The Sky Original docu-series Grand Tour. Viaggio in Italia travels the peninsula from north to south to discover the landscape and art treasures though the eyes of travellers from the past. The perspective is that of the foreign artists, intellectuals and nobles who undertook this journey of cultural and emotional initiation from the end of the 17th century onwards. Actor Alessandro Sperduti hoists his bag on his back and takes viewers on six unforgettable stops of the Grand Tour which demonstrate that Italy has conserved its primacy intact.
The first episode opens on the spectacular alpine landscapes of the Monceniusio Pass, considered by travellers in past centuries to be the gateway to Italy.
The destination is Venice, a city that was appreciated not only because of its precarious balance of water and land but also for its fame as a city of pleasure and music where tourists would buy paintings by Canaletto and other landscape painters as keepsakes. European artists, like El Greco, would head to Venice to study the Venetian school masterpieces of colour in the Galleries of the Accademia, and also the mosaics in St. Mark’s Basilica, which enthralled Dostoevskij for hours and inspired Gustav Klimt. The lapping of canal water echoes in the words of Proust and Mann, in William Turner’s Venetian paintings and the monumental installation by Anselm Kiefer at the Palazzo Ducale.
The journey continues down the Brenta river, following in Goethe’s footsteps, to end in Vicenza in the rooms of the Gallerie d'Italia, where the 18th century paintings linked to the Grand Tour and Francesco Bertos’ spectacular sculpture, La caduta degli angeli ribelli are displayed.
Alessandro Sperduti gets lost in the marble quarries of the Apuan Alps following in the footsteps of the legendary Michelangelo, as did so many of his contemporaries who left behind sculptures that have shaped the urban geography of Pietrasanta.
The focus of the episode is, however, Florence, an obligatory stop on the Grand Tour from the 1800s onwards. Sperduti visits Michelangelo’s Sagrestia Nuova which influenced the art of Auguste Rodin, stops to contemplate the Basilica of Santa Croce whose beauty profoundly affected Stendhal and shows how Botticelli’s was an important model for the Pre Raphaelite painters.
In the city, the cosmopolitan Gabinetto Vieusseux in Palazzo Strozzi was much frequented by the English and Americans, while the hills of Fiesole and the Tuscan countryside inspired artists and painters.
The desirable destination for travellers and tourists was the Eternal City, where they would get lost in the classical architecture, Renaissance style and Baroque splendour. This episode shows the remains of Ancient Rome, Raphael’s frescos at Villa Farnesina and the countryside of Lazio dotted with archaeological ruins.
Rome was key to personalities such as Henry James, Diego Velazquez, Renoir and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The American painter Cy Twombly, whose ashes are conserved in Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, found Rome so familiar that he would wander the Colosseum barefoot. Claude Lorrain meanwhile was fascinated by the countryside in the Agro Romano and the waterfalls of Tivoli, which became the subject of many of his paintings. Joseph Kosuth lived in Roma for 15 years, preferring the timeless atmosphere of the Dolce Vita to New York modernity.
Alessandro Sperduti opens the fourth episode from the peak of mount Vesuvius, the symbol of Naples whose presence dominates the city which inspired Andy Warhol to return to brush painting.
The Parthenopean city, with the vivacity of its alleys, the sparkle of the sea and the immensity of its volcano, was a strong influence of international art.
Spanish master Jusepe de Ribera, whose works can be seen in the Museo di Capodimonte, stayed in the city in the 1600s where he was influenced by Caravaggio who painted his last painting here: the Martyrdom of St. Ursula, which hangs in the new seat of the Gallerie d'Italia in via Toledo. Picasso was also so deeply marked by the turbulence of Neapolitan life and by the frescoes of Pompeii that he shifted from Cubism to works of neoclassical inspiration.
The episode ends at the Reggia di Caserta, where the “Terrae Motus” collection hangs, the artistic response to the 1980 earthquake by some of the most international artists of the 1980s, from Joseph Beuys to Robert Rauschenberg.
Sicily, so praised by Goethe, stars in the 5th episode. Sperduti starts his exploration of the island in Palermo, where the Flemish painter Van Dyck came in 1624 and met the by then elderly Sofonisba Anguissola, before immortalising the iconography of the patron Saint Rosa in his paintings. Walking through the amazing rooms of Palazzo Butera, amidst the rare plants in the park and the Arab-Norman buildings, Sperduti talks about the other great masters who were won over by the charm of the island landscapes, from Paul Klee to Maurits Cornelis Escher, and the young artists who still today come here in search of a more authentic life, from Paris or London.
After venturing into the centre of the island, he visits the Valley of Temples in Agrigento and then goes to Taormina where Oscar Wilde, following his imprisonment for homosexuality found an oasis of tolerance and communion with nature.
Alessandro Sperduti arrives in Genoa by sea, like Maupassant on his yacht “Bel-Ami”. He admires the noble palaces that conquered the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, who created the first Baroque altarpiece in Genoa conserved in the Chiesa del Gesù. His pupil, Antoon Van Dyck, would later define the contemporary portrait with his paintings of Genoese nobles. The labyrinth of caruggi in the historical centre fascinated writers like Henry James e Mark Twain.
The journey continues in the wake of that enchantment that the Ligurian riviera has always sparked, as it does still today, especially in a painter. He tells us how Monet spent three months in Bordighera working on his style; Kandinsky transformed the nature of the landscapes of Rapallo in his studies, the chosen spiritual retreat for Ezra Pound too. Meanwhile, Asger Jorn transformed his home in Albissola Marina into a work of art, working with traditional local ceramics.
