River scenes were among the painter’s favourites; he loved the rapid rush of mountain streams past big rocks and cool shady banks. Here the painting also assumes historical and documentary value, since vegetation has now overtaken the structure, after it had already been robbed of stones and other reusable material.
Along the Ente. The Bridge below Montegiovi
Vittorio Granchi
Florence, 20 October 1908 – 30 November 1992
Vittorio Granchi, after studying at the art school in Santa Croce and the art institute at Porta Romana in Florence, began a multifaceted career. He decorated wooden furniture for his father’s shop, made Art Deco batiks, painted easel paintings, and decorated domestic interiors with Giovanni Tolleri and ships with the architect Carlo Coppedè. During those same years he attended courses in life drawing of nudes at the Accademia, frequented the Circolo degli Artisti and the Giubbe Rosse café, and initiated an intense artistic collaboration with Dino Bausi, Ermanno Toschi, Ugo Pignotti, and Francesco Pagliazzi.
In 1934 he was asked by Ugo Procacci to work in the restoration department of the Superintendence of the Galleries of Florence, where he rose to a prestigious position. During World War II Granchi worked tirelessly to defend the art works in Florence and its surrounding territory, while at the same time describing the havoc wreaked by German mines on the area around the Ponte Vecchio in a series of tragic canvases painted from the windows of the Uffizi. After the flood in 1966, together with Umberto Baldini and other colleagues in the restoration department, Granchi performed highly skilled “surgery” on damaged art works, including the very delicate operation on Comabue’s Crucifix.
Granchi never abandoned easel painting, with a special interest in landscape; among his favorite horizons were those of Maremma and Mount Amiata, where his wife was born and where he regularly spent vacations until his final one in 1992.
