At Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, the entire project is presented through 110 original photographic prints, accompanied by documents and archival materials that reconstruct its complex development. The result is a body of work in which the formal precision of portraiture meets a reflection on the human condition, the relationship between the individual and society, and photography’s ability to question reality rather than merely reproduce it.

Richard Avedon: photographic portraiture as an exploration of identity

Richard Avedon (1923–2004) occupies a central position in the history of contemporary photography for having transformed portraiture into a means of psychological and social investigation. His work encompasses fashion photography, advertising, portraits of celebrated figures and photojournalism, while maintaining remarkable consistency in his pursuit of a direct relationship between the subject and the camera.

Born in New York, Avedon developed an early interest in representing the human figure. His professional breakthrough came through illustrated magazines, where he introduced a profoundly innovative visual language that challenged the static conventions of fashion photography. Models no longer appeared as rigidly posed figures but became dynamic presences, placed in situations suggesting movement, spontaneity and emotional engagement.

From fashion photography to psychological exploration

His collaboration with Harper’s Bazaar, followed by Vogue, helped establish a new approach to editorial photography. Avedon distinguished himself through his ability to create images in which compositional sophistication coexisted with a powerful sense of physical presence and individual personality.

This approach gradually extended to portraits of artists, writers, politicians and leading figures in international culture. The fame of his subjects did not prevent the photographer from seeking less conventional elements: an unexpected expression, tension in the eyes or an apparently involuntary gesture could become more significant than the outward symbols of social prestige.

In Avedon’s visual language, the photographic portrait is not intended merely to confirm an already recognisable public identity. Instead, it becomes a space of confrontation between the image subjects present of themselves and the one the photographer constructs through framing, lighting and the precise moment of exposure.

The white background and the elimination of context

One of the most recognisable features of Avedon’s photographic approach is his use of a white backdrop, which isolates the person being photographed from any environmental reference. This seemingly reductive choice intensifies the act of observation: attention becomes concentrated on the face, posture, clothing and physical characteristics of the body.

The neutrality of the background, however, does not imply an absence of interpretation. By eliminating context, the photographer establishes a particular way of reading the image. Every detail acquires significance, and the human figure assumes an almost sculptural presence, in which time appears to be concentrated into a single instant.

This formal approach would become fundamental to In the American West, where the isolation of the subjects enabled Avedon to construct an extensive gallery of individual identities, united by the same photographic method yet profoundly different in their experiences and social circumstances.

A photograph attentive to American contradictions

Alongside his commercial work, Avedon developed a photographic practice concerned with the political and cultural tensions of American society. His interest in the civil rights movement, the consequences of the Vietnam War and the contradictions of national identity demonstrates the importance of social issues throughout a substantial part of his work.

The volume Nothing Personal, produced in 1964 in collaboration with the writer James Baldwin, represents an important precedent. Through a sequence of photographs and texts, the book challenges reassuring representations of American society, addressing issues such as racial discrimination, violence, power and individual isolation.

The project devoted to the American West develops this perspective further, shifting attention from public figures to a population generally absent from mainstream cultural representation. Celebrity gives way to anonymity, while success is replaced by the hardships of everyday life and the vulnerability of human existence.

“In the American West”: constructing a different image of America

The project “In the American West” began in 1979 following a commission from the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, an institution particularly devoted to the history and visual culture of the American West. The initiative developed through the interest of its director, Mitchell A. Wilder, who recognised in Avedon’s photography the possibility of creating a representation of the region radically different from that established by traditional iconography.

An important precedent dates back to 1978, when the photographer took a portrait of Wilbur Powell, a ranch foreman in Montana. The image attracted Wilder’s attention and contributed to the development of a photographic investigation that would occupy several years of the artist’s career.

The journey across the American West

Between 1979 and 1984, Avedon travelled extensively throughout the western United States, covering a total of twenty-one states. His journeys, undertaken mainly during spring and summer, took him far from the major cultural centres and into places defined by manual labour and industrial activity.

Petrol stations, truck stops, livestock markets, rodeos, fairs, mines, oil fields and slaughterhouses became the locations where he sought out the protagonists of his project. His purpose was not to produce a geographical survey of the region, but to encounter individuals whose lives reflected significant aspects of American society.

The photographer produced images of more than a thousand individuals, subsequently selecting a limited number of portraits for the final project. This extensive undertaking required careful organisation, numerous journeys and substantial preparatory work involving collaborators and assistants.

The key players in working America

The subjects came predominantly from rural and industrial communities: ranchers, miners, farmers, factory workers, waiters, seasonal labourers, fairground workers and unemployed individuals. Alongside the adults appear children and adolescents, whose presence broadens the investigation into social conditions and the prospects facing younger generations.

Their physical appearance becomes an essential element of the narrative. Worn clothing, hands marked by manual labour, weary expressions and bodies exposed to the hardships of work reveal living conditions that rarely found a place in the dominant imagery of the United States.

Avedon nevertheless avoids constructing a simple sociological classification. Each person retains a distinct individuality, while the repetition of the same compositional framework makes it possible to recognise similarities and differences without erasing the complexity of individual experiences.

Beyond the myth of the frontier

American culture has long identified the West as a place of freedom, conquest and individual renewal. From nineteenth-century painting to landscape photography and Western cinema, the image of the frontier gradually became established through vast natural landscapes, heroic figures and narratives centred on territorial expansion.

Avedon challenges this tradition by radically shifting its perspective. In his portraits, monumental mountains, boundless plains and desert landscapes disappear. The territory remains present, but survives primarily through the physical characteristics, occupations and material circumstances of the people photographed.

The American West is no longer presented as the setting for an idealised collective destiny. Instead, it becomes a social landscape marked by inequality, economic transformation and contrasting opportunities in life.

The crisis of the image of American success

The historical context helps clarify the significance of the work. By the late 1970s, the United States was experiencing a period marked by the consequences of the oil crises, inflation, industrial restructuring and difficulties affecting numerous productive sectors.

During the early 1980s, while advertising and television continued to promote ideals of prosperity and individual achievement, a substantial part of the population faced economic insecurity and major changes in the labour market.

Avedon’s portraits emerge from this contradiction. Their critical force does not derive from explicit social denunciation, but from the decision to give visual prominence to individuals generally regarded as marginal within the dominant national narrative.

Photography thus raises a fundamental question about the relationship between social visibility and artistic representation: who is recognised as a protagonist in a nation’s history, and who remains excluded from the images through which that nation constructs its identity?

Photographic technique and the construction of the portrait

To produce the series, Avedon used an 8×10-inch large-format camera, capable of recording facial features, clothing and the texture of the skin with exceptional precision. This photographic process required working methods and exposure procedures fundamentally different from those associated with spontaneous photography.

Each subject was positioned in front of a large white backdrop set up outdoors, generally in a shaded area. Natural light produced a soft, even tonal range, while the absence of scenic elements concentrated attention entirely on the individual.

This photographic arrangement created a condition of isolation resembling that of a studio, although it was constructed in the locations encountered during the journey. The separation between the subject and their familiar surroundings constitutes one of the most distinctive aspects of the entire project.

Between documentation and interpretation

The descriptive precision of the photographs might suggest an immediate documentary objectivity. In reality, the selection of subjects, the arrangement of poses and the timing of each exposure reveal a highly deliberate visual construction.

Avedon makes no attempt to conceal his own authorship. The portrait emerges from an encounter between two individuals and the tension established in front of the camera. The gaze, the position of the hands, the distance from the lens and the subject’s bodily attitude all contribute to defining the image.

The series therefore occupies a space between documentary photography and artistic portraiture. Each photograph bears witness to the existence of a real person, while simultaneously offering an interpretation shaped through a rigorous formal language.

The exhibition route

Curated by Clément Chéroux, director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, the exhibition brings together, for the first time in Italy, the complete series of 110 photographic prints included in the book of the same name, published in 1985 by Harry N. Abrams.

The project is promoted by the Department of Culture of Roma Capitale and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, organised by the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson with works on loan from the Richard Avedon Foundation, in collaboration with Azienda Speciale Palaexpo.

The selection includes the prints used for the original publication, accompanied by documentary materials that illuminate the development of the project and the relationships established between the photographer and the people he portrayed.

The 110 photographs of the original series

The main section of the exhibition allows visitors to examine the project in its entirety, avoiding the fragmentation that often characterises retrospective presentations of Avedon’s work.

The photographs form a succession of individual presences, each identified by name, occupation, location and date of the sitting. This information restores a specific biographical context to the subjects, counteracting the risk that the aesthetic intensity of the portraits might transform their identities into purely symbolic figures.

The repeated use of the white background establishes a visual continuity that allows individuals from different backgrounds to be compared. At the same time, the variety of expressions and postures disrupts any impression of uniformity.

Ronald Fischer: the beekeeper covered in bees

Among the best-known portraits is that of Ronald Fischer, a beekeeper photographed in Davis, California, on 9 May 1981. The man appears bare-chested, covered with numerous bees spread across his skin and around his face.

The image creates a powerful sense of visual tension. The presence of the insects introduces an element of potential danger, while the subject’s composed attitude suggests an unusual familiarity with risk.

The photograph also demonstrates Avedon’s ability to transform a situation associated with a professional occupation into a composition of considerable symbolic complexity. The human body becomes the site of an ambiguous relationship between mastery and vulnerability, control and the unpredictability of nature.

Sandra Bennett and Boyd Fortin: childhood in the american west

Another significant aspect of the series concerns the representation of children and adolescents. Sandra Bennett, photographed at the age of twelve in Rocky Ford, Colorado, in 1980, belongs to a gallery of young figures through whom Avedon explores the relationship between individual identity and social environment.

Equally revealing is the portrait of Boyd Fortin, a thirteen-year-old photographed in Sweetwater, Texas, in 1979, identified through his occupation as a rattlesnake skinner.

The presence of such young subjects, associated with unusual occupations and living conditions, invites reflection on the distance between idealised representations of childhood and the diverse realities of rural America.

The photographer avoids sentimental treatment. The subjects’ age remains an essential element of their identity, but it does not lead to a visual language separate from that used for adults. The younger figures are portrayed with the same attention to posture and individual expression.

Miners, workers and communities of the american west

Individuals employed in industrial and manual occupations occupy a particularly important place in the series. The group portrait of Roger Tims, Jim Duncan, Leonard Markley and Don Belak, miners photographed in Reliance, Wyoming, in 1979, introduces a different dimension from that of the individual portraits.

The presence of several figures within the same image makes their shared working environment visible without erasing their individual differences. Their clothing, faces and bodily attitudes document a professional experience that leaves recognisable physical traces.

Other photographs broaden the social diversity of the series. Petra Alvarado, a factory worker photographed in El Paso on her birthday, David Beason, a shipping clerk in Denver, and Jesse Kleinsasser, a worker from a Hutterite colony in Montana, belong to profoundly different social and cultural settings.

Their juxtaposition demonstrates that Avedon does not construct a single model of American identity, but rather a plurality of individual experiences shaped by different economic circumstances, cultural traditions and community affiliations.

Individual dignity and the language of the body

One of the most significant aspects of these portraits is the way the body becomes a bearer of social information. Physical fatigue, exposure to the elements, the characteristics of clothing and the effects of manual labour emerge with a precision that leaves little room for idealisation.

The frontal composition gives the subjects a monumental presence, regardless of their social position. In this sense, photography establishes an unexpected relationship between economic marginalisation and visual prominence.

This process does not eliminate the inequalities inherent in the relationship between photographer and subject. On the contrary, it makes it all the more important to consider the responsibility involved in observing and representing living conditions different from one’s own.

Archival materials and Avedon’s working method

Alongside the finished photographs, the exhibition presents a selection of materials from the Richard Avedon Foundation. Manuscripts, preparatory Polaroids, documents and correspondence provide insight into how the project developed over the years.

Of particular interest are the files devoted to individual subjects, which contain information and accounts relating to the photographic encounters. This documentation reveals a dimension of the project that cannot be fully reconstructed from the finished images alone.

The Polaroids and the preparation of the images

The working Polaroids document several preparatory stages of the photographic process and provide insight into the decisions made during the construction of each portrait.

The differences between the preliminary studies and the final prints reveal the extent to which the apparent immediacy of the images depends on careful preparation. Rather than simply recording a chance encounter, each photograph emerges as the result of deliberate compositional and technical decisions.

Correspondence with the people photographed

The correspondence preserved in the archives adds another layer of interpretation. The people portrayed no longer appear merely as visual presences, but as individuals with whom the photographer established relationships and maintained communication.

This dimension offers a deeper understanding of the relational nature of portraiture and raises fundamental questions in the history of photography: the subject’s participation, their awareness of the image being created, and the relationship between personal experience and public representation.

The 1985 book and the critical reception of the work

The first public presentation of In the American West took place in 1985 at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, coinciding with the publication of the photographic book of the same name.

The work initially provoked mixed reactions. Its departure from traditional representations of the West and its emphasis on individuals marked by physical hardship and economic difficulties were interpreted by some observers as an excessively harsh portrayal of American society.

Over time, the series acquired a fundamental place in the history of photographic portraiture, particularly for its ability to challenge conventional distinctions between fine art photography, social representation and historical documentation.

To accompany the exhibition, a new edition of the book has also been published, featuring Italian translations of texts by Avedon and Laura Wilson, who collaborated with the photographer throughout the project, together with a critical essay by Clément Chéroux.

Why visit the exhibition: photography, history and social representation

The exhibition’s significance lies above all in the opportunity to experience a complete photographic project that helped redefine the role of portraiture in the second half of the twentieth century. The 110 images reveal the consistency of Avedon’s visual language and demonstrate how the repetition of a single photographic approach can produce remarkably different results.

The exhibition also provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between photographic art and social history, through images in which the economic and cultural transformations of the United States emerge indirectly from the physical characteristics and individual experiences of the people portrayed.

A landmark work in the history of photography

Viewing the complete series reveals the systematic nature of Avedon’s photographic investigation. Each photograph possesses its own expressive autonomy, yet acquires additional meaning within the sequence as a whole.

The consistent use of the white background, the precision of detail and the frontal presentation of the figures establish a visual language that engages with the tradition of painted portraiture while retaining distinctly photographic characteristics.

The scale of the prints and the sharpness of the images heighten the physical presence of the subjects. Viewers are encouraged to examine details that might otherwise escape their attention, recognising in the face and body a complex accumulation of visual information.

The relationship between photographer, subject and viewer

The photographic method developed by Avedon creates a direct confrontation between the person portrayed and the viewer. The absence of environmental elements limits the possibility of interpreting the image through external references, demanding closer attention to the individual.

Yet this visual encounter is not neutral. Viewers must confront the knowledge that every portrait results from a process of selection and a deliberate artistic decision.

Photography thus becomes a space of negotiation between identity, representation and interpretation, in which the apparent realism of the image does not exclude the presence of artistic construction.

1980s America through its less visible figures

The series also possesses considerable value as a historical record. Although it was not conceived as a statistical or sociological investigation, it provides an opportunity to observe a range of individuals living through a period of profound economic transformation.

The prominence given to manual labour contrasts with the imagery of technological modernisation and prosperity that characterised much of American media and public communication during the period.

Through these portraits, a less homogeneous nation emerges than its public representations might suggest, marked by territorial, cultural and social differences that cannot be reduced to a single national identity.

The persistence of the american myth

One of the exhibition’s principal points of interest lies in the relationship between the photographs and the longstanding iconographic tradition of the frontier. The imagery of the West contributed to the construction of an idea of the United States founded on individual independence, courage and the possibility of personal achievement.

Avedon does not simply offer a representation opposed to this myth. Instead, he questions its underlying assumptions, portraying individuals in whom independence and resilience coexist with frequently difficult material circumstances.

The tension between individual aspiration and social reality gives the series a significance that extends beyond its original historical context, making it equally relevant to contemporary reflections on inequality and the mechanisms of public visibility.

Photography as an experience of observation

Another significant aspect of the exhibition is the opportunity to engage directly with the physical qualities of the photographic prints. The tonal richness of the black-and-white images, the scale of the prints and the precision of their details acquire particular significance when viewed at close range.