The Sky Original docu-series Grand Tour. Viaggio in Italia travels the peninsula from north to south to discover the landscape and art treasures though the eyes of travellers from the past. The perspective is that of the foreign artists, intellectuals and nobles who undertook this journey of cultural and emotional initiation from the end of the 17th century onwards. Actor Alessandro Sperduti hoists his bag on his back and takes viewers on six unforgettable stops of the Grand Tour which demonstrate that Italy has conserved its primacy intact.
The first episode opens on the spectacular alpine landscapes of the Monceniusio Pass, considered by travellers in past centuries to be the gateway to Italy.
The destination is Venice, a city that was appreciated not only because of its precarious balance of water and land but also for its fame as a city of pleasure and music where tourists would buy paintings by Canaletto and other landscape painters as keepsakes. European artists, like El Greco, would head to Venice to study the Venetian school masterpieces of colour in the Galleries of the Accademia, and also the mosaics in St. Mark’s Basilica, which enthralled Dostoevskij for hours and inspired Gustav Klimt. The lapping of canal water echoes in the words of Proust and Mann, in William Turner’s Venetian paintings and the monumental installation by Anselm Kiefer at the Palazzo Ducale.
The journey continues down the Brenta river, following in Goethe’s footsteps, to end in Vicenza in the rooms of the Gallerie d'Italia, where the 18th century paintings linked to the Grand Tour and Francesco Bertos’ spectacular sculpture, La caduta degli angeli ribelli are displayed.
Alessandro Sperduti gets lost in the marble quarries of the Apuan Alps following in the footsteps of the legendary Michelangelo, as did so many of his contemporaries who left behind sculptures that have shaped the urban geography of Pietrasanta.
The focus of the episode is, however, Florence, an obligatory stop on the Grand Tour from the 1800s onwards. Sperduti visits Michelangelo’s Sagrestia Nuova which influenced the art of Auguste Rodin, stops to contemplate the Basilica of Santa Croce whose beauty profoundly affected Stendhal and shows how Botticelli’s was an important model for the Pre Raphaelite painters.
In the city, the cosmopolitan Gabinetto Vieusseux in Palazzo Strozzi was much frequented by the English and Americans, while the hills of Fiesole and the Tuscan countryside inspired artists and painters.
The desirable destination for travellers and tourists was the Eternal City, where they would get lost in the classical architecture, Renaissance style and Baroque splendour. This episode shows the remains of Ancient Rome, Raphael’s frescos at Villa Farnesina and the countryside of Lazio dotted with archaeological ruins.
Rome was key to personalities such as Henry James, Diego Velazquez, Renoir and Johann Joachim Winckelmann. The American painter Cy Twombly, whose ashes are conserved in Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, found Rome so familiar that he would wander the Colosseum barefoot. Claude Lorrain meanwhile was fascinated by the countryside in the Agro Romano and the waterfalls of Tivoli, which became the subject of many of his paintings. Joseph Kosuth lived in Roma for 15 years, preferring the timeless atmosphere of the Dolce Vita to New York modernity.
Alessandro Sperduti opens the fourth episode from the peak of mount Vesuvius, the symbol of Naples whose presence dominates the city which inspired Andy Warhol to return to brush painting.
The Parthenopean city, with the vivacity of its alleys, the sparkle of the sea and the immensity of its volcano, was a strong influence of international art.
Spanish master Jusepe de Ribera, whose works can be seen in the Museo di Capodimonte, stayed in the city in the 1600s where he was influenced by Caravaggio who painted his last painting here: the Martyrdom of St. Ursula, which hangs in the new seat of the Gallerie d'Italia in via Toledo. Picasso was also so deeply marked by the turbulence of Neapolitan life and by the frescoes of Pompeii that he shifted from Cubism to works of neoclassical inspiration.
The episode ends at the Reggia di Caserta, where the “Terrae Motus” collection hangs, the artistic response to the 1980 earthquake by some of the most international artists of the 1980s, from Joseph Beuys to Robert Rauschenberg.
Sicily, so praised by Goethe, stars in the 5th episode. Sperduti starts his exploration of the island in Palermo, where the Flemish painter Van Dyck came in 1624 and met the by then elderly Sofonisba Anguissola, before immortalising the iconography of the patron Saint Rosa in his paintings. Walking through the amazing rooms of Palazzo Butera, amidst the rare plants in the park and the Arab-Norman buildings, Sperduti talks about the other great masters who were won over by the charm of the island landscapes, from Paul Klee to Maurits Cornelis Escher, and the young artists who still today come here in search of a more authentic life, from Paris or London.
After venturing into the centre of the island, he visits the Valley of Temples in Agrigento and then goes to Taormina where Oscar Wilde, following his imprisonment for homosexuality found an oasis of tolerance and communion with nature.
Alessandro Sperduti arrives in Genoa by sea, like Maupassant on his yacht “Bel-Ami”. He admires the noble palaces that conquered the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, who created the first Baroque altarpiece in Genoa conserved in the Chiesa del Gesù. His pupil, Antoon Van Dyck, would later define the contemporary portrait with his paintings of Genoese nobles. The labyrinth of caruggi in the historical centre fascinated writers like Henry James e Mark Twain.
The journey continues in the wake of that enchantment that the Ligurian riviera has always sparked, as it does still today, especially in a painter. He tells us how Monet spent three months in Bordighera working on his style; Kandinsky transformed the nature of the landscapes of Rapallo in his studies, the chosen spiritual retreat for Ezra Pound too. Meanwhile, Asger Jorn transformed his home in Albissola Marina into a work of art, working with traditional local ceramics.
