No. 9

Vernal Equinox 2024

2024 / 126 PAGES. Language: English, Italian

FMR issue number 9, arriving on the vernal equinox, is wholly devoted to the world of plants, our humble and yet noble fellow travelers on this earthly plane: we range from botanical details in the masterpieces of the Prado to a tropical jungle painted in monochromatic grisaille in a Mexican monastery, from a Korean painter’s hyperrealistic cacti to an esoteric Genoese garden, and from the vegetable festoons of the Villa Farnesina to Gaetano Gandolfi’s portraits of great botanists. In the front of the book, we see again, after a one-issue hiatus, Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s “Mr. PA” visiting the museum.

HORS D’ŒUVRE

“Mr. PA Goes to the Museum” – Met Bat Met by Mr. PA

by Orhan Pamuk

“Auctions” – It’s Raining Rembrandts

by Simone Facchinetti

“Ephemera” – Franco Maria Ricci: A Genoese Returns

by Pietro Mercogliano

“Ephemera” – A Labyrinth of Flies

by Sylvia Ferino

A BOTANIST AT THE PRADO

by Eduardo Barba Gómez

The author, a landscape gardener and botanical investigator of great artworks, shows us recondite vegetal details of renowned masterpieces.

A CONTESTED PARADISE

by Giorgio Antei and Maria Dorotea Gonçalves

photography by Juan Carlos Barbero

The tropical welter of vegetation painted in the cloister of the Mexican monastery of Malinalco bears witness to the encounter (and clash) of cultures.

HYPERCACTACEOUS

by Giovanni Aloi

Hyperrealistic cacti, painted in oils and garish hues on gigantic canvases by the South Korean artist Lee Kwang-Ho.

AN ALCHEMISTIC PROMENADE

text by Amerigo Gassarini from 1857 (with an introduction by Antonio di San Pietro)

photography by Massimo Listri

The Masonic park of the Villa Durazzo Pallavicini in Pegli (near Genoa), conceived as a theatrical spectacle.

TUTTI FRUTTI

texts by Marina Warner and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi

photography by Araldo De Luca, Sergio Ruschena

The botanical festoons frescoed by Giovanni da Udine in the Raphaelesque Loggia of Cupid and Psyche in Rome’s Villa Farnesina, which include a number of species then newly brought over from the New World.

A LINNAEAN HALL OF FAME

by Donatella Biagi Maino

Stunningly refined portraits of botanists done by Gaetano Gandolfi for Bologna’s “Pinacotheca Bassiana”.