The volume is published on the occasion of the exhibition curated by Francesco Stocchi in Rome at the Galleria Borghese from 14 March to 28 May 2023. It offers the twofold opportunity to compare the representation of nature with historical time, together with that of inscribing organic works within a mineral dimension.

The exhibition and the volume present works displayed in four rooms of the museum (Salone di Mariano Rossi, Sala di Apollo e Daphne, Sala degli Imperatori and Sala di Enea e Anchise) and the adjacent gardens, describing an osmotic flow between organic matter and the inner rooms as well as between the bronze works and the botanical wealth of the garden.

Penone’s projects are not works arranged to embellish a place, but rather to present a question about sculpture, its historical evolution and its character of unchanged vitality. This research is a central element in the artist’s work, “the first and simplest idea of vitality, culture, sculpture” and, at the same time, it renews the linguistic articulation between landscape and sculpture already present in ancient statuary and the Galleria Borghese, a place unique worldwide.