La sottilità dell'aria. Arezzo and its territory in the Alinari archives.

The exhibition " La sottilità dell'aria. Arezzo and its Territory in the Alinari Archives", set up in the Casa Museo Ivan Bruschi, opens a photographic window on a hundred years of history of the Arezzo area, from 1856 to 1954.

A selection of shots, starts from the monumental work of documentation of the Italian cultural heritage carried out by Alinari and Brogi, self-described "editorial photographers", through which to tell about the lands of Arezzo, art, landscape and work.

The exhibition also features photographs by Aurelio Monteverde and Vincenzo Balocchi that tell the story of the Arezzo area and its people through a completely different set of eyes.

What emerges is a variegated social landscape made up of valleys bordered by hilly arches and elevated mountains, punctuated by medieval artistic relics, with an economy predominantly based on agriculture and the start of important industrial initiatives. A land of farmers, washerwomen, shepherds, monks, men and women of ingenious industriousness.

Wide and varied horizons and vivid traces of a long history of creativity: that subtility of the air to which Michelangelo, joking with Vasari, attributed his own ingenuity.
Hence Michelangelo reasoning with Vasari once in jest said, "Giorgio, s' i' ho nulla di buono nell'ingegno, egli è venuto dal nascere nella sottilità dell'aria del vostro paese d'Arezzo (Giorgio, if I have anything good in ingenuity, he came from being born in the subtility of the air of your town of Arezzo). [Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, Florence, 1568.]

The exhibition is divided into four sections and consists of 56 photographic prints, as well as digital reproductions of the album Miniere di lignite del Valdarno, also from the Alinari Archives.

This is the first in a series of exhibitions that the Alinari Foundation plans to dedicate to Tuscan cities.

The exhibition is organized by the Ivan Bruschi Foundation part of Intesa Sanpaolo Heritage, in collaboration with the Alinari Foundation for Photography, and with the contribution of the MINE Museum - Museum of Mines and Territory in Cavriglia (AR).