Articles by: Kayla Pantano

Unlike the vast majority of film festivals, the one up next on Manhattan’s calendar is devoted entirely to movies from a single country—in this case, il Bel Paese, or Italy. In fact for the past 17 years now, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema has been proudly offering New York audiences the most diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films. Sponsored by several Italian institutions, the mission of Open Roads is to showcase Italian cinema, providing an inside look into Italian culture, but also, of course, to garner wider distribution for its 14 feature-length films.

As always, the series includes a mix of emerging talents and esteemed veterans, as well as both commercial and independent fare. Furthermore, it strikes a balance between outrageous comedies, gripping dramas, and captivating documentaries—all welcome alternatives to summer blockbusters. Showcasing eight North American and six New York premieres, the festival will take place from June 1-7 at the Film Society Lincoln Center - Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th St) and feature in-person appearances by many of the filmmakers.

The festival will open with the New York premiere of Edoardo De Angelis’s award-winning Indivisible, a captivating tale about talented conjoined twins whose dreams for their futures start to diverge around their eighteenth birthday. The 13 additional titles set to screen include: At War with Love, acclaimed Italian TV personality Pierfrancesco Diliberto’s World War II–set satire; Federica Di Giacomo’s exorcism documentary, Deliver, which won the Orizzonti Prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival; Marco Tullio Giordana's Two Soldiers, the last in his popular organized crime trilogy; and The War of the Yokels, Davide Barletti & Lorenzo Conte's fable about a society at war, cast almost completely with children. See below for the complete lineup.

Tickets go on sale May 4 at $9 for members, $11 for students and seniors (62+), and $14 for the general public. See more and save with the 3+ film discount package or the Open Roads All Access Pass. Learn more at filmlinc.org.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Istituto Luce Cinecittà. Organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan, Film Society; and by Carla Cattani, Griselda Guerrasio, and Monique Catalino, Istituto Luce Cinecittà. With special acknowledgments to: Italian Trade Commission; Italian Cultural Institute New York; Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò NYU; and Antonio Monda.

Films & Descriptions

Indivisible / Indivisibili
Edoardo De Angelis, Italy, 2016, 104m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Thursday, June 1, 1:45pm & 6:30pm

At first glance, identical twins Dasy and Violet (newcomers Angela and Marianna Fontana, in powerful debut performances) appear to have it all: they're beautiful, gifted with captivating singing voices, and they do not want for gigs around Naples. They also happen to be conjoined at the hip, which is shamelessly exploited by their parents and close friends for money. But on the cusp of their 18th birthday, Dasy falls in love and pursues a new life after learning she can be separated from Violet. Balancing the beautiful and the perverse with poise, and featuring a beguiling soundtrack by renowned singer-songwriter Enzo Avitabile, Edoardo De Angelis's third feature is a moving, eccentric fable about the pains of growing up, and the lengths to which one may go in order to fulfill a dream. 

At War with Love / In Guerra per amore
Pierfrancesco Diliberto, Italy, 2016, 99m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Saturday, June 3, 9:15pm, Tuesday, June 6, 2:30pm

The latest by Pierfrancesco Diliberto (a.k.a. Pif, Italy's renowned TV host and political comedian) is a tender comedy set against the backdrop of World War II. Sicilian emigrant Arturo (Pif) is in love with Flora (Miriam Leone), but she's betrothed to the son of a New York mafia boss. Arturo's only option is to ask Flora's father for her hand; however, he still lives in Sicily. Penniless but determined, Arturo takes a "free" passage to Italy by enlisting in the U.S. military at the start of the Allied invasion. Mixing history with outrageous comedy and political satire, At War with Love is like Forrest Gump by way of Mel Brooks—equal parts funny, charming, and irreverent. 

