“Semper. Bagnoli, Bianchi, Salvadori nel palazzo di Clemente VII” invites the three artists to intervene inside Palazzo Medici Riccardi. The title of the exhibition, curated by Carlo Francini, Sergio Risaliti, and Francesco Vossilla, refers to the context of the palazzo, a location dense with history, where the word semper returns in various crests, and on the base of the sculpture of Orpheus and Cerberus by Baccio Bandinelli, positioned in the Michelozzo courtyard, in which the mythological subject, perhaps not coincidentally, is also the epitome of the figure of the artist.

Salvadori, Bagnoli, and Bianchi were called upon to experience and draw inspiration from this exceptional dwelling. Each artist made new works for an open space in the palace; Salvadori entered the Courtyard of the Mules by placing at its center Continuo infinito presente, 1985 (2007), which here with its 17 concentric rings reiterates the “sempiternal nature of geometry,” and a monumental Nel momento, 1974 (2009), measuring two meters per side in lead. The latter was set at the stone frame of a window facing into the courtyard, with a new configuration derived from the rotation of the axis, making the square element become rhombic. The usual play of lights and shadows of Nel momento was intensified by means of an expedient: Salvadori requested removal of the casement so that the darkness would be created from the space behind it. “The blackness of the cavity—the darkness of the room at the rear—acts as structural feature, giving volume and substance to the object and functioning as a formal feature”, Lorenzo Giusti wrote some years later. “Utilizing an existing architectural feature, Salvadori enlives the work by incorporating it in the setting, reinterpreting it within a variable system of relations.”