Tuscany Holiday rent BLOG

On Saturday,  April the 14^th , 2012  the Culture Week started. It is going on for nine days up to the 22^nd.  In Florence, like in many Italian towns, state museums, mansions, archeological sites,  libraries  welcome  visitors, for free. Public and private institutions have  jointly planned many programs to enhance the love and interest  for  huge Italian art heritage. Special events such as workshops,  tours and concerts are going to enrich these days devoted to discovery of Florence jewels.  In addition the Ministry of Culture has involved teachers and students as guides: a professional training and commitment to the cultural heritage for  students and a wider  artistic perspective for  visitors. Many the opportunities. In the heart of Florence, at the Uffizi and at Palazzo Strozzi important exhibitions  about  the Flemish tapestries of the Medicis and about American Impressionists respectively.

On purpose have a look at  the following posts on blog.tuscanyholidayrent.com

– A Firenze “Galleria degli Arazzi: Epifanie di tessuti preziosi “ published on March 22^{nd     2012}

– Japan in Florence on April  7th, 2012

–  The Seine and Paris replaced by the Arno and Florence in the American Impressionists on April the 11^th , 2012

– The virtually confident world of American Dreamers at the Strozzina  published on March the 9^th 2012

Among the many events not to be neglected the restored painting by Max Klinger “The Mermaid” which will be on show at the Galleria d ‘Arte Moderna for long.
At the Museum of San Marco it is possible to admire some restored paintings by Fra Angelico, accompanied by explanatory panels.

Many other treasures can be discovered in Florence these days.

An opportunity not to be missed

Florence has always been  a place of affection for  Americans. Together with Rome and Venice, compulsory stops of the Grand Tour, it  was, and still is,  an unavoidable magnet for the lovers of art, especially as far as Renaissance is concerned.

At present, on the fifth anniversary of the death of  the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci,  the  town celebrates the fertile relationship between the old and new worlds with an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi ”Sargent and the Impressionists of the New World” going on up to July 15^th, 2012. The issue is the Impressionism of  the American painters, who  lived in Tuscany and in Florence  between the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20th. .It is possible to admire artists like William Morris Hunt, John La Farge and Thomas Eakins who, though not explicitly subscribing to the Impressionist movement,  formed the new generations of American painters.

The exhibition includes the great cosmopolitan forerunners such as John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The main part deals with remarkable artists belonging to American Impressionist group,  known as the Ten American Painters among whom William Merritt Chase and Frederick Childe Hassam.
An interesting appendix the Italian painters  Giovanni Boldini and Telemaco Signorini who, keeping in touch with  the American community, mutually  exchanged themes and techniques.

A new energetic flow  introducing  a more modern approach to painting involves Florence, still thinking over the past pictorial experience of the Macchiaioli.

A  pivotal character, a link with the American group is  Egisto Fabbri, born to an Italian wealthy and cosmopolitan family in New York in 1866. The Fabbris, after decades in the States,  came back home, to the Florentine palace in Via Cavour. Here the versatile Egisto,  dandy and great art collector (his Cezanne paintings were greatly admired) shared the passions of the Americans who incessantly moved  among Paris, Venice and Florence such as Whistler, Sargent, Mary Cassatt,  Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Vernon Lee, Henry James and Bernard Berenson.

A new  revolutionary wind in Florence brought by  painters  from Boston and New York. Abandoned the traditionally academic  training and invigorated by the new trends of Paris and Munich,  they translated into  the impressionistic style their daily experiences. Thence paintings of  the landscapes along the Arno River, of views of Florence or the immediate surroundings like Fiesole or the countryside around Lucca villas, the marble quarries of Massa Carrara or the Etruscan Volterra. The Tuscan world  is declined through portraits which seems to be coming out of James’ and Foster’s  novels. The old and new worlds emerge in a varied synthesis ranging from the rebounding taste of the Capponcina,  home of D’Annunzio to  the splendor of the Tatti, Tuscan villa of Berenson, the most acclaimed Renaissance expert of the period.

“Sargeant and the Impressionists of the New World” at Palazzo Strozzi  and its counterpart  ” American Dreamers” at the Strozzina  (on purpose  see  the article “The virtually confident world of American Dreamers at the Strozzina” published in the blog of Tuscany Holiday Rent  on March 9^th,2012) stand as faithful  witnesses of the on- going  historical fil rouge between Florence and the United States

At Palazzo Pitti,  Florence,  the scheduled second step of  the program “Un anno ad arte 2012 is “Japan, Land of Enchantement”. The event, inaugurated on April the 2^nd 2012 and going on  up to July the 1^st 2012,  means to be  the right homage to a people known to the town  since the Medicis’ time,  more exactly since 1585.

Here under the guide of Alessandro Valignano,

a Jesuit missionary, the Japanese ambassadors were disclosed  the wonders  of the Renaissance, much earlier than the English and Americans  brought  to Florence by the Grand Tour. The exhibition tells about an extremely sophisticated culture,  basically focused on line and colour,  able to get to essence in spite of the minute details, the use of gold and the chromatic game concerning both  a  tea bowl and a folding screen.  Divided in three different shows, it is hosted by the different museums of the Palazzo Pitti. On the ground floor, in the summer residence of the Medicis,  nowadays  called  “Museo degli Argenti”,  the artworks on show  allow the visitor a plunge into Japan’s history,  from the times of the shoguns , 13^th and  14^th century rulers  to the pre-industrial Japanese era of the military nobility of the samurais.  The masterworks, ranging from painting and  calligraphy to sculpture, ceramics and fabrics come from various  Japanese  and European museums, which have highly contributed to the show together with the  Florentine Stibbert Museum.

It is possible to admire wonders  such as Katanas, daggers or painted golden  screens,  elegant kimonos,  bowls for the tea ceremony and other objects from the Edo era (17th-19th centuries)

among which the scroll  “Five Beaties “ of the great painter Katsushika Hokusai from Kyoto Hosomi Museum.  The voyage into the  20th century Japan continues  in the White Hall of the Galleria Palatina with  the applied arts. The Galleria di Arte Moderna is devoted to Japanism, that is  the suggestions of the East  on mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Japan opened to the world,  getting out of two centuries’isolation.  Japanism became a real mania  and the fashion turned to its fans,  screens,  kimonos  and the prints of Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige inspired the western artistic world. France, for instance had already investigated on the influence of Japan on painters such as Whistler,  Manet, Degas, Van Gogh and Gaugain. Now this Florentine exhibition,  for the first time,  focuses on the relationship between Japan and  painters such as the Macchiaioli and other later artists De Nittis,  Balla,  Signorini or even the same Mariano Fortuny.

Japanism has also touched  theatre, a small section is, in fact, devoted to the  sketches and posters of Madame Butterfly by Puccini and Iris by Mascagni. An event not to be missed on April the 14 th and the 15^th 2012  the tea ceremony in the Cortile dell’Ammanati and a concert in the Cappella  Palatina  on the notes which welcomed the Japanese ambassadors in 1585.

An ideal circular  conclusion  drawing back to the very beginning of a culturally enriching  relationship