Children of the Night / I Figli della notte
Andrea De Sica, Italy/Belgium, 2016, 85m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere 
Sunday, June 4, 4:00pm, Wednesday, June 7, 4:30pm

Introverted 17-year-old Giulio (Vincenzo Crea) is sent to an elite boarding school in the Alps. Contact to the outside world is limited, and the students—all troubled, some territorial and violent—are constantly surveilled by the administration (which includes an unctuous Fabrizio Rongione). Giulio forms an unlikely bond with the most sullen and rebellious student, Edoardo (Ludovico Succio), with whom he routinely sneaks off to a lascivious nightclub in the forest—but their nighttime excursions don't go undetected, nor are they as transgressive as initially thought. A twisted coming-of-age story tinged with elements of horror, Andrea De Sica's feature debut is a tightly wound narrative that defies convention.  

The Confessions / Le Confessioni
Roberto Andò, Italy/France, 2016, 104m
Italian, English, and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Thursday, June 1, 4:00pm & 9:00pm

Roberto Andò reteams with Toni Servillo in this Hitchcockian mystery-thriller, a spiritual sequel to Andò's Long Live Freedom (a 2014 Open Roads selection). During a G8 summit in a luxurious German hotel, a trio of outsiders—a rock star (Johan Heldenbergh), a children's novelist (Connie Nielsen), and a laconic Italian monk (Servillo)—join the Group of Eight at the request of Daniel Roché (Daniel Auteuil), a powerful man with an obscure agenda. Things get even more mysterious when Roché is found dead following a clandestine meeting with the monk. Boasting a star-studded international cast and a perfect blend of suspense, international intrigue, and a subdued but biting sense of humor, The Confessions is a classically composed and wildly entertaining whodunit. 

Deliver / Liberami
Federica Di Giacomo, Italy, 2016, 90m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
​Sunday, June 4, 6:30pm

Winner of the Orizzonti Prize at last year's Venice Film Festival, Deliver follows Father Cataldo, a Sicilian priest sought out by Catholics who believe themselves to be possessed. In between capturing the religious rites he performs on his clients—by turns frightening, profane, and absurd—Di Giacomo's documentary peers into the private lives of the afflicted: everyday people drawn to the church out of desperation who discuss their demonic interactions as though they were mere medical conditions. Avoiding cliché and easy sentimentality, Deliver offers a fresh perspective on the psychology underlying the continued practice of exorcism in the modern world. 

Ears / Orecchie
Alessandro Aronadio, Italy, 2016, 90m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Friday, June 2, 3:45pm, Monday, June 5, 9:00pm

A man wakes up with a painful ringing in his ear and to a note that reads, "Your friend Luigi is dead! I'm sorry. PS: I took the car..." But who's Luigi? This is just one of the many questions the unnamed protagonist (Daniele Parisi) must ask himself in this absurd tragicomedy by writer-director Alessandro Aronadio (One Life, Maybe Two, a 2010 Open Roads selection). Unfolding in a single day, Earsupsets a hapless man's routine with a series of hilarious, Kafkaesque situations involving meddlesome nuns, bumbling doctors, and a perplexing array of bureaucratic mishaps. Aronadio's black-and-white, aspect ratio­shifting second feature is a one-of-a-kind comedy that surprises and delights with unassuming humor and a quirky supporting cast.

Fiore
Claudio Giovannesi, Italy, 2016, 109m
Italian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
​Friday, June 2, 9:00pm, Monday, June 5, 6:45pm

Stylishly blending social realism with a coming-of-age story, Claudio Giovannesi's third feature focuses on a blossoming romance in a juvenile detention center. Newcomer Daphne Scoccia stars as a tough but troubled young girl locked up after committing a robbery, and during her stint she meets Josh (Josciua Algeri), an inmate confined to the boy's ward in the neighboring building. Their prohibited interactions spiral into a forbidden yet innocent romance that provides an escape from their fraught personal problems. Fiore's measured treatment of troubled youth recalls the Dardenne brothers, but the film's assured visual style and breathless romance are entirely the invention of director Giovannesi. 

Pawn Street / Le Ultime Cose
Irene Dionisio, Italy/Switzerland/France, 2016, 85m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Sunday, June 4, 1:30pm

Irene Dionisio's debut feature is a gripping moral drama that weaves together the plights of three people connected to a pawn shop in Turin. Stefano (Fabrizio Falco) is torn between doing the right thing and keeping his new job as a pawnbroker after catching his morally bankrupt manager (Roberto De Francesco) deceiving customers, one of whom is Sandra (Christina Rosamilia), a transgender woman at odds with her past. Outside the pawn shop, Michele (Alfonso Santagata), a kindhearted family man, gets in too deep with some deceitful street hagglers who illegally buy up receipts from the shop's customers. Lensed by César-winning DP Caroline Champetier (Holy Motors, I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar), Pawn Street tackles complex themes of shame and redemption with naked emotion and vivid realism. 

