You are invited by the Tuscan regional Film Board: Mediateca Toscana. Please inform Attache before 7 April tel 055-2719024

One of the most important wine fairs in the world attracting producers, buyers, critics and agents from every continent.

A. VIVALDI | The Four Seasons (violin concertos) A. VIVALDI | Gloria in D Major for solos, choir and orchestra violin Tamsin Waley-Cohen soprano Giulia Peri alto Patrizia Scivoletto Coro Harmonia Cantata Polska Iuventus Orchestra conductor Andrea Fornaciari

A Roman Mass from ancint times, with a certain byzantine flavour, found in Corsica as early as the 7 th century contre bass Pelerin Benoit bass Fanuchi Louis bass Bonetti Sebastien contre chant (baryton) Natali Eric contre chant (baryton), lead (medium), terza (high) Muglioni Hervè contre chant (baryton), lead (medium, terza (high) Vignoli Patrick

On the morning of Easter Sunday, the Florentine gather in Piazza del Duomo to see the traditional Scoppio del Carro (explosion of the cart). The cart, which is pulled by a pair of oxen adorned with flowers and escorted by 150 soldiers, musicians and flag bearers, reaches Piazza del Duomo. A rocket resembling a dove, the Colombina, darts forth from the Duomo, setting on fire the big cart on the square which is laden with firecrackers and fireworks. The deafening sound of the firecrackers spreads around the city a symbolic holy fire. This ceremony dates from the First Crusade, carried out to free the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidel. In the year 1099 the crusaders, led by Goffredo di Buglione, lay siege to the city of Jerusalem. According to tradition, the Florentine Pazzino de´ Pazzi is credited as being the first to go over the walls of the Holy City. After the liberation of Jerusalem on Holy Saturday, the crusaders distributed the holy fire as a sign of purification. After Pazzino returned, and on Holy Saturday, the youth of all the families burnt a small torch using the holy fire from the cathedral and brought the purifying flame in processions around the city. With time, the use of a cart was added to transport the holy fire and towards the end of the 14th century fireworks were used in place of the normal torch. The present three-level cart dates back from the 15th century and even though it has been restored several times it is still in good shape.

Official Holiday

You are invited by the Tuscan regional Film Board: Mediateca Toscana. Please inform Attache before 7 April tel 055-2719024

One of the most important wine fairs in the world attracting producers, buyers, critics and agents from every continent.

Steven Isserlis plays the Cello with the Orchestra della Toscana, directed by Moshe Atzmon

With the Ochestra della Toscana Roberto Prosseda on piano, directed by David Afkham

Stefano is a local photographer who, together with his wife Susanna Weber, contributes to the graphic design and layout for Palazzo Tornabuoni.

Official italian holiday

The Corsini family are hosting a reception and exhibition of contemporary sculpture, photographs and paintings celebrating Vegetables by local artists: Farrokh Belsara, Fiona Corsini, Caterina Enni, Alexander Hamilton, Olivia Magris, Matilde van der Does, Olimpia Benini, Leandro Enni, Francesca Guicciardini.

The English painter Cecil Collins (1908-1989) was originally associated with the Surrealist movement, but it never meant much to him and he later developed an individual style that placed him in the English tradition of visionary artists such as William Blake and Samuel Palmer. Brian Keeble, who knew Collins well, is the founder and director of the Golgonooza Press and has published three books on the artist. His illustrated talk is an authoritative interpretation of Collins´s mysterious art and thought.

- Fantasie in F minor Op. 49 - Nocturne in D flat major Op. 27 No. 2 - Sonata n. 2 in B flat minor Op. 35 - Barcarole in F sharp major Op. 60 - 3 Walzer - Berceuse in D flat major Op. 57 - Polonaise in A flat major Op. 53 On the occasion of the 200th. Anniversary of the Birth of Chopin

Composer Thierry Mader and filmmaker Amos Poe bring you an evening of music and Dante from their work-in-progress La Commedia di Amos Poe Contact attache for reservations

LUCCA has a large antiques market (centred around Piazza San Giusto and Piazza Antelminelli) on the third Sunday (and preceding Saturday) of every month. There is also a craft fair, again in and around Piazza San Giusto

