16 September 2024

16 September

NEW
- Pietro Tacca - sculptor

Pupil of Giambologna became major figure in own right

The sculptor Pietro Tacca, who succeeded his master, Giambologna, as court sculptor to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany, was born on this day in 1577 in Carrara.  Tacca, who initially produced work in the Mannerist style, later made a significant contribution to the advance of Baroque and helped preserve Florence’s pre-eminence in bronze casting.  As well as his work for the Medici family, Tacca achieved something never before attempted with his marble equestrian statue of King Philip IV of Spain in Madrid’s Plaza de Oriente.  The sculpture, considered to be a masterpiece, is notable for depicting the monarch on a rearing horse with its front legs off the ground and the entire weight of the statue supported by its hind legs and tail.  Tacca began attending the Florence workshop of Giambologna in 1592 at the age of 15. Giambologna was the most important sculptor of his time in Florence, not only for his relationship with the Medici but also for his bronze statue of Neptune above the Fontana di Nettuno in Bologna.  When Giambologna’s first assistant, Pietro Francavilla, left for Paris in 1601, Tacca was chosen to fill his role.  Read more…

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Sir Anthony Panizzi - revolutionary librarian

Political refugee knighted by Queen Victoria

Sir Anthony Panizzi, who as Principal Librarian at the British Museum was knighted by Queen Victoria, was a former Italian revolutionary, born Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi in Brescello in what is now Reggio Emilia, on this day in 1797.  A law graduate from the University of Parma, Panizzi began his working life as a civil servant, attaining the position of Inspector of Public Schools in his home town.   At the same time he was a member of the Carbonari, the network of secret societies set up across Italy in the early part of the 19th century, whose aim was to overthrow the repressive regimes of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sardinia, the Papal States and the Duchy of Modena and bring about the unification of Italy as a republic or a constitutional monarchy.  He was party to a number of attempted uprisings but was forced to flee the country in 1822, having been tipped off that he was to be arrested and would face trial as a subversive.  Panizzi found a haven in Switzerland, but after publishing a book that attacked the Duchy of Modena, of which Brescello was then part, he was sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Modena.  Read more…

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Terror attack on Café de Paris

Grenades thrown into iconic meeting place

The Café de Paris, a hang-out for Rome’s rich and famous during the 1950s and ‘60s and a symbol of the era encapsulated in Fellini’s classic film La dolce vita, was attacked by terrorists on this day in 1985.  Tables outside the iconic venue, on the city’s fashionable Via Veneto, were packed with tourists on a busy evening when two grenades were thrown from a passing car or motorcycle.  One of the devices, of the classic type known as pineapple grenades, failed to explode, but the other did go off, injuring up to 39 people in the vicinity.  Although 20 were taken to hospital, thankfully most were released quickly after treatment for minor wounds. There were no fatalities and only one of those hospitalised, a chef who happened to be waiting on tables at the time of the attack, suffered serious injuries.  Most of the victims were reported to be American, Argentine, West German or British tourists enjoying a late evening drink while taking in the atmosphere of Roman nightlife on a street lined with shops, cafés, airline offices and luxury hotels.  It was thought that three individuals carried out the attack but only one was apprehended and charged.  Read more…

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Sette e mezzo: The Palermo revolt of 1866

Insurgents took control of city after a major uprising 

The Sette e mezzo revolt - so named because it lasted seven and a half days - began in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, on this day in 1866.  The uprising - five years after the island became part of the new Kingdom of Italy - brought to the surface the tensions that existed in southern Italy following the Risorgimento movement and unification. It was put down harshly by the new government of Italy, who laid siege to the city of Palermo, deploying more than 40,000 soldiers under the command of General Raffaele Cadorna.  It is not known exactly how many Sicilians were killed before the revolt was subdued. Several thousand died as a result of a cholera outbreak that swept through Palermo and the surrounding area, but it is thought that more than 1,000 may have been killed as a direct consequence of the siege.  Sicily did not take well to the imposition of a national government, bringing with it plans to modernise the traditional economy and political system. New laws and taxes and the introduction of compulsory military service caused resentment. There was a feeling also that the industrialisation of Italy was too heavily concentrated in the north, with little investment being made in the south.  Read more…