Sun, Heart, Love / Sole, Cuore, Amore
Daniele Vicari, Italy, 2016, 109m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Saturday, June 3, 6:30pm, Wednesday, June 7, 2:00pm

In this tragic ode to urban living from writer-director Daniele Vicari, Eli (Isabella Ragonese) puts herself through a crushing daily grind—a two-hour commute from the outskirts of Rome that's slowly taking a toll on her health—in order to support her unemployed, loving husband and their children. Meanwhile her lifelong best friend Vale (Eva Grieco in her debut role), a dancer living on her own, is faced with her own struggles after taking in a coworker who was beaten by her boyfriend. Beautifully blending melancholy with quiet joy, Vicari's latest is a sorrowful, sensitively observed study of straphangers caught up in life's unrelenting demands. 

Sweet Dreams / Fai bei sogni
Marco Bellocchio, Italy/France, 2016, 134m
Italian and French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Sunday, June 4, 9:00pm, Tuesday, June 6, 8:45pm

The latest from Marco Bellocchio is this delicate, melancholic, and deeply moving adaptation of Massimo Gramellini's popular autobiographical novel Sweet Dreams, Little One. Tracing a middle-aged man (Valerio Mastandrea) as he still struggles to come to grips with the sudden loss of his mother when he was nine years old, Sweet Dreams alternates between past and present, memories and dreams, effortlessly weaving together disparate elements of Massimo's life to yield a profound, poetic study of loss and maternal love. Gracefully photographed by frequent DP Daniele Ciprì (Vincere, Dormant Beauty), this is Bellocchio at his most emotional, but his signature sense of humor and irony are as strong as ever. 

Tenderness / La Tenerezza
Gianni Amelio, Italy, 2017, 103m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Friday, June 2, 6:30pm, Monday, June 5, 4:30pm

The latest by Lamerica director Gianni Amelio explores loneliness, heartbreak, and complicated family relations in modern-day Naples. Renato Carpentieri stars as Lorenzo, an elderly widower estranged from his children who gradually builds a friendship with the new family next door—until a catastrophe pulls them apart. Loosely based on Lorenzo Moreno's Premio Strega prize­winning novel, The Temptation to Be Happy, Tenderness is a powerfully acted character study as well as an evocative portrait of middle-class Naples, beautifully filmed by Luca Bigazzi (The Great Beauty). 

Two Soldiers / Due Soldati
Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy, 2017, 100m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Friday, June 2, 1:30pm, Tuesday, June 6, 6:30pm

A grieving woman unexpectedly comes face to face with Naples' violent Camorra in what could be considered the third installment of Marco Tullio Giordana's organized crime cycle—including his Golden Globe-nominated One Hundred Steps and 2015's Lea. Rising star Angela Fontana (one of the leads in Indivisible, this year's opening night film) plays Maria, a young woman planning her marriage to a soldier stationed in Afghanistan (Dario Rea), until his life is tragically cut short. After being left alone in their new, empty apartment, she crosses paths with Salvatore (Daniele Vicorito), a member of the Mafia who hides out in her condominium after a botched hit job. Giordana's latest is a complex exploration of grief and redemption that evocatively captures the rippling consequences of war. 

The War of the Yokels / La Guerra dei cafoni
Davide Barletti & Lorenzo Conte, Italy, 2016, 98m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Sunday, June 4, 1:30pm, Tuesday, June 6, 4:30pm

With an eclectic ensemble cast made up almost entirely of children, Davide Barletti and Lorenzo Conte's fable about a war between the ruling elite and lower classes, based on the novel by Carlo D'Amicis, plays like a cross between Lord of the Flies and The Goonies. No one really knows why the centuries-old war exists, but after the "yokels" of the underclass carry out a series of disruptive invasions, and bring in a ruthless outsider, things start to escalate violently. Meanwhile, the pitiless leader of the ruling class falls in love with a yokel and begins to question his role in the needless war. Set in the 1970s off the sunbaked coast of Puglia, beautifully photographed by Duccio Cimatti, The War of the Yokels is a rambunctious mixture of social satire, perilous adventure, and low-key fantasy, with energetic performances by its cast of young actors.

