Winner of the Premio Città delle Rose 2015

Fifty-two masterpieces times fifty-two stories: one of Italy’s most beloved narrators accompanies us in the discovery of her own personal “imaginary museum”.

From Fra Angelico to Francis Bacon, a voyage into an exceptional writer’s ideal museum.

Every painting, every work displayed in a church or gallery leaves a mark on those who look at it. It is the beginning of an adventure. Created out of faith, or money, or vocation or love, the works of art that Melania G. Mazzucco has not been able to forget embrace five continents, from antiquity to nowadays. Created as amulets, prayers or curses by men and women, hunters and witches, assassins and saints, illiterates and intellectuals, no real museum could ever contain them. An imaginary museum, however, might be up to the task.

Among the most beloved paintings, Mazzucco has selected fifty-two –“only works by artists worth spending time with” – and after a rigorous selection, she decided to recount them in her weekly Repubblica column over the course of a year. This volume gathers the stories and the images of these works that become presences, a mirror of thought, indelible emotion and sparks of the world’s meaning.