Filippo Cianfanelli knows that his painting is rightfully his, as he has inherited its expression from his father, Folco, who himself "was an untroubled artist capable of depicting the most lovely aspects of life and creation"and of telling his people" by the means of simple yet evocative words the emotion and amazement he feels confronted with miracle of nature...", as Armando Nocentini wrote about him many years ago.
One evening, when a few friends and I invaded is studio, I sketched his portrait, somewhat in caricature, which I remember very clearly: bold at the temples, with moustache and a short beard, standing in front of the easel, painting his world. And today after 25 years, I see him again, through his contryside; the same places, I believe, where he used to accompany his father, equipped with palette and paintbrushes, and rejoice at the refreshed images laid down on the canvas where Folco reflected his realism; that very special Tuscan realism which is so capable of making poetry vibrate and the imagination soar: either before a Florence which emerges out of its details to open into a wide yet essential vision under and around Brunelleschi's cupola; or along the streams where elm trees cast their shadows on the banks, following the water's course. Wandering lost in his own thoughts berween the plains and the hills, from colour to colour, over the bluish outline of the mountains, in an atmosphere which helps recall memories as witness that they themselves are the paradise from which nobody can be chased, as Jean Paul has written.
In the painting of filippo Cianfanelli these thoughts live in remarkable harmony with the images and float gently down from clear skies to the hills and frolick there in suggestive perspectives. And it does not matter if the themes are the same as those handed down from the wise Folco, which the eye of Filippo used to study very attntively in order to soak up their intrinsic value and to treasure for ever their precious teaching.
This exhibition has many references to events which in Cianfanelli's life have been of historical importance, milestones along a difficult route littered with challenges to its lovers, either trying to make them fall in love with the past or entrancing them with te new, which is varely and vaguenly intuitable through the thick veil separating us from the future. Or else, more simply, to persuade them to repeat the old story that art is not compatible with a professional carrer. And it is that old story that Filippo Cianfanelli has clearly lived.
In spite of the many preambles, this exhibition, truly a debut, is easy and agreeable to understand, and the problems which may exist stealthily behind those very familiar and seducing images evoking paradise-memories always eager to exalt our imagination and our conscience as well.

Tommaso Paloscia