When in 1974 the Pieve Collegiata church in the far west of the Tuscan hillside area of Cerbaie, was dedicated to San Giovanni Apostolo and Evangelista di Santa Maria a Monte (Pisa), it underwent major restoration, and a canvas was recovered from its attics.

[caption id="attachment_120339" align="center-block" width="1002"] Picture by Simone Massetani[/caption]

After a quick restoration, it was placed above the new niche that housed the urn with the relics of Blessed Diana, a local saint who lived between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The canvas, 300 x 200 centimetres in size, was attributed to an anonymous 17th century artist on that occasion.

From the summary examination of the work it was already possible to realize that the painting has been retouched several times. However, the pictorial elements it expresses lend themselves to a dating: 17th century.

The work depicts Blessed Diana facing the Risen Christ in a crowd of angels. In the early 1980s, the canvas itself risked being destroyed when it was lapped by a fire, fortunately causing only minor damage.

However, the work has so far had little consideration, as no one had grasped the similarity with the upper half of the large altarpiece (720 x 423 cm) painted by Guercino between 1622 and 1623, which depicts the burial of Santa Petronilla. The work is housed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

The comparison between the two works is surprising: not only the scene depicted is superimposable in its presentation, but there are also many details that coincide.

In the canvas of Santa Maria a Monte, albeit of a smaller size, the scene of the glorification of the saint is re-positioned, which in this case is Blessed Diana "kneeling before Christ who welcomes her into heaven".

Among the characters participating in the event, the Blessed Diana appears as a technically less important subject, as if to suggest a subsequent change to the scene.

It is also noted that the upper part of the canvas gives the impression of not being the original one, as it shows abrupt termination of some elements such as the incompleteness of the angel's wing that holds the floral crown over the head of the Blessed.

The comparison of the two works, their chronological coincidence, call for a more detailed analysis by scholars in order to define the relationship between the Burial of Santa Petronilla in the Capitoline Museums in Rome and the canvas of the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria a Monte.

The hypotheses can be various.

One aspect in particular deserves further study: the canvas could be the work of a "copyist" of Guercino. In fact, the artist founded a school in Cento (the artist's hometown), initially attended by the youthful collaborators of the young Guercino, and a group of his "official" engravers and copyists were formed.

Among them we can mention Pietro Desani, Pietro Armani, Paolo Antonio Barbieri, Giuseppe Maria Galoppini, Bartolomeo, Cesare, Ercole and Lorenzo Gennai, Matteo Loves, Francesco Riva, Cesare Scala, Benedetto Zalone, all active precisely in the seventeenth century, especially in northern and central Italy.

We therefore want to hope that what has been reported will arouse the interest of scholars, in order to deepen the aspects that we have summarized.

In these cases, everything can fit. And I really mean ... "everything".

Cover picture by Simone Massetani

The fallen Christopher Columbus statue outside the Minnesota State Capitol after a group led by American Indian Movement members tore it down in St. Paul Minnesota on June 10 2020.

I sadly look at a another statue that is being knocked down and I think we risk sinking in the lack of creativity.

Throwing away is a liberating gesture, but it does not change history. It does not deny some dogmas with which we have all come to this point in our history.

We can say that history has had aberrations and moments of absolute idiocy of mankind, we can say that we should have learned from our mistakes, but we cannot deny history. We should not knock down the statues.
And then?

We show that we can learn from the past.

We study the lesson of yesterday so as not to have to repeat it. That we will build better generations from our past.

We learn from history and with creativity we build a new future.

Instead of knocking down the statues we can create 'counter-statues', new works of art.

Next to a statue of Christopher Columbus we can put a new statue that expresses the past that we have understood and the future that we want to build in peace.

Next to a missionary we put a statue showing culture that has contributed to destruction.

I am not an artist but I am sure that thousands of young artists are ready to accept this challenge and will have thousands or millions of new ideas to express this concept.

Our cities will be filled with new works and ... 'Beauty will save the world'.

"The Borgo del Futuro will have the signs of modernity and efficiency and the characteristics of classical civilization, and culture will be the cornerstone of its development" (Architect Luca Calselli)

The research on the characteristics that a Borgo del Futuro should have began in 2014 with the restoration project of the Paliano gym designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and Anna Maria Sacconi.

