Art historian Laura Damiani Cabrini will transport the audience to the past of Carona, a place that has always seen artists and artisans pass and stop.

The artistic events involving members of the Aprile family, originally from Carona, are to be read in parallel with a far-reaching phenomenon that only recently studies are attempting to bring into focus. In fact, the small municipality overlooking the shores of the Ceresio formed the epicenter of a migratory flow that, as early as the Middle Ages, involved legions of artists dedicated to building and working with stone and marble.

They began to settle in strategic geographical points for the processing and dissemination of stone artifacts: in Carrara, in Venice, in southern Italy and especially in Genoa, a city that from the mid-15th century established itself as a place of import, processing and export of marble throughout the Mediterranean area. From the early decades of the sixteenth century, the Aprile family, in particular, extended its production network from Genoa to the Iberian Peninsula, which had become under the rule of Charles V a fermenting artistic market attentive to the most innovative components of Italian Renaissance language. Antonio Maria (news from 1522 to 1535), active at first in Savona, Carrara, and Genoa thus became an important point of reference for the Seville artistic milieu, taking on important commissions destined for the Spanish imperial aristocracy. He also returned to his home territories, bringing with him and passing on figurative traditions elaborated in the contexts in which his production had been established.

For a more contemporary look at the artistic vicissitudes that came to life in Carona and in Casa Aprile, starting Sept. 28 MASI Lugano is offering at the LAC venue the exhibition David Weiss. The Dream of Casa Aprile Carona 1968-1978.