Saint Nicholas, who in Italy is closely associated with the city of Bari, is an extremely important figure in the cultural and artistic history of Europe and of the Mediterranean in particular. What this exhibition intends to illustrate to the vast public is the long and fascinating transformation of Saint Nicholas’s artistic representation through its various stages, which over several centuries has led this very enigmatic figure to assume a role of universal and transconfessional saint who has become the object of devotion for millions of faithful followers and who has been adapted to radically different traditions, contexts and functions. 

The Duchy of Parma and Piacenza went through 300 years of history, but its fortresses and its castles keep much more ancient memories. Noble families, feudatories, condottieri lived, amid those walls, several events that tell about having the nerve to oppose the enemies in this borderland which is in the middle of the major communication routes. They tell about benefactors that called many artists to give the splendour of the art to their residences. They testify also familiar and personal epic deeds together with betrayals and fights. The Castles were residences, defensive bulwarks, centres of power, administrative and political seats till when, in 1545, they became a State.

The first section illustrates The invention of the “macchia”, tool and emblem of the Tuscan realists’ movement. The second section introduces the most poetic moment of the history of the Macchiaioli, identifying themselves as a unified movement. The third section revolves around the artwork of Telemaco Signorini L’alzaia, until recently thought lost and now part of an English collection that groups splendid paintings by Fattori - Le Macchiaiole and Raccolta del fieno in Maremma, Borrani - Cucitrici di camicie rosse, Abbati - L’orazione, and Lega - Educazione al lavoro. These works of art exemplify the subliminal interest on the reality of daily life and work in Italy of that time. The fourth section is centered around the magnificent Ave Maria painted by Fattori which is being exhibited for the first time after more than fifty years.  

The recently-restored Palazzo della Ragione hosts 180 masterpieces divided into six “seventh heaven” sections. Included are Botticelli, Pontormo, Giorgione, Lotto, Titian, Tintoretto, Parmigianino, Carracci, Caravaggio, Guercino, El Greco, Canova, Piranesi, Böcklin, de Chirico, Modigliani, Carrà and Pistoletto. The exhibition reads in the malinchonic reflexion the principles of the modern sensibility; and for some aspects it claims for it the Italian and Mediterranean origins, developped from the entourage in Florence of Lorenzo De' Medici up to the present days, through a continuity which is proposed in the different faces of history and culture in a route which sees beauty sometimes like a sacred and supreme harmony, sometimes like a shake of human psyche.

The oldest music festival in Italy, and one of the most famous, the Maggio Musicale in Florence was founded in 1933 and features two months of opera, concerts, ballet and exhibitions. Having only missed a few years during the war, in 2007 it celebrates its 70th edition. Along with Bayreuth and Salzburg, the Florence Music Festival ranks among the oldest, most important European music festivals. More than this, it incorporates annual concert, opera and ballet seasons. Today the festival resides at the centre of musical life in Florence, based in the 2,000-seat Teatro Comunale and neighbouring Piccolo Teatro, a small, modern theatre accommodating an audience of 600. Many great conductors – Vittorio Gui, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Zubin Mehta, von Karajan and Muti – have graced the Comunale, as well as singers of such stature as the divine Maria Callas.

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