From England to Italy via Paris: Gino Severini and the Sitwells at Montegufoni

By focusing on a specific case study, a commission the Italian modernist artist Gino Severini received in late 1920 from British patrons and collectors Sacheverell and Osbert Sitwell to decorate a room in the family’s castle at Montegufoni, Italy, this article sheds new light on the transnational networks of exchange and circulation characterizing the contemporary art world in the interwar period. Through an examination of unpublished correspondence with Severini’s Parisian dealer, Léonce Rosenberg, the different expectations and agendas at play in this commission are exposed, as well as the artist’s resulting negotiations with national identities and cultural diversity, questioning a paradigm of centre–periphery relations. I suggest leaving behind accepted interpretations of Commedia dell’arte characters in the context of the postwar ‘return to order’ to focus on Sacheverell Sitwell’s taste and his writings on Southern Baroque art. From this perspective, Montegufoni becomes a site of cultural exchange and contamination.