The restoration project was promoted by the president of the local BCC, Giulio Capitani, to trigger a development process of the city and the entire area.

Ri-Gymnasium is a network of professionals, coordinated by Luca Calselli and Dario Biello, who works on complex projects of urban regeneration and territory development. Their humanistic and multidisciplinary approach activates architectural and urban planning initiatives that cross communicates design, art, literature, philosophy, training, cinema and photography.

The Paliano project did not materialize but was the beginning of a continuous research process that successfully applied to different territorial areas and other towns, a model that can be replicated and able to guarantee wide margins of originality.

The Borgo del Futuro of Ri-Gymnasium is today a mature project adopted by Arpino, the city of Cicero, Caio Mario and Vispiano Agrippa who has applied for the Italian Capital of Culture 2021.

Arpino intends to act as a model to be imitated in the experimentation of restoration and development practices of villages, in Italy and in Europe.

The work over these years and the acceleration given in recent months by Arpino, place the project as a cutting-edge solution in the adoption of growth policies and in the prospects for the future, after the dramatic Covid-19 crisis.

It is no coincidence that alongside Arpino, the leader, there are more than ninety municipalities as partners, in the provinces of Frosinone, Latina, the Metropolitan City of Rome, as well as universities and some of the greatest architects of international renown.

Paraphrasing Salvatore Settis, with his "If Venice dies", the project - "If Arpino dies"- arose, says Arduino Fratarcangeli, sociologist involved in the project.

A shadow seems to be projecting towards areas outside the large urban areas.

Everything that is not included in the city is attacked by a phenomenon that relegates these areas to be increasingly fragmented and marginal entities which, at worst, become the storage of negative outsourcing of metropolitan areas.

Product and market excuses are violating the natural balance, the social and economic spaces of the cities and villages nestled in rural urban areas.

The small cities that will be saved will be those that, in time, will learn how to plan and plan their future. Those who will be able to offer the opportunity to live beneficially in their communities and, therefore, limiting the exodus or even becoming attractive to new families.

These are the objectives behind the project.

The city is not metaphysical. It exists but its physicality is only a part of its existence as a complex organism. The other part, the most important, is the community thanks to which the city lives, grows and assumes identity.

It is on the public space project, therefore, that work is underway, meaning by public space both the physical place of a square, a street, a park (outdoor or indoor) and the virtual sharing space that the web makes available (of which it is impossible to do without), in addition to that of the public administration with its services to the person, the company, culture and health.

There are three different but interconnected parts.

This is the only way to make the public space project as a concrete opportunity for urban regeneration. A project that does not result just in an ordinary building work or in an urban decorum intervention, but which uses the different disciplines of the human sciences on several levels: physical, virtual, ideal and conceptual.

The ultimate goal is to satisfy the needs and expectations of the communities, and the needs and emotions of the individual components of those communities.

These are the principles behind the project.

It is highly probable that in the post-coronavirus era there will be a significant slowdown in the phenomenon of abandoning villages. People will wonder if it will still be appropriate to abandon peripheral areas or if it will not be possible to look for different solutions.

In parallel, there will be those who, in large cities, will evaluate the possibility of moving to rural areas. Politicians should seize the opportunity and give precise and concrete answers to these questions.
Visionary answers, which can make villages, smaller cities and rural areas truly attractive. Otherwise the phenomenon will restart. Inevitably.

The Ri-Gymnasium group is moving on these principles with the idea of creating a new policy that positively defines the concept of environmental, cultural, social, economic and, therefore, political quality.

The Arpino Borgo Futuro project will be presented during the summer during the Certamen, for the 2020/2022 Premio Biennale di Divulgazione dell'Architettura.

I am an artist, a sculptor.
I express my art through a particular material "wood": a living material that requires respect and listening.
During my journey I have also related to other materials: earth, bronze, marble, but in the end I returned to wood because I feel deeply linked to it and through it to my homeland.
I live in Pove del Grappa, under the great Monte Grappa and in front of me flows the Brenta which for centuries has transported wood from the mountains to the Venetian Arsenal.
Here we grow up loving trees and nature. I like to define myself as a 'tree sculptor'.

The tree is something intimate and magical.

