Verona showcases its myths, between Dante and Shakespeare

From April 23 to June 5, 2021, the Achille Forti Gallery of Modern Art in Verona will host the exhibition Between Dante and Shakespeare. The Myth of Verona, the centerpiece of the wide-ranging exhibition Dante in Verona that takes place in the city’s historic center. Dante arrived in Verona in 1303 courtesy of Bartolomeo della Scala and returned twice more, a guest of Cangrande.

Curated by Francesca Rossi, Tiziana Franco, and Fausta Piccoli, the exhibition will be divided into six large sections and will display works of art and historical evidence to explore two themes through the centuries, from the 14th to the 19th century: the relationship between Dante and Cangrande’s Verona with the subsequent 19th-century revival of an ideal Middle Ages and the Shakespearean myth of Romeo and Juliet.

The first theme leads one to retrace Verona’s figurative culture in the advent of the Giottesque revolution and to dwell on the figure of Cangrande in order to grasp the historical and cultural context in which Dante lived during his years of exile. A remarkable selection of decorated texts of the Divine Comedy, manuscript and printed, published and unpublished, takes visitors from the fourteenth century to the late eighteenth century, documenting the constant attention that Verona and the Veneto region paid to the poet and his Comedy.

In Romanticism, the myth of Dante was rediscovered, and the exhibition bears witness to the iconographic fortune of Dante and his characters, as well as the special attention paid to the tragic events of Paolo and Francesca by Pia dei Tolomei and Count Ugolino and his sons. Also, the fortune in Verona of the story of Romeo and Juliet.

The exhibition is part of the diffuse exhibition: leaving GAM, the visitor is invited to retrace the 14th-century sites of Verona, those linked to Dante’s Scaligeri sojourns, discovering, in an imaginary and circular space-time succession, such evocative environments as the church of Sant’Elena and the Bishopric, the Biblioteca Capitolare, the Palazzo del Capitanio, that of the Province and Prefecture, Piazza dei Signori, the Arche Scaligere, and the church of San Fermo.

Final stop is the Castelvecchio Museum, which houses the equestrian statue of Cangrande. Here, in Sala Boggian, Dante’s Inferno lives again in the powerful images of the American Michael Mazur: a rich nucleus of engravings, donated by the artist to the city of Verona, will be exhibited for the first time 20 years after the first exhibition at the Scaliger Castle.

Image: Pompeo Marino Molmenti, Pia dei Tolomei being driven to Maremma, detail (1853; oil on canvas; Verona, Musei Civici - Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti)

Verona showcases its myths, between Dante and Shakespeare

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.