Independent, precursors, revolutionaries. The young Macchiaioli, artists gathered in Florence in the mid-19th century around the Caffè Michelangelo in an artistic movement that was fundamental for the birth of modern art, are the protagonists of the exhibition " The Macchiaioli and plein air painting between France and Italy" , at the National Historical Museum of Artillery - Mastio della Cittadella in Turin, from 3 February to 1 April. 

Produced by Navigare srl, with the patronage of the Piedmont Region and the City of Turin and the collaboration of AICS, the exhibition curated by the art historian Simona Bartolena is hosted in the structure entrusted to Difesa Servizi, the subsidiary of the Ministry of Defense which deals the valorisation of the assets of the Dicastery, including the military museum heritage to disseminate the culture of Defense also through cultural activities such as exhibitions.

The exhibition of pictorial works, in oils and watercolours, coming from private collections and from the Palazzo Foresti collection in Carpi, brings together around 90 paintings by 30 mainly Italian artists, with some works by French painters such as Troyon, Rousseau, Daubigny, Dupré, Millet and Corot. The presence of artists from beyond the Alps together with Italians such as, among others, Fattori, Cabianca, Signorini, De Tivoli and Boldini, intends to highlight the close relationship that young Italian artists established with French art. In a seminal dialogue for the birth of impressionist painting, although initially observed with a critical sense by some Macchiaioli, a different way of making art was established, through a technical-stylistic revolution in which light and color become the main references, together to the anti-academic choice of plein air painting.

The exhibition, divided into 10 themes, proposes a rereading of the Macchia movement, articulating a path that recounts its evolution in the European and Italian context, its relationships with the realism of plein air painting of the French Barbizon school, those with the landscape painters of the Neapolitan school, in the exhibition represented in particular by the brothers Giuseppe and Filippo Palizzi and, again, the relationships with the School of Rivara, in Piedmont, where the Royal House of Savoy encouraged landscape painting of which the founder was Antonio Fontanesi, also he present at the exhibition in Turin.

The other themes of the exhibition also focus on the art of caricature to which the young artists of the Caffè Michelangelo in Florence dedicated themselves, the first literary café in the Tuscan city, born in the midst of the Risorgimento in 1848. The exhibition itinerary gives the opportunity to admire various caricatural works, such as those by Telemaco Signorini, Angiolo Tricca, Eugenio Cecconi and Vito D'Ancona, to name a few.