Worldly Girl / La Ragazza del Mondo
Marco Danieli, Italy/France, 2016, 101m
Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Sunday, June 4, 4:00pm

In Marco Danieli's debut feature, Sara Serraiocco (Salvo) stars as Giulia, a smart young Jehovah's Witness whose lifestyle is put to the test when she meets Libero (Michele Riondino), an ex-con and son of a recent convert. As much as Giulia wants to pursue a future in mathematics (which goes against her religion), it's her unexpected attachment to Libero that pulls her from her community. Sensitively portraying the religious community, Danieli's first feature is an assured, wonderfully acted, and unpredictable celebration of individuality. Worldly Girl premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival, where Danieli won the Brian Award (given by the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics) and stars Serraiocco and Riondino both won Pasinetti Awards for their performances.

This past weekend Calandra Italian American Institute hosted an exciting two-day conference called Italian Sonorities and Acoustic Communities: Listening to the Soundscapes of Italianità. The event set out to answer where we find and how we can hear the Italian acoustic communities that have existed in the historical past and that exist today—based around a transnational understanding of Italianness that encompasses the modern nation-state of Italy, including its diaspora and former colonies. Such soundscapes, for example as described in the program, can be composed of Mussolini’s rabble-rousing broadcasts from the balcony of Piazza Venezia to Frank Sinatra’s bel canto vocal styling.

Overall, the conference focused on Italian sonorities broadly defined in order to discover hitherto unexplored perspectives and expressions regarding such movements and identities. The panelists ranged from university professors and scholars to public intellectuals to performers, including singers, poets, and an organito player. A few standouts were: ​Donna Chirico, Calandra's campus delegate for York College, who chaired the "Women and Workers" segment and gave a lecture entitled Sounds of Silence: The Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Community as Linguistic Minority among Italians and Italian Americans; independent scholar George de Stefano, who gave the lecture, La Notte della Taranta: Musicking as a Social Act and Metaphor for Social Relationships, and chaired the "Disco, Hip Hop, and Mina" portion; and John Gennari of the University of Vermont, who kicked off the conference with his keynote address, Mediations on Italian American Soundfulness.

Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean of Calandra, shared that the goal of the conference was in line with the goal of the institute: “to study and promote the history and culture of Italians in America.” He elaborated that this goes beyond preserving because “the expression of culture changes from one generation to the next,” referencing the “development of Italian culture outside of Italy.” He emphasized that the events were heavily centered around the expression of Italianness outside of Italy, recalling that all of their previous annual conferences have dealt with an aspect of this in some way.

Tamburri also shared that he’s drawn to the idea of sonorities because of its many facets, saying it pertains to speech, song, cinema, and language. “It also deals with temperament in some ways because the one thing I think we can say we inherited from Italy was a sense of demonstrative expressivity, and we tend to be very demonstrative when we express our sentiments or ideas and our wishes.”

He lamented that Italian is not as spoken as it used to be. However, he expressed positive sentiments in regards to the rediscovery, explaining that “3rd and 4th generation Italians are going back to learn Italian,” adding that there’s even a “rebirth of an interest in dialect,” which he described as “an expression of the heart for those who speak it all over Italy.” Another optimistic observation, he believes that with the launching of the Made in Italy in the late 70s, “a lot of things have come back to life, whether its song, cinema, and things of that sort.” He concluded on this front, “So, while we lost some stuff, I think we’ve recuperated others, and some of us are hopeful that language will continue to grow.”

Joseph Sciorra, Director for Academic and Cultural Program at Calandra, is the man responsible for coming up with the idea each year. He explained that the topic has to be “broad enough that you get a number of different people, but that’s also specific enough that it’s not too broad.”

