“Per il pittore che cos’è la luce se non uno stato del colore?” Gino Severini, il tono e l’‘ambiente emotivo’/“What is light, for the painter, if not a state of colour?” Gino Severini, tone and the ‘emotional setting’’

The essay is dedicated to young Severini's frescos at the castle of Montegufoni, in the Florence environs . The subject is La Commedia dell'Arte that was the passion of the patron George Sitwell’s children, Severini had emigrated to Paris, and was now returning to Tuscany in a context that had injected a vital charge into his native culture, the cradle of the Renaissance and old, traditional techniques. Indeed, before he decorated Montegufoni, he lived in Paris where he had been a follower of the Futurism of the 1910s, sympathetic to Cubism and an associate of Picasso, Metzinger and Apollinaire, We have therefore attempted to analyse the chromatic layouts in Montegufoni in connection with the colour relationships expressed in scientific diagrams by the main relevant scientists of the time who the artist met in Paris.