Florence Biennale report highlights early Carracci landscape

La Tribune de l’Art reports that the 2026 Florence Biennale has opened with its usual emphasis on Italian art, including a substantial presence of Baroque painting and sculpture. Its account also points to a practical constraint on sales to visitors from abroad: it says that many works are notified, meaning they cannot be exported.

The report says the Italian state need not acquire a notified object in order to prevent its export. It adds that the minimum value requiring a certificate has, ‘theoretically’, recently been raised to €50,000. No official documentation for that threshold or details of its application to individual works are included in the supplied text.

Among the works singled out is Annibale Carracci’s ‘River Landscape with Boatmen’, shown by Galleria Alice Fine Art of Rimini. The oil on canvas measures 66 x 86 cm and is dated c. 1588-1590 in the report.

La Tribune de l’Art says that many people regarded the picture as the fair’s finest painting. It further characterises the proposed late-1580s date as exceptionally early, placing the work among the first classical landscapes. That is the publication’s assessment, rather than independently supplied dating evidence. For comparison, it cites a Carracci landscape in Rome’s Galleria Doria Pamphili dated 1604, several years later.

The supplied report gives neither a price nor provenance for the Carracci, and does not state whether the work itself is subject to notification.