Italy

Largest exhibition ever of Mario Merz igloos to take over Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca space

Major loan show is based on 1985 display of the Italian artist organised by pioneering curator Harald Szeemann

Lawnews

Top experts dispute Italian police claims about seized ‘antiquities’

“I cannot imagine where a terracotta life-size horse head could come from in antiquity,” a specialist says

Lost artfeature

Lost art: Has Caravaggio’s long missing Nativity been found?

Noah Charney on the Carabinieri's efforts to track down the stolen painting

Venice analysis

Venice: a city at a cultural crossroads

As the Venice Architecture Biennale opens, the Venetian journalist Enrico Tantucci analyses culture in the city through the Biennale, historic buildings, the Accademia and the Arsenale

Italian museum discovers painting by Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna in its collection

The Accademia Carrara in Bergamo has re-attributed the 15th-century work Resurrection of Christ

Canada’s 1950s Venice Biennale pavilion gets a facelift

The upgrade to the Modernist building and its surrounding landscape has resulted in a new visitor route planned for the Giardini

Design or colour? Look to Titian

A shoestring trip to La Serenissima—and a thumbs-up for Simon Schama

New territory for Glenn Ligon with first solo show in Italy

US artist tries new techniques and tackles immigration in Naples exhibition

Top Italian museum director faces trial over gym visits

The director of the Galleria Borghese in Rome has been suspended without pay for leaving the office

Carsten Höller puts plant life to the test—with slides—at Palazzo Strozzi

The Belgian-born artist has devised experiment with Italian scientist Stefano Mancuso

Why Miart is starting to attract high-profile exhibitors

Galleries, benefitting from Milan's April buzz, are already reporting healthy sales

Italian far right wants to turn Fascist HQ into mega-museum

The Lega party—which may soon be in power—believes that Italy, through its culture, can lead the world

Milan's Fondazione Prada sheds light on Italy's Fascist past on eve of country's elections

Timing of mega-exhibition organised by Germano Celant is coincidental but timely

Fondazione Prada recreates 20 Italian exhibits made under Fascist rule

Show of more than 500 works ranges from Giorgio de Chirico to Gruppo 7

Foreign galleries make move on Italy

Thomas Dane is the latest in a string of galleries to open spaces in the country, but are there are enough high-level collectors to sustain them?

Venetian mega-exhibition aims to highlight plight of European craftsmanship

Homo Faber's initiative, focussing on artisanal techniques, will take over the entire Fondazione Giorgio Cini next autumn 

Turin exhibition dwells on contemporary art's futile obsession with the new

OGR's first show remixes the city's collections from antiquity to present, reflecting on the over production of contemporary art and the fact nothing is new

Back to the future: Artissima to champion 80s art and new talent

New director Ilaria Bonacossa introduces a drawings section and plans to return Turin fair to its experimental roots

Lorenzo Quinn to follow in Christo’s footsteps by creating work for Lake Iseo

Italian artist known for submerging a giant pair of hands in Venice’s Grand Canal plans to install the steel sculpture next year

Mosaic floor from Caligula’s ship returned to Italy

New York authorities tracked down the object, which was being used as a coffee table by a Manhattan couple, after a photograph appeared in a book on porphyry

What if Italy sold this 5,000-piece hoard of orphan antiquities?

Experts say the haul, the result of a 14-year investigation, could raise as much as €15m for the country’s cash-strapped archaeological service

Booksarchive

Antonio II Badile: An Italian Renaissance drawing collector and his family

Casting light on an overlooked but fascinating aspect of the Renaissance

More questions than answers after ‘miraculous’ Russian avant-garde show

Specialists express concern about lack of provenance for works by artists including Rodchenko and Goncharova in Italian exhibition

Digital access to Italian banks’ art

300,000 works owned by banks belonging to the Associazione Bancaria Italiana to become available to view online

Obituariesarchive

Obituary: Gae Aulenti

One of the few Italian women to achieve fame in architecture, not least for turning a train station into the Musée d’Orsay

Tourismarchive

Return of Morgantina Venus inspires Sicilian tourism enterprise

Public-private tourism partnership aims to make more of the island’s heritage.

Forgeriesarchive

Italian pop art forgery scandal widens as six more works are now being sought

Public prosecutor Giuseppe Ferrando pursues fakes tied to JZ Art gallery