Including est flamma, Ravenna pays homage to Dante

 RAVENNA, 27 AUG - Gabriele D'Annunzio's famous sacks filled with laurel leaves and decorated by Adolfo De Carolis with the motto "Inclusa est flamma" ("the flame is inside") in homage to Dante, to establish a parallel between the flame that burned on the tomb of the great poet and the perennial flame that was kept at the sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi; the bronze model of Dante's monument in Trento, made by Cesare Zocchi in 1896; the works of Carlo Wostry (1865-1943) from Trieste, entitled Dante in the pine forest and Dante's funeral. And then some signatures, of illustrious personalities and ordinary citizens, left as testimony during the visit to Dante's sepulcher, including the autographs of Pope Pius IX, who transcribed Dante verses but did not leave a signature, and of that anonymous Florentine lady who he asked the poet for forgiveness to atone for the guilt of Florence, when, five or six centuries earlier, his exile from his hometown was decreed. These are some of the precious and highly original pieces - including books, posters, photographs, paintings, manuscripts and art objects - that embellish the exhibition "Inclusa est flamma. Ravenna 1921: the Secentenary of Dante's death", curated by Benedetto Gugliotta and organized by the Municipality of Ravenna, the MAR - Museum of Art of the city of Ravenna and the Classense Library to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the death of the great poet.
    The exhibition, opening on 11 September at 5 pm at the Classense Library and the first of the three that make up the exhibition project "Dante. The eyes and the mind" (scheduled from September 2020 until July 2021 at the MAR, the church of San Romualdo e la Classense), is free to enter and will remain set up until 10 January: an opportunity not only to pay homage to the immeasurable value of Dante's work, but also to remember a page of official history (national and Ravenna) , in turn linked to many small particular stories, still little known.
    The exhibition is configured as an accurate path of historical documentation, which has its fulcrum in the re-enactment of the national celebrations for Dante's sixth centenary in 1921, inaugurated the year before precisely at the Classense Library in the presence of the then Minister of Education Benedetto Cross. As the exhibition documents, the celebrations of 1921 were preceded by other important moments: in 1908, for example, the "Dante's Feasts" were organized by the Italian Dante Society, during which representatives of cities and territories then under the sovereignty of 'Habsburg Empire. Precisely on that occasion the Ceremony of the oil was born, with the city of Florence offering the oil destined to burn in Dante's tomb, again as a symbolic act to repair the decision to send the poet into exile.
    The exhibition also offers the opportunity to see together for the first time two copies (one from the Classense Library, the other from the historic Olschki publishing house) of the precious edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy and a limited edition ( only 306 copies) of the Divine Comedy, next to the autograph manuscript of the preface, written by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Finally, among the most important pieces, also the official poster of the Secentenary, of large format (200x150 cm) recently restored and exhibited in Ravenna for the first time after 1921, obtained thanks to the collaboration with the Chini Archive of Lido di Camaiore ( LU), custodian of the memory of Galileo Chini (1873-1956), a great Italian interpreter of the Liberty style.