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Paolo Di Lauro - Camorra boss

Capture of mobster struck at heart of Naples underworld

Italy's war against organised crime achieved one of its biggest victories on this day in 2005 when the powerful Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro was arrested.  In a 6am raid, Carabinieri officers surrounded a building in the notorious Secondigliano district of Naples and entered the modest apartment in which Di Lauro was living with a female companion.  The 52-year-old gang boss did not resist arrest, possibly believing any charges against him would not be made to stick.  However, at a subsequent trial he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment for drug trafficking and other crimes and remains in jail.  Di Lauro's conviction was significant because it removed the man who had been at the head of one of the most lucrative criminal networks in all of Italy for more than 20 years and yet managed to maintain such a low profile that police at times suspected he was dead.  At its peak, the Di Lauro clan presided over an organisation that imported and distributed cocaine and heroin said to be worth around €200 million per year.  The clan essentially controlled the run-down northern suburbs of Naples, making money also from real estate, counterfeit high-end fashion and prostitution.  Read more…

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Alessandro Fortis - politician

Revolutionary who became Prime Minister

Alessandro Fortis, a controversial politician who was also Italy’s first Jewish prime minister, was born on this day in 1841 in Forlì in Emilia-Romagna.  Fortis led the government from March 1905 to February 1906. A republican follower of Giuseppe Mazzini and a volunteer in the army of Giuseppe Garibaldi, he was politically of the Historical Left but in time managed to alienate both sides of the divide with his policies.  He attracted the harshest criticism for his decision to nationalise the railways, one of his personal political goals, which was naturally opposed by the conservatives on the Right but simultaneously upset his erstwhile supporters on the Left, because the move had the effect of heading off a strike by rail workers. By placing the network in state control, Fortis turned all railway employees into civil servants, who were not allowed to strike under the law.  Some politicians also felt the compensation given to the private companies who previously ran the railways was far too generous and suspected Fortis of corruption.  His foreign policies, meanwhile, upset politicians and voters on both sides.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750: Volume One, The Early Baroque, by Rudolf Wittkower. Revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu

The first of three volumes, this classic survey of Italian Baroque art and architecture focuses on the arts in every centre between Venice and Sicily in the early, high, and late Baroque periods. The heart of the study, however, lies in the architecture and sculpture of the exhilarating years of Roman High Baroque, when Bernini, Borromini, and Cortona were all at work under a series of enlightened popes. Wittkower’s text is now accompanied by a critical introduction and substantial new bibliography and includes colour illustrations for the first time.  Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750: Volume One, The Early Baroque is part of the Yale University Press Pelican History of Art Series.

Rudolf Wittkower was Durning-Lawrence professor of the history of art at the University of London, chairman of the department of art history and archaeology at Columbia University, Kress Professor at the National Gallery, Washington, and Slade Professor at Cambridge. Jennifer Montagu was for many years the curator of the photographic collection at the Warburg Institute, University of London. Joseph Connors is professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University.

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Pietro Tacca - sculptor

Pupil of Giambologna became major figure in own right

Tacca's equestrian sculpture of Philip IV  of Spain broke new ground in statuary
Tacca's equestrian sculpture of Philip IV 
of Spain broke new ground in statuary
The sculptor Pietro Tacca, who succeeded his master, Giambologna, as court sculptor to the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany, was born on this day in 1577 in Carrara.

Tacca, who initially produced work in the Mannerist style, later made a significant contribution to the advance of Baroque and helped preserve Florence’s pre-eminence in bronze casting.

As well as his work for the Medici family, Tacca achieved something never before attempted with his marble equestrian statue of King Philip IV of Spain in Madrid’s Plaza de Oriente. 

The sculpture, considered to be a masterpiece, is notable for depicting the monarch on a rearing horse with its front legs off the ground and the entire weight of the statue supported by its hind legs and tail. 

Tacca began attending the Florence workshop of Giambologna in 1592 at the age of 15. Giambologna was the most important sculptor of his time in Florence, not only for his relationship with the Medici but also for his bronze statue of Neptune above the Fontana di Nettuno in Bologna.

