Tuscany Marvel in the new book published by Assouline

The new book by Cesare Cunaccia that speaks of the thousand marvellous faces of Tuscany

Tuscany, the inimitable land, the region of many souls and of unique landscapes from sea to mountains, extraordinary food, traditions, art and architecture. She - Tuscany - is the protagonist of a new book by author and journalist Cesare Cunaccia who, following the success of Capri Dolce Vita, has published a new book with Assouline in the form of Tuscany Marvel, presented on 12 June with a conversation between the author and Alessandro Preziosi under the lime trees at Andana, a resort in Castiglione della Pescaia. In the pages of this volume, studded with portraits and archive photos from the collections or family albums of prominent Tuscan families, we see a Tuscany that’s authentic and packed with wonder, “an oxymoron of a place, woven of extraordinary details”.

A coffee-table book to dream with, whose introduction lays out a free and insistent overview of the images that progress in a manner both melodic and evocative, sometimes playing with suggestion and similarity, sometimes focusing on unexpected dissonance. A journey among intimate and majestic places, views of squares and glimpses of nature, works of art or meaningful details, hotels and restaurants. The Crete Senesi hills, Val d’Orcia in autumn, after the harvest, the smooth sand of the Versilia coast and the beaches of Maremma, the tongue of mediterranean maquis that almost licks the Tyrrhenian Sea; but also wineries designed by star architects such as Studio Archea, Renzo Piano or Mario Botta. All this is frequently accompanied by a dreamy plot, made of patterns and colour combinations like those of Emilio Pucci, which are superimposed on Pontormo’s dazzling colours in his altarpiece for the Capponi chapel in the Florentine church of Sant Felicita. Then come the mysterious moods and vertiginous Baroque of Villa Chigi in Cetinale and the fascination of the Abbey of San Galgano, Andrej Tarkovskij’s inspiration for the film Nostalghia, which won him the prize for Best Director at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. Interspersed with the images are testimonials and contributions from Tuscan or Tuscany-related figures, from artists like Sandro Chia, Fernando Botero and Jeff Koons to the musical director of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Zubin Mehta; Laudomia Pucci and James Ferragamo to Duccio Corsini and master perfumier Lorenzo Villoresi.