Margreta Moss is a journalist, historian, art critic and lecturer. Born in Florence, where she graduated in classical studies and gained a PhD in Mathematics, Margreta has also worked in Italy, the USA, Venezuela, Australia, Borneo, Middle East and, since 1993, in London, where she currently lives. She is a member of the Amerigo Vespucci a Casa Sua Committee and the Toscana-USA Association as well as head of the Fiorentini nel Mondo Association in the United Kingdom.
On September 14 at Florence’s Accademia del Disegno e delle Arti, the Fiorentini nel Mondo Association awarded its annual coveted prize for sonorous arts to Maestro Stefano Burbi for his past, present and future achievements. A symphony himself, Stefano Burbi is impetuous and passionate, tender and soothing like the […]
For Michelangelo, there was nothing to celebrate. Five hundred years ago, Pope Leo X forced him to leave his beloved Carrara and find new quarries in the impenetrable surroundings of Pietrasanta and Seravezza to extract marble for the façade of Florence’s San Lorenzo Basilica. Michelangelo was a stubborn man and strenuously opposed the papal decision, […]
Fancy those reddish tiles on roofs that make Italian towns and villages so picturesque? Or those elegant orange and lemon vases which dot their Renaissance gardens? Both of these essential Italian elements are made of cotto, a type of traditional brick tile, which in Tuscany is practically synonymous with Impruneta. A must for Chianti lovers, […]
500 years have passed since Michelangelo forged his marble road, extending from Seravezza to the heel of the Trambiserra and Cappella quarries. One of the many roads crossing the Apuan Alps, it is imbued with a legacy that has shaped the character of all towns in Alta Versilia. That character is as hard as the […]
This is not Radio Ga Ga: Filippo Baglini is serious on radio power and his London One Radio has yet to have its finest hour. There are 250,000 Italians in London, give or take. It’s not a “merging amalgamated” community, but it is nevertheless an audience to be reckoned with. Three years ago, an enterprising […]
Sandro Botticelli was the creator of complex allegories: it’s no wonder that his Birth of Venus, like Michelangelo’s David, has been reinterpreted and re-presented in every possible form by artists down the centuries. With its latest exhibition, “Botticelli Reimagined”, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London strives to mix modern interpretations of the Florentine painter’s […]
With family roots in Chianti, born in Florence and educated in Lucca, Pisa and Bologna, botanist Odoardo Beccari (1843–1920) spent what must have been a heady several months at the Royal Botanic Gardens before heading to Indonesia. While at Kew Gardens, he met not only botanists William and James Hooker but also Charles […]
When, a century ago, the National Gallery in London bought an impressive altarpiece, the Assumption of the Virgin, it was thought to be by Botticelli. But it turned out to be by Francesco Botticini (1446–98)—an esteemed colleague of Botticelli, as well as Filippo Lippi, Verrocchio and
