VIDEO | Art and INPS, in Tuscany the artistic and cultural heritage opens up to citizens

In Florence, at Palazzo Pazzi, the first event

FLORENCE – The INPS opens the doors of its artistic and cultural heritage, a highly respected excellence in Italy, to citizens. In Florence this means turning primarily towards the headquarters of Palazzo Pazzi, acquired by the organization in 1931, in via del Proconsolo, a piece clearly visible in its external forms, but not always so well known in the city and also in the external due to a sort of damnatio memoriae that affected the family of origin. The cause? A failed conspiracy in 1478 against the excessive power of the Medici family. Borrowing the words of the governor of Tuscany, Eugenio Giani, it could then be said that the national social security institute also contributes to rediscovering, in a positive way, the historical function of the building.

The chosen instrument is the ‘Heritage Excellence’ initiative which took place today in the city for the presentation of a documentary and a volume ’20 works for 20 regions’ dedicated to the artistic heritage. In the first volume, space monopolized by Tuscan masterpieces: among these the landscape paintings by Bresciani and Caponi, the Lucca countryside by Niccolò Codino but also the Maremma buttero by Tolomeo Faccendi.

“We start with this event, a conference divided into two sessions in which we tell the story of Palazzo Pazzi and Florence in the era of its construction and then we illustrate and talk about some works of art that are located throughout Tuscany in the our offices – the regional director of INPS Maurizio Emanuele Pizzicaroli explains to Dire – we do it with experts, art historians. We hope that this is only a first step, in fact we would like to dedicate special days also to school groups and in any case visits by citizens”.

Among the speakers, Claudio Paolini scientific director of the Roberto Longhi foundation who spoke on the Florence of the origins, Angela Orlandi professor of Economic History at Unifi who spoke about the economy of Renaissance Florence, the architect of the superintendence Hosea Scelza who focusing precisely on the architectural jewel of Palazzo Pazzi, Cristina Acidini, president of the Academy of Arts and Design of Florence. And precisely on the relationship between ‘INPS and art in Tuscany’, the title of today’s initiative, Pizzicaroli adds: “As a public body, even if we are a welfare body and we act on the social and economic development front, we have the duty to act on aspects of civil and cultural growth. Making our artistic heritage available to the public is an important operation. Then Palazzo Pazzi represents the history of Florence as well as of Italy given that the conspiracy that was orchestrated by the owners of this building marked the history of the city, but also of the entire Italian Renaissance“.

The reason for this commitment, comments the INPS communications director Diego De Felice who spoke on the ’20 works for 20 regions’ project, “is to raise awareness of the INPS cultural heritage, an institution that is now 126 years old, and to show citizens the accumulated heritage of pictorial and sculptural works of art, true heritage excellences. Tuscany is the richest region in this heritage. The publication was created together to our photographic center and to our colleagues who deal with audiovisuals. We present it to the city of Florence, to the Tuscany region but also to all citizens and all Italian colleagues”. On the other hand, De Felice specifies, “Inps has a great artistic heritage and we want to have a broader scope than the activities that are our core business“.