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The House of Franco and Lidia Luciani was built in the mid-1920s with funds from the employees of Società Elettrica Sert Valdarno (today ENEL, the so-called "Gruppo Luce").
The House is located in the Gavinana district in the south-east part of Florence.
Franco Luciani, who was born in 1930, lived in this house from his childhood. Franco was a true Florentine who loved art in all its expressions and he was strongly linked to his city and Tuscany. It was in this house that Franco and Lidia raised their family.
The House displays their hand-selected collection of paintings, engravings, prints, ceramics, majolica, bronzes, books, ancient postcards, and antique furnitures.
Both Franco and Lidia had a classical studies background: Franco was a pharmacist, and Lidia was an Italian Literature and History teacher. Both were particularly passionate about 19th century Tuscan paintings and, throughout their lives together, they bought numerous paintings by Macchiaioli and Post-Macchiaoli masters. These artists, starting from 1860, animated the Italian pictorial panorama and contributed decisively to the renewal of traditional pictorial aesthetics, and the anticipators of impressionism.
Their passion for this artistic movement lead Franco and Lidia to write in 1974 the Dictionary of Italian Painters of the 19th Century. This book was published by Vallecchi, and copies are still in the House.
The collection in the house started to grow in the 1950’s thanks to Franco’s passion and Lidia’s support, year after year untill 2006, when Franco became ill and passed away.
Many of the paintings in the house were loaned for exhibition and vernissages. Due in part because of this passion but also because of his knowledge of tyhis genre of artistic expression, Franco became an art consultant and was involved with organizations that arranged exhibits of various painters.
The collection starts on the first floor, with differents portraits of young women and young men. It continues in Franco's studio where recognized painters of the Labronico Group are featured. This group was born with the hope of enhancing Livorno art and the collection includes some works of Nomellini, Lomi, Natali, March, Filippelli, and Corcos.
The collection continues in the hall next to the house garden: this room includes the Florentine Macchiaioli painters, with figurative paintings by Signorini, Cabianca, Tommasi; the Florentine glimpses of Borrani, and an entire wall dedicated to Oscar Ghiglia, featuring still lifes and the portrait of his son Paulo.
The collection continues on the first floor, with a large painting by Silvio Bicchi, a pupil of Fattori at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence.
There are also numerous bronzes, sculptures, vases, pots, ceramics, majolica, small Japanese and ivory netsuke. These placements respect the painting collection harmony and structure.
The house features an ancient books and catalogues archive.
With Franco and Lidia both gone, the collection they built and shaped remains intact and displayed just as it was when they lived – a precious collection that Franco and Lidia proudly showed to their family and friends.
So now, their two daughters would be delighted to share these works of art with sector experts, scholars or simply art lovers. In doing so they hope to honor the memory of Franco and Lidia Luciani and also honor the great works and history of Italian paintnings of the 1800’s and early 1900’s.
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Maraini’s House is located in “Pasquìgliora”, at 982 meters above sea level on the Alpe di Sant’Antonio in the Municipality of Molazzana, in a panoramic position on the Pania Secca. In this remote place that can only be reached on foot, Fosco Maraini reconnected his ties with the Apuan Alps, the mountains of his youth, to which he was so attached that he decided he wanted to be buried in the small cemetery of the Alpe di S. Antonio.
Between 1975 and 2004 - the year of his death - Fosco Maraini spent long periods of each year in this house, where he wrote books and articles among the silence of the woods, views and landscapes.
“I was looking for a nice wild place. One day from Pania I glimpsed a red roof in the distance. It was difficult to track him down. The red roof now covered the shell of an abandoned house. Since 1978, as soon as I can escape from Florence, I take refuge in this paradise. Pasquigliora and surroundings, today abandoned places”.
Fosco Maraini’s House is a type of house museum that represents a testimony of its message, but which also becomes the starting point for a rediscovery and enhancement of the territory in which it is immersed, closely linked to the figure of Maraini. A place where cultural and human values intersect and blend to give visitors not just a visit but a real experience.
From the Maraini’s House it is possible to follow the various important paths to admire the Apuan Alps, including the Path of Freedom and the Path of the Rocchette, where Maraini used to go climbing in the past. There are six paths overall, all of them marked with white and red CAI trail markers. The notice boards describe the peculiarities of the surrounding environment, as well as the events that bind them to Maraini.
Observing Renzo Savini's collection, we're far removed from the idea of a methodological and analytical archive. This careful research of his collection, begun in the 1960s, and ended only after his death in 2018. A cultured man born in Bagnacavallo in 1931, with a classical education, he first studied at classical high school in Florence, and then took a degree in law at the University of Bologna where he met Nina de Beni, a student at the Faculty of Agriculture, who he would then marry.
The house, the design of which was assigned in 1964 to the architect Raoul Biancani, is made of various materials: brick, masonry, wood and large windows. In this interesting structure on three floors, the fullness of the brick walls is in constant harmonic play with the large window openings.
Natural light floods these spaces; in different hours of the day, it lights up first one area and then another, playing on the surfaces and the colours of the objects positioned inside the spaces. It's a personal place where every detail has been decided by him; a studied arrangement of alternating rhythms, with accelerations and pauses in which the light always indicates the new key of the score to follow. The large house museum is arranged on two floors, the second of which is surrounded by a panoramic terrace. Every space becomes a setting for expertly arranged artefacts, with a consistent and methodical desire to create a fusion between works and architectural elements of various eras.
In this dwelling in which every corner speaks of art, there hides, like in the centre of a Renaissance maze garden, a small Kunstkammer in which artifacts of multiple and multiform origins are wonderfully presented on glass shelves, the transparency of the supports making it possible to enjoy what is on display from every angle.
Documentation centre of the "festival dei due mondi"
The Documentation Center of the Festival of two worlds of Spoleto, which is housed in “Casa Menotti”, stands as a sign of continuity between past and present, and gives shape and context to the audio, video and photographic material from the editions of the Festival from 1958, the year of its foundation, until the present day.
This material has been collected over the years by the Municipality of Spoleto, the Festival dei Due Mondi Foundation and the Monini Foundation, which has digitised it and made it accessible.
The Monini Foundation was set up with the intention of making Casa Menotti a memory box.
The Documentation Center of the Festival of Two Worlds it is a year-round open space, suitable for different degrees of in depth researches.
There are spaces dedicated to the Festival’s history, to the figure of Maestro Gian Carlo Menotti, and links between the city of Spoleto and its international cultural context.
An interactive multimedia set-up shows the main themes related to the Festival of Two Worlds and its founder, Maestro Gian Carlo Menotti.
Visitors have the opportunity to enjoy contents and documentary material of historical, cultural and artistic high value. There is also an interactive itinerary between the various floors of the house.
Through the use of a high-tech, multimedia interactive scenic design relives the atmosphere of the Festival with its music, dance, theatre, screenplays, international connections, well-known faces, timeless images.
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