Jacopo Veneziani's 'Simmetrie' pairs old masters with modernists

Jacopo Veneziani's book 'Simmetrie. Osservare l’arte di ieri con lo sguardo di oggi' (Rizzoli, 2021) proposes anachronistic comparisons between historical and modern artworks, arguing that understanding the present is necessary to interpret the past. He aligns with Georges Didi-Huberman's approach, who linked Jackson Pollock to Fra Angelico's 'Madonna delle Ombre' (1440-1450) at San Marco, Florence. Veneziani pairs Rosso Fiorentino's 'Deposizione dalla Croce' (1521) with Henri Matisse's 'Ritratto di madame Matisse' (1905), and Gustave Caillebotte's 'Strada di Parigi in un giorno di pioggia' (1887) with Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks' (1942), focusing on non-communication and social isolation. Other pairings include Masaccio and Lucio Fontana, Caspar David Friedrich and Mark Rothko, Paolo Uccello and Marcel Duchamp, Charles Le Brun and Egon Schiele, James McNeill Whistler and Piet Mondrian, Johannes Vermeer and René Magritte, the Maestro del trionfo della morte and Pablo Picasso, and Francisco Goya and Hilma af Klint. The book is 175 pages, €22.90, ISBN 9788891831545.