When Giambologna’s first assistant, Pietro Francavilla, left for Paris in 1601, Tacca was chosen to fill his role. On the death of the master in 1608 at the age of 79, Tacca inherited both his studio and his house in Borgo Pinti. A year later, the Medici family appointed him as Giambologna’s successor as the grand-ducal sculptor.

Tacca's i Quattro Mori sculptures in Livorno showed his embrace of the drama of Baroque
Tacca's i Quattro Mori sculptures in Livorno
showed his embrace of the drama of Baroque
Among Tacca's earliest tasks in his prestigious new position were the completion of some of Giambologna’s unfinished works, including the equestrian statues of Ferdinando I de' Medici in Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence, of Henry IV of France, which was sent to Paris but later destroyed during the revolution in 1793, and of Philip III of Spain, which is still located in the Madrid’s Plaza Mayor.

The statue of Ferdinando I de’ Medici was cast with bronze melted from the cannons of captured Barbary and Ottoman galleys, taken by the Order of Saint Stephen, of which Ferdinando was Grand Master.

As his own career progressed, Tacca began to embrace the Baroque aesthetic. His work became characterised by a sense of the theatrical, conveying dramatic movement and exaggerated emotion. While his sculptures often depicted religious subjects, such as saints and biblical figures, he also created secular works, including fountains and allegorical figures.

Between 1623 and 1626 he executed what is considered his masterpiece, i Quattri Mori - the Four Moors - which shows four Saracen pirates chained at the base of Giovanni Bandini's monument to Ferdinando I de' Medici in Piazza della Darsena in Livorno. The pirates were supposedly taken prisoner by the Order of St. Stephen and imprisoned in Livorno. Tacca used some of them as models, posing them in accentuated twists and depicting grimaces of pain on their faces.

Tacca's Porcellino Fountain, a bronze of a wild boar, is now in a museum in Florence
Tacca's Porcellino Fountain, a bronze of a wild
boar, is now in a museum in Florence
Two bronze fountains by Tacca originally destined for Livorno, notable for their intricate grotesque masks and shellwork textures, were set up instead in Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

In 1634, Tacco created his famous Fontana del Porcellino, a bronze fountain statue of a wild boar originally planned for the gardens - the Giardino di Boboli - behind Palazzo Pitti, the main Medici residence in Florence, but subsequently placed in the recently built Loggia del Mercato Nuovo, where a copy is currently on display. The original is in the Museo Stefano Bardini in Palazzo Mozzi.

The colossal equestrian bronze of Philip IV in Madrid was Tacca's last public commission.

Based on a design by Diego Velázquez, it was started in 1634 and shipped to Madrid in 1640, the year of Tacca’s death. The sculpture, set on top of a fountain composition, forms the centrepiece of the façade of the Royal Palace. 

Tacca consulted the scientist Galileo Galilei for advice on how he might make the statue stable, despite its entire weight being supported by the two hind legs and the tip of the tail, shown as brushing the ground as the horse rears. The feat had never been attempted successfully in a statue of such scale. 

Towards the end of his life, Pietro Tacca was assisted by his son, Ferdinando, who almost certainly completed some of his father’s unfinished projects. After the death of Ferdinando Tacca, the studio and foundry in Borgo Pinti were taken over by Giovanni Battista Foggini.

Foggini specialised in small bronze statuary. His reproductions of Tacca’s Moors figures in bronze and ceramic were still selling well on the connoisseur market in the early to mid-18th century.

The Giambologna coat of arms identifies his former workshop
The Giambologna coat of arms
identifies his former workshop
Travel tip:

Borgo Pinti is an historic street in the heart of Florence, which runs from Via Sant’Egidio to Piazzale Donatello. It has several notable landmarks along its path, including the Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, a church dating back to around 1250 on a site that was previously occupied by the Monastery of the Women of Penance, a house of refuge for repentant women known as the Repentite, to which some ascribe the origin of the name Pinti, although others claim it was the name of an ancient family. The street, which forms a north-south axis of the historic centre, is lined with many notable palaces, as well as houses occupied by the painter Perugino and the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini.  The house and workshops where Giambologna and Pietro Tacca created so much of their art were at numbers 24-26 in a building now called Palazzo Bellini delle Stelle, identifiable by the Giambologna coat of arms over the door.

