Caravaggio and the 20th century in Florence

From March 27 to July 20, Villa Bardini hosts the exhibition Caravaggio e il Novecento. Roberto Longhi, Anna Banti, which explores the relationships that the couple had with important artists and figures of the twentieth century.
Roberto Longhi was one of the most important art historians in Italy and the one who curated the 1951 exhibition on Caravaggio at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, which was fundamental for the rediscovery of the artist worldwide.
Anna Banti, whose real name was Lucia Lopresti, was an art critic, writer and translator of great importance who, together with her husband, contributed to the research on the artistic 17th century.

The exhibition includes more than 40 paintings, as well as drawings, watercolors, photographs and archive documents. Among these works we find the Boy Bitten by a Lizard by Caravaggio, 10 paintings by Giorgio Morandi and works by Carrà, de Pisis and Giuseppe De Ribera.
The exhibition introduces the Longhi-Banti couple through paintings and photographs, then there are sections dedicated to Roberto Longhi the collector, where the work of Caravaggio and other Caravaggio-esque paintings are exhibited, or to Longhi and Cinema and again to his work as an art history teacher.
Anna Banti is then recounted as an art historian, writer and translator, accompanied by a series of photographs that portray her in the rooms of Villa Il Tasso and a selection of drawings that her husband dedicated to her. Another section is dedicated to the relationship with Giorgio Morandi.
There is also a Silent Room where you can take a moment to pause and reflect on the suggestions collected in the previous rooms.

The exhibition is configured as the story of an intellectual partnership between two protagonists of the artistic and intellectual scene of the twentieth century.