Quelle stesse linee che ora danno il ritmo al mio gesto creativo segnando forme, chiamando vuoti o pieni: io li ascolto e mi lascio guidare.
For many people it takes on an existential meaning, it expresses what we are, it shows us the way to recover a bond with ourselves.
It has its roots in the earth and looks upwards nourished by the energy of the sun, the sap that nourishes it flows inside and creates a perfect architecture of fibres and lines.

I feel accompanied in creative action and always pushed in search of new forms that are the vehicle of new messages.

I live in a valley, surrounded by woods and crossed by the river and, through the wood of the trees, the water of the river returns unceasingly in my creations.

The wood takes on forms that come out as fluid and dynamic and bring the flowing water in a path of liberation to the sea.
The flow of the current has always fascinated me: it is an experience that involves all our senses and that urges the mind to let go, to free the flow of thoughts and energies.
The sound of water, its shapes and colours are constantly changing, accompanying the gaze, are a powerful metaphor for human existence that is a continuous evolution. A continuous need to adapt to the shape of things and the facts of life.
My works take shape from this feeling and the river is a travel companion for me.
Sometimes I hear his call and so I stop to listen to feel the emotions that live in me when I am there.
This is how my art takes shape in a process that starts inside me while I observe the flow of water and dialogue with the fibres of the tree.

My relationship with the history of my city and its territory begins in the 70s of the last century, precisely in the autumn of 1971 when I met my dear friend Mauro Incitti.
It started from a ploughed field with a pair of country boots on my feet and an envelope in his hand.

I am impressed in my mind that image of myself and Mauro struggling among the fresh clumps of dirt to collect ancient "shards". I wish everyone could experience that thrill, that sensation in picking up a fragment that becomes your contact with the past at that moment.

The awareness of an ancient presence that you are helping to revive.
In my research journey I realized that intimate personal relationship with history could not remain an end in itself but had to be shared with others, therefore disclosed in the most direct form possible
We started with a volunteer organization initially called the 'Colleferro section of the Ernico Archaeological Group', which later became the 'Tolerino sector of the Latin Archaeological Group and Toleriense sector of the Roman Archaeological Group' and finally 'Toleriense Archaeological Group'.
The evolution of these names already give an indication of the evolution we have made as a group and as a city.
By the way, for those few who still didn't know, the name Toleriense comes from the ancient name of the river Sacco: Tolerus.
We have to be proud of our roots that are very long and sink into generations.
In over thirty years, numerous generations of Colleferrini have passed through the ranks of the group. To paraphrase a well-known text by Mario Capanna: "Those years were tremendous" made of commitment, sacrifice, and archaeological research.
We were moved by an unstoppable desire to know and make known to everyone the history of this area.
I remember the anxiety and stubbornness of wanting to do justice to the historical story, so I at fifteen and Mauro Incitti at eighteen were busy dealing with the text of Aldo Colaiacomo: Fundamentals for a history of Colleferro.

"I have been making scientific dissemination for almost fifty years, and each time it is surprising to realize that the more things come out of the knowledge box, the more they create in them, continuously, new ones".

Pictures by Museo Archeologico Comunale del Territorio Toleriense

If I had to let someone know the path of my artistic expressiveness I would say that it started actively with  research on the origins of Italian theatre.
It was 1980 when, looking for the traces left in the books, I came across the Renaissance, precisely in the early decades of the 1400s in Florence.

The more I researched historical knowledge, the more I found myself immersed in a Florentine artisan shop and looked around. A workshop populated by artists, architects, craftsmen, a distinction that imposed the culture of that time on me.
Gradually I could no longer distinguish the categories, indeed they disappeared to give way to the figure of a man who was able to forge the body of his thoughts with his hands.
I had found what I wanted within me: to be the son of the earth that had generated me. And our land is made of work, of matter, of its transformation for the utility of daily needs.
I always believed that culture was a daily requirement, so I started to give body to it with what others produced in tools for life.

I had become an artisan of thought, of beauty and inside my shop I started to transform the material and make it an emotional offering.

It has been a while since that beginning, the workshop is full of testimonies of my work and every time I enter, they tell me each of the life that I have given them.

But, as always happens, there is one of all that best represents you, which best defines the beginning of a new path.