The white of Carrara's marble makes the Apuan Alps seemed snow-covered even in the summer
The white of Carrara's marble makes the Apuan
Alps seemed snow-covered even in the summer
Travel tip:

Pietro Tacca’s town of birth, Carrara, famous for its blue and white marble, sits just inland from the Ligurian Sea coastline, in a valley that descends from the Alpi Apuane in Tuscany. The natural white of the peaks often convinces visitors they are covered with snow even in the summer. Marble has been quarried in the area for more than 2,000 years. Michelangelo was said to have been so taken with the purity of the stone that he spent eight months there choosing blocks for specific projects.  The Pantheon and Trajan's Column were both constructed using Carrara marble, which was also the material used for many Renaissance sculptures.  Carrara, nowadays a city of around 70,000 inhabitants, is home to many academies of sculpture and fine arts and a museum of statuary and antiquities.  The exterior of the city's own 12th century duomo is almost entirely marble.

Also on this day:

1797: The birth of revolutionary-turned-librarian Sir Anthony Panizzi

1841: The birth of politician Alessandro Fortis

1866: Sette e mezzo revolt breaks out in Palermo

1985: Terrorists attack Rome’s iconic Café de Paris

2005: Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro captured in Naples


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15 September 2024

15 September

Umberto II - last King of Italy

Brief reign was followed by long exile

The last King of Italy, Umberto II, was born on this day in 1904 in Racconigi in Piedmont.  Umberto reigned over Italy from 9 May 1946 to 12 June 1946 and was therefore nicknamed the May King - Re di Maggio.  When Umberto Nicola Tommaso Giovanni Maria di Savoia was born at the Castle of Racconigi he became heir apparent to the Italian throne as the only son and third child of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife Queen Elena of Montenegro.  He was given the title of Prince of Piedmont.  Umberto married Marie Jose of Belgium in Rome in 1930 and they had four children.  He became de facto head of state in 1944 when his father, Victor Emmanuel III, transferred his powers to him in an attempt to repair the monarchy’s image after the fall of Benito Mussolini’s regime.  Victor Emmanuel III abdicated his throne in favour of Umberto in 1946 ahead of a referendum on the abolition of the monarchy in the hope that his exit and a new King might give a boost to the popularity of the monarchy.  However, after the referendum, Italy was declared a republic and Umberto had to live out the rest of his life in exile in Portugal.  Read more…

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Fausto Coppi - cycling great

Multiple title-winner who died tragically young

The cycling champion Fausto Coppi, who won the Giro d’Italia five times and the Tour de France twice as well as numerous other races, was born on this day in 1919 in Castellania, a village in Piedmont about 37km (23 miles) southeast of Alessandria.  Although hugely successful and lauded for his talent and mental strength, Coppi was a controversial character. His rivalry with his fellow Italian rider Gino Bartali divided the nation, while he offended many in what was still a socially conservative country by abandoning his wife to live with another woman.  Fausto, who openly admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs, which were then legal, died in 1960 at the age of just 40 following a trip to Burkina Faso in West Africa. The cause of death officially was malaria but a story has circulated in more recent years that he was poisoned in an act of revenge.  The fourth in a family of five children, Coppi had poor health as he grew up and would skip school in order to amuse himself riding a rusty bicycle he found in a cellar. He left at the age of 13 to work in a butcher’s shop in Novi Ligure, a town about 20km (12 miles) from his home village in Piedmont.  Read more…

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Ettore Bugatti - car designer

