Official WEB: 
www.palazzostrozzi.info

CÉZANNE A FIRENZE
Two Collectors and the 1910 Exhibition of Impressionism
March 2nd - July 29th / 2007

Some of Cézanne’s most important works return to Florence. About a century ago, they were an integral part of the collections found in the Florentine homes of two young collectors, Egisto Paolo Fabbri and Charles Loeser. The exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi is a unique occasion to admire dozens of Cézanne’s masterpieces. Today these works are found in the world’s most important museums, which include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence as well as in private collections such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections.
The Fabbri collection, which included thirty-two of Cézanne’s paintings, the majority of a very high quality, was unparalleled in either Europe or the United States in the early 20th century. During that same period, another important collector, Charles Loeser, had realized the greatness of the painter from Aix. The paintings – fifthteen in all – were part of his collection together with precious drawings and ancient art. The interest aroused by Cézanne’s painting was an important spur for the organization of the first Italian exhibition of Impressionism, in May 1910, in the rooms of the Florence Lyceum.
At Palazzo Strozzi, it will be possible to appreciate and admire the paintings of Cézanne and of some of his contemporaries, such as Pissarro, Van Gogh and Sargent; it will be possible to understand how a sensitivity and an attention to modernity grew and matured in a cultural context greatly marked by the Renaissance as well as to experience the cultural and artistic climate of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries in Florence, an ambience formed mainly by world-class personalities such as Bernard Berenson, Vernon Lee, Edith Wharton to name just a few. In the halls of Palazzo Strozzi, we will also find paintings and sculptures by Italian artists who, elaborating a stylistic and ethical interpretation of the French master in line with the spirit of their times, expressed themselves using a shared language. Among the most important painters are Rosai, Soffici, Muller, Gordigiani, Carena, Ghiglia, together with the sculptors Libero Andreotti and Medardo Rosso.
(Press: Catola & Partners)

Catalogue: Electa
Official WEB: www.cezanneafirenze.it

THE RENAISSANCE MAN
Leon Battista Alberti and the Arts in Florence between Reason and Beauty
March 11th - July 23rd / 2006

Approximately 170 works, some of them by Alberti, but most by the great artists who were influenced by his theories: Donatello, Ghiberti, Beato Angelico, Bernardo Rossellino Andrea del Castagno, Lo Scheggia, Filippo Lippi, Filarete, Verrocchio, Botticelli, Fra Carnevale, Andrea Sansovino, Neri di Bicci and many others. These are the contents of the major exhibition, The Renaissance Man, Leon Battista Alberti and the Arts in Florence between Reason and Beauty, (Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 11 March to 23 July 2006, www.albertiefirenze.it) designed to celebrate the sixth centenary of the birth of the Florentine genius, one of the major exponents of Renaissance culture. Alberti (1404 – 1472) was in fact a supreme architect, a prodigious scholar and an extremely acute art theorist, but also a town planner, mathematician, painter, archaeologist, physicist, chemist and musician. He was, in short, the man that embodied the universal ideals of Renaissance humanism before Leonardo, ready to penetrate the most diverse fields, the emblematic product of a cultural ascent capable of formulating original syntheses of reason and beauty, of defining the rules of a new aesthetics, of shaping the sensibility of an epoch.
Among the most precious pieces are some extraordinary works by Donatello: the Madonna and Child (Piot), exceptionally on loan from the Louvre, Herod’s Banquet from the Musée des Beaux Arts of Lille, the Virgin and Child with Angels from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Other works on display include: the plaque considered a Self-portrait of Alberti in Profile from the National Gallery of Washington, Botticelli’s Calumny from the Uffizi and the Silver Cupboard by Beato Angelico from the Museo di San Marco. One of the major attractions is The ideal city from the Museo Nazionale delle Marche.
The exhibition also continues outside Palazzo Strozzi, in the form of an Alberti itinerary marking the works designed by Alberti the architect and the places where his intellectual suggestions can be perceived.

Catalogue: Maschietto Editore/ Mandragora
Official WEB: www.albertiefirenze.it

BEAUTIFUL MINDS
PREMI NOBEL. UN SECOLO DI CREATIVITA’
September 16th / 2004 - January 2nd / 2005

Catalogue: Beautiful Minds. Premi Nobel. Un secolo di creatività, Giunti Editore - Beautiful Minds. I Nobel italiani, Giunti Editore
Official WEB: http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/nobel/

BOTTICELLI e FILIPPINO
L'INQUIETUDINE E LA GRAZIA NELLA PITTURA FIORENTINA DEL '400
March 11 - July 11 / 2004

At Palazzo Strozzi opens an important exhibition dedicated to Botticelli (Firenze 1445 - 1510) and to his pupil Filippino Lippi (Prato 1457 – Firenze 1504).
This event offers to us a transverse and thematic “journey”; in fact, is possible to admire the works of Botticelli near the master-pieces of the young Filippino, so it is easy to make an interesting comparison between the two painters.
Thus, our “travel” about the Florence of the second middle of XV century, begins with the issue of the sacred, in particular, with the cultured Annunciation and the Virgin Mary and the Child (1480), in which the master Botticelli excels at the grace and lyricism; near, the pupil with the beautiful Virgin Mary and the Child and Angels and the altar-piece of the Vision of San Bernardo. In this exhibition we can see the different paintings themes: the portraits, of which Botticelli is one of the bigger masters, the allegory(sacred and secular), the literary(Boccaccio, Dante), the religion, with the figure of domenican friar Girolamo Savonarola (Ferrara 1452 – Firenze 1498) and, at the end, the melancholy and spiritual work from the Museo Poldi Pezzoli of Milan and the San Girolamo of Filippino (Uffizi).

Official WEB: www.palazzostrozzi.info
(G.V)