The following is a city-by-city guide to some of Italy's top art exhibitions.
AREZZO - Museo Statale d'Arte Medievale e Moderna: Piero della Francesca masterpieces including his first painting, a Madonna and Child, missing for 50 years until its recent discovery. Other attractions are diptych of Urbino rulers Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, which has left the Uffizi for the first time; the Louvre's portrait of Rimini lord Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta; and the Madonna di Senigallia from Urbino. Show combined with tour of surrounding villages where Piero (1412-1492) made his name in the 1430s including Sansepolcro with its Madonna della Misericordia polyptych and Resurrection fresco, and Monterchi's Madonna del Parto; until July 22.
BARLETTA - Palazzo della Marra: Zandomeneghi, De Nittis, Renoir. The Painters of Happiness; Italy's only "true" Impressionist artist, Federico Zandomeneghi, is being celebrated in a new show that also explores his ties with two of his famous contemporaries: Auguste Renoir and Giuseppe De Nittis; until July 15.
BERGAMO - Gallery of Modern and Contemporary art: Vanessa Beecroft; the contemporary Italian artist has won international notoriety and acclaim for her nude 'tableaux vivants' but this new exhibit explores a lesser-known, more traditional side to her work. Over 400 drawings and paintings are on display; until July 29.
FLORENCE - Uffizi: Albrecht Durer Engraver; the show features 180 prints and drawings created by the German artist (1471-1528) and his Italian contemporaries. The exhibit coincides with a major Durer show in Rome. Until June 10.
- Palazzo Strozzi: Florence and Paul Cezanne; of some 100 works on display, around 20 are by the French artist, including some of his most famous paintings: Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair, The Bathers and House on the Marne, a very rare loan from the White House. The show also includes paintings by some of Cezanne's contemporaries, including Pissarro, Van Gogh, Matisse and John Singer Sargent; until July 29.
- Boboli Garden: Gardens of the Ancient World; although Boboli is one of the first and finest examples of formal 17th-century gardens, the exhibit looks at much earlier concepts, from the Mesopotamian world through to Imperial Rome. Over 150 archaeological finds are on display, unearthed at the digs of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and on loan from Italian and foreign institutes around the world. The event, staged in the Limonaia (Lemon House), also features a series of reconstructions and models, exploring the development of gardens from the 1st millennium BC through to Ancient Rome; until October 28.
FORLI' - San Domenico Museum: Silvestro Lega; the exhibit spotlights an important collection of work by one of the leading lights of Italy's 19th-century Macchiaioli movement. Over 100 of Lega's paintings are featured, many which have never been displayed before; until June 27.
LIVORNO - Centro Arte Guastalla Gallery: Marc Chagall, 80 etchings from the 1920s and 30s, when the Russian master was at the peak of his powers; until June 24.
MILAN - Palazzo Reale: Kandinsky and Italian Art; the show looks at how Wassily Kandinsky's work in the first decade of the 20th century shaped the development of a group of Italian artists in the 1930s and 1940s. Until June 24.
MODENA - Foro Boario: Vermeer, the Young Woman at a Virginal and the Painters of Delft, 30 works by 17th-century Dutch masters; until July 15.
NAPLES - MADRE Contemporary Art Museum: Piero Manzoni, 200 works from bread-and-kaolin Achromes (non-colour) sculptures to fingerprinted eggs by the irreverent creator of 'Artist's Shit'; until September 24.
- Palazzo Reale: Turkey, 7,000 Years of History, highly successful show on second stop after Rome's Quirinale Palace, ranging from neolithic artefacts to Ottoman treasures; until June 30.
PADUA - Palazzo Zabarella: Giorgio de Chirico; the show brings together over 100 paintings, many on loan from abroad. It aims to illustrate the complexity and contradictions of de Chirico's career over 60 years, rather than focusing on his earlier, more famous, Metaphysical paintings; until May 27.
PARMA - Magnani Rocca Foundation: Mario Sironi, a comprehensive look at the neglected Metaphysical works of one of the founders of the Futurist movement who was, until recently, tainted by his links with Fascism; until July 15.
RAVENNA - Museum of Art: Felice Casorati: Painting Silence; this major exhibition celebrates one of Italy's most enigmatic modern artists. It features around 100 works on loan from museums and private collections; until July 15.
ROME - Scuderie del Quirinale: Albrecht Durer and Italy; the show features over 200 works by the German artist, the local artists who inspired him, and the Italians he in turn inspired. Durer masterpieces have been loaned by museums in Vienna, Washington, Madrid and London and Germany. These are displayed alongside works by Leonardo, Mantegna, Bellini, Raphael, Caravaggio and Carracci; until June 9.
- Vittoriano: Marc Chagall; a major show featuring 180 works on loan from the world's leading museums and important private collectors. Curated by Claudia Zevi and Chagall's niece Meret Meyer, it focuses on the twin influences on Chagall's art of his native Russia and Judaism; until July 1.
- Colosseum: Eros; this show brings together a series of outstanding artworks which seek to shed light on the familiar yet enigmatic figure of Eros. Organizers say it offers an opportunity to look at the liberty and spontaneity with which the Greeks lived their sexuality - homosexual relations included. The show also looks at how the image of Eros evolved over the centuries, gradually 'declining' into the decorative putto - the podgy, winged baby Cupid of Italian Renaissance art; until September 18.
- Palazzo Venezia: Julian Schnabel; the show features a number of Schnabel's celebrated plate paintings, his signature works which use a base surface of broken crockery to create some surprising visual effects. A section of the show is devoted to portraits of celebrities and friends of the US artist; until June 17.
- Castel Sant'Angelo: A World To Rediscover, 12 contemporary Iraqi artists; until July 15.
TURIN - Palazzo Madama: Alexander's Heirs in Asia, From Seleucia to Gandhara; the exhibition highlights the massive cultural influence Alexander the Great's conquests had in Western Asia after his death; the show concentrates on archaeological finds from the fourth century BC to the third century AD uncovered at the city of Seleucia on the Tigris in present-day Iraq and at the Swat Valley, in what was the Gandhara kingdom; until May 27.
- Museum of Antiquities: Ancient Afghan Treasures, over 200 artefacts from four major archaeological sites dating back between 1,700 and 3,200 years. Until September 23.
VENICE - Museo Correr: Sargent and Venice; John Singer Sargent visited Venice more than 10 times between 1879 and 1913 and its palaces, churches, squares and canals feature in over 150 of his paintings. Around 60 are on display in this major show; until July 22.