Name that became a trademark for luxury and high performance

The car designer and manufacturer Ettore Bugatti was born in Milan on this day in 1881.  The company Bugatti launched in 1909 became associated with luxury and exclusivity while also enjoying considerable success in motor racing.  When the glamorous Principality of Monaco launched its famous Grand Prix in 1929, the inaugural race was won by a Bugatti.  Although Bugatti cars were manufactured for the most part in a factory in Alsace, on the border of France and Germany, their stylish designs reflected the company’s Italian heritage and Bugatti cars are seen as part of Italy’s traditional success in producing desirable high-performance cars.  The story of Bugatti as a purely family business ended in 1956, and the company closed altogether in 1963.  The name did not die, however, and Bugatti cars are currently produced by Volkswagen.  Ettore came from an artistic family in Milan. His father, Carlo Bugatti, was a successful designer of Italian Art Nouveau furniture and jewelry, while his paternal grandfather, Giovanni Luigi Bugatti, had been an architect and sculptor.  His younger brother, Rembrandt Bugatti, became well known for his animal sculpture.  Read more…

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The first free public school in Europe

Frascati sees groundbreaking development in education

The first free public school in Europe opened its doors to children on this day in 1616 in Frascati, a town in Lazio just a few kilometres from Rome.  The school was founded by a Spanish Catholic priest, José de Calasanz, who was originally from Aragon but who moved to Rome in 1592 at the age of 35.  Calasanz had a passion for education and in particular made it his life’s work to set up schools for children who did not have the benefit of coming from wealthy families.  Previously, schools existed only for the children of noble families or for those studying for the priesthood. Calasanz established Pious Schools and a religious order responsible for running them, who became known as the Piarists.  Calasanz had been a priest for 10 years when he decided to go to Rome in the hope of furthering his ecclesiastical career.  He soon became involved with helping neglected and homeless children via the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.  He would gather up poor children on the streets and take them to schools, only to find that the teachers, who were not well paid, would not accept them unless Calasanz provided them with extra money.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Fall of Mussolini: Italy, the Italians, and the Second World War, by Philip Morgan

In this powerful history, Philip Morgan tells the dramatic story of Mussolini's fall from power in July 1943, illuminating both the causes and the consequences of this momentous event. Morgan recounts how King Emanuel first ousted Mussolini and how Germany then succeeded in putting him back in place, this time as a puppet of the Nazis. The resulting chaos included fighting by anti-fascist rebel groups, retributions on all sides, and mini civil wars throughout the country. When Germany finally surrendered, Italy was in complete disarray. The Fall of Mussolini shines light on how common people responded to and coped with the extraordinary pressures of wartime living and with the invasion, occupation, and division of their country by warring foreign powers. Morgan's descriptions of little known events from Italy's war, as well as vivid eye-witness reports from people who hid Jews, fought in the resistance, and killed collaborators, clearly show how much the country suffered during this time. And it proves how crucial the experience of this period was in shaping Italy's post-war sense of nationhood and its transition to democracy. The book also debunks the myths that arose after the war, which depicted the nation as almost entirely anti-Fascist, with the heroes of the resistance movement fighting to rid their country first of Mussolini, then of their German occupiers. In truth, the situation surrounding Mussolini's removal from power, return to power, and eventual execution was far more complicated. The Fall of Mussolini presents an accurate history of Italy during the war years, rather than what Italians imagine or want their actions to have been.

Philip Morgan is senior lecturer in Contemporary European History at the University of Hull. He specialises in the study of Italian Fascism and has authored several notable works on the subject, including Italian Fascism, 1915-1945 and Fascism in Europe, 1919-1995.

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14 September 2024

14 September

Renzo Piano – architect

Designer of innovative buildings is now an Italian senator

Award-winning architect Renzo Piano was born on this day in 1937 in Genoa.  Piano is well-known for his high-tech designs for public spaces and is particularly famous for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which he worked on in collaboration with the British architect, Richard Rogers, and the Shard in London.  Among the many awards and prizes Piano has received for his work are the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture in 1995, the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998 and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2008.  Piano was born into a family of builders and graduated from the Polytechnic in Milan in 1964. He completed his first building, the IPE factory in Genoa, in 1968 with a roof of steel and reinforced polyester.  He worked with a variety of architects, including his father, Carlo Piano, until he established a partnership with Rogers, which lasted from 1971-1977.  They made the Centre Georges Pompidou look like an urban machine with their innovative design and it immediately gained the attention of the international architectural community.  Read more…

