace amid the chaos of Milan's suburbs

On the one hand, the high-rise buildings of San Giuliano Milanese, the results of the 'building expansionism of the 1960s, the straight line of the railroad, the sequence of banks, grill shops, driving schools, turkish kebabs, hairdressers, furniture...
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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...
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Death and Rebirth. Among the Halls of the Fortress of Fontanellato.

Misinformation, easy to find in some early twentieth-century articles, reports that a masterpiece by Parmigianino, the portrait of Galeazzo Sanvitale that today can be admired at the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples, was seized by the Farnese...
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In Lunigiana, inside churches that hide traces of the struggles between Christians and pagans

Bare, severe, devoid of any ornamentation. The small church of San Giorgio that stands in the lower part of the charming Filattiera, in Lunigiana, is a large pile of squared ashlars, a heap of stones that shortly after the year 1000 were stacked on t...
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