By Camilla Sarra. Cover image courtesy of ETRA Studio Tommasi.
A Hidden Art Space in Florence That Feels Like Magic: ETRA Studio Tommasi
Tucked away in the heart of Florence, ETRA blends timeless beauty with contemporary creativity. Once the studio of master sculptors, today it’s a cultural hub for art, poetry, and performance. Step into the space where silence meets illumination — and don’t miss the current exhibition Lo Sguardo della Luce.
A Secret Florence Gallery You Shouldn’t Miss
Hidden among the ancient streets of Florence lies a gallery of quiet yet powerful beauty — a place known and cherished by locals like a well-kept secret. It feels as though time itself has settled gently onto the marble surfaces and into the silence of the ateliers. This is ETRA Studio Tommasi, located at Via della Pergola 57 — a gallery unlike any other, both discreet and deeply evocative, nestled within a historic studio where Benvenuto Cellini cast his Perseus, the very one that now stands triumphantly in the Loggia dei Lanzi. It is also the space where Marcello Tommasi, a refined 20th-century sculptor, lived and worked.
Inside ETRA Studio Tommasi: Sculpture, Silence and Timeless Art
Today, this space — filled with busts, plaster casts, tools of the trade, and tangible memories — is more than an artist’s studio. It is a vibrant and visionary cultural center, brought to life with grace and conviction by Francesca Sacchi Tommasi, the artist’s granddaughter. She breathes new life into her family’s legacy, transforming the atelier into a living laboratory where history and contemporaneity coexist in dialogue, mutually enriching one another.
Fiorella Sampaolo’s “Lo Sguardo della Luce” Photography Show
In this evocative setting, the exhibition Lo sguardo della luce comes to life — a photographic project by Fiorella Sampaolo, curated by Andrea Ulivi for Edizioni della Meridiana, and accompanied by poetic texts by Davide Rondoni.
Born in Tolentino in 1972, Fiorella Sampaolo has explored various artistic languages — drawing, painting, poetry — before discovering photography in 2018, thanks to a gifted vintage Fuji camera. Since then, the camera has become for her a tool of emotional resonance and introspection, capable of capturing value to the most fleeting aspects of reality. A member of the ICON Photos collective and part of the board of Tolentino Arte e Cultura, Sampaolo has exhibited in numerous venues across Italy, recognized for a gaze that is both delicate and radical, able to transform a detail into a revelation.
The exhibition presents 40 black-and-white photographs, displayed without glass to preserve an unfiltered connection between image and viewer. Each photograph is paired with poetic verse, creating an intimate dialogue between word and vision, between form and perception. Here, photography is not documentary, but rather a luminous trace of introspection, a search for meaning through shadows, textures, and visual epiphanies.
The Poetic Use of Light and Emotion in Her Work
As the artist says:
Only in the solitude of those steps did I realize that what I was chasing was Light. It wasn’t just a visual exploration, but an inner dialogue between myself and the reality ‘touched’ by the Light. I began to observe where it settled, where it seeped in, what it chose to illuminate. That discovery, for me, was a beginning — a quiet reflection both with myself and with the world. A powerful, credible point from which to begin again. Light, like a baker’s warm bread.
This poetic statement encapsulates the essence of a profound artistic pursuit — one that is rooted in silence, contemplation, and a yearning for authentic connection with the world. The exhibition is a poetic and political invitation. An appeal to cultivate wonder, to find beauty in overlooked details, and to rediscover light as a language that bridges the visible world and our inner landscape.
At the heart of her work lies light — not merely as a physical phenomenon but as a spiritual metaphor, a transfigured lens through which objects, bodies, and the hidden geometries of daily life regain meaning. In a world oversaturated with images, Sampaolo invites us to slow down, to truly see, and to ask ourselves a timeless, urgent question: what are we really seeking when we look?
