Of Susanna Daniele
PISTOIA – In the large room on the first floor of Villa Puccini in Scornio on Thursday 18 April, Professor Giovanni Capecchi presented the volume “Niccolò Puccini and the dream of the Risorgimento”, published by Methylene. The texts are edited by the art historian Laura Dominici, the numerous photos accompanying the publication by various authors.
The mayor of Pistoia has announced that the Administration is attempting to include the Puccini Park among the number of Italian historic gardens.
Professor Giovanni Capecchi introduced the work by highlighting how the Dossier Pistoia art series, of which the volume on Puccini is the fourth, manages to combine scientific rigor with dissemination even for non-experts and for a non-Italian public , thanks to the double text in English. He hopes that the agile volume can contribute to bringing students and citizens in general closer to discovering the figure of Niccolò Puccini, the structure of the villa and the characteristics of the romantic park and the works that decorate it.
Capecchi then went on to trace the complex, multifaceted and even contradictory figure of Niccolò: a client of artists, committed on a social, economic, philanthropic and intellectual level, who for years maintained a close correspondence with some of the most important men of letters of his time.
He was responsible for many institutions that operated in the city for many years: the Cassa di Risparmio, the Via Bolognese project, the Porrettana railway. Puccini is also remembered as a fervent supporter of the unification of Italy, which for age reasons (he died in 1852) he was unable to see.
A curiosity revealed by Laura Dominici: the villa was equipped with an underground escape route that exited towards the current Via di Valdibrana and a sighting system from the turret on the roof which could transmit messages inside through a system of pipes in the walls of the villa in order to protect the guests and himself from incursions by the grand ducal police who were keeping him under surveillance on suspicion of subversive activities.
At the end of the presentation, Laura Dominici offered those present a guided tour of the visitable rooms of the villa, now home to the music school, illustrating in particular the pictorial decorations.
