“Americans in Florence” Exhibit Celebrates Italian-American Connections At Palazzo Strozzi

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci, Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi Foundation celebrates the connections between Italy and America in the “Americans in Florence: Sargent and the American Impressionists” exhibit, open daily through July 15.
 
Curated by Francesca Bardazzi and Carlo Sisi, the exhibit showcases works from American painters who spent time in Italy at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The work of John Singer Sargent, who was born in Florence in 1856, features prominently, including his evocative Hotel Room (1904-1906) and portraits of Henry James (1916) and Vernon Lee (1881).
 
Members of the American Impressionist group known as the Ten American Painters, including William Merrit Chase and Federick Childe Hassam, as well as Mary Cassat and Elihu Vedder, a pioneer of landscape painting in that era, are represented. The exhibition consists primarily of proto-impressionists, who learned the modern Italian painting techniques and inspired future generations of American painters.
 
These artists were part of an intellectual community of Americans in Florence that also incorporated prominent writers, including Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, and Henry James, many of whom are show in portraits in the second room of the exhibit, entitled “Americans in Florence”.
 
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation has coordinated artistic, literary, and historical tour itineraries for visitors of locations where these American artists lived, worked, and met in Florence and the countryside.