Italy

Major Raphael show in Rome returns for three-month run

Securing the loan extensions was “really easy” says director of the Scuderie del Quirinale

Italian museums start to reopen from today after €55bn lifeline from government

National spending package includes emergency support for state museums, arts organisations and cultural businesses

Explosion in chemicals factory threatens Venice with cloud of toxic smoke

The fire is now under control, but the mayor warns people to stay indoors and keep their windows closed

Museums in Belgium and Italy to reopen mid-May under phased lifting of lockdown

Belgian museum director says his institution is “ready to serve as a test room”

Pope Francis, his crucifix and the Virgin Mary: miraculous or merely traditional?

Art history removes the numinous from art. At the Vatican’s Covid-19 blessing we saw it invoked again

Inspired by Italy's spontaneous singing, museums commission artists to make 'balcony art' during coronavirus crisis

Fourteen artists have been asked by the L’Internationale museum group to participate in the project, which supports artists with "quick, modest commissions"

'Save Italian culture from suffocation': art world leaders sign petition calling for national art fund in the wake of coronavirus crisis

Signatories include leaders at Rome's MaXXI Museum and Venice’s civic museums as well as the artist Paola Pivi

Take a virtual tour of once-in-a-lifetime Raphael show in Rome that closed after four days due to coronavirus

Video is part of Italy's "Culture never stops!" initiative providing online access to cultural and heritage sites

Letter from Italy: the churches—open, but without services—are the only place to see art

The Art Newspaper's founder-editor Anna Somers Cocks on the impact of Covid-19 on Turin, where she is in lockdown

'Italy, I love you': Marina Abramovic releases moving video message during the coronavirus crisis

Performance artist says we "must learn a lesson" from the disaster of the pandemic in her contribution to Palazzo Strozzi's new digital project

Podcastspodcast

Coronavirus: dispatches from Italy and China

We speak to our journalists Anna Somers Cocks and Lisa Movius about their experiences of lockdown. Plus, we begin a new feature—Lonely Works—where we look at individual works of art that are now hanging unseen in galleries. Produced in association with Bonhams, auctioneers since 1793

Hosted by Ben Luke. with guest speakers Anna Somers Cocks, Lisa Movius and Bendor Grosvenor. Produced by Julia Michalska, David Clack and Aimee Dawson

'Stay home and stay together': Ai Weiwei offers coronavirus advice in new video

Chinese artist's video is part of Palazzo Strozzi's new digital project for users during lockdown

Vittorio Gregotti, the last modern architect of Venice, dies of coronavirus aged 92

He designed many prestigious buildings in Italy and internationally and led the visual arts section of the Venice Biennale twice in the 1970s

Venice canals appear cleaner amid coronavirus lockdown

Images of clearer water and returning wildlife to the Italian city are being posted on social media

Coronavirus in Italy: Ai Weiwei criticised for 'insensitive' pasta meme and Raphael blockbuster closes

An emergency decree means that all museums in the country are on lock down until 3 April

Coronavirus travel restrictions force Venice Architecture Biennale to postpone opening until August

The biennial's 17th edition will now only run for three months rather than six

Old Master scandal: Italy rejects European arrest warrant for painter connected to forgery case

Lino Frongia was arrested in September as part of a major investigation involving works purportedly by Lucas Cranach, Frans Hals, Parmigianino, Gentileschi and Bronzino

Coronavirus: Louvre closes while Italian museums reopen following government green light

Italian officials say cultural institutions can open to the public so long as they ensure “visitors respect a distance of at least a metre between each other”

Uffizi scientific committee resigns in dispute over Raphael loan

The committee had advised against moving Raphael’s portrait of Pope Leo X; the museum loaned it to Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale regardless

Catherine Hickley. with additional reporting by Hannah McGivern
Italynews

Steve Bannon wins again in battle against Italian ministry of culture

President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist wants to set up a nationalist bootcamp in an Italian monastery

Mass museum shutdown in northern Italy—including Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Fondazione Prada—as coronavirus spreads

Public and private institutions in Venice, Milan and Turin will stay closed for at least a week as more than 200 cases of Covid-2019 are confirmed

Italy hands Nazi-looted Renaissance sculpture from the Uffizi to Germany

Andrea della Robbia’s Mary Magdalene was acquired by Hermann Göring in 1941

For this week only: unrepeatable chance to see Raphael’s tapestries with Michelangelo’s ceiling

The Vatican Museums celebrate Raphael’s 500th anniversary by hanging his tapestries in the Sistine Chapel for which they were created

British dealer James Butterwick cleared of defamation for describing Russian Avant-garde works in Mantua exhibition as fake

Italian judge said his opinion of the 2013 show was based on his “proven and recognised competence and experience”

Uffizi wins legal battle against 'cybersquatter' owner of Uffizi.com domain name

The unofficial websites were used to sell tickets to the Florentine museum at inflated prices

Vast Fratelli Alinari photographic archive saved by Tuscan government

Tuscany has acquired agency collection and will create a new foundation in Florence to preserve its more than five million items

Film producer Roberto Cicutto replaces Paolo Baratta as Venice Biennale president

He will be overseeing the Italian city's art biennial as well as film, dance, theatre and music festivals

Booksreview

Born of hate and contempt, how the Bargello's extraordinary collection of medieval ivories came to be

Book tells the tale of how Italian museum amassed such a vast array of important sculptures thanks to Frenchman Louis-Claude Carrand

Culture ministry failed to vet right-wing religious group close to Steve Bannon

Decision to lease Italian medieval monastery to an organisation affiliated with President Trump’s former chief strategist is blamed on staff shortages