Departures: the fresco inside Santa Maria Novella station in Florence

About 60,000 people transit through the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence every year, and yet, not everyone notices the huge 25-meter fresco placed on the south wall of the large arrivals and departures hall.

A work created with an ancient technique, for which Italian and in particular Florentine art is famous throughout the world, inserted in the rationalist architecture of the 1930s signed by Giovanni Michelucci.

The fresco is a work by Giampaolo Talani (1955 - 2018), entitled "Partenze” (departures), and its theme is the journey: humanity in motion in search of something, with a baggage of memories, feelings, passions, hopes. But also the image of the anonymous crowd, undifferentiated, but made up of very similar individuals who pursue a thousand different goals, in an existential journey that has a beginning and an end, a departure and an arrival.

The style is characteristic of Talani, which depicts among a pile of red suitcases 19 people with sharp noses, with curly hair, dclothes and ties moved by a gust of wind - perhaps the one generated by the departing train - all very similar to the artist himself. .

The predominating colors are the ocher of the background and the red of the luggages, which appear almost like a pile of bricks and seem to have its specific weight too.

The work does not put you at ease, the figures seem almost ghostly, distant, blocked forever in that instant observing those who pass by. They do so with stern, thoughtful, almost suspicious looks;  travelers who seem to be crossing a burning desert rather than a station.

Giampaolo Talani, had already painted frescoes in the Church of San Vincenzo, in the Bishop's Palace of Massa Marittima, in the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Frassine. In recent years he had devoted himself to sculpture, creating important works such as the Sailor in San Vincenzo, and "Departure" in Washingtonplatz in Berlin.

The artist himself asked the Municipality of Florence for permission to carry out this work, which was finished in just two months.

The fresco was detached from the wall and transferred onto panels to be placed in the station, thanks to a structure unique in its kind, of cellular glass plates set in an aluminum frame. This is the largest detachment of a fresco ever made.