The exhibition encourages a slower, more attentive approach to observation, in which the succession of faces allows viewers to recognise differences and connections between individuals belonging to apparently distant social realities.

The inclusion of preparatory materials further enriches the visitor experience, demonstrating that the finished image represents only one stage in a more complex process involving encounters, technical experiments, editorial decisions and personal relationships.

The historical and critical value of the archive

Documents and working photographs make it possible to understand In the American West not merely as a succession of celebrated images, but as a coherent artistic project developed through sustained research and a consistent methodology.

The archive becomes an integral part of the artistic interpretation, providing insights into the distance between the original photographic encounter and the eventual publication. The information collected about the subjects, the photographic studies and the correspondence help situate the portraits within specific human relationships.

It is precisely this interaction between artwork, document and testimony that makes the exhibition particularly significant: Avedon’s photography emerges simultaneously as an aesthetic construction, an interpretation of American society and a tangible record of encounters that took place at a particular moment in history.

L'articolo Richard Avedon and the American West beyond the myth of the frontier proviene da ArcheoRoma.

AQVA: water, memory and contemporary languages

A library is created to preserve words against the dispersal of time; water, by contrast, can erase them within a matter of hours. From this opposition emerges “AQVA. Catastrophe and Wonder”, the first chapter of a five-year project in which the Vatican Apostolic Library examines the forces capable of threatening the written heritage and transforms them into instruments of knowledge.

The exhibition brings together the history of the book, art, science, conservation techniques and material culture, avoiding any reduction of water to the single image of catastrophe. Its very ambivalence governs the entire project: water is indispensable to life and scientific research, a medium of navigation and nourishment, a source of myths and fears, but also an agent capable of damaging paper and endangering written memory. The Vatican collections are placed alongside contemporary interventions by JR, Bill Moran and Fulvio Pierangelini.

Water between catastrophe, knowledge and the history of the Book

The intellectual premise of the exhibition rests on a paradox that is simple only in appearance. Books preserve the memory of societies and are conceived to survive the passage of time; yet their survival depends on vulnerable materials, sensitive to humidity, light, heat, microorganisms and human intervention. The exhibition cycle was conceived precisely to address these threats not only from the perspective of conservation, but also as categories through which to reflect on the relationship between human beings, nature and cultural memory. The following chapters will also focus on light and air, fire, insects and microorganisms, and ultimately on human intervention.

Water was chosen for the first chapter, perhaps because it expresses this contradiction more clearly than any other element. Without water there would be no life, agriculture, food production, navigation or many of the material processes that have accompanied the development of civilizations. At the same time, a flood can irreversibly damage libraries and archives. The exhibition therefore constructs a progression from fear to knowledge, gradually transforming the meaning attributed to the natural element.

The memory of the florence flood

One of the sections most directly connected with the vulnerability of cultural heritage recalls the Florence flood of 4 November 1966. Sixty years after the disaster, photographs preserved in the Vatican collections document the consequences of the overflowing of the Arno, when water also invaded the storage areas and reading rooms of the National Central Library of Florence. The reference is not merely commemorative: it introduces visitors to the concrete challenges of book conservation and shows how a substance usually associated with life can become a force capable of erasing evidence accumulated over centuries.

From destruction to the development of modern conservation

The Florence flood also occupies a fundamental place in the recent history of book conservation. The enormous number of damaged volumes and documents prompted an international mobilisation and accelerated the development of more systematic procedures for paper recovery, cleaning, drying and the treatment of water-damaged materials. Within the logic of the exhibition, the event therefore becomes a point of transition between catastrophe and the capacity to respond: loss becomes an opportunity to refine techniques and knowledge intended to protect cultural heritage in the future.

A Wunderkammer of the aquatic world

Once the initial dimension of threat has been overcome, the exhibition takes on the character of a Wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosities in which the world of water appears in multiple forms. Marine bestiaries, evidence connected with navigation on the Tiber, numismatic objects and unusual books construct a cultural landscape in which scientific observation, imagination and antiquarian curiosity are not yet clearly separated. Among the objects featured in the exhibition is also a rare sixteenth-century booklet bound in sharkskin.

The arrangement of such heterogeneous materials evokes a culture of knowledge that predates modern disciplinary specialisation. A fish may simultaneously be a natural organism, a source of food, a symbolic image and a visual subject; a river may be a geographical phenomenon, a trade route, an infrastructure and a narrative space. The exhibition recovers this plurality without sacrificing historical precision, showing how knowledge of the aquatic world was constructed through the accumulation and overlap of different kinds of experience.

Ippolito Salviani’s Aquatilium animalium historia

The scientific and bibliographical core of the exhibition is the Aquatilium animalium historia by Ippolito Salviani, published in Rome in 1557 and represented through two particularly valuable copies. A sixteenth-century physician and naturalist, Salviani approached the study of aquatic animals according to criteria that reflect the growing importance of direct observation within Renaissance scientific culture. The treatise was at once a scientific, editorial and visual undertaking, in which the quality of printing and the precision of the images contributed directly to the construction of knowledge.

Observing nature before describing It

The importance of the Aquatilium lies above all in its method. Salviani chose to discuss animals that he had been able to study directly, also making use of dried specimens and drawings executed at natural size and in natural colours. Even the diplomatic network of the Holy See was involved in obtaining suitable material, a detail that reveals the organisational complexity of a scientific project in sixteenth-century Rome. The publication shows how the study of nature already depended on a network of observers, illustrators, engravers, printers and intermediaries.

The book thus becomes an object particularly suited to the theme of the exhibition: creatures belonging to the aquatic world are transferred onto paper through engraving and acquire a new visual existence. What may destroy the volume is at the same time the natural environment of the organisms that the book seeks to preserve through image and word.

JR, Bill Moran and Fulvio Pierangelini: contemporary languages in dialogue with the library

The encounter with the historical collections is not entrusted to a single artistic language. The curatorial approach brings together three figures from different fields: JR, an artist known for photographic interventions and environmental installations; Bill Moran, a contemporary interpreter of traditional letterpress printing; and Fulvio Pierangelini, a chef invited to explore the gastronomic and narrative dimensions of the aquatic world. This diversity is not incidental: it reflects the encyclopaedic character of the Library’s collections and the intention to observe water from multiple perspectives.

JR and the monumentality of the flood

The first encounter is with Diluvium, a site-specific installation created by JR on the sixteenth-century façade of the Library. The work takes as its point of reference an engraving conceived by Gustave Doré for the illustrated Bible published in Tours in 1866. The image of the flood is enlarged to an architectural scale, making the building appear as though it were being engulfed by a mass of water. According to the official documentation, this is the first site-specific installation of its kind to be created in the Vatican.

JR does not use the image to illustrate the biblical narrative literally, but rather to create a perceptual tension between the stability of architecture and the instability of the wave. By definition, the Library is a place of permanence; water, by contrast, introduces the idea of sudden events, matter escaping control and the possibility of loss. The installation makes visible the paradoxical condition of the book: a vessel for ideas capable of surviving for centuries and, at the same time, an extremely fragile physical object.

From Diluvium to Undae

JR’s work also accompanies the final part of the exhibition through Undae, connected with the transformation of the Sala Barberini into a contemplative space. The sequence between the two installations creates a genuine narrative trajectory. If the initial wave breaks in as a threat, the concluding one gradually loses its catastrophic character and takes on a mental dimension. The same substance is therefore perceived in opposite ways without any need to alter its nature: what has changed is the visitor’s gaze after moving through the exhibition.

Bill Moran and the Letterfishes

With Bill Moran, the relationship between books and water passes directly through the tools of typography. The American artist uses letters, numbers and punctuation marks to construct images of marine creatures. The Letterfishes series includes fourteen works displayed throughout the exhibition spaces, twelve printed by hand on paper and two made in plexiglass.

The process reverses one of the fundamental principles of printing. Movable type, originally designed to compose words, ceases to produce readable text and becomes a graphic unit: curves, stems, dots and counterforms all contribute to the anatomical construction of the fish. Seen from a distance, the work resolves into a figure; viewed up close, that figure breaks apart into the individual signs of the alphabet. The image therefore exists on the threshold between reading and seeing, one of the most appropriate themes for an intervention conceived within a library.

The Typotheca Vaticana and the material memory of printing

The dialogue with Moran acquires further significance through the presence of the Typotheca Vaticana. For the first time, a cabinet made by A. Fouchier is being displayed, with 160 small drawers in its upper section designed to hold copper matrices for letters. The labels attached to the various compartments document the extraordinary range of languages and alphabets used by the papal printing press.

Placing this historical instrument alongside Moran’s typographic fish creates a dialogue between two functions of the printed character: on the one hand, the philological and linguistic transmission of knowledge; on the other, the contemporary possibility of freeing the letter from its semantic role and transforming it into image.

Fulvio Pierangelini: fish between books, memory and cuisine

The third contributor introduces a discipline that may initially appear more distant from the history of the library. In fact, the work of Fulvio Pierangelini reconnects naturalistic knowledge with material culture. The fish observed and classified by naturalists are also ingredients, commodities, elements of economic life and recurring presences in culinary tradition.

For the project, Pierangelini has composed six gastronomic narratives, also linked to the Library’s 2027 diary. The texts combine observations on ingredients, memories, literary and scientific references and an ironic component, transforming the recipe from a simple technical formula into a narrative form.

From Apicius to the cookbooks of the world

Around this contribution, the exhibition develops an itinerary through cookbooks from different geographical areas. Among the most significant materials is one of the oldest manuscripts of De re coquinaria by Apicius, in which the culinary text is presented through a decorative scheme reminiscent of the structure of a liturgical book. Alongside the European tradition is, among other examples, a rare Chinese cookbook from the Song period, preserved in an edition dating from the late fifteenth century and present in the Vatican collections since at least the mid-sixteenth century.

Gastronomy thus becomes a tool for tracing the circulation of knowledge. Ways of fishing, classifying, preparing and consuming aquatic animals reveal trade routes, cultural exchanges and different conceptions of nature.

The exhibition route

The exhibition is structured as a narrative progression rather than a chronological sequence of objects. The official itinerary moves from Impact to Fear, then to the wonder of collecting, science, typography, the geography of taste and conservation practices, before concluding in the Ocean of the Mind. Each section reshapes the visitor’s relationship with water, initially perceived as a hostile force and gradually recognised as an object of study, a source of images and even an instrument of care.

From impact to knowledge

Diluvium immediately introduces the theme of the disproportion between human beings and natural forces. The subsequent reference to the Florence flood transfers this perception from the realm of myth into documented history. The aquatic Wunderkammer then produces the first reversal: what inspires fear becomes something to observe, name and catalogue.

The transition to the Aquatilium animalium historia deepens this transformation. The marine animal ceases to be a fabulous creature and becomes the object of empirical verification; drawing and engraving participate in the construction of a science based on comparison and experience. Moran follows by returning those same creatures to the realm of imagination, but through the material tools of typographic culture.

Water as a tool for conservation

One of the most conceptually effective sections concerns the Conservation Laboratory of the Vatican Library. Here, the initial opposition becomes more complex: the very substance responsible for some of the most serious forms of damage to books can, under controlled conditions, be used in the processes designed to preserve them. The exhibition therefore presents water not through an absolute judgement, but through the relationship between matter, quantity, technique and knowledge.

Caring for the material substance of the book

Book conservation requires a physical understanding of the object. A manuscript or an early printed volume is not only the intellectual content it transmits: it is paper or parchment, ink, pigment, adhesive, thread, leather and wood. Each of these materials responds differently to its environment. Including conservation within the exhibition therefore removes the library from the abstract image of a mere repository of knowledge and reveals the range of technical expertise required for memory to remain accessible.

The Ocean of the mind in the Sala Barberini

The final section gradually abandons the analytical character of the preceding rooms. In the Sala Barberini, JR’s intervention leads towards what the project defines as the “Ocean of the Mind”: a space in which water no longer coincides with a disastrous event or an object classified by science, but instead takes on the value of a mental and contemplative image.

The choice avoids any consolatory resolution. The vulnerability of books remains real, just as the risks posed by natural elements remain concrete. What changes is the way they are confronted: uncontrolled fear gives way to knowledge grounded in observation, historical memory and the technical ability to intervene.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition is particularly compelling for the opportunity it offers to explore the collections of the Vatican Apostolic Library from an unusual perspective. Manuscripts, printed books, photographs, engravings, typographic materials and documents connected with the history of science are not arranged according to conventional chronological or disciplinary categories, but are instead examined through a single element: water.

This principle allows objects normally belonging to separate fields to be brought into relation. Renaissance ichthyology encounters contemporary art; the history of printing enters into dialogue with graphic practice; a medieval or Renaissance cookbook becomes a means of understanding the geographical circulation of knowledge; documentary photography introduces the techniques of conservation.

The fragility of memory

A second reason for the exhibition’s significance lies in the theme of conservation itself. A historical library usually presents what has survived. More rarely does it reveal the possibility of loss. “AQVA”, by contrast, draws attention to the material vulnerability of documents, reminding us that the transmission of culture is never automatic: it depends on institutions, specialists, techniques, environmental conditions and a continuous commitment to preservation.

The issue therefore extends beyond the specialist field. To conserve a book is to make it possible for people not yet born to encounter the words and images of earlier ages. From this perspective, water threatening a library becomes a particularly effective image of the precariousness of collective memory.

The dialogue between the ancient and the contemporary

The presence of JR and Moran is not used as a simple aesthetic updating of a historical collection. Their works arise from the characteristics of the place and from the objects preserved within it. Diluvium intervenes directly in the architecture and in the very meaning of the Library, while Moran’s Letterfishes take shape from the fundamental elements of printing.

Pierangelini also works from documentary heritage, using early texts on fish and historical cookbooks as material for new narratives. The result is a dialogue in which the contemporary does not replace the ancient, and the ancient is not reduced to an iconographic repertoire: both contribute to the creation of new associations.

A different way of entering the Vatican Library

Another element of interest is the opportunity to follow an itinerary that also includes the Salone Sistino, incorporated into the visits associated with the exhibition. This allows the temporary installation to be experienced alongside the historical dimension of one of Europe’s most important library institutions, established in its modern form in the fifteenth century and developed as a centre for the preservation, study and transmission of knowledge.

The first chapter of a five-year project

“AQVA” acquires a broader significance when considered as the opening chapter of “Catastrophe and Wonder”. The project unfolds over several years through the elements and agents capable of endangering the written heritage. The curatorial concept, however, is not intended to create a catalogue of threats: each becomes an opportunity to examine how human beings respond to forces they cannot entirely control.

The choice of water makes this approach clear from the very beginning. Destruction and regeneration, fear and knowledge, matter and image are not presented as rigidly separate categories. The same element that soaks and deforms paper can also be used in its restoration; what gives rise to the narrative of the flood is also what makes life possible; the sea inhabited by fantastic creatures in bestiaries becomes the object of Salviani’s scientific observation and, centuries later, reappears in Moran’s fish composed from typographic characters. It is precisely this continual reversal of meaning that gives the exhibition its most distinctive critical structure.

L'articolo AQVA. Catastrophe and Wonder: Water and Memory between History and the Present proviene da ArcheoRoma.

Visitors can thus follow the transition from the drawn page to the mechanism itself, gaining an understanding of principles related to the transmission of motion, lifting systems, flight, hydraulics and military engineering. Multimedia display cases and nine holograms broaden the experience, while in the underground areas the visit reaches the Roman tomb of Aulus Hirtius, discovered in 1938 and today partially submerged by the waters of the ancient Euripus.

Leonardo and the culture of machines in the Renaissance

To understand the significance of the machines on display, it is necessary to place Leonardo da Vinci within the technical culture of his own time. The modern image of the solitary genius who anticipated every future invention by centuries risks oversimplifying a far more complex historical phenomenon. Leonardo achieved exceptional results, but he worked within the profound transformation of mechanical knowledge that swept through Italy between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and that historians of science have described as a true “Renaissance of Machines”.

