One spring morning, at the beginning of the 1990s, I was awakened by an unexpected intercontinental phone call: on the other end of the line, a loud, crisp female voice was asking to speak with Giuliano Matteucci. Expressing herself with an unmistakable New York accent was the secretary of the famous movie director Martin Scorsese! The reason for the call had to do with the preparation of the film The Age of Innocence, based on Edith Wharton’s 1921 novel of the same name, winner of numerous prestigious awards. Scorsese’s well-known maniacal care in the philological reconstruction of settings had led him to ask for information about emblematic works of Macchiaioli painting, so as to contextualize them in some sequences of the film. A suggestion that I was honored to provide, by indicating a series of famous paintings by artists who had frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence: among them, the iconic Rotonda dei bagni Palmieri (Palazzo Pitti, Gallery of Modern Art) and the Signora all’aperto (Pinacoteca di Brera), both by Giovanni Fattori.