Description
A celebration of restoration and art production, our Spring 2025 issue delves into the Innocenti Hospital’s historic archives, in search of stories and ‘tokens’ belonging to its girl foundlings; then, we revel in the before-and-after glory of eighteenth-century painter Violante Siriès Cerroti’s newly restored Reading Madonna – never published before. Florence’s Museo Sant’Orsola ushers our readers into the world of contemporary art production with three artists at work for the venue’s upcoming show: Mireille Blanc, Shubha Taparia and Cécile Davidovici.
In England, we meet Harriet Loffler, curator of Cambridge University’s Women’s Art Collection, and contemplate John Singer Sargent’s satin-clad ‘dollar princesses’ at Kenwood House, before venturing ‘Beyond Bloomsbury’, the Carrington exhibition at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery.
This issue of Restoration Conversations travels from the chestnut grove of farmer Miranda Tomatis, in ‘Women Who Save the Earth’, to Elizabeth Von Arnim’s turn-of-the-twentieth-century garden in the mind of modern-day garden designer Maria Chiara Pozzana. Flavia Arlotta’s family share ‘Inner Gardens’ at the painter’s historic home, and author Katia Lysy recounts what it took for writer Iris Origo and her husband Antonio to grow a ‘Paradise in Tuscany’.
We are transported from the Neolithic Age, to a world without stars, thanks to cosmologist Roberto Trotta’s book Starborn, before finding ourselves amidst the pages of Days of Light, through author Megan Hunter’s ‘personal reflections’ on her forthcoming novel, liberally inspired by artist Vanessa Bell and her daughter Angelica Garnett.