Artists, architects and engineers such as Filippo Brunelleschi, Mariano di Jacopo known as Taccola, and Francesco di Giorgio Martini had already developed devices for lifting heavy loads, hydraulic machines, transmission systems, military apparatuses and mechanisms designed for construction sites. Leonardo absorbed this tradition but brought it to an extraordinarily more systematic level of analysis. In his drawings, the machine is not merely an object to be built: it becomes an instrument through which to investigate the laws of motion.

From the Renaissance workshop to scientific drawing

Leonardo’s training in the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio brought him into contact with an environment in which painting, sculpture, metallurgy, mechanics, stage design and construction techniques all belonged to the same practical culture. In the fifteenth century, the modern separation between the visual arts and engineering disciplines was far less rigid: building a machine, designing theatrical apparatus or organising the casting of a large statue required geometrical and mechanical knowledge comparable to that employed in architecture.

Leonardo made drawing the principal tool of this investigation. Cogwheels, screws, pulleys, bearings, blocks, levers and transmission systems are frequently isolated, broken down and studied from different viewpoints. Graphic representation does not simply illustrate a machine that has already been conceived, but makes it possible to understand how it works and progressively modify its structure.

The Codices as a research laboratory

Leonardo’s manuscripts should therefore be interpreted as an immense intellectual laboratory. They bring together observations derived from experience, copies and reinterpretations of earlier devices, unsuccessful attempts, innovative insights and projects destined to remain on paper. They are not catalogues of inventions ready to be built, but records of a form of thought constantly subjected to testing and revision.

His studies of perpetual motion are particularly revealing. Leonardo reconsidered devices already present in the medieval tradition and in the work of Sienese engineers, analysing wheels in which weights and movable arms were intended to create a continuous imbalance. After studying numerous variations, however, he came to understand their impossibility. This is an important step because it shows that his greatness lay not only in imagining new machines, but also in subjecting technical hypotheses to critical scrutiny based on the observation of phenomena.

Nature as a model for the machine

A second essential element is the relationship between mechanics and nature. Leonardo observed the movement of water, the flight of birds, the articulation of bones and the action of muscles, seeking principles that could be described in terms of forces, levers, pressure and trajectories.

This approach emerges with particular clarity in his studies of flight. His early hypotheses for machines with flapping wings gradually gave way to a more accurate analysis of the behaviour of birds and air currents. In the Codex on the Flight of Birds, compiled in the early sixteenth century, Leonardo focused above all on the possibility of remaining airborne and manoeuvring by exploiting the wind, moving closer to the principle of gliding flight.

Between invention and reinterpretation

The presence in the exhibition of devices such as the Archimedes’ screw also helps to clarify Leonardo’s method. Leonardo did not invent this ancient system for raising water: he studied it, drew it and incorporated it into the broader repertoire of hydraulic solutions known in his time. The same applies to many mechanisms inherited from the technical tradition and transformed by him through new combinations and applications.

It is precisely this historical continuity that makes Leonardo the engineer even more compelling. His originality does not depend on the myth of an isolated inventor: it emerges instead from his ability to gather earlier knowledge, compare it with experience, break it down into its essential elements and develop possibilities that had previously remained unexplored.

The exhibition route

The core of the exhibition consists of three-dimensional reconstructions derived from drawings contained in Leonardo’s codices. The exhibition covers approximately one thousand square metres and brings together more than sixty machines and models, accompanied by multimedia installations and in-depth sections devoted to the different fields of research explored by the artist.

No original manuscripts or paintings by Leonardo are displayed: the museum project deliberately takes a different approach, transforming technical drawing into a physical experience. The reconstructions make it possible to observe dimensions, relationships between individual components and movements that, on the surface of a page, would require specialist knowledge to be fully understood.

The machines: from drawing to movement

The wooden machines are the most distinctive feature of the exhibition. Some of the reconstructions are considerable in size and allow visitors to examine gears, lever systems, pulleys and devices designed for the transmission of force at close range.

The exhibition includes different families of projects: machines related to flight, hydraulics, lifting and handling, civil engineering and warfare. In this way, the wide range of Leonardo’s technical interests is revealed without artificially separating fields that continuously intersect in his manuscripts.

The armoured vehicle and military engineering

Among the most immediately recognisable reconstructions is the famous armoured vehicle, developed by Leonardo in drawings during his Milanese period. The project envisages a large mobile structure protected by a sloping covering and equipped around its perimeter with numerous firearms.

Rather than interpreting it as a modern tank anticipated by four centuries, it is historically more accurate to place it within the context of Renaissance military engineering. The introduction and refinement of firearms were transforming fortifications, sieges and military tactics, while court engineers were increasingly required to devise complex offensive and defensive machines. Leonardo’s project belongs to this environment, while standing out for the exceptional graphic clarity with which the relationship between structure, movement and armament is visualised.

The parachute and studies of flight

Another celebrated insight is represented by the parachute, conceived as a pyramidal structure covered with fabric and designed to slow a man’s descent by exploiting air resistance. The project belongs to Leonardo’s broader investigation of flight, which included flapping wings, articulated devices and studies on the possibility of gliding.

Here too, its historical value lies above all in the intellectual process behind it. Leonardo sought to transform the behaviour of air into a mechanical and geometrical problem. Drawing thus became an experimental space in which surfaces, weights and forces could be assessed before the device was ever physically constructed.

Mechanisms, water and the transmission of force

Alongside the most spectacular machines, the exhibition also presents apparently simpler devices that are fundamental to understanding Leonardo’s method. Cogwheels, screws, pulleys, lifting systems and transmission mechanisms reveal the attention he devoted to the elementary components of mechanics.

Leonardo tended to break down a complex machine into functional units. Once the behaviour of each element had been understood, it could be combined with other devices to create different systems. This modular method represents one of the most modern aspects of his approach to technical problems.

Interactivity as a method of understanding

One of the exhibition’s most significant features is the possibility of interacting with numerous machines. Visitors do not simply observe their form, but can set gears and mechanisms in motion, directly following the transmission of force from one component to another.

Interactivity therefore serves a genuinely educational purpose. Turning a crank and observing the resulting rotation of a sequence of cogwheels makes a principle immediately understandable that might otherwise remain abstract if explained solely through technical language.

From a machine to observe to a machine to experiment with

This type of experience establishes a particular connection with Leonardo’s own method, which was based on the primacy of experience. Naturally, the contemporary reconstructions should not be confused with machines historically built and used by the artist: they are three-dimensional interpretations developed from his drawings.

Their purpose is precisely to test visually and mechanically what the manuscript suggests. In this way, visitors can also recognise the difficulties inherent in reconstruction: a sheet by Leonardo may be extremely detailed in some areas while leaving materials, dimensions or connecting systems undefined. Transforming it into a functioning machine therefore necessarily involves a process of interpretation.

The seven thematic display cases

The route through the machines is complemented by seven thematic display cases containing reproductions of Leonardo’s drawings and codices, accompanied by tablets and interactive content. The in-depth sections explore numerous fields of his research, including anatomy, botany, mathematics, architecture, engineering, aeronautics, music, cooking and theatre, demonstrating how Leonardo’s thought developed across disciplines that were closely interconnected.

Tablets, high-resolution images, three-dimensional reconstructions and video explanations make it possible to enlarge details and explore subjects that the machines alone could not fully document. This approach also avoids reducing Leonardo to a purely technological figure, recalling how inseparable his work as an engineer was from his activity as an artist and observer of nature.

The Holograms and “Da Vinci, a new dimension”

A specific section of the exhibition, entitled “Da Vinci, A New Dimension”, uses nine holograms to develop the three-dimensional interpretation of Leonardo’s projects even further. The virtual images are devoted to studies of flight, warfare, engineering and painting.

Here, digital technology performs a different function from that of the physical reconstructions. The machine is no longer simply a static object placed before the visitor, but can be visualised while operating, with its individual parts and movements isolated and examined.

Visualising what the drawing suggests

The hologram thus becomes a contemporary extension of technical drawing. Leonardo frequently used multiple views, sections and exploded representations to depict a machine beyond what could be observed from a single viewpoint; three-dimensional animation pursues a similar objective using modern technological tools.

The value of this section therefore lies not in producing a merely spectacular effect, but in making the potential movement contained within Leonardo’s drawings easier to understand. Gears and components can be followed while in motion, clarifying the relationship between individual elements and the overall functioning of the machine.

The submerged Tomb of Aulus Hirtius

At the end of the section devoted to Leonardo, the visit introduces a completely different element, yet one that is closely connected to the museum experience: in the underground areas of the Palazzo della Cancelleria lies the tomb of Aulus Hirtius, one of the lesser-known archaeological remains of the ancient Campus Martius.

The monument was discovered by chance in 1938. Its identification is confirmed by boundary stones bearing the name of Aulus Hirtius, the Roman consul who died in 43 BC. Today largely surrounded by water, the tomb represents a particularly unusual feature within the exhibition route and allows visitors to physically reach a level of the city that predates Leonardo’s lifetime by more than fifteen centuries.

Who was Aulus Hirtius?

Aulus Hirtius was a general and associate of Julius Caesar. He took part in Caesar’s military campaigns and was later appointed consul for 43 BC. Following Caesar’s assassination the previous year, the political situation in Rome rapidly deteriorated into conflict between the different Caesarian factions and the Senate.

Although he came from Caesar’s political circle, Hirtius, together with his colleague Gaius Vibius Pansa, took command of the senatorial forces opposing Mark Antony, who was besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina. Both consuls died during the campaign. Hirtius was killed during the assault on Antony’s camp in the War of Mutina in 43 BC.

From Caesar’s associate to latin author

Hirtius is also important from a literary point of view. He is widely regarded as the probable author of the eighth book of the De bello Gallico, written to connect Caesar’s account of the Gallic campaigns with the period immediately preceding the civil war.

The deaths of Hirtius and Pansa were considered worthy of exceptional recognition: the Senate decreed a public burial in the Campus Martius for both men. The presence of Hirtius’ tomb beneath the Cancelleria and the discovery nearby of an inscribed slab associated with Pansa’s funerary monument confirm the tradition recorded by ancient sources.

The discovery of 1938

The tomb was identified during works carried out in the Palazzo della Cancelleria. The funerary structure consists of a quadrangular enclosure with a tufa base, brick walls and a travertine crowning element with a double-pitched profile. The foundations of the Renaissance palace partially intersect the ancient structure.

The inscribed boundary stones made it possible to identify the owner of the monument with certainty. Important archaeological finds were also discovered in the area, including the Altar of the Vicomagistri and the celebrated Cancelleria Reliefs, now preserved in the Vatican Museums; casts of the reliefs can be seen in the underground areas.

The Euripus and the water surrounding the monument

The feature that makes the tomb immediately recognisable is the presence of water. The monument originally stood near the Euripus, a canal that crossed the western sector of the Campus Martius and channelled water towards the Tiber.

The present submerged appearance, however, does not correspond to the tomb’s original condition. With the construction of the Tiber embankments at the end of the nineteenth century, several outlets belonging to the drainage systems of the area were altered or obstructed. The rise and stagnation of water gradually transformed the underground archaeological site into the unusual configuration visible today.

An ancient roman monument included in the visit

The tomb is not a reconstruction or an installation symbolically connected with Leonardo, but an authentic archaeological monument accessible through the exhibition route. For this reason, it deserves a distinct place within the presentation of the event.

The transition from Renaissance machines to a Republican funerary monument introduces a sharp but meaningful change: after a route centred on reconstructions of projects preserved on paper, visitors encounter an ancient structure still located in the place where it was built more than two thousand years ago.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition provides an opportunity to explore an aspect of Leonardo’s work that is sometimes overshadowed by the fame of his great paintings. Leonardo was undoubtedly one of the leading figures of Renaissance painting, yet a substantial part of his intellectual activity is documented in the manuscripts in which he investigated machines, water, anatomy, optics, flight, architecture and natural phenomena.

Seeing these projects transformed into three-dimensional structures helps visitors understand how central technical drawing was to his way of thinking. The reconstructions do not replace the original codices, but they help interpret their complexity and visualise problems that Leonardo explored through sequences of sketches and annotations.

Moving beyond the myth of the inventor of the future

One of the most interesting aspects of the visit lies precisely in the possibility of recognising a historically more complex Leonardo than the popular image of a prophet of modern technology. The armoured vehicle is not simply a modern tank designed in the fifteenth century, just as the aerial screw cannot be directly identified with the contemporary helicopter.

These projects instead belong to the technical culture of the Renaissance and demonstrate Leonardo’s ability to push existing knowledge beyond its established limits, bringing together mechanical traditions, observation of nature and graphic experimentation. It is precisely this interpretation that fully reveals the scope of his research.

An experience based on function

Interactivity also makes the exhibition particularly effective for understanding elementary mechanics. A gear transmitting motion, a lever multiplying force or a system of pulleys demonstrates in concrete terms principles that Leonardo investigated through drawing.

Visitors are therefore confronted not only with the final result, but also with the problem the machine was designed to solve. It is in this relationship between question, project and function that the exhibition finds its particular character.

From the codex to the machine, from the machine to archaeology

The presence of the seven thematic display cases and the nine holograms further broadens the interpretation of the models, connecting mechanics with the other fields of Leonardo’s research. The route thus moves from the physical presence of the wooden structures to the manuscript page, and from the page to the digital simulation of movement.

The final descent towards the tomb of Aulus Hirtius adds an unexpected dimension to the visit. It is not directly connected with Leonardo, but it represents a genuine and distinctive part of the experience offered by the exhibition: beneath the route devoted to Renaissance experimentation emerges a surviving trace of the Republican Campus Martius, still shaped by the presence of the ancient water system. Two very different ways of understanding the past, the reconstruction of machines and archaeological preservation, are thus encountered within the same itinerary.

Leonardo beyond painting

The visit is particularly significant for those who know Leonardo above all through works such as the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper or the Vitruvian Man. The Cancelleria exhibition presents an artist for whom artistic practice was inseparable from the observation of physical reality.

In the study of a machine, a watercourse, the movement of a wing or the structure of the human body, the same need to analyse the visible world that characterises his painting constantly reappears. The tools and subjects of investigation change, but the desire to understand forms, movement and proportion remains unchanged. It is precisely this continuity that makes the exhibition particularly useful for approaching the complexity of Leonardo da Vinci and the extraordinary breadth of his intellectual laboratory.

Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 09:30 – 19:00. Weekends and public holidays, 09:30 – 19:30.

L'articolo Leonardo da Vinci: The Genius and his Inventions proviene da ArcheoRoma.

Curated by Vittorio Sgarbi with Marina Giordano, the exhibition avoids a strictly chronological structure, instead organising the works into thematic groups that connect Guttuso’s public and more intimate sides, collective history and personal affections, Sicily and Rome, observation of reality and the memory of the great European painting tradition.

Renato Guttuso and the figurative power of the mediterranean

Born in Bagheria in 1911, Guttuso developed from an early stage a visual language in which his knowledge of the European avant-gardes never led him to abandon visible reality. His relationship with the Mediterranean cannot be reduced simply to his geographical connection with Sicily: it concerns a way of perceiving the world in which light, colour, bodies, vegetation, labour and matter acquire an intensely physical presence.

In his paintings, objects are rarely neutral. A cut-open fruit, a basket, a plant, a reclining figure, a fisherman or goods arranged on a market stall become elements of a reality subjected to expressive tension. Guttuso heightens chromatic contrasts, at times reinforces contours and compresses space, creating images that preserve the recognisability of things without limiting themselves to mere description.

Sicily as memory and language

Sicily remained one of the fundamental sources of Guttuso’s imagination even during the many decades he spent away from the island. Bagheria, Palermo, the markets, the sea, fishermen, agricultural labour, sun-scorched vegetation and the energy of the Mediterranean landscape do not form a picturesque repertoire, but rather a reservoir of experiences to which the artist returned throughout his career.

In his work, the Sicilian landscape can take on an almost telluric dimension. Light does not soften forms, but often exposes them with even greater clarity; earth, stone, sea and vegetation participate in the same chromatic tension. Even when an image originates in memory, Guttuso avoids idealised nostalgia: recollection is transformed into pictorial construction.

