Ancient Italian masterpieces in desperate need of attention will soon be restored to their original glory, thanks to the enthusiasm of American art-lovers.
The United States is currently hosting two major travelling exhibitions devoted to Italian art, which are drawing large numbers of visitors and helping raise money for urgently needed conservation work.
Organized by a business based in the Tuscan city of Florence, Contemporanea Progetti, the initiative also seeks to spread awareness and knowledge among the American public about the significance and beauty of traditional Italian art.
The first exhibit, featuring an array of still lifes, has just opened in The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York, its final stop in a 14-month tour taking in six museums.
The 44 paintings are all originals from a collection that once belonged to the powerful Medici family, which dominated political and cultural life in Florence for several centuries.
The exhibition includes works by leading artists such as Jacopo da Empoli, Bartolomeo Bimbi and Bartolomeo Rigozzi, all fascinated by still lifes, which were a relatively new development in Western art at that time.
The exhibit's stops in the Rochester, New York and states of Virginia, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin have already helped fund the restoration of several paintings, now part of the new Still Life Museum that opened in Tuscany in June.
The second exhibition showcases 44 landscapes, on loan from Florence's prestigious Uffizi Museum.
While the first show is confined to older art, the second collection represents paintings from an array of periods, ranging from the Baroque explorations of Sandro Botticelli through to the futurist vision of Giacomo Balla.
The Botticelli contribution, his world-famous Adoration of the Magi, is expected to be the biggest crowd-puller, particularly as Christmas approaches.
This second exhibit opened in Alabama's Huntsville Museum of Art on November 18, after which it has a further four stops scheduled before the tour wraps up in Lubbock, Texas, in January 2009.
'Natura Morta, Still Life Painting. The Medici Collections' and 'Painting the Italian Landscape, Views from the Uffizi' are on respective show in Glens Falls and Huntsville until January 13.
