FLORENCE, ITALY.-The Boboli Gardens present Antonio Manzi at Court - marble, bronze, graffiti and ceramics, on view through September 18, 2005. For many contemporary artists, the challenge of tackling such a strongly historicised territorial context as the Boboli Gardens, so complex and modelled since its sixteenth-century origin, and of bringing it to dialogue with the present, has represented a strong attraction. An irresistible temptation which, in these past years, has involved artists like Igor Mitoraj, Kan Yasuda, Hossein Golba, Sandro Chia, Dario Bartolini and now, Antonio Manzi. The attraction this old garden exerts on sculptors derives from its ability to adapt and host various art forms through their numerous mutations over the centuries. In particular, the area of the garden, known by different names in different periods as “jardin potager”, “giardino degli ananassi”, “giardino della botanica”, underwent many transformations from the 1600s to the 1800s, assuming the forms of a romantic garden which, though isolated, was part of a larger garden. The ideal setting with a human scale for Antonio Manzi. In the two time-worn Tepidaria, still intriguing and evocative of past splendours, he has found an ideal habitat for his sculptural production of these past years. The theme of love and nostalgia is quite important in his work, in his fantastic, multicoloured forms in ceramic, and the delicate ton-sur-ton graffiti that evoke suggestive “Art Nouveau” fabric patterns with sinuously swirling lines. The rustic, deteriorated architecture of the glasshouses hosts the silky white and perfect marble sculptures in an ancient embrace, dense with the fumes of the plants quartered here in winter. Once again, this garden’s magic has bewitched the artist and caught him in the invisible clasp of an age-old, still vibrant attraction, offering itself like a sort of precious treasure chest to contain the creations of the man and artist Manzi who has conquered the privilege of forming old ties between present and past.