Colour, matter and sensory perception

It is above all through colour that this Mediterranean identity acquires substance. Reds, greens, yellows, blacks and blues are not used merely to describe natural reality, but become instruments for organising space. Colour establishes relationships between objects, creates visual hierarchies and makes the very temperature of things almost tangible.

From this perspective, Guttuso’s Mediterranean is first and foremost a sensory experience: the heat of the light, the density of fruit, flesh, fish, leaves, fabrics and bodies are conveyed through a painting that insists on the physicality of the world.

From Expressionism to Realism

Guttuso’s formation took place within the unsettled cultural climate of Italy between the 1930s and 1940s. His contact with the artists associated with Corrente (an influential italian artistic and literary movement active in Milan from 1938 to 1940), together with his interest in European Expressionism, helped reinforce his opposition to official rhetoric and to a purely celebratory conception of painting. Works such as Crucifixion of 1941 already reveal his determination to turn figurative language into an instrument of moral and civic inquiry.

His encounter with Picasso and Cubism later offered him new possibilities for constructing figures and space. Guttuso, however, never adopted Cubist fragmentation as an autonomous formal exercise: he used it to give greater force to the representation of reality, while keeping the human figure and historical experience at the centre of his work. In the post-war period he became one of the leading figures in the debate on realism, taking part in the Fronte Nuovo delle Arti and developing a form of painting deeply attentive to labour, social conflict and the condition of the working classes.

Painting as a presence in its own time

For Guttuso, the artist does not exist outside history. His commitment to figurative painting also reflects the need to preserve a legible relationship between image and world. Peasants, workers, fishermen, demonstrations and collective struggles therefore enter his work not as mere documents, but through a formal construction that seeks a broader, collective dimension.

This tension explains why his realism cannot be reduced to naturalistic reproduction. Reality is interpreted, deformed and recomposed. The lessons of Expressionism, Picasso and modern European painting remain active even in those works most explicitly connected with contemporary society.

The exhibition route

The exhibition is organised into five thematic sections: Faces, Sicily, Living nature, Still lifes, Artist and Society and The Feminine. Rather than following a strictly chronological sequence, the route brings together works from different phases of Renato Guttuso’s career, highlighting both the continuity of certain subjects and the evolution of his visual language.

Paintings, drawings, works on paper and prints offer a close view of the artist’s working method and of the central role of line in the construction of figure and space. Graphic work thus acquires an autonomous value while also revealing how Guttuso developed and transformed the same motif through different techniques.

The various sections present the principal areas of his research: portraiture, his bond with Sicily, still life, the representation of society and the female body. Together they provide a broad view of his production, in which personal experience, observation of reality and an acute awareness of contemporary history remain closely interconnected.

Faces: portraiture as interpretation

The section devoted to Faces brings together portraits and self-portraits dating from the late 1930s onwards. Friends, intellectuals, people close to the artist and figures from his cultural circle become an opportunity to explore the distance between physical resemblance and pictorial interpretation.

Guttuso did not conceive portraiture as a neutral recording of facial features. The face is transformed in ways that suggest character, emotional tension and the human presence of the sitter. Realism therefore coexists with expressive distortions, variations of line and heightened chromatic accents that prevent the figure from being reduced to mere recognisability.

Mimise and the private dimension

Particular importance is given to works associated with Mimì “Mimise” Dotti, the artist’s wife and a central figure in his private life. Portrait of Mimise with the Red Hat introduces a more intimate dimension of Guttuso’s work, in which chromatic intensity derives not from the desire to represent a public event but from the emotional closeness between artist and subject. The exhibition thus places alongside the painter of civic engagement an artist equally capable of observing personal relationships with concentrated attention.

Sicily: landscape, labour and memory

The section devoted to Sicily represents one of the key stages of the exhibition. Landscapes, figures, fishermen, images of labour and memories of towns and villages evoke a territory that, in Guttuso’s work, assumes both biographical and symbolic significance.

Sea and sunlight coexist with lava, vegetation scorched by the light, urban rooftops and the vitality of popular markets. Sicily is not presented as an unchanging region removed from history: in scenes of labour and in works addressing social themes, the landscape also becomes a setting for human relationships, hardship and conflict.

La Vucciria: from memory to pictorial construction

Particularly significant is Study for La Vucciria, a 1974 watercolour on canvas-mounted paper, accompanied in the exhibition by a later lithographic version. The subject refers to one of the best-known themes in Guttuso’s oeuvre: the Palermo market is transformed into an almost dizzying concentration of goods, bodies and colours.

The power of these images does not depend solely on their chromatic richness. The market space almost eliminates any contemplative distance: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, crates and human figures seem to advance towards the viewer. Painting turns vision into a physical experience, bringing abundance into dialogue with transience, sensory attraction with an awareness of matter.

Living nature, still lifes

The largest section of the exhibition is devoted to Living Nature, Still Lifes. The apparent contradiction contained in the title precisely identifies one of the most distinctive aspects of Guttuso’s work: his ability to endow objects with such a powerful presence that the traditional opposition between living nature and still life almost disappears.

Interiors and exteriors, plants, fruit and everyday objects are constructed through sharply defined chromatic relationships. Things seem to share the same energy as human figures. Composition does not arrange them passively before the viewer; instead, it places them in tension: objects occupy space, confront one another and generate rhythm.

Still life as narrative

By the middle phases of his career, Guttuso had already transformed still life into something more complex than an exercise in observation. Objects can suggest a social environment, a season, a gesture just completed or the temporary absence of a human presence. Still life thus acquires a narrative quality without relinquishing the autonomy of painting.

Urban views participate in the same conception. Buildings, streets, windows and objects do not merely form a backdrop but preserve traces of lived experience. Reality becomes a surface upon which personal experience and collective memory continually overlap.

Artist and society

In the section Artist and Society, the public dimension of Guttuso’s painting emerges with particular clarity. Labour, hardship, social relationships and the conflicts of the twentieth century are themes that accompanied the artist for decades. References to Sicilian reality take on particular importance here, especially when the representation of landscape becomes intertwined with that of peasants and workers.

Guttuso’s social realism nevertheless retains a formal complexity that prevents it from being interpreted as mere ideological illustration. Figures are often constructed through angular forms of post-Cubist origin; colour intensifies contrasts; and composition tends to concentrate action within dense, tightly organised surfaces.

Between conflict and everyday life

Alongside works more directly connected with social issues, the exhibition includes images in which narrative tension becomes less pronounced. Footballers, from the Fondazione Sicilia, demonstrates Guttuso’s ability to turn his attention towards the everyday and collective dimension of sport. The movement of the bodies allows the painter to keep the human figure at the centre without necessarily investing it with dramatic meaning.

Other works, such as The Night of Gibellina, instead return the viewer to the memory of a Sicily marked by history and transformations of the landscape, showing how the island remained for the artist a place where personal experience and collective consciousness continually intersect.

The feminine: body, desire and art history

The final section addresses a recurring theme in Guttuso’s work: the female figure. The female body is represented through different registers, moving from portraiture to nudity and from emotional intimacy to erotic tension. Corporeality is not idealised according to a single model of beauty but can emerge through irregular forms, complex poses and an openly asserted physical presence.

A dialogue with the masters

This section also makes particularly clear Guttuso’s relationship with art history. The exhibition evokes comparisons with artists such as Ingres and George Grosz, while throughout his broader oeuvre Guttuso maintained a continuous dialogue with Picasso, Van Gogh and numerous other masters. These are not learned quotations introduced as secondary references: the art of the past becomes active material, subjected to reinterpretation and brought into relation with the concerns of the present.

Between Sicily and Rome: a biography through painting

One of the most significant aspects of the exhibition is the possibility of considering together the two essential geographical poles of Guttuso’s biography. If Sicily represents his origins, memory and the sensory repertoire to which the painter would return throughout his life, Rome became the place of his cultural maturation, intellectual relationships and public activity.

Guttuso settled in the capital in 1937 and, with several interruptions, remained there until his death in 1987. It was in Rome that his pictorial experience became increasingly intertwined with Italian cultural and political history. The city brought him into contact with artists, writers and intellectuals, but above all became the setting in which his idea of painting confronted some of the major issues of the twentieth century.

Antifascism and the responsibility of the image

The experience of antifascism was decisive in shaping Guttuso’s artistic position. In the years before and during the war, he rejected the idea of an art detached from contemporary tragedy. The murder of Federico García Lorca, war, persecution and, later, the Nazi occupation entered his work either directly or indirectly.

In the cycle of drawings later known as Gott mit uns, produced during the war years, historical violence is addressed through an essential and dramatic line. The human figure remains recognisable precisely because it must embody a concrete experience: the body becomes the place upon which history leaves its consequences.

Realism as a modern choice

Guttuso’s position in the post-war artistic debate was often at the centre of the opposition between figuration and abstraction. To interpret his realism as a rejection of modernity, however, would be reductive. The painter had a profound knowledge of avant-garde experimentation and employed spatial fragmentation, Expressionist distortions and intense chromatic effects derived from his engagement with European art.

His choice was instead to preserve the relationship between these formal devices and reality. The modernity of artistic language had to continue confronting human beings, objects, society and history.

From current events to memory

Over the decades, Guttuso’s painting gradually broadened its scope. More directly social narratives were accompanied by images connected with memory, eroticism, urban experience and dialogue with tradition. Works such as The Funeral of Togliatti, La Vucciria and Caffè Greco, although very different from one another, demonstrate his ability to move from collective history to the theatre of everyday life without abandoning an immediately recognisable visual language.

A figuration in constant transformation

Guttuso’s long-standing commitment to figuration did not therefore mean remaining within a fixed formula. From the Expressionist climate of the 1930s to his Neo-Cubist phase, from social realism to the freer and more allegorical compositions of his maturity, his work underwent continuous transformation. What remained constant was the conviction that painting should preserve a direct relationship with experience.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition offers, above all, an opportunity to explore more than fifty years of artistic research through a sufficiently broad selection of works to move beyond an identification of Guttuso with only a handful of celebrated images. The combination of paintings, drawings and prints makes it possible to understand the process through which a subject was studied, transformed and, at times, revisited using different techniques.

A thematic route beyond the traditional retrospective

The organisation into five thematic sections also allows works from chronologically distant periods to be placed in dialogue. Visitors can therefore observe how certain themes, portraiture, Sicily, objects, labour and the female body, recur over time while acquiring different meanings. The result is a transversal reading that does not replace the artist’s biography, but makes it visible through the persistence and transformation of images.

Drawings and prints as a key to Guttuso’s method

The presence of graphic works is particularly significant. Drawing played a central role in Guttuso’s practice: it was not merely a preparatory stage, but an autonomous instrument of analysis. Line defines the structure of bodies, organises the scene and allows the artist to test rapidly the relationships and tensions that, in painting, are also entrusted to colour.

Printmaking, by contrast, shows how the same iconographic repertoire could be transferred into a different language, based on contrast, the synthesis of line and the reproducibility of the image. The juxtaposition of study, painting and graphic translation therefore helps clarify the continuity of the creative process.

A key to understanding twentieth-century italian art

Approaching Guttuso’s work also means confronting some of the central issues of twentieth-century Italian art: the relationship between figuration and the avant-garde, the social role of the artist, the reception of Cubism, the question of realism, the legacy of European painting and the relationship between individual experience and collective history.

The exhibition makes it possible to examine these themes without separating formal research from the biographical dimension. Sicily, Rome, politics, personal relationships, memory and sensuality are not independent chapters: they continually overlap, shaping the complex identity of an artist for whom painting meant interpreting his own time through the concrete power of images.

The persistence of matter and the body

In a century marked by the progressive dematerialisation of the artwork and by the rise of abstraction and conceptual practices, Guttuso remained closely attached to the materiality of painting and to the presence of the body. This choice becomes particularly evident in the sections devoted to still life and the feminine, where objects and figures possess an almost tactile consistency.

It is perhaps precisely in this persistence of vision that the exhibition locates the “Mediterranean soul” evoked by its title: not a folkloric category, but a way of understanding painting as a physical, historical and sensory experience. The Mediterranean thus becomes the matrix through which Guttuso observes the world, from the memory of Sicily to the tensions of contemporary society, while keeping at the centre the figure, colour and the irreducible concreteness of things.

L'articolo The Painting of “Renato Guttuso. Mediterranean Soul” proviene da ArcheoRoma.

Paintings of exceptional importance, portraits and a substantial selection of works on paper allow visitors to follow the artist from his formative years to the experiments of his maturity, revealing the complexity of a body of work that progressively challenged classical equilibrium in favour of images governed by tension, instability, emotional intensity and a deeply personal conception of colour.

Pontormo and the transformation of the Florentine Renaissance

Jacopo Carucci was born in 1494 in Pontorme, near Empoli, the village from which the name by which he entered art history derives. His training took place in Florence at a moment of extraordinary cultural vitality, when the legacy of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael coexisted with the investigations of a younger generation engaged in rethinking the visual language of the early sixteenth century. Pontormo worked in the studios of Piero di Cosimo and Mariotto Albertinelli before joining that of Andrea del Sarto, where he also worked alongside Rosso Fiorentino.

It is precisely through his relationship with Andrea del Sarto that the distinctive character of Pontormo’s language can best be understood. From his master he absorbed the solidity of pictorial construction, a refined sensitivity to light and an elegant use of colour, yet he soon transformed these elements into something more restless. Figures gradually begin to withdraw from perspectival stability, poses become less predictable, and space progressively loses the rational clarity that had constituted one of the foundations of Renaissance culture.

From Classicism to Mannerism

To define Pontormo simply as a Mannerist painter, however, risks reducing the complexity of his artistic development. His language emerged within Renaissance culture and continued to retain its extraordinary discipline of drawing, its knowledge of anatomy and its engagement with antiquity. What changed was the relationship between these elements. Form no longer necessarily aimed at stability; beauty no longer coincided with order; and space ceased to function simply as a measurable container within which figures could be harmoniously arranged.

In Pontormo’s painting, the body may elongate, turn or assume positions that are difficult to reconcile with natural balance. Figures move closer together until they almost compress the available space, or appear to float within settings whose depth becomes deliberately ambiguous. The result is a form of painting that preserves the sophisticated visual culture of the Renaissance while questioning its certainties.

A generation after Michelangelo and Raphael

Pontormo belonged to a generation that was compelled to confront models which seemed to have brought painting to a level of perfection that could hardly be surpassed. His response did not consist in abandoning those models, but in absorbing and creatively transforming them.

Michelangelo remained fundamental to his monumental conception of the human body, while the Florentine tradition of drawing continued to form the underlying structure of his images. To these references Pontormo added an interest in Northern European prints, particularly those of Albrecht Dürer, which contributed to the development of narrative and compositional solutions less closely tied to Italian Classicism.

Crisis as a creative principle

To speak of restlessness in Pontormo’s painting does not mean simply projecting a modern psychological category onto the artist. Tension belongs to the very structure of his images. It emerges in the contrast between the monumentality of the figures and the uncertainty of the spaces they inhabit, between the precision of the drawing and the anti-naturalistic use of colour, and between the physical proximity of the protagonists and their frequent emotional distance. The result is a form of painting capable of preserving extraordinary elegance while denying the viewer any easy sense of visual resolution.

Florence, the Medici and a new visual culture

Pontormo’s career developed mainly in Medici Florence, during one of the most politically and culturally complex periods in the city’s history. Religious commissions, dynastic celebration and private portraiture offered different contexts in which the painter explored constantly evolving solutions. Yet this variety did not lead to a succession of separate styles: in sacred paintings as in portraits, the same interest in the human presence repeatedly emerges, observed both as physical reality and as the locus of an inner tension that remains difficult to define.

It is also for this reason that Pontormo’s painting exerted a particular fascination on twentieth-century culture. Artists and intellectuals far removed from the context of the sixteenth century recognised in his figures a sensibility capable of transcending its own time. Pier Paolo Pasolini looked at his painting with particular attention, while in more recent decades Bill Viola identified in the suspended power of Pontormo’s gestures and encounters a precedent surprisingly close to contemporary sensibility.

