Giotto and Lucio Fontana in Dialogue at MAN Nuoro

The MAN museum in Nuoro, Sardinia, presents the exhibition "GIOTTO | FONTANA. Lo spazio d'oro" (Giotto | Fontana. The Golden Space), running from February 2024. The show juxtaposes the spatial innovations of Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337) and Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), exploring their shared concern with the representation of space and the symbolic use of gold. Curated by director Chiara Gatti, the exhibition features Giotto's "Due apostoli" (Two Apostles), first published by Miklós Boskovits in 2018 and dated to the mid-to-late 1320s, alongside Fontana's "Concetto spaziale" from the MART in Rovereto. The comparison highlights how Giotto broke with Byzantine and medieval traditions by transforming the gold ground from a symbol of divine transcendence into a tangible, atmospheric space, as seen in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1303–1305). Fontana, in turn, literalized this spatial breakthrough by physically perforating the canvas, creating actual holes and slashes that open onto an infinite dimension. The exhibition argues that both artists sought to materialize the immaterial, turning the gold ground into a medium for light and infinity. The show also references the writings of philosopher Massimo Cacciari and critic Georges Bataille to contextualize the artists' shared drive toward the absolute.