THE GARDEN PROJECT: Spring 2025. Restoring memories amidst the green

From March to May 2025, this programme of springtime events forms part of ‘The Garden Project’, organised by Il Palmerino Cultural Association and Calliope Arts Foundation, in conjunction with the British Institute of Florence, 2024-2027.

LECTURE. Elizabeth Von Arnim's Invisible Garden

March 11, 2025

Elizabeth Von Arnim, author of The Enchanted April pens a green space of her own.

Join us on, for a lecture in Italian at Il Palmerino Cultural Association. Landscapes and gardens recounted by the novelist will be reimagined through the eyes of noted landscape architect Maria Chiara Pozzana. 

Elizabeth Von Arnim (1866–1941) published her first book Elizabeth's Gerrman Garden in 1898, and it achieved immediate acclaim. A cousin to Katherine Mansfield, this Australian-born writer of English descent spent 18 years in Pomerania, following her marriage to German Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, the adoptive son of Cosima Wagner. Von Arnim's husband gave her permission to write, provided her real identity not be revealed. In addition to several initial successes, she produced 17 works in the 1920s and 1930s, of which The Enchanted April may be the most widely read.

Garden designer Maria Chiara Pozzana at work, ph. Tommaso Tarassi

March 13, 2025

VISIT. Il Palmerino: Garden and Estate Tour

Author Vernon Lee and painter Lola Costa made their home at Il Palmerino, the place they found their creative identity.

Join us at Il Palmerino (Via Il Palmerino 6) on Thursday, March 13 at 4.30pm for a tour of the Il Palmerino garden, estate and cultural association, as Federica Parretti, opens her home to visitors as part of the project: ‘A Florentine Garden: Early Women Expats and Artists of Today’. Federica is director of Il Palmerino’s namesake association and granddaughter of English-born painter and poet Lola Costa, who made her home there from 1935 to 2004.

Il Palmerino was also once home to English author Vernon Lee, who hosted a cultural salon there every Thursday, with top artists and intellectuals of her day, such as Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Janet Ross, Edith Wharton, Mary Cassatt, Ethel Smyth, as well as the likes of Henry James, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent. In 1935, Il Palmerino became the home of painters Lola Costa and Federigo Angeli, who built themselves a studio and began a painterly dialogue by responding to the same subjects in ways that reflected their individual artistic journeys. Federica and her family now run Il Palmerino as a country estate, artist residency programme and cultural association which hosts exhibitions, music concerts and other events – with a special focus on women’s creativity and emerging talents.

Il Palmerino estate, ph. Il Palmerino, Angeli-Parretti Family Archives

April 9, 2025

VISIT. Spring Garden Tour of ‘La Foce’ with Katia Lysy

La Foce manager Katia Lysy will accompany our guests through the garden of her family’s Tuscan estate, as she shares the ‘living memory’ of her grandmother, writer Iris Origo whose contributions to the Val d’Orcia endure on page and in the region’s landscape. The visit begins at 11am on April 9 2025. Participants will have the opportunity to enjoy the gardens featured in Katia's newest book 'La Foce: Paradise in Tuscany’, a photographic volume that celebrates the Origos’ ‘landscape-based labour of love' and shares memories of Iris Origo, well-known English-born author of War in Val D’Orcia, Images and Shadows, and A Chill in the Air, a posthumous work, edited by Katia herself.

La Foce estate from above, ph. courtesy of La Foce

May 2025

WORKSHOP. Grant for young painters to work with artist Marieluise Bantel

 at Atelier degli Artigianelli

Via degli Serragli 104, Florence

Marieluise Bantel instructing grant awardees, ph. Calliope Arts Archive

The Atelier degli Artigianelli, located in Florence’s Oltrarno, the city’s artisans district since the mid-1500s, hosts workshops and training courses with expert artists and artisans associated with paper-making. As a pre-exhibition educational project, two students, Maria Modesta from the University of Florence and Ksenija Kalezic from the University of Belgrade, were awarded grants to study and practice the Fabriano paper-making process alongside artist Marieluise Bantel, thanks to the instruction of the Artigianelli’s head conservator Beatrice Cuniberti and professional artisan Antonella Ielpo.

Used since medieval times, the process includes pulp preparation, vat work, mould dipping, couching, pressing and first-phase drying. The newly made paper is then subject to gelatine sizing using rabbit glue – which enables it to become a sturdy support for ink and paint without disintegrating. During final desiccation, the sheets were hung to dry, and later sanded and prepared with gesso primer, until they were ready for the artist’s brush. The paper was ultimately used by Bantel to create some of the works exhibited in her show Timeless, which bring together the results of the two awardees’ training programme, developed in collaboration with the Florentine atelier.