From 8 May to 11 July 2021, inside the Church of San Romualdo in Ravenna, the valuable exhibition “LE ARTI AL TEMPO DELL’ESILIO“, the second great event of the exhibition cycle “Dante. Gli occhi e la mente“ is on display.
When thinking about Dante Alighieri, more than once people have wondered about the peculiar role that visual art could have played in conceiving his works. Many scholars have noticed the ability of the poet to think directly through images. Especially in the Comedy, he sourced from a repertoire that had to include also representational experiences.
This is even more so, if you consider he was born and raised in Florence. Starting from the second half of the 13th century, the city namely lived a remarkable artistic flowering, peaking with Cimabue and with his suriprisingly talented pupil Giotto, that Dante must have known, as the very well-known passage of thePurgatorioproves.
The florentine origin of the poet gave him a privileged position. He had in fact the chance to experience the most important events during this period of persistent evolution of the local art.
After his exile (1302), Dante started his peregrinations from one court to the other, wandering across central and northern Italy. This made him enrich his already “vast heritage of images”, from which he certainly drew when writing the Comedy.
His was a very troubled journey, and “Le Arti al Tempo dell’Esilio” curated by Massimo Medica (director of the Musei Civici d’Arte Antica di Bologna) tries to show it. The exhibition traces back the main stops of Dante’s journey up to his final refuge, Ravenna, where he passed away exactly seven hundred years ago.
Roma, Arezzo, Verona, Padova, Bologna, Lucca, Pisa, Ravenna, are the main stops of his exile and they mark the exhibition itinerary. The materpieces on display, dating back to Dante’s time, record the most important happenings that marked the Italian art in the period between the 13th and the 14th century , influenced by deep changes and innovations.
The exhibition was realized thanks to the support of Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, Camera di Commercio di Ravenna and Regione Emilia-Romagna
