An essay that, after 40 years, continues to challenge the reader. Castelnuovo, and historian Carlo Ginzburg reread the history of Italian art by questioning one of the dogmas on which it had been based for centuries, namely that only in the great Italian centers was innovative artistic creation possible, while the 'periphery' registered delays and insignificance. The book recounts the relationship between the 'center' and the 'periphery' in a less hierarchical manner, but also less peaceful. Indeed, often, even when it seems to conform to the directions of the center, the peripheries do so creatively or at least at the cost of resistance.

The reader will understand how the “symbolic domination” of the center over the periphery is not a given in the affairs of art and, more generally, of Italian society, but is instead the result of a centuries-long process of constructing models and forms capable of reducing diversity to unity.