Colour, space and psychology in Pontormo’s painting

One of the most immediately recognisable aspects of Pontormo’s art is the progressive liberation of colour from a purely naturalistic function. Pinks, greens, blues, oranges and iridescent tones do more than describe fabrics and surfaces: they actively contribute to the emotional construction of the image. Chromatic relationships can become unexpected and even dissonant, altering the perception of the bodies and separating them from the surrounding environment.

Colour, however, is never independent of drawing. Pontormo remained an exceptional draughtsman and developed his inventions through intensive graphic preparation. The relationship between the discipline of line and chromatic freedom is one of the most fascinating aspects of his work: beneath surfaces that may appear spontaneous lies a prolonged investigation into poses, movements, relationships between figures and the direction of their gazes.

The human figure at the centre of the image

Pontormo’s painting is dominated by the presence of the body. Even when architecture plays a significant role, it is the figures that determine the structure of the composition. The body is not used simply to narrate an action: it becomes the principal means through which the artist organises rhythm, emotion and narrative tension.

In his religious paintings, gestures can acquire an almost ritual slowness. Hands meeting, arms crossing and faces seeking or avoiding other gazes construct a network of relationships more complex than the straightforward narration of a sacred episode. The represented event is thus transformed into a meditation on the fragility of human presence.

The Visitation of Carmignano

This conception reaches one of its highest points in the celebrated Visitation from the church of San Michele Arcangelo in Carmignano, a key work in the exhibition and one of the most recognisable images in Pontormo’s entire oeuvre. Mary and Elizabeth meet at the centre of the composition, while two further female figures, almost silent doubles of the protagonists, occupy the space behind them.

The embrace is not described as a simple narrative episode. The monumentality of the bodies, the breadth of the garments and the intensity of the colours transform the encounter into a suspended presence. The urban architecture recedes and seems incapable of providing the figures with a stable spatial measure. The gazes of the women in the background, directed straight towards the viewer, introduce an enigmatic stillness that contrasts with the movement of the draperies.

The modernity of the painting lies precisely in this ability to transform the Gospel episode into an experience almost outside time. The image does not abandon narrative, but concentrates it into a system of gestures, colours and presences in which the spiritual dimension is conveyed through the physical tension of the figures.

From the Supper at Emmaus to the investigations of maturity

Another fundamental work for understanding this phase is the Supper at Emmaus of 1525, now in the Uffizi Galleries. Painted after Pontormo’s stay at the Certosa del Galluzzo during the plague that struck Florence, the work demonstrates with particular clarity his ability to combine everyday observation with religious intensity. Christ occupies the centre of the composition while the disciples react to the moment of recognition; behind them, figures of Carthusian monks emerge from the shadows, portrayed with remarkable psychological acuity.

Small, tangible details, the table, the vessels and the animals, coexist with a composition strongly focused on the gesture of blessing. The sacred thus enters the sphere of everyday life without losing the subtle instability that characterises Pontormo’s visual world. Even where the scene appears more firmly constructed, the intensity of the gazes and the luminous isolation of the figures introduce a tension that transcends straightforward naturalism.

The portrait and the construction of identity

Alongside his major religious compositions, the portrait represents one of the fields in which Pontormo achieved particularly original results. His sitters often possess an extremely precise physical presence: clothing, hands, poses and indications of social status are rendered with meticulous attention. At the same time, individual identity seems to resist immediate interpretation.

External composure does not eliminate psychological tension. On the contrary, it makes it more evident. Stillness can turn into vigilance, elegance into distance, and the formal pose into a form of restrained unease. This ability to preserve both social recognisability and inner ambiguity distinguishes Pontormo’s portraiture from much of the earlier tradition and helps explain its extraordinary appeal to modern criticism.

The exhibition route

The exhibition follows a predominantly chronological structure, complemented by thematic sections that establish connections between paintings and graphic works. This approach makes it possible to observe not only the evolution of Pontormo’s style, but also the process through which he constructed his images. The aim is therefore not simply to present a succession of isolated masterpieces, but to restore the continuity of an artistic investigation pursued over more than four decades.

The exceptional nature of the exhibition largely depends on the opportunity to bring together works normally housed in collections far removed from one another. Alongside significant loans from the Uffizi Galleries, the exhibition includes works from the Galleria dell’Accademia, the Bargello Museums and the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, as well as from major international institutions including the Louvre, the National Gallery and British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Getty Museum.

A monographic exhibition built through comparisons

Bringing together works from different collections makes it possible to reconstruct relationships that are difficult to perceive today. Paintings executed years apart can be observed within the same itinerary; preparatory studies can be compared with finished compositions; and solutions developed for one work can be recognised, transformed, in later creations.

This approach is particularly important in the case of Pontormo, whose artistic evolution does not follow a straightforward linear progression. Motifs already explored are reconsidered and subjected to new tensions; some inventions seem to anticipate later solutions, while others reveal unexpected returns to earlier models. Chronology therefore becomes an instrument of interpretation rather than a mere succession of dates.

Paintings and works on paper

The presence of a substantial selection of drawings represents one of the exhibition’s most significant scholarly aspects. A remarkably large corpus of Pontormo’s graphic work survives, comprising hundreds of sheets that document the central role played by drawing in his creative process. Figure studies, anatomical details, variations of poses and compositional experiments reveal an artist who repeatedly tested the possibilities offered by every solution.

The sheet becomes the place in which an image is conceived through successive revisions. A leg may change position, a torso may turn, or a gesture may be reconsidered several times before reaching its final form. Seeing these studies alongside the paintings makes it possible to understand how the apparent freedom of Pontormo’s compositions was in fact the result of an extraordinarily analytical working method.

Drawing as a laboratory of form

Pontormo’s graphic practice also helps to challenge the Romantic image of an eccentric genius guided exclusively by instinct. His experimental approach emerged from relentless discipline. The body was observed from life, analysed and reconstructed; the tension visible in his painted figures was prepared through a process in which every movement was subjected to careful scrutiny.

This aspect is particularly important for understanding Pontormo’s relationship with the Florentine culture of drawing. The artist did not break with tradition; rather, he pushed it towards unexpected consequences. Precision of analysis became the prerequisite for deformation, while knowledge of form made its transformation possible.

A comprehensive reassessment of the artist

Despite Pontormo’s central position in the history of Italian art, an exhibition of this breadth devoted entirely to his production represents an unprecedented undertaking. The project therefore also offers an opportunity to reassess the scholarly studies developed over recent decades, bringing together questions of attribution, chronology, restoration and new interpretations of individual works.

Cristina Acidini’s curatorship, together with the contribution of the scientific committee, makes it possible to place Pontormo’s investigations within the cultural context of sixteenth-century Florence, avoiding the temptation to isolate his eccentricity from the system of relationships in which it developed.

Why visit the exhibition

The importance of the exhibition lies not simply in the number or prestige of the loans. The opportunity to see together works that are normally dispersed makes it possible to approach Pontormo beyond the simplifications that long accompanied his critical reception. The image of the melancholic, solitary and eccentric artist, encouraged in part by early biographical accounts, certainly forms part of his historical reputation, but it is not sufficient to explain the complexity of his painting.

Witnessing the birth of a new visual language

Following Pontormo’s development means witnessing one of the decisive moments in European visual culture: the point at which the equilibrium achieved by the Renaissance was subjected to radical transformation. This was not a crisis understood as a decline in quality, but the emergence of new expressive possibilities. Proportion, perspective and naturalism continued to be understood and employed, yet they ceased to function as unquestionable principles.

In Pontormo’s hands, colour acquires autonomy, space can become unstable and the body may be subjected to unexpected torsions. Above all, the relationship between figures becomes a means of representing emotional states that cannot be reduced to straightforward narrative. It is in this distance between formal perfection and perceptual unease that one of the most profoundly modern aspects of his art emerges.

Seeing the creative process at close range

The dialogue between paintings and drawings also provides a rare opportunity to understand the artist’s working method in concrete terms. Pontormo’s painting can initially appear to be governed by visionary impulse. The works on paper demonstrate instead the extent to which this freedom was supported by rigorous control of the human figure and by continuous experimentation.

Observing variations of the same pose means entering the process through which the painter transformed natural observation. The real body provided the starting point, but not the final destination. Through drawing, Pontormo selected, emphasised and modified what he saw until he constructed a form capable of expressing a tension that the simple imitation of nature could never convey.

Understanding Pontormo’s modernity

The twentieth-century reception of the painter is not a marginal episode in the history of his reputation. The fascination he exerted on figures such as Pasolini and Bill Viola demonstrates how Pontormo’s language has been perceived as unexpectedly close to modern sensibility. The isolation of his figures, the suspension of time, the intensity of encounters and the ability of colour to alter visible reality are elements that can be appreciated independently of a detailed knowledge of sixteenth-century iconography.

The Visitation perhaps offers the clearest example. The subject belongs to the Christian tradition, but the way in which Pontormo arranges the figures transcends the simple illustration of the episode. The embrace becomes a structure of bodies and colours, a moment of recognition and at the same time of suspension. It is hardly surprising that this very image has attracted contemporary artists interested in duration, gesture and human relationships.

L'articolo Pontormo: the first major monographic exhibition in Rome proviene da ArcheoRoma.

The title Absolute Black does not refer merely to a chromatic quality. It alludes to the very heart of Rembrandt’s graphic research: his ability to transform ink into living matter, to construct space through shadow and to make faces, bodies and gestures emerge from seemingly impenetrable depths.

In his prints, black is not synonymous with emptiness. It is instead an active, shifting substance, traversed by sudden appearances of light. It can conceal, protect, suggest or reveal. It becomes the space in which the image takes shape while, at the same time, preserving part of its mystery.

Rembrandt and the invention of black

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born in Leiden in 1606 and died in Amsterdam in 1669. His fame is associated above all with his paintings, his large group portraits, biblical scenes and self-portraits, in which he observed the transformation of his own face over the years. Alongside his painting, however, the artist developed an autonomous and radically experimental body of graphic work.

Between 1626 and 1665, he produced approximately three hundred etchings and drypoints. In most cases, these were not simply reproductions of paintings. For Rembrandt, printmaking constituted an independent territory, governed by its own rules and open to solutions that painting could not offer in the same way.

Printmaking allowed him to work directly on the relationship between line and light. Every line could be altered, deepened, superimposed or erased. Each plate could be reworked several times, giving rise to different “states” of the same composition. The image was therefore not necessarily a definitive result, but rather a provisional stage in a constantly evolving creative process.

Light generated by shadow

In Rembrandt’s paintings, light often seems to emanate from within the figures. A face emerges from the darkness, an illuminated hand acquires narrative significance, and a secondary character suddenly becomes essential. In his prints, this principle reaches an even more radical intensity.

Without colour, the artist was compelled to construct every transition through the density of the lines. Closely spaced strokes generate deep surfaces; short, irregular marks define the texture of a garment; almost untouched areas of paper become sources of light. White is not simply the background, nor is black merely a form of filling: both participate in the construction of the image.

Rembrandt’s light does not describe everything with equal precision. It selects, separates and directs the gaze. Certain parts of the scene are presented with striking clarity, while others remain immersed in a half-light in which forms appear to be still in the process of taking shape.

This tension between the visible and the invisible produces a distinctive emotional quality. The viewer is not given every piece of information, but is invited to complete mentally what the artist has merely suggested.

Black as a psychological space

In the Western tradition, shadow had often been used to model bodies and give depth to space. Rembrandt, however, also endowed it with psychological significance. Darkness becomes the realm of uncertainty, meditation, suffering and memory.

His figures are not placed against neutral backgrounds. Instead, they appear to emerge from an inner space. Black envelops them without erasing them, transforming every appearance into an event. A barely illuminated face can convey weariness, concentration or unease through the slightest variations.

For this reason, Rembrandt’s prints cannot be viewed hastily. They require proximity, time and attention. Their often intimate dimensions compel the viewer to move closer, establishing an almost private relationship with the image.

The revolution of printmaking

During the seventeenth century, printmaking was one of the principal means through which images circulated. It made it possible to reproduce celebrated works, illustrate books and disseminate portraits and visual inventions in places far removed from those in which they had originally been conceived.

Rembrandt fully understood the possibilities of this medium, but refused to regard it merely as a system of reproduction. In his hands, the print became an autonomous art form, capable of generating unrepeatable images even when they originated from the same plate.

The artist intervened not only on the plate itself, but also in the methods of inking, the cleaning of its surface and the choice of paper. He could leave thin veils of ink on the plate, creating what is known as surface tone, or print on different supports in order to obtain warmer, softer or more luminous effects.

As a result, two impressions taken from the same plate could display considerable differences. The mechanical process of printing was transformed into a creative act in which every impression retained its own identity.

Etching, drypoint and the freedom of line

The technique most closely associated with Rembrandt’s graphic production is etching. The metal plate was covered with a protective ground, upon which the artist drew with a pointed tool. The plate was then immersed in an acid bath, which corroded the exposed areas and transformed them into grooves capable of retaining the ink.

Compared with engraving executed with a burin, etching allowed for a quicker gesture, closer to drawing. Rembrandt could move the needle with immediacy, alternating fine lines, broken strokes, areas of shading and sudden abbreviations.

The artist frequently combined this technique with drypoint, produced by incising the plate directly with a sharp instrument. The action of the point raised small ridges of metal along the edges of the groove, known as burrs, which retained a greater quantity of ink and produced dark, soft and velvety lines.

Rembrandt combined etching, drypoint and, in some cases, engraving with the burin, creating surfaces of exceptional complexity. His line could be precise or nervous, extremely delicate or deeply incised. Areas described with great care coexisted with passages that were merely suggested, as though the artist wished to preserve on the plate the immediacy of an intuition.

The plate as a work in transformation

One of the most revolutionary aspects of Rembrandt’s graphic work lies in the possibility of modifying a composition that had already been printed. After examining the first impressions, the artist could return to the plate, adding new shadows, removing certain figures or radically altering the distribution of light.

Different states of the same print were thus created. These were not merely corrections, but genuine variations on a theme through which a scene could acquire a different meaning. A setting that was initially clearly legible could gradually be invaded by darkness; a secondary figure could emerge through a new intervention of light; the emotional tone of the entire composition could shift from narration to meditation.

This method reveals how Rembrandt regarded printmaking as an open-ended process. The work did not necessarily correspond to a single image, but rather to the history of its transformations.

The act of printing itself also formed part of this research. By varying the inking or leaving different amounts of surface tone on the plate, the artist could produce more dramatic atmospheres or clearer, more luminous images. Originality therefore resided not only in the engraved design, but in the unrepeatable relationship between plate, ink, pressure and paper.

Faces, self-portraits and everyday humanity

The exhibition in Rome highlights the variety of themes explored by Rembrandt. His graphic production includes biblical scenes, self-portraits, landscapes, figure studies and representations of everyday life.

These subjects are not separated by rigid hierarchies. Rembrandt observes an episode from the Scriptures with the same attention he devotes to the gesture of a person encountered in the street. The sacred can reveal itself within a domestic setting, while a beggar, an elderly person or a worker can acquire monumental dignity.

The artist does not idealise bodies or conceal the signs of age, fatigue or poverty. Wrinkles, uncertain postures, worn clothing and lowered gazes become essential elements of the representation. The truth of the image arises precisely from the acceptance of imperfection.

The self-portrait as a laboratory

Rembrandt repeatedly used his own face as an instrument of research. In his early graphic self-portraits, he experimented with grimaces, expressions of surprise, theatrical poses and different lighting effects. He was not merely recording his appearance, but studying the workings of emotion.

The artist’s face became an ever-available laboratory. Through the mirror, he could observe the movement of muscles, the way light struck the forehead or left the eyes in shadow, and the transformation of an expression through the slightest variations.

This practice helped to free the self-portrait from its purely celebratory function. Rembrandt does not always present himself as an authoritative and idealised figure. He may appear young and curious, self-assured, absorbed in thought or marked by the passage of time. The face is not a fixed mask, but a mutable reality.

