Raffaello as a Poet, the Complexity of an Artist
Thursday, June 25 | 3:00pm EDT
a Zoom webinar
with
STEFANO JOSSA
Royal Holloway, University of London
Registration Required
On April 6, 1520, Raffaello Sanzio, one of the geniuses of the Renaissance, passed away in Rome. Five hundred years later, the force of one of the most creative artists of all time challenges the global crisis caused by Covid-19: as we await for cultural venues to open their doors again so we can view the art behind them in person, the network of Italian Cultural Institutes (IIC) in the US and Canada will celebrate the Master through online multimedia initiatives. In the coming months, a live Zoom conference series featuring some of the most important experts on Raphael, live concerts, and Renaissance cooking webinars will be available to all members and friends of the IICs in North America.
In this lecture, Stefano Jossa will explore the interaction between Raphael’s poems and his painting, with a closer look at their reception, adaptation and appropriation by later artist, in order to demonstrate that painting and poetry went hand in hand in his experience. It is rarely acknowledged by critics, but Raphael was a writer too. He drafted six love sonnets alongside the sketches of The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament at the time when he reached the court of Pope Julius II. Petrarchan in style and dedicated to his beloved La Fornarina, the sonnets demonstrate Raphael’s engagement with courtly literature.
The event will be moderated by Dario Brancato (Concordia University, Montreal).
Stefano Jossa is Reader in Italian at Royal Holloway, University of London. He specialises in the Italian Renaissance and the Italian national identity expressed through literature. He is the author of L’Italia letteraria (Il Mulino, 2006), Ariosto (Il Mulino, 2009) and Un Paese senza Eroi: L’Italia da Jacopo Ortis a Montalbano (Laterza, 2013). He has also edited and co-authored the following books: with Claudia Boscolo, Scritture di resistenza. Sguardi politici dalla narrativa italiana contemporanea (Carocci, 2014); with Giuliana Pieri, Chivalry, Academy, and Cultural Dialogues: The Italian Contribution to European Modernity (Legenda, 2016); and, with Jane E. Everson e Andrew Hiscock, Ariosto, the Orlando Furioso and English Culture (Oxford, 2019). He held the De Sanctis Chair at the Polytechnic (ETH) of Zurich and was Visiting Professor at the University of Parma and Roma Tre. His most recent book is La più bella del mondo. Perché amare la lingua italiana (Einaudi, 2018).
Dario Brancato is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at Concordia University, Montreal. He is an expert of literature and culture in Renaissance Florence, the reception of the Classical tradition (Boethius and Aristotle in particular) in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and Italian linguistics and dialectology. He has published many articles and one monograph (Il Boezio di Benedetto Varchi. Edizione critica del volgarizzamento della Consolatio Philosophiae (1551), Olschki, 2018), and collaborates with several research centres in Europe and North America. In 2014-2015, he was a recipient of a fellowship at Villa I Tatti in Florence (Harvard University).
The event is organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal with the Italian Cultural Institutes in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto & Washington D.C.