It was September 1995, the plans for the advent of the new millennium were already shaking, I felt a strong desire to be the key figure in that extraordinary moment.
So I searched through the notes of my memory and found traces of an idea that I had been planning for more than ten years: the Nativity.
I went with my thoughts to the great Florentine architects of the 1400s, to their stage carriages created for the story of the Sacred Representations and immediately before the indelible eyes I was presented with the stage machine of the Annunciation by Filippo Brunelleschi.
High above the trusses a sky opened, a host of angels moving over the faithful,l taken by an ecstatic bewilderment, and the Archangel Gabriel with a slender rope descended to Mary to announce the long-awaited event.

It was the glorification of God with an infinity of lights, stars, which exalted his heavenly palace.

Instead, I wanted to represent the descent of God, his becoming man and his domus could no longer be heavenly but earthly. Then, I closed my eyes, took the starry dome placed high up in my hands, turned it upside down and laid it on the cold floor.

Man among men.

No longer to gaze upwards in an act of prostration, but gaze into the gaze. Thus the terrestrial domus in my representation was to be placed among the faithful as the centre of a new era. Metaphor of the new Jerusalem shown by the seventh angel, from the story of the Apocalypse of John, from a high mountain to the prophet.
The performances of the Sacred Representations were offered in churches full of believers, from all walks of life and diversified cultural backgrounds, there were the learned but also the uneducated, there were the literate as well as those who had always communicated with their hands.
And the hands in Florence had brought the craftsmanship to such mastery that, combined with the ingenuity of artists, they had created works of surprising perfection. Thus the moulded matter became a word capable of taking on the task of narration in shows.
In the show that I was creating, what tangible, material image could immediately represent for all the birth if not an egg that, to start life, had to half open?
Then in the centre of the space of the representation I placed a large sphere of light wood that opened to it half-way by means of a strong rope that went up to the trusses.

The exhibition is open by reservation (by calling the numbers: 3892775583/3203120850) and on the occasion of some holidays.

Davinci Experience

500 years of Leonardo da Vinci but still we can't get enough!

We visited the multimedia exhibition "The Da Vinci Experience and his realmachines" in Florence that is being held from May 23rd to November 3rd 2019 on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death, and we were awestruck once again.

Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the most eclectic and brilliant men this world has seen.

It is a multimedia exhibition. With a small surcharge you can start the visit from the “Oculus VR” stations that in virtual reality show Leonardo's main inventions such as the tank, the cannon, and other war machines all visible in real life dimensions. With your eyes focusing on a machine, you can penetrate inside and see the details and the mechanisms of its action.

This first part is already an incredibly engaging, stimulating and fascinating experience, it gives the impression that you are able to shrink at will and penetrate into the machines.

We then move on to the multimedia exhibition of the paintings, which is presented in this deconsecrated church, where you can see full images and details of each image continuously projected on all 4 walls of the church (and also on the floor) for a duration of 35 minutes.

The atmosphere is really special, the feeling is an immersion in a reality of other times and the expertly selected background music, diffused at 360° in "Dolby surround", increases the charm of the projected images.

The space is large so it feels like you are a grain of sand in infinity.

You can stand or sit and watch the projected images of which you can appreciate different details by moving to various spots. You listen to the background music in semi-darkness and in an extremely pleasant and relaxing atmosphere, so pleasant that you can stay there for hours and hear and see the projection several times because every time you notice different details and each time you appreciate different sections of the music tracks.

The images projected are taken from paintings or preparatory drawings with religious figures, women, men, animals, images of the machines he invented and their preparatory sketches. Also striking is the three-dimensionality of the figures that seem to come out of the paintings: the faces of the children are much more mature than their age (almost old) but all very expressive.

Another thing that excites is that Leonardo merges his anatomical and medical knowledge into those faces and some become even more intense and fascinating due to the physical imperfections that Leonardo's compulsive genius puts into it.

For example, experts say that the slight defect of the lips of the Mona Lisa is almost certainly due to Bell’s palsy, which consists of a dysfunction of the VII cranial nerve (facial nerve) that causes the lowering or raising of the angle of the mouth. Yet this makes that smile even more fascinating. Even the clothes and drapes are very neat and enveloping in these paintings.

But we must not stop and let ourselves be hypnotized by the projections. We advise everyone to take a tour of the entire church to observe the beauty of the details and to discover other interesting things that no one tells you about at the entrance nor are they indicated on the brochure because a multimedia exhibition also invites us to "do it yourself" and that is, to explore spaces in search of "hidden treasures".

If you do, you will discover something beautiful and exciting.