Pecci (permanet collection; Athos Ongaro-Michael Lin) www.centropecci.it Gori Fondation www.goricoll.it 550 euro a person The price includes transportation with a luxury car, lunch, entrance to the Foundation and catalog. For the first time ever, art lovers can now come to Italy and see private and public collections of Contemporary Art. A country known for its extraordinary Renaissance art, it is natural that this world has been mostly overlooked by the tour businesses of Italy. But Italy is in fact a haven of some extraordinary collections of contemporary and modern art, beyond the Biennale of Venice, and so this autumn, Palazzo Tornabuoni is launching a series of Contemporary Art Tours with a knowledgeable Italian Art Curator and Gallerist, Caterina Biagiotti, who has also been following this world from the inside, for over a decade. The half, full day and two to three day tours will offer private behind the scenes visits to the Contemporary Art collections and studios of Italy. With Caterina Biagiotti at your side, putting the works and collections in context, you will meet or be toured by the museum directors or curators, visit private collections and have an opportunity to meet the movers and shakers of this world. With all meals, transportation and housing carefully organized, you will have a carefree opportunity to explore and become one of the few to know this hidden world. See the schedule below. For issues of privacy, the list does not include private collections. For more details contact the Attachè elucifero@palazzotornabuoni.com.

"Le Macchine di Leonardo", the world’s biggest private collection of Leonardo da Vinci´s machines was born following the juvenile passion of Carlo Niccolai. Particularly skilled craftsmen, the members of the Niccolai family have so far developed 150 different models, based on the Da Vinci codes and on historical documents using the materials of Leonardo’s time: wood, metal, ropes and fabrics. According to the unwritten rules of Florentine craftsmen, Carlo Niccolai has passed on his passion to his sons and grandsons, who, thanks to their knowledge of new technologies, have enriched the collection with new models and organised more than a hundred exhibitions all over the world in the last ten years. Professor Carlo Pedretti, Director of the Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles and of its European division at the University of Urbino, has praised the accuracy in reproducing the models. In the last few years the models have been refined with Professor Pedretti’s support and have rapidly gained international credit. Leonardo Da Vinci´s machines are displayed at the Galleria Michelangiolo, where the Macchiaioli used to meet, in one of the most famous streets in Florence city centre. More than 50 models are displayed in four rooms: the largest one is dedicated to civil machines, in the second room flying machines are shown, war machines are to be found in the third and in the fourth the recently developped collection of anatomical models can be admired. Most of the models are real working machines. A documentary on Leonardo Da Vinci’s life and works is displayed on large screen monitors. The gallery has an agreement with Caffé Michelangiolo, the restaurant inside the exhibition area. At the bookshop you will find many publications and gadgets. Tickets: Full price: 6 € Reduced price: 5 € (students with Carta Studente; people aged 6-18 years and 65 years or older with ID) Groups: 3 € (at least 15 people, leader excluded)

Every working day and last Sunday of the month 055 328 3550

From February 13th to June 26th, 2010 the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence will open the new exhibition “Díaita. Heath rules in the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana” an exposition concerning life style and diet as strategies to ensure physical and mental wellbeing. This is a theme that is fashionable today as it was in the past when in Italy during the age of princely courts and wealthy merchants, the interest of the elite in preserving their health inspired the Regimina sanitatis - the offspring of the classical tradition gradually enriched by contact with the Arab world – contained in the manuscripts on display. The concept of a ‘life regime’ in the classical world was expressed by the term díaita/diaeta (which had nothing to do with adjusting rations according to an individual’s physical and biometric conditions, as it does today). Its meaning was far broader, encompassing all the areas that were not determined automatically by nature and that humans thus could plan of their own accord such as one’s relationship with air and water, food and drink, motion and rest, sleep and wakefulness, dejecta and sexuality, love and passion. Amongst the manuscripts that can be viewed, all from the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, in Latin, Greek or Italian Vernacular and dating from the XII to the XVI centuries, some are particularly interesting: the Treatise on Cooking by Apicius that witnesses the specific importance of eating; the Tacuinum sanitatis by Ibn Butlan; the Regime del Corpo by Aldobrandino da Siena present in different Italian translations one realized in May 1310 by the Florentine notary Zucchero Bencivenni. Important among others is the Compendium of the nature and properties of food by Barnaba from Reggio in a parchment manuscript copied between the 13th and 14th century. “The exhibition is about a type of knowledge that has often survived in traditional medicine." Catalogue: Diaita. Health rules in the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, ed. by Donatella Lippi, presentation by Maria Prunai Falciani, Firenze, Mandragora, 2010. Entries by : E. Antonucci, A.R. Fantoni, I.G. Rao, S. Magrini

