La tradizione toscana da Montesquieu a Berenson

"The Italy of Italy". While Goethe stood hastily in Florence, eager to reach the antiquities of Rome, and Montesquieu relegated the city "in a corner" of Europe, this expression escaped from the pen of an anonymous eighteenth-century traveler announces with naive prophetic ability the future destiny of Tuscany, destined to become into the collective imagination the place that best accommodates and collects the deepest sense of Italy and its history.
The journey by which we come from this afar intuition to the current size of the mass consumption of the Tuscan tradition is described in this book, that uses other travels, from the Grand Tour to the restless visitors of the twentieth century, in order to understand the hidden recesses of a symbolic icon - Florence, Tuscany - apparently so bright and clear.