Alessandro Mendini, 2005

For a long time I had been thinking of an object that would express the gentleness, the far-away quality, the mysteries and the sense of noble elegance of Italian art.
I wanted to try to enclose in a single image the signs of aesthetic sense contained within our Mediterranean civilization, as a testimony to the ever-relevant history of our creativity.
The highest synthesis of our past, I told myself, can be found in the figure of Giotto. The lightness of Italian art is concentrated in the distant look in his eyes, in the polychrome wings of his angels, in the blues of his skies: delicate figures and landscapes; infinite profundities in the space and time of our land. And so, with care and love, “Giotto” was born, an emblematic object in Venini glass: this austere face, this legendary gentleman who is part modern, part old fashioned; strong, yet fragile.
A winged gentleman destined to look at us while we look at him. A sensitive being who communicates through the slits of his alien eyes that he might be an amulet, an auspice of continuity for our art.

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