A sold out show -- May be extended -- for those thinking of taking a day trip to Rome: Celebrating the fourth centenary of Caravaggio´s death, Rome´s Scuderie del Quirinale invites art critics and the general public to look at Caravaggio´s work from an innovative point of view. Bacco (Uffizi), musici (Metropolitan Museum) and other great pieces are displayed. This concise, yet carefully structured, exhibition coupled with new research findings enables the viewer to rethink the painter´s artistic essence.

In display mostly DeChirico´s work belonging to the so-called metaphysical painting lasted up to around 1918

Palazzo Strozzi will host an exhibition to celebrate the masterpieces of the father of metaphysical painting, Giorgio de Chirico, and of its perception of life after reading some works by philosopher and writer Friedrich Nietzsche. Isolation, a sense of abandonment, alienation, anxiety and despair are just a few of the feelings that De Chirico is capable to convey, allowing them to powerfully emerge through his works. Others have confronted and identified with this artist´s vision of the world, such as Belgian painter René Magritte, a leading representative of surrealism, and French painter Balthus, who, although initially inspired by pre-renaissance art, infuses his works with frequent elements of De Chirico´s metaphysical perception. Other works will also be exhibited at Palazzo Strozzi, such as those by Marx Erns, Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, all artists who were inspired by De Chirico´s experience. The primary goal of this exhibition is exactly that: to find any common themes, similar subjects and insights between the works of different artists. De Chirico´s poetics, which is appropriately considered the expression of that state of mind that characterized an entire century acts as the common thread between all the works in the exhibition. For more information: 055 2645155

Paolo Canevari – Nobody Knows, curated by Germano Celant. The exhibition will be shown until August 1st, 2010. The show will follow the main steps in the artist’s career, and will include new works created for the occasion. Canevari’s work investigates the impermanence of art, the meaning of sculpture and how it relates to the contemporary social fabric. Since the early nineties, Canevari’s elective material has been rubber – taken from tires and tubes – developing a personal language aimed at rethinking the everyday and the most intimate aspects of memory: overlappings of symbols, icons, pop culture, historical representation and political awareness. His work is among the most relevant contemporary syntheses of the linguistic expressions elaborated since the Sixties, and its forms know no boundary, including videos, installations and performance. Canevari’s work, however, avoids monumentality, and steers clear of all rhetoric connected to concepts such as “tradition” and “classic”. The primary, simple materials constituting his work relate to the notion of representation, and act as “keys” to which every possible reading is viable. They nonetheless bear witness to the continuous metamorphoses of matter, whose instability goes hand in hand with openness to interpretation. Paolo Canevari’s huge solo show, curated by Germano Celant, is focused on his Globes series, forming a constellation in the Museum’s spaces and centered on the image of a massive black globe holding the silhouette of a human figure, referencing art’s original nature: a place for the investigation of reality, of the world’s fates. A romantic image projecting the spectator in an ever uncertain future, “nobody knows”, the ?»??/? ??6?6artist always struggling with interpretive doubt, “nobody knows”, the original moment of inspiration of every artistic gesture. These ambiguities are synthesized in the show’s title, Nobody Knows. The show will also include previously unreleased videos – one of which is US (2009); a new series of drawings on black marble, depicting animal symbols of power and aggression, always an important element of Canevari’s imagery; some recent installations as of yet unreleased, as Hanging Around, a huge gallows turned into a swing by a hanging tire. The exhibition path will feature references and hints to important past works, offering a counterpoint to the latest production and marking the oeuvre’s continuity over time: animated films produced for Blobcartoon RAI 3 in the early nineties, the first inner tube sculptures (Elmi, 1900), the Lupa Roma (1993), the Colossei from a decade later. Other works from the nineties will include installations such as Esodo (1998), a crowd of people cut in tube rubber, and Jesus (1999), an eighteenth-century wooden sculpture holding a tire. The show will also feature the Bouncing Skull video, premiered in 2007 at the 52nd Venice Biennale and included in the MoMA’s permanent collection, and Little Boy, a huge atom bomb covered in mirrors like a disco ball. The show will be documented by a monographic volume, published by Electa and edited by Germano Celant. Paolo Canevari (Roma, 1963) lives and works between Rome and New York A selection of his recent shows includes the 14th Rome Quadriennial, Palazzo delle Esposizioni Rome,1999; Colosso, Christian Stein Gallery, Milan 2002; The Liverpool Biennial, 2004; Welcome to Oz, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center New York, 2004; Paolo Canevari, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Museum, Johannesburg, 2005; Black Stone, Christian Stein Gallery, Milano, 2005; Rubber Car, MART, Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, 2006; Whitney Biennial Peace Tower Project, Whitney Museum of American Art, New?»??/? ??6?6 York, 2006; A Couple of Things I Have to Tell You, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, 2006; Into me Out of Me, Kunst Werke institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2006. 52° Venice Biennale, 2007; Senso Unico, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Continenti, Studio Stefania Miscetti, Rome 2007; Nothing from Nothing curated by Danilo Eccher, Museo d´Arte Contemporanea (Macro) di Roma, Rome 2007, Decalogo, Istituto per la Grafica Calcografia Nazionale, Rome, 2008, Raw – War, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - New York, 2008. His work is included in private and public art collection, among which: Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci - Prato, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) - New York, Foundation Louis Vuitton pour la Creation - Paris, Cisneros, Fontanals Art Foundation - Miami, Museo d’arte Contemporanea (Macro) - Rome, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Trento e Rovereto (Mart), Istituto per la Grafica Calcografia Nazionale - Rome, Johannesburg Art Gallery Contemporary Art Museum – Johannesburg, Perna Foundation - Capri.

