No.7

Autumn Equinox 2023

2023 / 126 PAGES. Language: English, Italian

This issue, which we dedicate to Italo Calvino on the centennial of his birth, is pervaded with a fairytale atmosphere in his honor: it is spangled with journeys to distant and noble lands and evocative country attics, a great poet’s last love and the magical glitter of molten glass, the alchemistic enigmas of a mysterious painter and the leering dances of mocking skeletons, hidden in a tucked-away rural church. To complete our offering, we bring you a few cunning tricks of the trade of the most successful art dealers and a new episode of the art-historical adventures of Mr. PA, as narrated by the Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk.

HORS D’ŒUVRE

“Mr. PA Goes to the Museum” – Hidden Cards

by Orhan Pamuk

“Auctions” – The Art of Raising the Level

by Simone Facchinetti

“Ephemera” – Image and Imagination

text (1985) by Italo Calvino

Transpacific Overture

by Hwee Lie Bléhaut, Rodrigo Rivero Lake

Magnificent painted folding screens tell the tale of sixteenth-century encounters between the cultures of Portugal, Japan, and Mexico.

THE GLANCE OF THE LORD

by Vincenzo Patanè

The adventures (especially the romantic escapades) of Byron in Ravenna,
illustrated with paintings inspired by the poet’s creations in those same years.

DARING GEOMETRIES IN MURANO

by Marino Barovier

photography by Elizabeth Lamark

The Olnick Spanu collection of glasswork created in Murano by the architect
Carlo Scarpa.

ALCHEMY AND TRANSFIGURATION

by Fabio Benzi and Caterina Napoleone

photography by Riccardo Ragazzi

The work of painter Emanuele Cavalli, steeped in complex and nebulous
esotericism, tells us much about the School of Rome and all that ensued in its
wake.

THE MUSEUM OF WORKS AND DAYS

text (1991) by Roberto Tassi

photography by Mauro Davoli

Ettore Guatelli’s museum of rural culture at Ozzano Taro, in the province of
Parma.

DANSE MACABRE

by Latica Tomašić Kickert

A procession of the quick and the dead, guided by skeletons, in the church of
St. Mary of the Rocks in Beram and in the church of the Holy Trinity in
Hrastovlje (Slovenia).