Finestre sull'Arte

Finestre sull'Arte is Italy's first podcast about the history of art. It was born in April 2009 from an idea by Federico Giannini, 25 years old, and Ilaria Baratta, 24 years old: during each episode of the podcast (distributed in MP3 format) Federico and Ilaria talk about an important Italian artist from 13th to 19th century. Each episode lasts about 25-30 minutes and presents the life of the artist, his works and even some trivia about himself. The episodes are completed by a page in which the authors provide the links to the images of the works presented during the transmission, the relationships of the artists and list of museums to visit and books to read, useful to widen the knowledge about the artists the podcast deals with. In Finestre sull'Arte visitors can find also articles written by a staff composed of young art historians (Ambra Grieco, Antoniettachiara Russo, Riccardo Zironi, Marina Porri, Chiara Zucchellini, Anselmo Nuvolari Duodo and Giovanni De Girolamo).

The main aim of Finestre sull'Arte is to encourage visitors to go to museums and exhibitions and to see the works presented during the episodes: the interest of the public should not be exhausted in the website, but it has to be incited by the contents of the transmissions. Another aim of Finestre sull'Arte is to approach young people to art: in Italy often universities do not succeed in having a dialogue with young people, so the producers think that a podcast created by young people for young people could be interesting and useful for an exchange of proddings between producers and visitors.

During its three years of life Finestre sull'Arte has become one of the most downloaded cultural podcasts in Italy (the site is always in the iTunes top-30 for the cultural category in Italy, having reached several times the top three positions in the chart). Moreover, in 2011 Finestre sull'Arte has created a spinoff called Finestre sull'Arte Video in collaboration with the University of Pisa: fifteen video podcasts, lasting about ten minutes each, dedicated to fifteen great masterpieces by Italian artists (such as the Flagellation by Piero della Francesca, the Fornarina by Raphael, the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, etc.).

The video podcasts have been launched on iTunes U and they are constantly in the top-20 of the overall chart for Italian universities' podcasts. Finestre sull'Arte has obtained a 2nd place in the eContent Award Italy 2009 (the most important Italian prize for quality websites) and has ranked 20th in the European Podcast Award 2010 (2nd in Italy).

Finestre sull'Arte is very interesting and useful for who wants to know better the history of art (not only the greatest artist of Italy, such as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Piero della Francesca and others, but also those who are less famous such as Bernardo Strozzi, Domenico Fiasella, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Giusto de' Menabuoi, Niccolò Circignani and many others). Also the people who haven't ever studied it can get near this wondelful world because the website is simple and clear showing and  talking about the different artists, who are always presented in their cultural and social period and context.