The Little Big Museums’ project, presided by Antonio Paolini, director of the Musei Vaticani, Rome, on its 8th year has set up a series of initiatives, called the Renaissance Tour, promoting the territory in and around Arezzo. Here on the footsteps of many great 15th century artists the event schedules guided tours to museums, churches and other compelling sites up to November the 18th 2012.
The towns involved are Arezzo, Castiglion Fiorentino, Civitella in Val di Chiana, Cortona, Lucignano, Marciano della Chiana, Monte San Savino, thus focusing on the Val di Chiana, the road leading from Florence to Rome.
In this spectacular corner of Tuscany an acclaimed artistic season allows a journey to the sites where great painters were born and lived such as Beato Angelico, Piero della Francesca, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Luca Signorelli, Donatello, Andrea della Robbia, Filippo Lippi. One can see plenty of Madonnas with Child, Vergin’s Assumptions, Altar-pieces, Annunciations, all partaking in that extraordinary revolution of colours and forms which is usually defined as Renaissance.
The visit is going to be a hall of mirrors, a charade whose links are enthralling to be discovered in their harmonious unfolding. The event thus is becoming a memory training, urging us to contribute to the maintenance of this heritage and shelter them from the insults of times and men’s and natural events’ damages. It enhances, at the same time, the idea that the cultural roots have to deepen into their own environment which doesn’t allow any concentration in a chosen site, like a museum for example, unless they break up the connections with the reality which produced them. The only relationship established with the artwork should be its real knowledge which means experiencing it on the spot. That is why the altarpiece called “Pala Marsuppini” painted by Filippo Lippi in the first half of the 15th century, now belonging to the Musei Vaticani, Rome, has just moved back to its original site San Bernardo Church , Arezzo. Here it can restore an interrupted dialogue with the other masterworks in the area such as the Annunciazione of Beato Angelico, the Magdalen by Piero della Francesca , the San Rocco of Bartolomeo della Gatta just to mention some.
An event not to be missed. Let’s leave for a while exotic beaches and spend some days in the Tuscan countryside for an amazing plunge into beauty profiting from the accommodations offered by Tuscany Holiday Rent.
