A new exhibition titled "Dante Ferretti. Con i miei occhi" has opened at the Musei di San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome, celebrating the legendary Italian set designer and costume designer Dante Ferretti. Curated by Raffaele Curi, the show runs until July 19, 2026, and features a collection of Ferretti's sketches, charcoal drawings, and collages that served as the foundational visual ideas for films by directors including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, and Tim Burton. The exhibition presents these preparatory works not merely as production tools but as autonomous works of art, tracing Ferretti's visual genealogy from Renaissance painters like Piero della Francesca and Caravaggio to contemporary cinema.
The exhibition matters because it elevates the often-overlooked craft of production design to the level of fine art, recognizing Ferretti's six-decade career as a bridge between classical painting and cinematic storytelling. By displaying his original sketches alongside finished film scenes, the show highlights how Ferretti's method—reading a script, isolating himself, and presenting completed drawings to directors—shaped some of the most iconic film environments of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It also offers insight into the collaborative yet invisible role of the set designer, as illustrated by Ferretti's anecdote about proposing the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana for Julie Taymor's "Titus," a choice later credited to the director.