The medieval Cassero in Prato hosts FAUNA , the solo exhibition of the painter Carlo Romiti , which can be visited with free access until 26 May (from Thursday to Sunday, from 4pm to 8pm).

With FAUNA , Romiti brings inside the Cassero, a symbolic place of order and power, his cosmogony of animals in the wild : horses, deer, dogs, wild boars - and some gaunt human beings - populate this space which becomes an allegory of the relationship between our contemporary civilization and the ecosystem of which we ourselves are part.

FAUNA appears, inside the Cassero, as a long wall fresco, with seventeen canvases three meters wide, in sequence: almost an immense Bayeux tapestry which celebrates the triumph of the indomitable nature and which calls to the eye of the profane, rock painting, but which is the result of careful anatomical studies, returned here by Romiti in an impetuous abstraction.

The painting on canvas is made with natural pigments, obtained by grinding the lands of the countryside between San Gimignano and Volterra , where Romiti lives, lands transformed into color with the same natural methods as in Cennino Cennini's Treatise on Painting . The canvases are displayed so that natural light illuminates them and allows a different enjoyment of the work depending on the time of day . At the center of the Cassero, there is also an installation with the earth used by Romiti to paint and branches "engraved" by the passage of wild boars, as if the medieval structure itself was a place of transit for the animals depicted on the walls.

Entering the Cassero di Prato, the path of FAUNA , almost a Platonian "cave" in reverse, leads the spectator to discover the truth that is hidden in the deepest and darkest part of the self: contemplating the neighs of horses and furious boars, heads of twisting bull and frightened human faces, he can feel part of the breath of a single immense fauna.