To think of Italian artwork is to think of the Renaissance. Supported by the Pope and the powerful Medici family, the arts flourished during the 14the through the 16th centuries. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, these are the artists whose names inspire awestruck reverence. Florence became the art capital of the world.

France gave us Impressionism in the 19th century, beginning a secular age in art. The modern period of Picasso and Matisse followed. Both men achieved the fame previously held by Renaissance artists and Paris became the art capital of the world during the 19th century and midway into the 20th century.

Meanwhile back in Italy, an artist was quietly building his oeuvre and teaching drawing in his hometown of Bologna. Giorgio Morandi, with his somber tonalist still lifes somehow managed to claim attention and achieve a reputation away from the clamor of Paris. He also earned rankings as the greatest modern painter in Italy and the master of the still life in the 20th century.

Morandi was influenced by another Italian, Giorgio de Chirico, whose paintings depicted a brooding surrealism. Nevertheless he is often compared with Giotto, a pre-Renaissance painter of childlike simplicity. The paintings of Morandi, unembellished still lifes of ordinary bottles, evoke the architecture of Italy, especially that of medieval Bologna.

The adage less is more is the mainstay of the Morandi conceptual framework. With a muted hue structure, a lack of technical trickery such as reflections and special effects, his bottles are reduced to straightforwardness. With no personal significance given to his objects, he reduces the work further into abstraction. With all narrative removed, we are left with an entrenched spiritual component.

Visiting Italy, one can be overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Renaissance art. Take a trip off the beaten path and visit the Morandi Museum in Bologna for some quiet aesthetic rumination. There is nothing of importance to understand, no commanding history to learn. Only a gentle acknowledgment that the simple, the ordinary, in the hands of a gifted artist, speaks to the soul as Italian artwork has for centuries. Read more about: Italian Artwork