Rothko and the Renaissance: A Conversation in Colour

There is something quietly radical about bringing Mark Rothko to Florence. A city so saturated in figurative genius — Botticelli, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico — might seem an unlikely home for vast, wordless fields of colour. And yet, speaking with Riccardo Lami, Head of Development at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, it quickly becomes clear that this is precisely the point — and that for the institution behind some of Florence's most ambitious modern art programmes, the question of past meeting present is one to return to again and again.

Rothko in Florence, curated by Christopher Rothko — the artist's son and lifelong custodian of his legacy — and art historian Elena Geuna, brings together more than seventy works spanning his career. Many have never before been shown in Italy. But what makes the exhibition exceptional is not just its scale, as Lami explains: "Rather than presenting Rothko in isolation as a canonical figure of Abstract Expressionism, the exhibition situates him in a profound dialogue with Florence and with the Italian art tradition. It is both a major retrospective and a contextual reflection on his vision."

That reflection now plays out across three locations in an ambitious project designed by Palazzo Strozzi curators and its Director General, Arturo Galansino. This city-wide approach "allows Florence itself to become part of the exhibition — experiencing the continuity between Renaissance space and twentieth-century abstraction," Lami says.

The connection, although abstract on the surface, is one rooted in biography. Rothko's first encounter with Florence dates to 1950, during a trip to Italy with his wife Mell. He was not a willing traveller by nature, but Florence was a special place for him. What he found there astounded him: Fra Angelico's frescoes at San Marco, and Michelangelo's architectural vision in the Vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana — an encounter that is said to have inspired the Seagram Murals of the late 1950s. He returned in 1966, deepening a dialogue that reverberated through the final years of his work.

"Florence intensifies the experience rather than distracting from it," Lami continues. "The city's extraordinary density of art and architecture creates an awareness of continuity across centuries. In this context, Rothko's work becomes part of a long lineage of artists concerned with transcendence, space and the human condition."

At Palazzo Strozzi, visitors follow the chronological evolution of Rothko's visual language, starting in the 1930s. At the Museo di San Marco — where Fra Angelico's frescoes seem to dissolve into the very walls of the convent — the resonance becomes almost visceral. "Rothko spoke of the convent as a place where architecture, painting and silence form an indivisible whole," Lami says. "That unity of space and contemplation deeply informed his conception of immersive painting." At the Vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Michelangelo's compressed proportions and architectural tension illuminate Rothko's preoccupation with scale and spatial drama. "The dialogue is not about visual quotation," Lami explains, "but about shared concerns: light, proportion, enclosure, and the capacity of painting to generate an inner experience." The effect is cumulative.

"The silence in his paintings resonates differently when experienced alongside the disciplined geometry and measured light of Renaissance spaces — sharpening our perception of the paintings' stillness and gravity."

Florence, Lami is keen to stress, has never been solely a city of preservation. "Its Renaissance heritage was itself once radically contemporary. Today, the city's challenge and opportunity lie in creating meaningful dialogues between past and present, rather than treating them as separate domains or using our heritage only as a stage. Exhibitions such as this one demonstrate that modern and contemporary art can be read in continuity with historical traditions." The ambition, ultimately, is for Florence to function not as setting but as interlocutor.

For guests staying at Hotel Savoy, the partnership with Palazzo Strozzi offers the chance to inhabit that dialogue rather than simply observe it. "These collaborations help transform a visit into a layered cultural experience," Lami says, "where dialogue, conversation and shared reflection become essential elements of the idea itself of visiting Florence."

Standing in the cortile of Palazzo Strozzi as the afternoon light shifts across the stone, it is not difficult to understand what Rothko saw here. Some silences, it turns out, speak across centuries.

Rothko in Florence is on view at Palazzo Strozzi, Museo di San Marco, and Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 14 March – 23 August 2026. Stay in a suite at Hotel Savoy to enjoy exclusive previews and tours.