Self-Portrait with Saskia

Among the works included in the exhibition, Self-Portrait with Saskia, an etching created in 1636, holds particular significance. The composition shows Rembrandt in the foreground, looking towards the viewer, while Saskia van Uylenburgh appears behind him.

The image possesses an intimate tone, but it cannot be interpreted as a simple family portrait. Rembrandt carefully constructs the relationship between the two figures. His own face, closer and more clearly defined, dominates the scene, while Saskia’s emerges in the background, creating a sense of depth achieved almost entirely through overlapping forms and the use of line.

The work belongs to an important phase in the artist’s life. Rembrandt and Saskia had married in 1634, and the young woman appears in numerous drawings, prints and paintings. Yet even when beginning from a private experience, the artist avoids conventional sentimental description.

Saskia’s presence appears natural and silent. The relationship between the two figures is conveyed through proximity, differences in scale and the contrast between Rembrandt’s more strongly defined face and the woman’s more delicate features.

Executed in etching and known in different states, the composition demonstrates how closely the practice of self-portraiture was connected to technical experimentation. The work is dated 1636, and the impression held by the National Gallery of Art has a plate mark measuring just over ten centimetres in height. Its small dimensions reinforce the intimate character of the image.

Bringing the sacred back into life

Religious scenes occupy a central place in Rembrandt’s graphic work. The artist repeatedly addressed episodes from the Old and New Testaments, interpreting them in ways that moved away from celebratory rhetoric.

Sacred figures inhabit tangible settings populated by ordinary presences. Alongside the protagonists may appear elderly people, children, the poor, curious onlookers and marginal figures. Biblical history is brought back into the realm of human experience.

Once again, light plays a decisive role. It does not merely indicate the principal figure, but determines the spiritual meaning of the scene. It may focus on a gesture of mercy, isolate a face or transform a dark space into a place of revelation.

Rembrandt does not eliminate suffering, fear or doubt. The spirituality of his images arises from the fragility of the figures. The sacred does not appear distant from reality, but manifests itself precisely through human vulnerability.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition at the Historical Museum of the Infantry offers an opportunity to approach Rembrandt through a dimension quite different from that of his large canvases. Printmaking requires a different way of looking.

When standing before a monumental painting, viewers can immediately perceive the overall organisation of the scene. A small-format print, by contrast, requires them to move closer, slow down and follow the path traced by the lines.

This proximity makes it possible to recognise the technical complexity of the works. Viewers can observe the networks of cross-hatching used to construct the shadows, the isolated lines that define an expression, the areas in which the paper is left untouched and those where the ink acquires an almost material density.

The modest dimensions do not diminish the power of the image. On the contrary, they concentrate it. Within just a few centimetres, Rembrandt succeeds in suggesting deep spaces, numerous crowds, windswept landscapes or silent encounters between two people.

From reproduction to original work

One of the exhibition’s merits lies in reminding visitors that a print is not necessarily a copy of another work. In Rembrandt’s case, printmaking often represents the only form in which a particular artistic invention was conceived.

The plate is not a neutral instrument, but a field of experimentation. Every scratch alters the behaviour of the ink; each biting of the acid determines a different intensity of line; every passage through the press creates a new relationship between the mark and the surface of the paper.

Rembrandt developed this awareness to its most advanced consequences. His prints do not attempt to imitate painting passively. Instead, they exploit the specific qualities of the medium: repetition, variation, the reversal of the image, the possibility of reworking the plate and obtaining different results through the printing process.

In this respect, his research appears remarkably modern. The work is not conceived as an immutable object, but as a process. Reproducibility does not eliminate uniqueness, because every impression may possess its own distinctive characteristics.

Looking into the shadow

The title Absolute Black can also be understood as an invitation addressed to the visitor. Looking at Rembrandt’s prints means learning to distinguish what takes place within darkness. At first glance, certain areas may appear dense and impenetrable. Viewed more closely, however, the black reveals a complex texture of intersecting lines, deeper marks, veils of ink, imperfections and traces left by the cleaning of the plate.

The image takes shape slowly. The eye must adjust, just as it does when entering a dimly lit room. This gradual process transforms observation into an active experience. The depth of Rembrandt’s works therefore derives not only from the subjects represented, but also from the way in which viewers are invited to discover them. The Dutch master does not reveal everything immediately. He preserves areas of silence, margins of ambiguity and spaces in which the imagination can continue the work begun by the engraved line.

Rembrandt’s modernity

More than three and a half centuries after the artist’s death, Rembrandt’s prints retain an astonishing power. Their modernity lies not only in their technical freedom, but also in their ability to contemplate the human being without idealisation.

Dignity and fragility coexist in his faces. His figures are never reduced to social types or abstract symbols. Even when portraying beggars, elderly people or anonymous individuals, Rembrandt preserves the individuality of each subject.

The engraved line

The engraved line records hesitations, tensions and changes. It does not conceal the process through which the image was constructed. On the contrary, it makes that process visible. This technical honesty corresponds to an honesty of vision.

The exhibition in Rome therefore allows visitors to recognise Rembrandt’s graphic work not as a secondary activity in comparison with painting, but as one of the highest achievements of his artistic research. Through etching and drypoint, the artist transformed black and white into a language capable of expressing the body, faith, solitude, human affection and the passage of time.

L'articolo Rembrandt. Absolute Black: The revolution of Printmaking proviene da ArcheoRoma.

The exhibition Keith Haring. “Art without Borders”, presented at the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi, offers an extensive overview of his artistic journey, revealing the complexity of a body of work often known through its most iconic images yet deeply rooted in broader cultural, historical and social contexts.

Keith Haring and the birth of a universal visual language

Keith Haring occupies a central position in the history of contemporary art during the 1980s. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1958 and educated at New York’s School of Visual Arts, Haring quickly developed an independent artistic vision shaped by both the tradition of drawing and the vibrant energy of American urban culture. His encounter with New York at a time of profound social and cultural transformation played a decisive role in the creation of a visual language capable of engaging simultaneously with graffiti, the emerging street art movement, comics, music and contemporary visual culture.

From the very beginning, Haring’s ambition was not to create works intended exclusively for museums and galleries, but rather to restore art to the public sphere. For this reason, he initially chose the unused advertising panels in New York’s subway stations as his preferred medium, rapidly covering them with white chalk drawings. Seen daily by thousands of commuters, these interventions quickly made his work instantly recognisable and helped establish an artistic philosophy based on accessibility and shared experience.

Line as a universal language

One of the defining features of Haring’s work is his ability to create a visual vocabulary that is both remarkably simple and extraordinarily rich in meaning. Stylised human figures, barking dogs, radiant babies, snakes, televisions, dynamic lines and radiant energy forms constitute an iconographic system capable of overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers.

Every image is constructed through a continuous, bold line without modelling or chiaroscuro. Behind this apparent simplicity lies a sophisticated understanding of composition, graphic synthesis and art history. Haring’s images require no specialised knowledge to be understood; they speak directly to viewers, engaging them emotionally before inviting intellectual reflection.

Between fine art and popular culture

One of Haring’s greatest achievements was his ability to erase the traditional distinction between elite artistic production and popular visual communication. His work draws inspiration not only from the great masters of modern art but also from comics, cartoons, advertising, urban posters and the rapidly evolving world of contemporary music.

His paintings demonstrate how artistic language can embrace the tools of modern communication without sacrificing conceptual depth. Beneath the vivid colours and unmistakable graphic style lies an ongoing reflection on the relationship between the individual, society, technology, consumer culture and political power.

New York in the 1980s

New York itself became Haring’s essential creative laboratory. During the 1980s, the city experienced profound contradictions: remarkable cultural and economic vitality coexisted with growing social inequality, drug addiction, the AIDS epidemic and dramatic transformations within its urban landscape.

Within this dynamic environment, Haring developed close relationships with figures such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Andy Warhol, Madonna and many of the leading personalities of the international music and art scenes. These encounters encouraged an interdisciplinary approach in which painting, performance, dance, music and public art became complementary forms of artistic expression.

Despite his rapid success within the international gallery system, Haring never abandoned his conviction that art should remain accessible to everyone. This belief inspired him to create murals, public interventions, educational workshops for children and community-based projects, ultimately redefining the social role of the contemporary artist.

Public art, activism and social responsibility

Reducing Keith Haring to a simple representative of Pop culture would overlook one of the most significant aspects of his artistic practice. From the outset of his career, he used visual language as a powerful instrument for political and social reflection, addressing issues ranging from racial discrimination and civil rights to children’s welfare, nuclear disarmament and the fight against the AIDS epidemic.

His images never become didactic. Instead, their remarkable visual clarity makes complex ideas immediately accessible, encouraging direct engagement from viewers. Through this essential graphic language, Haring created a universal means of communication capable of crossing generations, cultures and geographical boundaries.

Art for everyone

Haring consistently argued that art should never be regarded as a privilege reserved for a select audience but as a shared cultural heritage belonging to society as a whole. This conviction led him to work in public spaces, schools, hospitals and community centres, where artistic creation acquired an educational as well as an aesthetic dimension.

The celebrated Pop Shop, opened in New York in 1986, perfectly embodied this philosophy by making his visual universe available through everyday objects, deliberately challenging the traditional separation between fine art and popular culture. Although this decision generated considerable debate within the art world, it is now widely recognised as one of the most innovative and influential aspects of his career.

Art as collective participation

For Keith Haring, the value of an artwork extended far beyond its formal qualities; it was measured above all by its ability to establish a dialogue with the public. His images, intentionally free from complex narratives, invite viewers to recognise themselves within a shared visual language. In doing so, Haring created a form of expression that could be understood regardless of age, cultural background or familiarity with the history of art.

This vision also reflected his belief that art should contribute to the cultural development of society. Throughout his career, Haring organised workshops for children, painted schools, hospitals and community centres, transforming artistic practice into an experience of collective participation. Many of his murals were created in collaboration with local communities, demonstrating a conception of creativity as an opportunity for dialogue and inclusion rather than individual affirmation.

Commitment to the fight against AIDS and discrimination

During the second half of the 1980s, Haring’s work acquired an even stronger social and political dimension. The outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, which had a devastating impact on New York’s artistic community, prompted him to use his growing international reputation to raise public awareness of a disease that was still surrounded by prejudice and misinformation.

Through posters, public campaigns and numerous artworks, he addressed issues of prevention, solidarity and the dignity of those affected by HIV/AIDS. At the same time, Haring spoke out against racism, social exclusion, apartheid in South Africa, the nuclear arms race and violations of human rights, confirming that his artistic production was inseparable from the historical realities of his own time.

After learning that he was HIV-positive in 1988, the artist intensified his public commitment by establishing the Keith Haring Foundation, which continues to support educational initiatives, children’s programmes and HIV/AIDS research while preserving and promoting his artistic legacy.

Keith Haring and his connection with Italy

Italy occupies a significant place in Keith Haring’s artistic biography. From the early 1980s, his work attracted considerable attention from museums, galleries and collectors, establishing a relationship that continued to grow throughout his career. His immediate and accessible visual language found particularly fertile ground in a country where an enduring artistic tradition has long coexisted with a strong interest in contemporary experimentation.

The many exhibitions dedicated to Haring over the years have played a fundamental role in expanding knowledge of his work, while several permanent projects continue to testify to the artist’s direct relationship with Italy and its cultural landscape.

The “Tuttomondo” mural in Pisa

The most celebrated example of this connection is undoubtedly Tuttomondo, the monumental mural completed in 1989 on the exterior wall of the Convent of Sant’Antonio Abate in Pisa. Composed of thirty interlocking figures arranged in a complex network of symbolic relationships, it was the last major public mural created by Haring before his death.

The work conveys a powerful message of harmony between humanity and nature through imagery that synthesises many of the recurring themes of his artistic practice: cooperation, peace, solidarity, balance and intercultural dialogue. Today, Tuttomondo remains one of Italy’s most important works of contemporary public art and one of the most enduring symbols of Keith Haring’s presence in the country.

Keith Haring and Rome

A dedicated section also highlights the special relationship Haring developed with Italy. Works, posters, and archival documents trace his connections with Naples, Milan, Pisa, and Rome, recalling his collaborations with Lucio Amelio and Salvatore Ala, the celebrated Poster for Pisa, and the painting Motorcycle, painted in Rome in 1984. The display is further enriched by photographs by Stefano Fontebasso De Martino documenting Haring’s interventions in the Italian capital, from the Palazzo delle Esposizioni to the Pietro Nenni Bridge, illustrating the artist’s dialogue with Rome’s urban landscape.

The exhibition

Presented in the galleries of the Museum of Rome at Palazzo Braschi, the exhibition offers an extensive chronological and thematic journey through the artist’s career. Curated by Kaoru Yanase, Ilaria Miarelli Mariani and Claudio Zambianchi, the exhibition brings together more than 140 works, many of them on loan from the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection in Hokuto, Japan, one of the world’s most important collections dedicated to the artist.

Designed specifically for the spaces of Palazzo Braschi, the exhibition follows a thematic route that explores the principal areas of Keith Haring’s artistic research. From the origins of his street art and the celebrated works created in the New York subway, the exhibition moves to his political and social commitment through works addressing racism, apartheid, AIDS, violence, and discrimination.

Considerable attention is also devoted to the body and vital energy, expressed through large-scale paintings in fluorescent colours, as well as to Haring’s conviction that art should be accessible to everyone, illustrated by his numerous public projects and initiatives created for communities and young audiences. The exhibition concludes with a section devoted to the symbolic and spiritual dimensions of his later production, exploring themes of transformation, religion, and the relationship between life and death.

From the New York subway to monumental works

The exhibition begins with Haring’s formative years in New York and the celebrated Subway Drawings, the chalk works that fundamentally transformed the relationship between art and the urban environment. Through drawings, photographs and documentary materials, visitors gain insight into the cultural context from which one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive artistic languages emerged.

The following sections explore the expansion of Haring’s practice into large-scale paintings, monumental canvases, sculptures, posters and works addressing major political and social issues. Together, these galleries reveal the gradual maturation of an artistic vision that, while maintaining its unmistakable visual vocabulary, achieved increasing conceptual richness throughout the artist’s career.

Drawings, paintings and documentary materials

Alongside Haring’s best-known works, the exhibition includes drawings on paper, preparatory sketches and documentary materials that illuminate his creative process. These works reveal how the apparent spontaneity of his line was in fact supported by rigorous compositional thinking, a refined sense of rhythm and a constant commitment to graphic experimentation.

Historic photographs, archival films and contemporary documents further enrich the exhibition by placing Haring’s work within the vibrant international cultural scene of the 1980s, allowing visitors to appreciate the creative environment in which many of his most celebrated works were conceived.

A critical interpretation of Haring’s artistic practice

One of the exhibition’s greatest strengths lies in its decision to move beyond a purely chronological narrative in favour of a deeper exploration of the conceptual themes that define Haring’s work. Visitors are invited to examine the relationships between public art, popular culture, spirituality, political activism and reflections on contemporary society.

Rather than interpreting the immediate accessibility of Haring’s imagery as a form of simplification, the exhibition demonstrates that this clarity was the result of a deliberate cultural choice: to create a visual language capable of reaching the widest possible audience without sacrificing intellectual depth or artistic complexity.

The Nakamura Keith Haring Collection

One of the exhibition’s most significant features is its collaboration with the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection in Hokuto, Japan, home to one of the world’s most important collections devoted to the American artist. Thanks to this exceptional international partnership, the exhibition brings together a remarkable selection of works that allows visitors to follow the evolution of Haring’s artistic vision with unusual depth and continuity.

The paintings, works on paper and documentary materials drawn from this outstanding collection broaden the interpretation of Haring’s career, revealing not only the coherence of his visual language but also the extraordinary diversity of themes explored throughout his brief yet intensely productive life.