He added, "I come up with the idea, and then I start kicking it around, talking with people--Rosangela Briscese, Sean, and Anthony in particular, and then re-write the call for papers. With something so specific as sound, I reach out to colleagues, and the colleague I reached out to was John Gennari because he writes about sound, he writes about music, and he’s also the keynote who gave a special lecture about the sound."

He expressed, “Sound is one of those things that we’re not always aware of. We’re a visual culture. Western world is normally visual and with the Internet, even more so. The idea to be sensitive and aware of how sound shapes our world, how we shape the world through sound, how sound creates a sense of identity, projects a sense of identity.” He continued, “One thinks of accents—your accent from Italy, my accent from New York, dialect sounds, the way people speak, their inflection. Those things are very much indicators of who people are and how people are viewed.” He even added that Italian Americans were historically seen as singers.

“Then the question is, what happens when sound is mediated, when it’s recorded, when it’s transmitted, when it’s put into movies, when it’s made into a podcast. Also things like oral histories, who records these, how people’s voices and sounds get documented. What do people do with them, and who has the responsibilities with those recorded sounds? All of that is sort of part of what this conference is about.”

As part of the “Tango y Los Italianos” segment, Calandra’s own Fred Gardaphé, Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies, even danced. He said, "I have always been moved by music of all types: from ninna nannas to Big Band orchestras, Classical to Rock and Roll, but it was in Tango that I heard my past telling me to bring it into the present. It's that immigrant's music filled with ancestral longing for a better life while lamenting the need to leave home that caught me one day and I haven't stopped dancing since."

If you were a foreign film buff in the 1970s and frequented the famed Quad Cinema in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, odds are you were graced with a Lina Wertmüller movie. The provocative Italian director, a certifiable international phenomenon, was a longtime favorite of the Quad’s audiences. Back in the day, Swept Away and Seven Beauties both played there for nearly five months on end. However, the city’s first-ever multiplex, which opened in 1972, shut its doors down in 2015 for a multimillion-dollar gut renovation thanks to owner Charles Cohen. Once possessing a gritty charm, two years later the art house has reopened in a glitzy new form and is celebrating with a retrospective called Lina Wertmüller: Female Trouble.

Lina Wertmüller, a lively firebrand behind white glasses still chic as ever at 88-years-old, began as an apprentice for legendary filmmaker Federico Fellini. She went on to rock the second half of the 20th century with hot-button, epically-titled movies that smashed American box-office records for foreign-language films. Martin Scorsese once described her 20-plus pictures as “funny and frighteningly harrowing and big and emotional and over-the-top and popular." He also said “she was able to do things that nobody else was doing” and that she possessed “a very special artistic vision.” New York Magazine even put her on the cover with a headline that read, “The Most Important Film Director Since Ingmar Bergman.” Not to mention, she was the first woman ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for her notorious Seven Beauties, earning three more Oscar nominations for that same film.

Both loved and hated for her contradictory proclamations, coined a “feminist” by some and “woman hater” by others, she garnered so much attention and her daring, politically incorrect films now look more essential than ever before. The program of her retrospective reads, “With world premieres of new restorations of her greatest successes and imported 35mm prints of ultra-rare gems, this series finally offers the opportunity to dive into the history of this extraordinary director, an aesthetic pioneer and a crucial trailblazer in a male-dominated industry.”

The Quad series, which runs through May 11, spans the director’s illustrious career, featuring such defining films as The Lizards (1963), The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Swept Away (2002), and Behind the White Glasses (2015). The selection is split up between new restorations from Kino Lorber, which are making their world premiere as part of this retrospective, totaling to 14 films (including Fellini’s 8 ½, which she apprenticed on.)

With a red lacquered concession stand that serves olive-oil-drizzled popcorn and coffee from all around the world and a separate wine and beer bar section, seeing the new Quad Cinema is a trip to take. And with Wertmüller on display there’s literally no excuse to delay your visit.

For more information click here.

In case you’re not familiar, the 519-year-old, 29-foot-by-15-foot depiction of Jesus Christ and his disciples—The Last Supper (1495-1498)—is one of the most illustrious paintings on the planet. Though it has stood the test of time (at least in terms of value), it's deteriorating rapidly, often referred to as the “most famous endangered species.” Fortunately, the world’s largest purveyor of Italian delicacies, Eataly, is stepping up to save Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary masterpiece.