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Dante Alighieri – poet

Famous son of Florence remains in exile

Dante Alighieri, an important poet during the late Middle Ages, died on this day in 1321 in Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna.  Dante’s Divine Comedy is considered to be the greatest literary work written in Italian and has been acclaimed all over the world.  In the 13th century most poetry was written in Latin, but Dante wrote in the Tuscan dialect, which made his work more accessible to ordinary people.  Writers who came later, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, followed this trend.  Therefore Dante can be said to have played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy.  His depictions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven in the Divine Comedy later influenced the works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer and Lord Alfred Tennyson, among many others.  Dante was also the first poet to use the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, terza rima.  Dante was born around 1265 in Florence into a family loyal to the Guelphs. By the time he was 12 he had been promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, the daughter of a member of a powerful, local family.  He had already fallen in love with Beatrice Portinari, whom he first met when he was only nine.  Read more…

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Tiziano Terzani - journalist

Asia correspondent who covered wars in Vietnam and Cambodia

The journalist and author Tiziano Terzani, who spent much of his working life in China, Japan and Southeast Asia and whose writing received critical acclaim both in his native Italy and elsewhere, was born on this day in 1938 in Florence.  He worked for more than 30 years for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, who took him on as Asia Correspondent in 1971, based in Singapore.  Although he wrote for other publications, including the Italian newspapers Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, it was Der Spiegel who allowed him the freedom he craved. To a large extent he created his own news agenda but in doing so offered a unique slant on the major stories.  He was one of only a handful of western journalists who remained in Vietnam after the liberation of Saigon by the Viet Cong in 1975 and two years later, despite threats to his life, he reported from Phnom Penh in Cambodia after its capture by the Khmer Rouge.  He lived at different times in Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok and New Delhi. His stay in China came to an end when he was arrested and expelled in 1984 for "counter-revolutionary activities".  Read more…

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Vittorio Gui – composer and conductor

Precise and sensitive musician enjoyed a long and distinguished career

Internationally renowned orchestra conductor Vittorio Gui was born on this day in 1885 in Rome.  Gui composed his own operas, while travelling around Italy and Europe conducting the music of other composers. He spent many years conducting in Britain and served as the musical director of the Glyndebourne Festival for 12 years.  He was taught to play the piano by his mother when he was a young child. He graduated in Humanities at the University of Rome and then studied composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.  The premiere of his opera, David, took place in Rome in 1907. He made his professional conducting debut at the Teatro Adriano in Rome in the same year, having been brought in as a substitute to lead Ponchielli’s La Gioconda.  This led to Gui being invited to conduct in Rome and Turin. Arturo Toscanini then invited him to conduct Salome by Richard Strauss as the season opener at La Scala in Milan in 1923.  He conducted at the Teatro Regio in Turin between 1925 and 1927 and premiered his own fairytale opera, Fata Malerba, there.  Gui founded the Orchestra Stabile in Florence and developed the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival. Read more…

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Book of the Day: Piano, by Philip Jodidio

While some architects have a signature style, Renzo Piano seeks to apply coherent ideas to extraordinarily different projects. His buildings impress as much for their individual impact as for their diversity of scale, material, and form.  Piano rose to international prominence with his codesign of the Pompidou Center in Paris, described by The New York Times as a building that “turned the architecture world upside down.” Since then, he has continued to craft many high-profile cultural spaces, including the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Morgan Library Renovation and Expansion in New York; and, most recently, the Whitney Museum of American Art, an asymmetric nine-story structure in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with both indoor and outdoor galleries. In New York and London, the Renzo touch has also transformed the skyline with the towers of the New York Times Building and the Shard, the tallest building in the European Union.  Piano is an essential introduction that travels from Osaka, Japan, to Bern, Switzerland, and through many cities, structures, and islands in between, to explore the staggering scope of the Renzo Piano repertoire. From the “inside-out” Pompidou to the airy shells of the Tjibaou Cultural Center in Nouméa, New Caledonia, this is a thrilling journey through the beauty of architecture, where, in Piano’s own words, “each time, it is like life starting all over again.”

Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard and edited Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His books include the Homes for Our Time series for publishers Taschen and monographs on numerous major architects, including Norman Foster, Tadao Ando, Jean Nouvel, and Zaha Hadid.

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