Loud and clear: a language that does not know the sharp cadence of the velar sound is, necessarily, the language of a people which has already in its phonetics renounced violence of every origin. Thus it is for the language of the Tuscans which, just by listening to it, has always preferred a gentle shimmering of the breath to the sombre sound of the hardening of the glottis - never breathlessness, but the melancholy inspiration of a sigh which already in speech aspires to dream, or to memory, to gentle hills in the light of dawn, to shady clefts of vines, the sweet bouquet of a ruby-red Brunello, to the soft profile, without any further cuts, of the gelid stones in the water of the Arno in the morning. It is not surprising then that from that discourse, to which every hardening of the occlusive is alien, the Tuscan attitude - how can we put it? - to "polite expression" has transformed itself over the centuries in this land, into a widespread feeling. A politeness which comes from the people most of all. And you realise it when, just as I who have had the good fortune to live in the serene countryside for a good part of the year (and always for too short a time), after a while return, and you don't even have time to enjoy it there before you start missing, forgetting, each time, how much of the Tuscan is not just the polite accent but the glance, the action, the movement. A feeling which, more than ever, appears impressed already into the same natural conformation of the region: the profile of the hills in Chianti, the Siena countryside, which in the early morning the melancholy of a rag of fog dampens like a fable, and the wide open horizons around Arezzo, and the sinuous and slow flow of the Florentine river. Even the flora appears to be taking part in this melancholy, only rarely meeting the knotty suffering of the olives or bare clearings, more likely instead the tapering safety of the cypress that marks, as a reminder of what we are, with its unique, courteous authority, the blue of the countryside. So it is. Or should we perhaps understand as the effect of a simple bizarre coincidence that, in the painting of the great Tuscan Paolo Uccello, round and breathless are in fact the solemn advance of the armies and the clash of battle and all the men (even in the broken strife of the struggle) and the courteous scenarios of Central Italy? A thousand poets and a thousand artists born in Tuscany have narrated this sentiment which delights in its grace. Try and ask an Englishman. He might give up his afternoon tea. Or any glory of his ancient Empire. But not his idea of Tuscany. Which is also mine. Apologetic, I admit. Pure apology. But you have to live here to see what I mean. And to understand it.
I know. Someone could perhaps ask me: excuse me, isn't the unequalled violence of expression of the 'Sommo Poeta' Tuscan? Oh. Of course. Dante. How much suffering and what unheard of power in the language of the Commedia, the black nightmare from the depths of that upturned funnel planted in Hades! Yet, there too, in the wildest and sharpest and toughest countryside that any fable may have depicted there was, in the end, the serenity of a sky full of stars, the clear cobalt of compensation, the soft promise of a redemption around which all revolves. Like too the saving beauty of a courteous love. Because, as Tuscans well know, each miracle of beauty has behind it the seal of a woman.

