Dante's exile in Verona: the myth of the Supreme Poet in the city of Verona

From May 7 to October 3, 2021 in Verona, the exhibition Tra Dante e Shakespeare. Myth in Verona, curated by Francesca Rossi, Tiziana Franco, Fausta Piccoli.

Produced by the City of Verona - Department of Culture - Civic Museums, the exhibition is part of theVerona, Dante and His Legacy 1321-2021 project promoted by the Interinstitutional Memorandum of Understanding, with the patronage and contribution of the National Committee for the celebration of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death.

The review is one of the main tributes that the city of Verona dedicates to the Supreme Poet; in fact, Verona celebrates him with an articulated widespread exhibition specially designed for the celebrations. The city is not simply the backdrop for Dante’s story, but becomes the protagonist herself. A city itinerary leads the visitor to rediscover twenty-one places, including squares, palaces, churches, and monuments in the city and in the territory, that are closely linked to the presence of the Poet and to Dante’s tradition.

The exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art is intended as a tribute to Dante’sVeronese exile and the link between Verona and the poet, which continued to grow over the centuries, giving rise to a rich artistic production.

On display will be a selection of more than one hundred works including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, textiles and material evidence of the Scaliger era, manuscript codices, incunabula and printed volumes in original and digital format from civic collections, city libraries, and Italian and foreign libraries and museums.

It will cover a chronological span from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century: the exhibition itinerary will be developed in two main thematic nuclei. The first aims to reconstruct the relationship between Dante, Verona and the Veneto region in the early fourteenth century, while the second focuses on the nineteenth-century revival of an ideal Middle Ages between Verona and the Veneto region.

If at the opening the exhibition evokes the legendary and alleged meeting between Giotto and Dante in Padua and allows us to retrace the Scaligera artistic culture at the great junction of the Giottesque revolution, the exhibition then goes on to recount the profound bond that united Dante and Cangrande della Scala, to whom the poet dedicated Paradise. The rich testimonies linked to the figure of the Scaliger outline the context in which Dante spent the years of exile until the creation of his famous poem. Decorated texts of the Comedy, manuscript and printed, accompany visitors from Dante’s time to the end of the 18th century, testifying to the constant attention that Verona and the Veneto region paid to Dante and his work.

Notable among the works on display are three drawings by Botticelli, a prestigious loan from the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. In particular, Dante and Beatrice. Paradiso II, was chosen as the coordinated image of the diffuse exhibition, which graphically develops the theme of Dante’s itinerary in Paradiso and translates it into the Poet’s journey, guided by Beatrice, along the streets of Verona, discovering the places linked to his memory.

The second thematic core develops the rediscovery of Dante’s myth in the great nineteenth-century season, as an embodiment of the rising Risorgimento ideals and at the same time an example of the poet’s creative torment in exile.

It is at this point in the exhibition that the visitor will be able to admire the iconographic fortune of Dante’s characters, starting with Beatrice and Gaddo, as well as other female figures and the tragic events, linked to the theme of love and star-crossed lovers, of Pia de’ Tolomei and Paolo and Francesca. It is precisely this last theme that introduces the myth of Romeo and Juliet, made famous by William Shakespeare throughout the world.

Through this path it will be possible to grasp the constitution of the identity of nineteenth-century Verona, which on the one hand is nourished by the historical and real presence of Dante at the court of Cangrande, and on the other by the imaginary presence of Romeo and Juliet, also created in the setting of a fourteenth-century Scaliger.

The two thematic paths, real the Dante one and imaginary the Shakespearean one, both set against the backdrop of a Scaliger Middle Ages, define a salient feature of Verona’s urban and cultural physiognomy, which is still clearly recognizable today: this is why the exhibition is linked to the “diffuse exhibition” that runs throughout the city.

For info: www.danteaverona.it

Image: Lorenzo Rizzi, Pia dei Tolomei, detail (1853-1855; oil on canvas; Verona, Musei Civici - Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti) © Ennevi Foto

Dante's exile in Verona: the myth of the Supreme Poet in the city of Verona

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