Wear and Tear from Time, Humidity, and…Bombs

Painted in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the work has endured humidity and vandals, even surviving a bomb during World War II. For centuries, it has undergone various restoration attempts; however, the fragility and vulnerability of the experimental technique adopted by Leonardo (dry tempera instead of traditional fresco technique) has caused it to continue to disappear more everyday and with each visitor’s microscopic dust. As a result, it is restricted to only 1,300 viewers daily with a limited time of 15 minutes.

Conservation Efforts: Controlling Climate

But it takes more than a few visitation policies to preserve cultural heritage. The internal microclimate of the Cenacolo Vinciano Museum (in terms of temperature, humidity, floating particles and nanoparticles, air pollutants, and VOCs) is crucial for the conservation of The Last Supper. This is where Eataly comes into play.

In an exciting international press conference on April 19 at Eataly Downtown, founder Oscar Farinetti announced that the piece will see at least 500 more years of life thanks to the installation of a cutting-edge air-filtration system. The Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism designed the system in collaboration with top Italian research institutes (ISCR, CNR, Polytechnic Institute of Milan, and the University of Milano Bicocca). And the giant grocery chain is the proud and only private financer of the system, which will filter in approximately 10,000 cubic meters of clean air into the convent everyday (compared to the current 3,500). The project is coordinated in Italy by the Arts Council and in the US by the Italian Renaissance Fund. The installation is slated for completion in 2019, in time for the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death.

Eataly Announces Protection Plan

With live video streams of both Eataly Milano Smeraldo and Eataly São Paulo and of course, Santa Maria delle Grazie, the world simultaneously rejoiced in this grand effort to preserve one of the most iconic, studied, and celebrated artworks of all time. Physically in attendance were the likes of Nicola Farinetti, Oscar's son and CEO of Eataly US; Vera Alemani, Member of the Italian Renaissance Fund; and Alberto Cribiore, Vice Chairman of Citigroup. Virtual speakers from Eataly Smeraldo included Andrea Guerra, Executive President of Eataly, and Stefano L'Occaso, Director of the Polo Museale della Lombardia. Not far by in Santa Maria were Dario Franceschini, Italian Minister of Culture, and Chiara Rostagno, Director of the Cenacolo Vinciano Museum. And lastly in Brazil, Andre Sturm, Secretary of Culture in São Paulo, and Renato Poma, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in São Paulo.

Farinetti began, "Eataly will try to tell explain this initiative in a simple way. It’s right to say that a business allocates a part of its profits to projects like this and that it tries to help a country like Italy."

Cribiore was the first to extend his thanks to Eataly and to Farinetti for increasing the number of visitors to The Last Supper, which he described as "an extraordinary and incredible work." He expressed, "The fact that it can be accessible to the world is absolutely extraordinary. This restoration presents a civic and moral duty for Italians to make sure that this patrimony that we have can be available to everybody."

After Farinetti noted how Easter weekend saw Italian museums full of people, Franceschini responded, “Easter weekend saw a very large influx in the cultural centers in Milan, Florence, and Rome, but also in little centers and neighborhoods of both tourists and Italian citizens. Through the monitoring of artistic and patrimony, we can contribute to economic growth in our country.”

He continued, “We approved–3 years ago at this point–a fiscal incentive, the Art Bonus, the strongest in Europe today, for which each business and every citizen that donates a sum of money, even a symbolic one, towards the protection of national patrimony of a museum or a foundation, will receive a 65% tax credit.” He concluded, “This has a very consistent material, educational, and cultural value.”

To celebrate the news, every Eataly across the globe is offering guests the chance to reserve a special tour of the painting that will allow them 50 minutes in the space after the museum is closed. On the tour, visitors will be treated to an expert talk on the painting's creation, life, history, and secrets.

Next time you buy cheese, charcuterie, or whatever Italian treat your heart (or stomach) desires, you can justify the splurge as in investment in an early Renaissance-period art, allowing Italians, Americans, and other citizens of the world to revel in its wonder for generations to come.