Parma, in the restored Scuderie della Pilotta the Divine Comedy illustrated by Scaramuzza

From November 20, 2021 to February 12, 2022, the Salone delle Scuderie of the Complesso monumentale della Pilotta in Parma will host the exhibition Uno splendor mi squarciò ’l velo. From Codex 3285 to Scaramuzza. Curated by Giuseppa Zanichelli and Simone Verde, the exhibition is part of the Dante and the Divine Comedy in Emilia Romagna project, a widespread exhibition itinerary that enhances the Dante heritage of fourteen libraries and historical archives in which Dante Alighieri, after his exile, found his second home.

The title of the exhibition is taken from the thirty-second Canto of Purgatorio, while the two quotations in the subtitle announce the exhibition itinerary. Codex 3285 is one of the Palatine Library’s greatest treasures, a masterpiece formerly belonging to the Danti of the Hundred, is recognized as one of the oldest transcriptions of Dante’s Comedy (in fact, it dates back to the early fourteenth century) and features an extraordinary decorative apparatus. The volume has recently undergone a restoration campaign and complete digitization funded by the Lions Club of Parma. Around this Giuseppa Zanichelli has designed an itinerary that reveals to the public the very important heritage of Dante’s works, manuscript and printed, kept in the Palatine Library. Bibliographic and artistic treasures acquired over the centuries by the Farnese, the Bourbons and, finally, by Maria Luigia of Austria to enrich their library.

Parma artist Francesco Scaramuzza executed the mural paintings using a cold encaustic technique between 1841 and 1857 to embellish the Dante Room of the Palatina Library, which holds the magnificent collection of manuscripts, incunabula and rare Dante editions. This prestigious commission gave the painter the cue for another undertaking: to illustrate the entire Divine Comedy, and already in the centennial year, 1865, his plates depicting theInferno were exhibited in Florence.

Scaramuzza finished illustrating the entire Commedia, 243 pen cartoons in all, in 1876. The study of these works allowed Complesso della Pilotta director Simone Verde to reread, in the catalog, Scaramuzza’s work in light of the rediscovery of Dante’s Commedia that, after centuries of oblivion, began in the latter eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, first in England and then in France, Germany and finally Italy.

The exhibition thus aims to offer the public the first organic display of Dante codices that are usually accessible to scholars and the discovery of Francesco Scaramuzza’s entire corpus of Dante drawings. All this in the restored Scuderie Ducali, the Pilotta’s new exhibition space, located on the ground floor of the palace’s north wing.

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Francesco Scaramuzza, Divine Comedy (Indian ink on paper; private collection)

Parma, in the restored Scuderie della Pilotta the Divine Comedy illustrated by Scaramuzza

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