***

I have thought about these things for some time. Because I have loved Tuscany for so long. Yet, for some time now, each thread of these sentiments appears to be woven into the overall fabric of a real and proper revelation. Since when, to be precise, I met a Tuscan artist. A sculptor. And this artist is Luigi Galligani.
I already knew his work. I had seen that fine sculpture which the Accademia dei Georgofili in Florence had exhibited, at the end of the work of restoration which gave it back its immaculate splendour three years later, following the ignominy of '93. And I had after that seen a number of his fiberglass and terracotta works in various Italian exhibitions. Then there was the encounter, in the homes of friends of mine who are collectors, with some of his bronzes, generous female figures with wide hips that recounted, despite the turgid rigour of the metal, the promise of infinite fertility; serious faces, yet flat; seraphic looks like those from who must look far and cannot, because their destiny is higher, and must suffer to the end the fleeting nature of mankind's pain, knowing that the power of their full burden - as full as the horizon of the world -, is the inscrutable witnessing of eternal things. Goddesses that is. They were goddesses those statues, which even then enraptured me.
They were perfect works, those of Galligani, in which the patent debt with the ample and polished surfaces of a Marino Marini - who later I discovered was a passion of the artist, fully confessed - was wedded to an attention to detail - the minute folds of the clothes, the thread of the mane, the shadowy arch of the eyebrow lightly frowning -, truly heralding powerful suggestion. They were perfect - I thought - for the exhibition work I was conducting already during those years at Capri, based in some ways on the research into what best was being produced by new figurative art at the international level. And was it not the "outstretched sirens", the "metamorphoses" or that variegated and dazzling pantheon which Galligani was constructing - I said to myself - the rare sign of how much the art of the figure, even in contemporary sculpture, is still able to wed experimentation (in his works believe me there is also the self-assurance and the rigour of the giants, such as the last Henri Laurens, so we understand) and expressive power? It is of no surprise, then, that Galligani, even if dedicated exclusively to sculpture, owes his art also to an ample crop of suggestions borrowed from artists of various upbringing and, among them, also to those who worked with greater commitment to painting. Certain of his figures can be compared with the women of many female portraits by a Salvatore Fiume, for example, or, more clearly, the generous rotundities which his statues share with that extensive portfolio of humanity portrayed by Botero, to get an idea of what I mean. Or with that extraordinary work - a skillful synthesis of genres - of the immense Constant Permeke, just to give an even higher example. And a further indication of how even the nature of colour is among the elements that are close to the heart of this artist comes to us from the variety of materials that he constantly uses: the icy cement, the warm copper, the blood-coloured terracotta, the warmth of the clay and the cold fiberglass plastic, cold as a blade of cobalt. As if to say that not only the forms, but also the form of colour, in Galligani, is sculpture. It is undeniable, however, faced with certain of his more recent terracottas, that Luigi's poetic universe is joined above all by respect- philological and sentimental - for ancient sculpture such as - so obvious in his choice of subjects - the fascinating (and underlying) body of Greco-Roman images. But also the Etruscan, Egyptian and Hebrew. A gallery where, in a syncretic manner, sensual Graces and sage Minervas find their place; astonished Sphynxes and suffering Pegasus, or - impertinent contradiction - a perplexed Hermes imprisoned forever at the height of a bronze bust (how much must the god of speed have suffered through not having had legs?); and, again, angels, bathers and demure Aphrodites... Galligani, in this journey a rebours of his, also finds the time to challenge the grimmest of creatures for a sculptor, Medusa, she who with a glance turns whoever gazes upon her into stone. In other words, statues. This then is a play of mirrors in which the monster - and perhaps because of this rendered more gentle by a less grim aspect - is the dream produced by the artist: his terrible yet necessary double. However I am convinced that his work cannot be understood (I do not say loved since for this, as with every bolt from the blue, a glance is enough), unless brought back into a precise expressive current. Which is to say, the extraordinary lesson of the Italian Novecento. There is a stupefying Diana in terracotta which tells us through and through. In this work from 2001, the goddess of hunting has her right arm arched backwards to allow the hand to quickly reach her quiver. Those who admire her are unable to say whether the goddess is ready to unleash another arrow or whether she has just been caught at the moment when, the danger past, she is replacing the arrow. At the same time the other arm is dropping to her side with the bow in her hand; her left leg is thrust forward so that - another magnificent ambiguity in this work - the observer does not know whether it is the step forward of someone about to move in that direction or the fixed foot of someone who has arrived. And, behind the generous leg just moved, the ample clothing makes waves like a sea beaten by a symmetrical tempest. While other waves heroically raise full locks of hair. But it is the equilibrium of the whole thing, the fascinating medley of elegance and power, succumbing sensuality and audacious imperiousness of posture which reveals every debt, and which ideally weds the work of Galligani to the masterful splendour of the Novecento.

***

One last episode. When, a little after that revealing meeting with his bronzes, I met Luigi in person in his fine studio in Chianti, I perhaps gathered an ounce of the mystery of so much art.
There, when I asked him enthusiastically to talk to me, alongside his statues, of the secret of his work - and he, kindly, in his sharp Tuscan accent, talked of poetry and an Etruria lost as if it were Atlantis lost -; there, as dusk fell during a September afternoon, in the dark coolness of the garden of the farmhouse where, laid out on the reassuring ancient brick of the paving were his stones and metals, a breath of wind reached us. And then another. I am not joking; they were autumn blades. The Junoesque pantheon which rose motionless before me seemed, at that moment, to become disheartened by that sudden cold and the locks of those statues also seemed to become ruffled. Just for a second. To the point when the wind stopped caressing the bodies (or until the next gust of wind) as if smoothing their forms for all time. Only then did I understand. How the will of the world participates in those women of Galligani, as if they were alive. And his immense design.