In the Paris of boulevards, cafés, theaters, and salons, modernity was born. Between 1870 and 1910, a generation of Italian artists chose the French capital as a place of learning and freedom: Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe De Nittis, Federico Zandomeneghi, and other remarkable figures transformed everyday life into painting, capturing the light, movement, and elegance of a new era.

The volume, curated by Francesca Dini, reconstructs this unrepeatable period in which Italian art engaged in dialogue with Impressionism and the emerging culture of modernity—between worldliness, introspection, and urban poetry. It is a journey into the luminous and restless soul of the Belle Époque, when Paris became the heart of European art.