Pitti Palace, 12 masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay

FLORENCE, ITALY – Twelve masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay: this extraordinary event is the result of an exchange between the two important French and Italian museum institutes. Indeed, in a gesture of reciprocity the Musée d’Orsay has loaned these 12 Impressionist masterpieces following the important contribution made by the Gallery of Modern Art which made it possible to organize the exhibition “I macchiaioli des impressionistes italiens” at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris from 10 April to 22 July last.

19 masterpieces by the leading exponents of the Tuscan movement, in addition to the precious Album, the Zibaldone by Telemaco Signorini, for three months left the Florentine gallery, which possesses the most important collection of works documenting the Macchiaiolo movement.

In this way the Gallery of Modern Art of the Pitti Palace, until January 5, 2014, made its own substantial contribution to this cultural exchange, casting light on a synchronicity of feeling and analogies of research between French and Italian artists in the second half of the nineteenth century. The two works by Degas, two by Monet, two by Cezanne, two by Renoir, two by Pissarro, one by Fantin Latour and one by Paul Guigou now on display could suggest further paths of study and research aimed to illuminate various possible contaminations between the French and Tuscan cultures, which may have acted as a crucial benchmark even for the experiences of the twentieth century.