Last Week to Visit the Toulouse-Lautrec Show at the Innocenti Museum

Until June 7, 2026: TOULOUSE-LAUTREC: UN VIAGGIO NELLA PARIGI DELLA BELLE ÉPOQUE. Museo degli Innocenti. Open every day from: 9:30 am – 7 pm. Admission: €16, with further concessions available on the museum’s official website. 

For those seeking immersion to a period when artistic expression was woven seamlessly into everyday existence, look no further than the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition at the Museo degli Innocenti. The Belle Époque (1871-1914) was rapturous, beautiful, and fleeting, much like the tragically short life of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. This show explores the works of the French artist and life during that period in Paris. Toulouse- Lautrec was one of the leading artists of the era, something vividly captured in his colourful paintings and lithographs in the current retrospective. 

Paris in the Belle Époque saw itself as the bright, well mannered heart of the world. When the sun rose, the city showed a polished face, and when the sun set, it turned into a place that aimed to amuse. In that hilltop quarter, Toulouse-Lautrec, bored by the picture the city liked to show, began to draw the side of Paris that would not stand still for a portrait. 

While the era praised its own machines and technological advancements, Lautrec looked past the wide new boulevards and turned his gaze towards cabarets, café-concerts, fueling the artistic boom of Paris. The middle class looked at the Eiffel Tower and called it proof that the future had arrived – yet the true beat of Paris pounded in Montmartre. 

Over 170 works by the French artist have arrived in Florence for the exhibition, including pieces from museums and personal collections in Hamburg and Alby (near the country estate of the Toulouse-Lautrec family). Toulouse-Lautrec’s famous, coloured lithographs -including Jane Avril 1893- will come from the Wolfgang Krohn Collection. The display seeks to place 

Toulouse-Lautrec in dialogue with his contemporaries, Alphonse Mucha, Jule Chéret and others to create a detailed picture of the Belle Époque’s art scene. 

To bring the esprit of the fin de siècle the show displays contemporary photographs, costumes and furnishings, making it a window onto Toulouse-Lautrec’s life. Paris has always been a city that has enchanted the imagination but, during this time it cemented itself as the artistic and entertainment capital of Europe. A central part of this was the new art form: Art Nouveau. It was born in Paris; its neo-romantic elements contrasted an increasingly industrialised society. Amongst artists of this period, Toulouse-Lautrec’s colours and contours stand out. 

Lautrec did well where art met business. His posters for shops, cabarets and café-concerts showed the life of places that served as both markets and stages. In those spots, art did not hang on a wall – it joined the act and pushed both the show but also the goods at the same time. He became a staple of the Parisian nightlife scene, frequenting clubs and cabarets like the Moulin Rouge. Some of his most well-known lithographs are advertisements or depictions of dancers in these venues. 

The venue of a former Founding Hospital, Museo degli Innocenti, might seem like an odd choice to be hosting an exhibition about Toulouse- Lautrec and the other bons vivants of the Belle Époque. Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of ordinary people, however–especially women–gave a voice to these marginalised historical figures, even if it was through the eyes of an aristocratic man. Similarly, the Museo degli Innocenti makes the stories of working- class families and abandoned children heard in a city celebrated for its wealthy merchants, bankers, and artists. 

The show brings to life the ambiance that he lived and worked in, cementing his and his models’ place in history. More information on the website.

(Mikela Persson Caracciolo)