Luciano Vittori

A painter at the roadside of the Mille Miglia

Born in 1950, Luciano Vittori belongs to the last generation that saw the true Mille Miglia with its own eyes. As a boy of six and seven he was taken to the roadside for the final two runs of the original race, in 1956 and 1957, and never forgot them. At school his teachers more than once sent him out of the classroom — not for mischief, but for the astonishingly detailed cars he could not stop drawing during their lessons.

The race never let him go. He was there again for the 1967 and 1977 revivals, and since the modern re-run began in 1982 he has missed only two editions. The Mille Miglia, he will tell you, is in his blood — and it is that lifelong devotion, poured onto canvas and then weathered into fresco, that stands at the very origin of Heritage Fresco.

The cars, and the land that holds them

His subjects are the sculpted bodies of classic sportscars — Italian above all, but also the machines of Stuttgart and the roadsters of England — set never against a bare studio wall but against the rolling hills, rustic farmhouses and cypress lines of his native Tuscany. The car is movement; the land is memory. Luciano paints the moment the two become one.

From photograph to fresco

His method begins in patience. He gathers photographs of the race, works up his sketches and outlines, then builds the image in layer upon layer of oil until the colour sings and the forms take on their weight. Then comes the step that changed everything: together with his daughter Elena he began to weather the finished painting as though it had hung on a chapel wall for four centuries — cracked plaster, worn stone, the patina of ages. This is the technique that became Heritage Fresco.

A studio full of thunder

He works surrounded by the memorabilia of a lifetime at the race. His paintings are sought by collectors for their emotional depth and their precision, and tend to find their owners within months. Each is printed on Hahnemühle fine-art paper, mounted on aluminium Dibond, issued in a strictly limited edition and certified through MyArtRegistry.com.