Why visit this exhibition

This exhibition offers a valuable opportunity to rediscover an artist who is often identified solely through his most iconic images. Rather than focusing exclusively on familiar motifs, the exhibition presents Keith Haring’s work as a coherent artistic journey, placing his visual language within the broader historical, cultural and social context in which it developed.

The richness of the works on display demonstrates that the apparent simplicity of Haring’s imagery conceals a sophisticated reflection on the role of art in contemporary society. Throughout the exhibition, visitors are encouraged to explore the close relationship between artistic experimentation, visual communication and civic responsibility, gaining a deeper understanding of an artist whose work extends far beyond the conventions of 1980s Pop culture.

The enduring relevance of Keith Haring’s message

Several decades after his death, Haring’s artistic vision continues to resonate with remarkable immediacy. Themes such as inclusion, peace, human rights, equality and universal access to culture remain central to contemporary public debate, making his work as relevant today as it was during his lifetime.

It is precisely this universal dimension that gives the exhibition a particular cultural value. The works are not presented as simple testimonies of an era, but as tools still capable of questioning the visitor about the relationship between the individual, the community, and public space, demonstrating how the language of art can continue to transcend geographical, social, and cultural boundaries.

L'articolo Keith Haring. “Art without Borders” at Palazzo Braschi proviene da ArcheoRoma.

While Cinecittà attracted major international film productions and Via Veneto became the symbol of a cosmopolitan lifestyle, Rome’s fashion houses were developing a distinctive language of elegance destined to achieve worldwide recognition. It was within this unique cultural environment that Made in Italy was born, not merely as a commercial label but as a broader cultural phenomenon: a synthesis of artisanal excellence, technological innovation, entrepreneurial vision and refined aesthetics.

The exhibition retraces this extraordinary period through a rich display of garments, photographs, newsreels, documents, magazines and archival materials, revealing how fashion helped redefine Italy’s cultural identity during the second half of the twentieth century.

Rome and the Birth of a new cultural identity

The history of Italian fashion extends far beyond the celebrated couture houses. It emerged from a complex network in which craftsmanship, industry, textile innovation, photography, cinema, publishing and the applied arts worked together to create a distinctive creative system. The exhibition presents this remarkable period as a collective achievement, in which each participant contributed to the development of a visual language that established Italian elegance on the international stage.

Rome occupied a unique position within this process. Fashion ateliers maintained close ties with the film industry, illustrated magazines transformed runway presentations into international events, and photographers used the city’s monumental heritage as the natural setting for their images. Within only a few years, the capital evolved into a creative laboratory where different disciplines converged, translating Italy’s manufacturing tradition into a compelling vision of modernity.

Fashion, Cinema and Photography

One of the exhibition’s greatest strengths lies in demonstrating how the success of Roman haute couture was supported by the creation of a powerful visual culture. Photographs from the Archivio Storico Luce, newsreels, illustrated magazines and fashion house archives reveal that garments were never presented as isolated objects. Instead, they became part of a broader narrative in which architecture, cinema, social life and the urban landscape all contributed to defining their cultural significance.

Historic squares, grand hotels, film studios and Rome’s panoramic terraces became theatrical settings for a new vision of elegance. Fashion thus assumed a broader cultural role, expressing the aspirations of a country confidently embracing the future while remaining deeply rooted in its extraordinary artistic heritage.
Perfetto. Mantengo lo stesso registro della prima parte: **non una traduzione letterale, ma una traduzione editoriale**, pensata per un pubblico internazionale interessato all’arte e alla cultura italiana.

The exhibition

Curated by Fabiana Giacomotti, the exhibition offers an interdisciplinary interpretation of Italian fashion, moving beyond a simple display of iconic garments. The exhibition brings together haute couture creations, photographs, films, documents, magazines, sketches and archival materials from major public institutions and private collections, demonstrating how the success of Italian fashion emerged from the convergence of creativity, industrial research and visual communication.

The remarkable holdings of the Archivio Storico Luce form the backbone of the exhibition’s narrative. Newsreels, photographs and documentaries guide visitors through a story in which fashion shows, ateliers, the work of skilled dressmakers and the circulation of images reveal how the visual identity of Made in Italy was shaped. Fashion thus emerges not merely as an expression of style, but as a historical document capable of reflecting the profound economic and social transformations that accompanied Italy’s post-war economic boom.

The leading figures of Roman Haute Couture

The exhibition brings together some of the designers who shaped the history of Italian haute couture. The creations of the Sorelle Fontana illustrate the close relationship between Rome’s fashion houses and the international film industry, while the work of Fernanda Gattinoni highlights the enduring dialogue between fashion design and cinematic costume.

Particular attention is devoted to Roberto Capucci, whose garments transform fabric into sculptural forms through an extraordinary exploration of volume and structure, and to Emilio Schuberth, one of the leading interpreters of post-war Roman elegance.

The exhibition also features creations by Simonetta, Irene Galitzine, represented by her iconic Palazzo Pyjamas, Renato Balestra, and Valentino Garavani, whose celebrated “Fiesta” dress reflects the stylistic maturity achieved by the maison during the 1960s. The narrative further extends to the history of Fendi, highlighting the creative contribution of Karl Lagerfeld, whose work exemplifies the continuity between Italian craftsmanship and contemporary design innovation.

Textile innovation and industrial research

One of the exhibition’s most distinctive features is its focus on the relationship between creative design and technological innovation. Rather than concentrating exclusively on celebrated designers, the exhibition demonstrates how the success of Italian haute couture was supported by the growth of the textile industry and by continuous experimentation with new materials, essential aspects that are often overlooked in the history of fashion.

A central role is assigned to SNIA Viscosa, one of Italy’s leading companies in the development of artificial and synthetic fibres during the years of the economic miracle. The introduction of innovative textiles dramatically expanded the creative possibilities available to designers: lighter, stronger and more versatile fabrics encouraged new silhouettes, refined structural solutions and unprecedented chromatic effects. The excellence of Italian fashion therefore emerged not only from artistic creativity but also from the fruitful collaboration between scientific research, the chemical industry and traditional manufacturing.

This perspective significantly broadens the understanding of the history of Made in Italy. Elegance is presented not simply as the result of individual artistic talent, but as the expression of a highly integrated system in which companies, workshops, technicians and artisans collaborated to produce garments combining aesthetic excellence with technical sophistication. It was precisely this balance between craftsmanship and industrial innovation that established the Italian model as one of the defining creative systems of the twentieth century.

Palma Bucarelli and the dialogue between Fashion and Contemporary Art

The exhibition further expands its cultural perspective through the figure of Palma Bucarelli, the visionary director of Rome’s National Gallery of Modern Art and one of the leading figures in the renewal of Italian museums after the Second World War. Her presence within the exhibition is more than a biographical reference: it highlights the growing dialogue that developed during those decades between the visual arts, design and fashion.

Bucarelli understood remarkably early that the culture of design could not be confined to the traditionally recognised fine arts. Like a work of design or an object of the applied arts, a garment could embody the historical, social and cultural values of its time. The exhibition embraces this broader perspective, inviting visitors to regard fashion as an integral part of twentieth-century artistic heritage, one that reflects the transformations of Italian society just as effectively as painting, architecture or industrial design.

Hollywood on the Tiber and the making of an international image

During the 1950s and 1960s, Rome experienced an extraordinary cultural season remembered as Hollywood on the Tiber. The arrival of major American film productions transformed the city into a vibrant meeting point between the international film industry and Italian creativity, providing Rome’s fashion houses with an exceptional stage on which to showcase their work.

The actors and actresses who lived and worked in the capital played a decisive role in bringing the prestige of Roman haute couture to an international audience. Creations by the Sorelle Fontana, Gattinoni, Schuberth and many of Italy’s leading couturiers appeared not only on screen but also at film festivals, gala receptions, premieres and editorial photo shoots. Cinema became an extraordinarily powerful medium, transforming Italian elegance into an internationally recognised symbol of style and sophistication.

The photographs and newsreels presented throughout the exhibition vividly capture this remarkable period. Rather than simply documenting garments, they portray a city alive with artists, filmmakers, journalists and photographers, where fashion played an active role in shaping Rome’s image as a modern, cosmopolitan capital while remaining deeply connected to its artistic and cultural heritage.

Fashion Photography as historical evidence

The exhibition also highlights the fundamental role of fashion photography. Advertising campaigns, editorial features and photographs from the archives of leading fashion houses demonstrate how photography helped define the visual identity of Made in Italy. Through the photographers’ lenses, garments became part of a broader narrative, engaging in a dialogue with Rome’s architecture and the rhythms of everyday urban life.

By presenting these images as historical sources rather than simple illustrations, the exhibition enables visitors to explore not only changing tastes in fashion but also the evolution of visual communication, advertising and the representation of Italian society during the years of the economic miracle.

Dialogue with the Centrale Montemartini

One of the exhibition’s most compelling features is its relationship with the unique setting of the Centrale Montemartini. Housed within a former thermoelectric power station, today one of Rome’s most distinctive museum spaces, the exhibition creates a meaningful dialogue between industrial archaeology and artistic heritage. In this context, exploring the relationship between fashion and technological innovation becomes especially relevant.

The monumental machinery preserved inside the museum recalls the central role of industry in shaping modern Italy, while the garments on display demonstrate how Italian creativity transformed technological research and manufacturing excellence into a distinctive aesthetic language. Rather than serving merely as a backdrop, the building itself becomes an integral part of the exhibition, reinforcing the connection between Rome’s industrial past and one of the creative sectors that most profoundly shaped Italy’s cultural identity during the twentieth century.

A library for exploring fashion history

The exhibition concludes with a reading area featuring books, exhibition catalogues and specialist publications, underscoring how fashion history has become a well-established field of academic research. This curatorial choice broadens the exhibition’s scope, encouraging visitors to consider Italian haute couture as an essential part of the history of art, design and material culture.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition’s greatest achievement lies in its ability to present Italian fashion within the broader framework of twentieth-century cultural history, moving beyond a purely aesthetic appreciation of clothing. Through the dialogue between garments, photographs, archival documents, newsreels and other historical materials, it demonstrates that the success of Made in Italy emerged from the convergence of artistic creativity, industrial innovation, technological research and visual communication.

The richness of the works on display, the authority of the participating institutions and the exceptional documentary value of the Archivio Storico Luce encourage visitors to see fashion not as an ephemeral phenomenon but as a powerful testimony to the economic, social and cultural transformation of post-war Italy. The creations of leading designers become tangible expressions of an era in which elegance, innovation, and industry came together to redefine modernity and establish Italy as a global benchmark for creativity.

L'articolo Moda in Luce 1955–1975: The Exhibition on the Birth of Made in Italy in Rome proviene da ArcheoRoma.

Among the works that have most profoundly shaped the European artistic tradition, Publius Ovidius Naso’s Metamorphoses occupies a unique position. More than a collection of mythological tales, the poem offers an ongoing reflection on transformation as the principle governing the natural world, human destiny and divine intervention. The exhibition is built around the remarkable generative power of Ovid’s text, tracing its influence on the visual arts through a journey that brings together archaeology, sculpture, painting and cultural history.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses: the poem that transformed western art

When Ovid completed the Metamorphoses, probably around AD 8, he bequeathed to Latin literature a work destined to exert an unparalleled influence on both literature and the visual arts. Comprising fifteen books and more than 250 interconnected episodes, the poem unfolds as a continuous narrative that stretches from the creation of the cosmos to the deification of Julius Caesar, bringing together myths from diverse traditions through the unifying theme of transformation.

The originality of the work lies precisely in its ability to transcend the episodic nature of mythological storytelling. Rather than presenting isolated narratives, Ovid links each episode through a sophisticated network of references, analogies and narrative connections, creating a seamless and fluid composition. Every transformation gives rise to a new story, each character introduces another episode, while change itself becomes the poem’s organising principle.

From this perspective, metamorphosis extends far beyond the realm of the miraculous. It embodies the constant transition between different states of existence, the mutability of human emotions, the fragility of identity and nature’s inexhaustible capacity for renewal. Men transformed into trees, nymphs becoming springs, and youths changed into flowers or constellations are not merely fantastical episodes, but symbolic images through which Ovid reflects on the human condition and the relationship between freedom, desire and destiny.

Ovid and the augustan age

Publius Ovidius Naso was born in Sulmo in 43 BC and educated within the cultural elite of the Augustan Age, where he distinguished himself through an elegant and innovative literary style. Unlike Virgil and Horace, he devoted his poetry to love, myth and human passions, exploring the complexities of human nature rather than celebrating imperial ideology.

In AD 8, the year in which the Metamorphoses was essentially completed, Ovid was exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea for the enigmatic reason he described as a carmen et error (“a poem and a mistake”). Far from Rome, he continued writing until his death, while his masterpiece gradually established itself as one of the most influential works in the Western literary tradition.

The poetics of transformation

Metamorphosis is the unifying principle of the entire poem. Each episode depicts a transition, often irreversible, in which the body changes form without entirely losing the memory of its former identity. This suspension between two states is one of the most distinctive features of Ovid’s imagination.

In the myth of Daphne, for example, the dramatic climax lies in the nymph’s gradual transformation into a laurel tree, while the story of Narcissus explores the question of identity through the myth of self-contemplation. In other episodes, such as those of Arachne and Baucis and Philemon, metamorphosis becomes an expression of punishment, reward or divine intervention, revealing the extraordinary symbolic richness of the poem.

From poetic narrative to visual image

The enduring influence of the Metamorphoses also stems from the vivid visual power of Ovid’s writing. His descriptions of transformation are so precise and evocative that they generate compelling mental images, providing artists with an exceptionally rich repertoire of subjects.

Ovid focuses on the very instant of change, a narrative choice that painters and sculptors have translated into works capable of conveying movement within the stillness of the image. It is precisely this dialogue between word and representation that explains the poem’s lasting impact on the history of European art.

Ovid’s poem as a key to interpreting the collection

Conceived by Francesca Cappelletti and Frits Scholten as part of the collaboration between the Galleria Borghese and Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the exhibition offers a fresh interpretation of art history through the lens of Ovid’s poem. The Metamorphoses serves as the guiding thread of a journey that places the exhibited works in dialogue with both the museum’s permanent collection and the historic spaces of Villa Borghese.

The choice of Scipione Borghese’s historic residence is far from incidental. The villa stands as one of the finest examples of the reception of the Classical world in seventeenth-century Rome, where collecting, architecture and mythology converge within a unified cultural vision. Deeply embedded in the museum’s identity, the theme of metamorphosis becomes the key to understanding the dialogue between the ancient and the modern, revealing how Ovidian myths have continued to inspire artists across the centuries.

Metamorphosis as a universal principle

One of the exhibition’s most compelling aspects is its expanded interpretation of the very concept of metamorphosis. It is not merely the transformation of the poem’s protagonists, but a universal principle that governs the cosmos, shapes the cycle of the seasons, transforms matter and landscapes, and regulates the perpetual cycle of life and death. Art thus becomes the privileged medium through which this continuous process can be observed and understood.

The curators extend this reflection to the creative process itself. Every work of art is born from the transformation of a material—marble, bronze, pigment or wood—into an image, just as nature in Ovid’s poem constantly assumes new forms. Artistic creation thus becomes a metamorphosis in its own right, establishing a subtle parallel between the artist’s creative act and Ovid’s poetic narrative.

A dialogue across the centuries

The exhibition deliberately avoids a strictly chronological approach. Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces are presented alongside works from antiquity and modern art, demonstrating the uninterrupted legacy of the Metamorphoses. The inclusion of artists such as Michelangelo, Correggio, Titian, Rubens, Poussin, Rodin and Brâncuși highlights the exhibition’s broad chronological scope and the continual reinvention of myth through diverse artistic languages.

The exhibition journey

The exhibition follows the narrative structure of Ovid’s poem, transforming the galleries of the villa into a journey through some of the most celebrated episodes of the Metamorphoses. Rather than presenting a simple sequence of artworks, the display creates a visual narrative in which literature, sculpture, painting and decorative arts constantly interact. More than eighty works from leading European and American museums are displayed alongside the permanent collection, enriching the historic setting while preserving its unique identity.

