Foreword

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:59:20 +0000
Num. 3

Having come to the third issue of the magazine, and encouraged by the succès d'estime accorded it, we should like to draw readers' attention to Andrea Emiliani's article on the forthcoming exhibition organized by the Fondazione, La leggenda del collezionismo. Quadrerie storiche ferraresi, an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of one of the periods of our history that has attained recognition on a European level, and even beyond.
Ferrara, its culture, and its extraordinary artistic heritage are all reflected in the story of those collections and their irreplaceable works, while the story of art collecting itself bears witness to how the city's intellectual and artistic heritage spilled over to extend throughout the variegated history of western civilization. Ranieri Varese's article on Giacomo Bargellesi's collection of drawings is also concerned with this European aspect of Ferrara's cultural vocation.

But this issue - dedicated ever more explicitly to Ferrara's role as a great capital of art, as illustrated in the article by Adriano Cavicchi on Renaissance and Baroque theatre, Cibotto's piece on Garofalo's house, and Grazietta Butazzi's refined and unusual essay on Beatrice d'Este as a fashion designer - also deals with another of the city's proudest boasts: salama da sugo, a culinary masterpiece already celebrated in print and on television by Mario Soldati that has now - in the person of that impassioned scholar of cultural traditions who is Valerio Riva - found another poet and connoisseur.

The international character of Ferrara's production of culture is also underlined by two brief pieces on the exhibition held in Casa Cini and entitled Libri e collezioni d'arte, which will complement the exhibition on art collecting, and the major conferences on Torquato Tasso scheduled for December.
The fundamental nature of the links between culture and economics is reiterated by Luigi Abete, whose article confirms the importance of a concept taken very much to heart by the Fondazione, whose strategy for 1996 includes major investments to restore, conserve, and promote our cultural and artistic heritage.