“WINE AND ART: THE WAYS TO DRINK” – INCISIONS AND PRINTS OWNED BY FERRUCCIO FERRAGAMO ON SHOW AT THE DEL BORRO ESTATE IN SAN GIUSTINO VALDARNO. WORKS BY FLEMISH ARTISTS FROM THE 1600’S, MANTEGNA, AND SPAGNOLETTO…

The pair “wine and art” have found a new space in the wine cellar of the Il Borro Estate in San Giustino Valdarno with an incredible exhibition of 70 rare works from the private collection of Ferruccio Ferragamo, one of the top names in the Italian fashion industry. “The Florentine antiquarian Marco Ceri proposed the first prints to me” – explained Ferragamo – “I willingly bought them, and from there began the collection gathered at markets and antique fairs throughout Europe”.
Wine, as well as being an inebriating drink, also represents a symbolic aggregating and festive force, a gift given to men by the gods - that can elevate or turn both men and gods into animals. And it is precisely these “ways of drinking” the theme of this exhibition.
The prints on show (chosen by curator Martina Becattini, expert in oriental art at the Stibbert Museum of Florence) guide the observer through the multiple human passions, relations, and traditions in which art, in the past being a vehicle of recounting events, has transformed into an instrument of privileged observation for contemporary spectators.

The voyage is, “a course of great fascination and grand harmony, even with the many different hands that are present”, explained Becattini, and begins with the simple daily life portrayed by the Flemish painters of the 1600’s like, for example, David Teniers il Giovane, Gabriel Metsu or Jacob Jordaens, and then moves on to the British bourgeois of the XVIII and XIX century. In the prints by Borro, wine is depicted as a democratic drink that is poured into the luxurious cups of the rich as well as into the lurid cups of the poor, which can make the first act like derelicts and the second rise to levels of poetry and art. Wine is, therefore, a social equalizer and a key to passing to a higher level of existence.

Among the “ways of drinking”, one of the main themes is the opposition between times during festivities when drinking is permitted for all and that of daily life in which wine becomes a faithful companion to sip slowly and intimately during cold winter evenings or as a restorative after a long, hard day at work.

Ambiguity is that which characterizes the different “ways of drinking” and its divine creator, Dionysus, is also derived from this same ambiguity. The two splendid incisions by Mantegna (also the fulcrum of the show) are a perfect example of this, demonstrating a drunken god, overcome by his own drink, as well as a triumphant god on a sumptuous cart.
The Il Borro Estate, once the property of Amedeo d’Aosta and, before that, the Pazzi family, the Medici and the Hohenloe, is a luxurious 700 hectare estate that has belonged to the Ferragamo family since 1993. Its name comes from the gullies (borro in Italian) that characterize the terrain, and the resulting yellow colored rocky crests that were formed one million years ago. Located in the municipality of San Giustino Valdarno, at the foot of Mount Pratomagno, it is made up of an ancient village where a group of artisans have returned to work, and by the landlord’s villa where the wine cellar is located and in which the show is on exhibition.

The show will run until May 31 and can be visited on Wednesdays by reservation (tel. 055 9772921).

Giovanni Paris