Corsica imported more the Pisan and Genoese cultures than art and paintings.

As can be seen in the gothic frescoes realised at the end of the XV century, which decorate around twenty churches and chapels. The Fesch museum in Ajaccio houses the biggest collection of Italian paintings in France after the Louvre. Assembled by cardinal Fesch, Napoléon’s uncle, commissioner at war in Italy then well-advised trader, there are around ten primitive Italian works.

In the XIX century some Corsican artists were noticed attending some of the schools in the large French towns (Charles Fortuné Guasco, Louis Pelligriniles...) Some of them reaching the ‘prix de Rome’ or were exposed in Parisian exhibitions.

A little later on, the island was to contribute to the artistic effervescence in welcoming, at the end of the XIX century and at the beginning of the XX century, the main artists who had come to see the particular luminosity of the Mediterranean. Among them were : Matisse, Fernand Léger, Utrillo and his mother Suzanne Valadon, Signac and the American Whistler.

Not so much the precursors but still from the same generation, were the painters such as Lucien Peri, François Corbellini, Pierre Dionisi or Jean-Baptiste Pekle who are synonymous with the artistic revival of Corsica following the first world war. Most of them found their inspiration in the fabulous landscape of the island.