Created as part of GNAMC’s collaborative project with leading figures in design and Made in Italy, Fuga di topi (Escape of Mice) is an original installation by Giovanni Raspini that brings together design and high artistic craftsmanship. Adapted on a smaller scale to suit the museum’s reception spaces, the installation revisits the original “escape” staged in the summer of 2025 in Monte San Savino, a town in the province of Arezzo where Giovanni Raspini restored an historic palazzo designed and inhabited by the Renaissance architect Andrea Sansovino, transforming it into a museum.
The town was invaded by a multitude of silver-coloured mice, small sculptures drawn from the designer’s fantastical imagination, which cheerfully occupied some of the most distinctive corners of the historic centre, arousing curiosity and causing a touch of playful disruption. At GNAMC, twenty-four mice scamper across a wall after timidly emerging from a hole, while another twelve venture onto the top of a doorway leading into the museum galleries, peering down at visitors from above.
Here is how they did it.
Escape of the Silver Mice at GNAMC
Giovanni Raspini’s works reach the Eternal City
by Francesco Maria Rossi
Fuga di topi d’argento (Escape of the Silver Mice), Giovanni Raspini’s conceptual and material performance, has now infested the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome. The artistic gesture first came to life in Tuscany, in the beautiful town of Monte San Savino. Here, the Arezzo-born designer and creative artist established Il Palazzo dei Topi d’Argento (The Palace of the Silver Mice), formerly the home of the Renaissance artist and architect Andrea Sansovino, and now housing an extraordinary collection of contemporary works, sculptures and jewellery. Opened to the public free of charge in the summer of 2023, it offers Italian and international visitors the opportunity to admire an array of remarkable examples of Made in Italy artistic craftsmanship.
Giovanni Raspini’s silver mice first “escaped” from the palazzo that housed them in the summer of 2025, suddenly and under cover of darkness, giving rise to a site-specific installation dispersed throughout the town, permanent yet continually evolving. The streets and squares of the Renaissance town, birthplace of Andrea Sansovino and Pope Julius III, thus became the stage for an intervention that reinterpreted tradition through a contemporary lens: a conceptual and experimental art project in which sculpture, design and urban space enter into an unprecedented dialogue.
A number of mouse sculptures, some arranged in small family groups, have now been placed at the most iconic locations in the historic centre. Life-size and rendered with extraordinarily realistic detail, these surprising little silver animals are handmade by Giovanni Raspini using the ancient lost-wax casting technique and become the protagonists of an unprecedented artistic gesture. The installation brings material and idea, artisanal excellence and conceptual action into dialogue, while an artistic thread unfolds among the ancient stones and through the most significant sites of the historic centre. It becomes almost a treasure hunt, leading visitors to discover Giovanni Raspini’s dreamlike, animal-inspired universe.
But to return to the here and now: twenty-four silver mice have, incredibly, made their way to Rome, still somewhat bewildered by their encounter with the Eternal City. This second escape is more deliberate than the first, intended to assert the originality of a significant conceptual gesture rooted in the animalier tradition. After leaving Sansovino’s palazzo, they stealthily boarded a coach carrying Roman tourists who had come to Monte San Savino to enjoy its famous Chianina steaks, unfairly described as “Florentine”. Hidden in the engine compartment and equipped with a printed GNAMC guide left behind at the palazzo months earlier by a distracted tourist, they reached Rome and leapt off near Lungotevere Flaminio, from where they made their way resolutely to the Galleria Nazionale. After touring the collections and admiring the monumental sculptures, they claimed a space of their own in the refreshment area and now have no intention of leaving. They have built themselves a comfortable den and receive the museum’s many visitors there. Who knows how long they will remain, happily settled in this welcoming place where the paths of time meet those of space and art.