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Violante Siriès’ success in a changing art market An interview with Giulia Coco by Linda Falcone Originally published in Restoration Conversations Issue 8 Autumn/Winter 2025   Maria Theresa of Austria’s husband Francis Stephan decided to stay in Vienna with his wife in 1737, despite being proclaimed head of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.  Europe’s more powerful states had refused to recognise Anna Maria Luisa, the last of the Medici line, as the territory’s legitimate ruler, bec

Personal Reflections on Sarah Cecilia Harrison By Anne Chisholm   In the tall house in Hampstead where I grew up hung a number of large, dark portraits in gold frames. The only one that caught my eye was that of a beautiful dark-haired woman, her lips parted, wearing a slightly decollete black dress. My mother told me that it was a portrait of my Irish grandmother, Eliza Beatrice Harrison, painted for her engagement to my English grandfather, Hugh Chisholm, by her younger sis

German botanical artist Marieluise Bantel comes to Il Palmerino with a new exhibition that celebrates the many phases of flowers

Vanessa Nicolson, Carla Danella, Anne Chisholm, Sarah Cecilia Harrison, Suzanne Valadon and more... Press the image to flip through Autumn Winter 2025/6 This issue of Restoration Conversations  explores modern and contemporary art and film from women’s perspectives, with several thought-provoking shows, like ‘MARY MARY’ (quite contrary) at The Artist’s Garden and ‘Ketty La Rocca: you you’, the Estorick Collection’s retrospective on the Italian conceptual artist. In Florence,

Shubha Taparia and Cécile Davidovici at Museo Sant'Orsola, 'Beyond Bloomsbury, with Carrington and more... Press the image to flip through Spring 2025 A celebration of restoration and art production, our Spring 2025 issue delves into the Innocenti Hospital’s historic archives, in search of stories and ‘tokens’ belonging to its girl foundlings; then, we revel in the before-and-after glory of eighteenth-century painter Violante Siriès Cerroti’s newly restored Reading Madonna –

Lola Costa, Vernon Lee, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf... 'a garden of one's own' at Il Palmerino Cultural Association in Florence