From primordial chaos to the birth of the world

Like Ovid’s poem itself, the exhibition begins with the creation of the cosmos. Before the appearance of gods and heroes, visitors encounter the concept of Chaos, the formless matter from which all life emerged. This opening section establishes metamorphosis not simply as a mythological event, but as the original condition of the universe. Renaissance paintings and later sculptures illustrate how successive generations of artists interpreted the theme of creation through distinct visual languages.

The great myths of transformation

As the exhibition unfolds, visitors encounter some of the poem’s most celebrated episodes. The stories of Apollo and Daphne, The Rape of Proserpina, Narcissus, Orpheus and Eurydice and many other mythical figures become the common thread linking works created across different centuries. Each section reveals how artists have chosen different moments within the same narrative: some depicting the instant before transformation, others the decisive moment of change, and still others its lasting consequences.

This dialogue highlights the remarkable interpretative freedom offered by Ovid’s text. Although inspired by the same myths, each artist creates a distinct visual language, continually reimagining the relationship between body, space and movement.

Dialogue with the permanent collection

One of the exhibition’s greatest strengths lies in the integration of loans with the museum’s own masterpieces. The celebrated sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, themselves inspired by the Metamorphoses, are not merely highlights of the display but serve as its key interpretative anchors. Visitors come to appreciate how the theme of transformation was already deeply embedded in the history of the villa and in Scipione Borghese’s collecting vision long before this exhibition was conceived.

A narrative across time

Rather than presenting the Classical tradition as a fixed legacy, the exhibition demonstrates how each era has reinterpreted Ovid according to its own cultural values. The formal balance of the Renaissance, the theatrical dynamism of the Baroque, Romantic sensibilities and the innovations of modern sculpture are all presented as stages in an ongoing process of artistic reinterpretation, confirming the enduring vitality of Ovid’s poem within European art.

Bernini and the poetics of Metamorphosis

If there is one artist who more than any other succeeded in translating the narrative power of the Metamorphoses into visual form, it is undoubtedly Gian Lorenzo Bernini. For this reason, staging the exhibition at the Galleria Borghese carries a significance that extends well beyond the museum itself. The villa houses the most celebrated group of sculptures directly inspired by Ovid’s poem, commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese during Bernini’s early career. The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider these masterpieces not merely as milestones of Baroque sculpture, but as part of a broader reflection on transformation, placing them in dialogue with works from major European and American collections.

Bernini’s greatest innovation lies in his ability to capture the precise moment that Ovid describes with such dramatic intensity: the instant when one form has not yet disappeared and another has not yet fully emerged. Marble seems to abandon its mineral nature to become flesh, hair, leaves, feathers or flowing water, giving viewers the impression of witnessing an event still unfolding. This extraordinary ability to render time, as well as space, places Bernini’s sculptures among the supreme achievements of European art.

Apollo and Daphne: time carved in marble

Among the masterpieces in the permanent collection, Apollo and Daphne stands as perhaps the most accomplished sculptural interpretation of Ovid’s language. Rather than depicting either the pursuit or the completed transformation, Bernini captures the fleeting instant in which Daphne’s body gradually becomes a laurel tree. Her fingers extend into delicate branches, her feet take root in the earth, and bark slowly envelops her still-living body.

This compositional choice reveals Bernini’s profound understanding of Ovid’s poetry. Just as the poet builds dramatic tension through the gradual unfolding of the metamorphosis, Bernini translates the same narrative process into marble, encouraging viewers to move around the sculpture and experience its transformation from multiple perspectives.

The dialogue between word and matter

By placing Bernini’s sculptures alongside the works included in the exhibition, visitors gain a deeper understanding of how the Baroque did not merely illustrate myth but reinterpreted its essential meaning. Metamorphosis becomes a metaphor for the fragility of existence, the power of human passion and the instability of reality itself. Within this context, the exhibition restores Bernini’s masterpieces to their original literary framework, offering a renewed perspective on their enduring significance.

The Rape of Proserpina and the drama of transformation

The Rape of Proserpina represents another pivotal moment in the exhibition. Although it does not depict a physical metamorphosis in the strict sense, the sculpture embodies an irreversible transition—from the world of light to the depths of the Underworld. In Ovid’s account, this myth tells the story of an existential transformation that forever alters Proserpina’s destiny and the eternal cycle of the seasons.

The celebrated illusionistic rendering of Pluto’s fingers pressing into Proserpina’s flesh, the dynamic composition and the theatrical intensity of the group demonstrate Bernini’s extraordinary ability to transform marble into a seemingly living material. The sculpture conveys both the violence of the action and the psychological tension of its protagonists, while the exhibition reveals how this formal achievement is deeply rooted in Ovid’s poetics of transformation, making sculpture one of the highest expressions of the dialogue between poetry and the visual arts.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition’s greatest strength lies in its ability to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. Classical literature, archaeology, art history, collecting and museology converge in a unified project that encourages visitors to experience artistic heritage from fresh perspectives. Rather than presenting isolated masterpieces, the exhibition reveals them as chapters in a continuous history of reinterpretation and transformation spanning more than two millennia of European culture.

The international collaboration with the Rijksmuseum further highlights the scholarly significance of the project. Developed through a dialogue between Italian and Dutch specialists, the Roman presentation is not simply a reproduction of the Amsterdam exhibition but an independent curatorial project, specifically designed for the historic spaces of the Galleria Borghese, where Bernini’s masterpieces become the exhibition’s principal interpretative focus.

A journey through the european imagination

The exhibition demonstrates how the Metamorphoses became one of the most influential iconographic sources in Western civilisation. From Renaissance masters to Baroque painters and modern sculptors, Ovid’s poem has provided artists with an extraordinary range of subjects through which to explore desire, power, violence, memory, humanity’s relationship with nature and the fragility of identity.

Works by Michelangelo, Correggio, Titian, Rubens, Poussin, Rodin and Brâncuși, displayed in dialogue with the permanent collection, allow visitors to trace the evolution of these themes across the centuries, highlighting both the continuity of the Classical tradition and each period’s capacity to reinterpret it according to its own artistic vision.

The contemporary relevance of Ovid

More than two thousand years after its composition, Ovid’s poem continues to resonate with contemporary audiences. Its reflections on transformation, the instability of forms and the fluid boundaries between humanity, nature and the divine remain strikingly relevant in an age shaped by environmental concerns, questions of identity and renewed interest in humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The exhibition demonstrates that myth belongs not only to the past but also remains a powerful tool for understanding the complexities of the present.

An outstanding opportunity for art-historical insight

For scholars, art enthusiasts and visitors alike, the exhibition offers an exceptional opportunity to deepen their understanding of European artistic culture. The dialogue between rarely exhibited masterpieces, the quality of the international loans and the chance to reinterpret the Galleria Borghese’s celebrated collection through the lens of Ovid’s poem provide a richer appreciation of the enduring relationship between literature and the visual arts. The exhibition ultimately shows how every artist, engaging with Ovid’s text, created a personal metamorphosis of the image, confirming the extraordinary vitality of one of antiquity’s most influential literary masterpieces.

L'articolo Metamorphoses: Ovid and the Arts, on display in Rome proviene da ArcheoRoma.

Conceived as part of the celebrations marking the eighth centenary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi, the project establishes a dialogue between works from the second half of the twentieth century and contemporary art, taking the Canticle of the Creatures as its interpretative key. The exhibition offers a reflection on matter, the fragility of living beings, landscape, and the relationship between humanity and nature, identifying in contemporary artistic research some of the intuitions that make the Franciscan message remarkably relevant today.

Saint Francis’ thought and contemporary art

The principal originality of “Creatures, Creators. Saint Francis and Contemporary Art” lies in shifting the focus of interpretation from the saint’s iconographic representation to his worldview. For centuries, Francis has been portrayed through the most celebrated episodes of his life, from the encounter with the Wolf of Gubbio and the Sermon to the Birds to the reception of the stigmata. The exhibition instead seeks to reveal the deeper significance of these events, considering them expressions of a unique relationship between humanity and creation.

The Canticle of the Creatures as an interpretative key

The Canticle of the Creatures, one of the earliest poetic works in Italian literature, provides the theoretical foundation for the exhibition. Francis presents a vision of the world in which every element of nature shares the same inherent dignity, transcending any hierarchy between humanity and the environment.

This perspective has acquired renewed significance in the present day. Environmental issues, the relationship with the landscape, and reflections on sustainability and collective responsibility have become central concerns of contemporary artistic practice. The exhibition suggests that Franciscan thought may be understood not merely as a religious testimony but as a cultural paradigm still capable of shaping our understanding of the present.

The figure of the Parvolus

One of the exhibition’s central concepts is that of Francis as the parvolus—the little one, a creature among creatures. This idea challenges an anthropocentric view of reality and invites us to consider humanity as part of a broader balance within creation.

From an artistic perspective, this outlook translates into an interest in simple materials, processes of transformation, natural elements, and creative practices that privilege dialogue with both landscape and memory. Fragility, rather than being perceived as a limitation, becomes a condition of openness and connection.

The exhibition path

The exhibition brings together works from the museum’s collection alongside historical pieces, loans, and new commissions created specifically for the project. Rather than following a chronological order, the display establishes an intricate network of relationships between artists and generations, demonstrating how Franciscan thought continues to inspire contemporary visual culture.

The exhibition does not seek to illustrate Saint Francis through traditional religious imagery. Instead, it identifies within the artworks several key themes of his message: the relationship with creation, the value of poverty understood as essentiality, respect for all forms of life, the fragility of the human condition, and the possibility of a harmonious relationship between humanity and nature.

Post-War italian art

A substantial section of the exhibition is devoted to leading figures of post-war Italian art whose research developed a privileged relationship with matter, landscape, and the spiritual dimension of existence. Although belonging to different artistic movements, these artists share a profound attention to the physical world and to the processes of transformation within nature, creating meaningful connections with Franciscan sensibility.

Matter and spirituality

The works of Alberto Burri, Pier Paolo Calzolari, and Ennio Morlotti represent some of the exhibition’s most significant moments. For these artists, matter is not merely a means of expression but the very protagonist of the artwork, acquiring a symbolic value that evokes the continuous transformation of life itself.

Burri’s use of sacks, wood, burnt plastics, and Cretti embodies an artistic vision in which wounds and regeneration coexist, transforming humble everyday materials into images of extraordinary poetic intensity and establishing a compelling parallel with the Franciscan idea of the dignity inherent in every aspect of creation.

Pier Paolo Calzolari’s works introduce a suspended dimension in which natural elements and unconventional materials create environments of profound contemplative power. Ice, salt, lead, and organic surfaces generate a poetics of precariousness that encourages reflection on the transient nature of existence and the perpetual metamorphosis of matter.

In Ennio Morlotti’s painting, the landscape gradually dissolves into a network of signs and colours that conveys the vital energy of nature. Representation loses its descriptive function to become a direct experience of the natural world, understood as a living organism in constant evolution.

A similar search for essentiality characterises the work of Giorgio Morandi. His celebrated still lifes and landscapes reduced to their most fundamental elements create spaces of silence and meditation in which the simplest objects acquire an almost sacred presence. Their formal restraint and subtle variations of light and colour evoke a contemplative dimension that finds remarkable affinities with the spirituality of Saint Francis.

Nature, sign, and memory

A second core section of the exhibition brings together artists who have explored nature through profoundly different artistic languages while sharing a common interest in the relationship between individual experience and collective memory.

The works of Stefano Arienti investigate the value of transformation and the layering of matter by reworking existing images and materials through minimal interventions that alter our perception of reality.

Bruna Esposito‘s artistic research introduces natural elements, atmospheric phenomena, and everyday materials into installations that reflect on energy, time, and sustainability. Her works establish a direct dialogue with the forces of nature, inviting viewers to consider the landscape as a space of balance and shared responsibility.

Particularly significant is the presence of Maria Lai, whose artistic production represents one of the most original explorations of the relationship between community, memory, and territory. Threads, woven structures, stitched books, and environmental interventions transform artistic practice into an act of connection, restoring central importance to popular traditions.

The works of Mario Schifano further expand the dialogue through a personal reinterpretation of the contemporary landscape. Nature, filtered through the culture of images and mass media, retains a powerful symbolic charge while revealing the complex relationship between the natural environment and technological civilisation.

Antonio Del Donno likewise addresses the themes of symbol and memory, recovering archetypal signs and essential materials that evoke a universal and ritual dimension. His works seem to question the deeper meaning of forms and cultural traditions.

With Paolo Canevari, the exhibition ultimately opens onto a reflection on the relationship between nature and contemporary civilisation. Through the use of industrial materials and everyday objects, the artist creates images that challenge the balance between technological development, the environment, and collective responsibility.

Taken together, these artistic experiences demonstrate that the landscape is not simply a subject to be represented but a space of relationships, memories, and continual transformations. Artistic language becomes a means of exploring the relationship between culture and nature, individual and community, offering multiple interpretations that find a common ground in Franciscan thought.

The new Generations of artists

Alongside the masters of post-war Italian art, the exhibition presents a significant selection of contemporary artists invited to engage with the legacy of Saint Francis through updated languages and personal perspectives. The works of Jacopo Benassi, Chiara Calore, Aron Demetz, Fulvio Di Piazza, Marco Cingolani, Andrea Mastrovito, Alessandro Pessoli, and Nicola Samorì testify to the vitality of artistic research addressing themes such as bodily vulnerability, the metamorphosis of living beings, the relationship between humanity and the environment, and the significance of cultural memory.

Particular importance is given to the new commissions created specifically for the exhibition. These works do not narratively illustrate Franciscan thought but reinterpret its essential intuitions, transforming them into images capable of engaging with contemporary issues.

New interpretations of the living world

The human figure, the animal body, landscape, and metamorphosis are among the principal iconographic themes of the exhibition. The emphasis on the vulnerability of living beings and the processes of transformation reveals the continuity between the Franciscan message and some of the most significant concerns of contemporary art.

The newly commissioned works are especially noteworthy, reflecting the curatorial intention not merely to revisit history but to stimulate new artistic productions capable of engaging directly with the exhibition’s central themes.

Beatrice Buscaroli’s curatorial project

The curatorial approach of Beatrice Buscaroli is distinguished by its emphasis on dialogue between artworks and ideas rather than a simple chronological sequence of artists. The exhibition creates a network of associations in which materials, forms, and images become instruments for reflecting on the relationship between the sacred and the contemporary.

An exhibition beyond religious iconography

The decision to avoid a direct representation of Saint Francis is one of the project’s most compelling aspects. The saint does not appear as a figurative protagonist but as a generative principle of thought, capable of connecting widely different artistic experiences.

From this perspective, the exhibition addresses themes such as poverty, respect for creation, the fragility of existence, the dignity of matter, and responsibility towards the natural world, demonstrating how contemporary art can engage with spiritual questions without sacrificing its critical autonomy.

Art, ethics, and contemporary society

The project also highlights the role of cultural institutions in fostering dialogue between historical heritage and contemporary sensibilities. Francis is interpreted as a shared cultural legacy capable of providing valuable insights into the major issues of our time.

In this sense, “Creatures, Creators. Saint Francis and Contemporary Art” proposes an exhibition model in which art history, philosophy, spirituality, and cultural ecology converge in an interdisciplinary interpretation of the contemporary world.

Why visit the exhibition

The exhibition offers an important opportunity to understand some of the principal directions of Italian art over recent decades through an original interpretative perspective. The juxtaposition of historical masters and contemporary artists reveals both continuities and differences in the representation of nature, matter, and the relationship between individuals and the collective.

From an art historical perspective, Saint Francis’ message is liberated from an exclusively religious dimension and interpreted as a system of values capable of crossing the artistic languages of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Through the dialogue between matter and symbol, memory and landscape, figure and metamorphosis, the exhibition presents a nuanced reflection on the relationship between art and reality, demonstrating how Franciscan thought continues to provide fertile ground for contemporary artistic research and a privileged lens through which to question the present.

L'articolo Creatures, Creators. Saint Francis and Contemporary Art proviene da ArcheoRoma.