Gem collecting was one of the most fascinating aspects of the rediscovery of antiquity which characterised the Renaissance. As of the first half of the XV century, cameos and intaglios were much sought after by popes, princes and cardinals, on several occasions indeed giving rise to harsh disputes between admirers who were even ready to spend large sums to secure themselves the desired piece. The reasons for this success were manifold. First and foremost, the art of carving gems required the use of rare and very costly materials, as well as master artisans with extraordinary technical capabilities, considering that the slightest error, in point of fact irreversible, could vilify months or even years of hard work. Secondly, special magical and mysterious virtues were attributed to cameos and intaglios depending on the type of material utilised and on the subject of the depiction. Moreover, their small dimensions and ease of transport made them ideal gifts for illustrious personages, as well as an excellent form of investment, a capital to draw on in moments of great difficulty. All of these factors explain the special liking that as of the XV century the Medici developed for carvings on precious and semiprecious stones, which they actively collected, forming one of the most important collections in history, and the source of great prestige for the entire family, which through the centuries continued to increase with new acquisitions. Presenting a select number of pieces of exceptional quality from the most important Italian and foreign museums, the exhibition will illustrate the complex history of this treasure, starting from its formation by Cosimo, Piero and, especially, Lorenzo de’ Medici who reserved a special place to cameos and intaglios in his art collections, and also purchased many prestigious specimens such as the so-called Seal of Nero, a splendid cornelian depicting Apollo and Marsyas, which was celebrated and admired by a host of men of letters and artists. Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello and Sandro Botticelli are only three of the artists who found important creative suggestions in the diaphanous depictions of the Medici gems. This aspect will be documented by a great variety of works, illuminated codices, medals, drawings, paintings and sculptures, which show the great fortune enjoyed by the specimens that belonged to the Medici. In many cases, these are faithful translations of selected iconographic models, but there are also original specimens in which the elements drawn from the carved stones are enriched with totally new aspects, as we can find in several drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti who in the Medici gems not only found a heterogeneous repertory of forms but also an effective instrument for the recovery of the sense of balance and the measure of proportions characteristic of classical art. Opening hours: Daily: 8.15 – 16.30 (November February) 8.15 – 17.30 (March) 8.15 – 18.30 (April, May, September and October) 8.15 – 17.30 (in the month of October when Daylight Saving Time ends) 8.15 – 18.50 (June August) Entry is permitted up to half an hour before closing time. Closed on the 1st and the last Monday of each month, New Year´s Day, May 1st and Christmas Day. Tickets: Full Price: € 10,00 Reduced: € 5,00 Ticket valid also for the Museo degli Argenti, the Costume Gallery, the Porcelain museum and the Bardini Gardens. Booking: Firenze Musei, ph: 055 294883 Booking charge: € 3,00