The exhibition highlights not only the eclectic nature of this 'brilliant man', much more than what can be seen in the exhibition itself, but also its vast knowledge, such as that of anatomy found in all the preparatory drawings for the final painting.

Leonardo, born in Anchiano April 15, 1452 and died May 2, 1519 in Amboise (at the age of 67 years very advanced for those times), had multiple interests ranging from the human sciences (he was anatomist and botanist) to the arts (draftsman, writer, set designer, painter architect, musician, sculptor), to technologist (civil and military engineer, designer). The depth of his knowledge and the genius of his observations, discoveries and applications is impressive.

The artistic beauty, the music, the arts in general represent a therapy of the soul and the body, and the multimedia presentations set up by teams of multidisciplinary experts have strengthened this positivity of art that we have been able to experience.

It is an exhibition we can share in three-dimensions and in dynamism where art becomes all-enveloping, surrounding us, we feel it, we breathe it, we touch it. It penetrates us and this gives strong sensations and emotions.

Time stands still, we are no longer in Florence in 2019 and not even at the time of Leonardo.

We are in a space of time in which the body vibrates, listens, rejoices. Every viewer becomes, whether he wants it or not, an integral and interacting part with the virtual images that envelop. Images that with their virtuality, their immateriality, envelop and pierce you, appear unexpected, fragmented, in movement, in fusion, peculiarly.

To us the synthesis, to us the active listening to Leonardo's unspoken message: exploring without setting boundaries, overcoming material obstacles and having the courage, even before the curiosity, to look beyond the visible.

This is an experience that remains well beyond the time spent in the splendid deconsecrated church, an experience that also re-emerges unintentionally during the gestures of everyday life that subsequently returns.

The exhibition was organized in the 1100s era deconsecrated church of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Piazza di Santo Stefano 5, right in the centre of Florence (www.davinciexperience.it).

There is a special bond that unites the great engineer Eiffel with Labico, a small town south of Rome. But who was Eiffel and how do the two stories intertwine?

Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel was one of the greatest engineers ever, known throughout the world for one of his masterpieces: the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris. He was born in France in Dijon on December 15, 1832 of a family of German origin. Their original surname was Bönickhausen and they changed it to Eiffel in honour of the Eifel mountains.

After becoming an engineer, one of his first tasks was to build a bridge in the French railways and he immediately proved to be a daring designer. An artist of structures capable of uniting two disciplines: architecture and engineering.

His absolute masterpiece, however, was a structure built for the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, a tower that was to be the symbol of the event. A tower so intriguing, modern in its sinuous lines and in the use of structural steel that it was decided not to disassemble it and that since then took the name of its designer: the Eiffel Tower.

A masterpiece of engineering to the point that with its 312 meters height it was the tallest construction built by man until 1930 when the Chrysler Building was built in New York.

Since then, the idea of ​​modernity and of man's challenge to nature has moved to the United States, but in Paris the Eiffel Tower is increasingly transformed into a poetic identity element thanks to its sinuousness.

And even if, today, Paris is immediately recognized at a glance, it is thanks to the forms of its tower that are known to virtually all the inhabitants of the planet earth.

But Eiffel has created many other structures including the engineering of the Statue of Liberty in America and part of the work of the Panama Canal. He then opened a construction company that built bridges, viaducts and many large infrastructures and took care of the aerodynamics of airplanes and airships thanks to its wind tunnel.

But alongside these great works, the Eiffel company made many small buildings always characterized by an artistic use of iron according to a style that was then called the architecture of engineers.

These buildings were built in many parts of the world including as two exhibition pavilions in South America: one in Lima in Peru and the other in Quayaquil in Ecuador. These pavilions were built from 1905 to 1907 and later hosted two exhibitions.

The pavilion that was in Lima after incredible and fortuitous events was dismantled to make room for a reinforced concrete structure.

The pieces were sold and bought by an Italian businessman and now these disassembled parts are located on a farm in Labico.

The cast-iron and steel structure is 150 meters long by 15 wide and 8 meters high and there are only a few original photos from that period.

For a certain period on its arrival, this structure attracted the attention of many local administrators, including the former mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni, but today it is still waiting for its final location.

In the meantime, we continue to dream of seeing this covered pavilion of Eiffel rebuilt and, why not, we can dream of a twinning between Labico and Paris.