Flowers without borders: La Festa dell’arte e dei fiori in fin de siècle Florence

This paper considers how Florence, in the decades following its loss as the new nation’s capital, came to refashion itself as a new, cosmopolitan capital of European culture. One important way the city achieved this was by drawing on the potent image of a garden of flowers, which was well established in its cultural patrimony. In 1896, the Società di Belle Artiand the Società Toscana di Orticulturaorganized a major international exhibition that made the connection between the city’s floral patrimony and the revival of Botticelli, theFesta dell’arte e dei Fiori. This exhibition was held from December 1896 to May 1897 attracting more than one hundred thousand visitors. It showed the work of 400 artists and 683 works of art, including works by Edward Burne-Jones, George F. Watts, and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, along with Symbolist painters such as Aristide Sartorio and Telemaco Signorini, and Arnold Böcklin.