Art
in Tuscany
Very few places in
the world can boast an artistic legacy with contents so deeply rooted in the
territory and popular culture as Tuscany. We invite you to discover this elect
land of art and civilisation which today continues to be a sought-after place of
residence and source of inspiration for numerous Italian and foreign artists.
The countless testimonies of art in Tuscany indeed narrate a story as
articulated and complex as it is unique and unrepeatable, starting at the dawn
of civilisation and continuing, without solution of continuity, up until present
day. For the visitor, a trip to Tuscany at the beginning of the Third
Millennium holds much the same fascination that accompanied the travellers on
the Grand Tour. The first-time visitor to the lands of Tuscany can not but be
amazed by the natural symbiosis between landscape and culture, history and the
expressive means of architecture and town-planning, the urban and rural
dimension, and its patrimony of art, architecture, monuments and museums. A
cradle of Italian civilisation and one of the greatest crucibles of modern
European culture, Tuscany is not only tied to the extraordinary elaboration of
concepts and the original expression of forms and methods that left their mark
in more than two millennia of history: it was itself a forge of an extraordinary
artistic production that set pace and means on the continent. We need only
recall the universal nature of the Renaissance which, starting in Florence and
thanks to the versatility and genius of its extraordinary interpreters, spread
and took root throughout Europe. Tuscany as a workshop of artistic experiences,
as a place of synthesis and rebirth on a universal level. A synthesis of art in
this region begins with the cave dwellings of Cetona, the stele-statues of
Lunigiana, the presence of ancient civilisations on Elba Island, and then
continues with the Etruscan necropolises with tangible signs of a Roman past,
the countless testimonies of the Middle Ages, the flowering of the Gothic, the
explosion of the Renaissance, the opulence of the Baroque, the Macchiaioli, the
flowery art nouveau style, termed Liberty, finally reaching the expressions and
trends of contemporary art.