With the arrival of 2021, and hopefully with the reopening of the museums as soon as the health emergency allows it, the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri come to life, through numerous projects of high cultural and scientific value that will see the Supreme Poet protagonist, made in different cities, from Florence, which gave him his birth, to Ravenna, his "last refuge".
FLORENCE - The first project, already underway on January 1st, is from the Uffizi and is completely virtual: it is the great exhibition "A riveder le stelle", which presents all the drawings by Federico Zuccari for the Divine Comedy on the site of the Florentine museum , for the first time digitized in high definition.
The 88 sheets made at the end of the sixteenth century by Zuccari constitute the most impressive illustrative group of the Comedy created before the nineteenth century: a precious heritage, now visible in a journey in stages capable of making it admire in its entirety and in every detail. At the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, one of Dante's places par excellence in Florence (the oldest portrait of Dante is kept in the frescoes in the Chapel), two projects will be dedicated to Alighieri: divided into 6 sections and with different levels of reading - suitable for scholars but also to school children - "Honorable and ancient citizen of Florence. The Bargello for Dante" (23 March - 25 July) offers the opportunity to explore the relationship between Florence, Alighieri and his work in the first half of Trecento through loans of manuscripts and paintings (which will be set up in dialogue with the frescoes and other contemporary works), all works made by artists, copyists, commentators, illuminators and readers of the Comedy around the year 1337. From 23 September (until 9 January 2022), the second exhibition project, entitled "The admirable vision. Dante and the Comedy in the symbolist imaginary", curated by Carlo Sisi: through a selection of works, from the current na turalist to the European influences of Symbolism, the exhibition illustrates the complex perception of the figure of Dante and the Divine Comedy in the literary context between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
RAVENNA - In addition to the exhibition "Inclusa est flamma", the first of the three major exhibitions gathered under the logo "Dante. The eyes and the mind", in close collaboration with the Uffizi, already inaugurated, then blocked by the pandemic and extended until July at Classense Library (which traces Dante's sixth centenary of 1921), "The Arts at the time of exile", curated by Massimo Medica, arrives at the Church of San Romualdo, from 6 March to 4 July. In the exhibition there are absolute masterpieces, works that Dante had the opportunity to admire during his long wanderings through Italy, while he was in exile, from the "Polyptych of Badia" by Giotto to the effigies of San Pietro and San Paolo by Jacopo Torriti up to precious Offiziolo, a miniature exhibited for the first time, now privately owned, belonged to the poet Francesco da Barberino, friend of the poet.
It will also reopen "Dante in the art of the nineteenth century. An exhibition of the Uffizi in Ravenna", a special project in collaboration with the Florentine museum that lends a nucleus of nineteenth-century works of art for the spaces of Casa Dante in Ravenna.
The latter will thus have an exhibition section dedicated to the Poet until September with works in long deposit: among the works on display there is also "Dante in exile", oil on canvas by Annibale Gatti. Dante's popular fortune, from text to images, including books, films, comics and cartoons, even video games, edited by Giuseppe Antonelli; and then, in parallel, a contemporary art journey, curated by Giorgia Salerno, with artists (such as Edoardo Tresoldi, Richard Long, Kiki Smith, Rä di Martino) who insert Dante references in their works: this is finally the double track of the exhibition "A Pop Epic", at the Mar-Museo d'Arte in the city of Ravenna from 11 September to 9 January 2022, the third exhibition of "Dante. The eyes and the mind".
FORLI '- "Dante. The vision of art", curated by Antonio Paolucci and Fernando Mazzocca, arrives at the San Domenico Museums from 12 March to 4 July. The exhibition, which sees together the Uffizi and the Cassa dei Risparmi Foundation of Forlì, documents the reading that in the various historical periods was given to Dante's art and his works: among the masterpieces present, the portrait of Alighieri and that of Farinata degli Uberti by Andrea del Castagno as well as a drawing by Michelangelo which portrays a damned man in the Inferno of the Divine Comedy.
VERONA - "Between Dante and Shakespeare. The myth of Verona" is the title of the widespread exhibition set up with a central nucleus at the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art and in other places in the city center. Curated by Francesca Rossi, Tiziana Franco, Fausta Piccoli, and scheduled from April 23 to October 3, the exhibition project addresses two main themes through a selection of works, covering a time span that goes from the 1300s to the 800s: the relationship between Dante and Cangrande's Verona and the subsequent nineteenth-century revival of an ideal Middle Ages; the second, all from Verona, is the Shakespearean myth of Romeo and Juliet. (HANDLE).