2021 – Page 34

Uffizi honors the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death with virtual exhibit of Federico Zuccari’s illustrations (Jan. 1, 2021)

January 2, 2021 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“MILAN (AP) — Florence’s Uffizi Gallery is making available for viewing online 88 rarely displayed drawings of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” to mark the 700th anniversary in 2021 of the Italian poet’s death. The virtual show of high-resolution images of works by the 16th-Century Renaissance artist Federico Zuccari will be accessible from Friday [Dec. 31, 2020] “for free, any hour of the day, for everyone,” said Uffizi director Eike Schmidt.” […] AP News, January 1, 2021

See the 88 drawings by Federico Zuccari (1540-1609) done between 1586-1588 while in Spain here.

…mi ritrovai in una strana pandemia… (2020)

January 2, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

In the last days of 2020, the image below was circulating on various social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook):

Contributed by Irene Zanini-Cordi (Florida State University)

Scenes From the Mountain, a score for Purgatorio by Zachary Cheng (2020)

November 24, 2020 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

Scenes From the Mountain is a musical score for Purgatorio by Zachary Cheng (DeMatha Catholic High School ’21).

Of his composition, Cheng writes: “This small movement, which is only around six-and-a-half minutes long, was incredibly difficult to complete despite its length. I returned to it many times over quarantine though I could not seem to find any musical ideas that would stick with me. That changed for the better when I returned to the work in late August and decided to shift my approach. Instead of specifically cataloguing the tale of Dante, I decided to use music to describe the general environment of the Mountain of Purgatory. This ended up giving me more musical freedom. I also shifted the orchestration from a traditional orchestra towards something I am much more familiar with, that being the wind ensemble. The specific movement here encapsulates the base of the mountain (Canto I) up to just before the Valley of Princes (Canto VII).”

The score, with Cheng’s interlinear notes, are available to view here. Listen to it on Soundcloud.

The DeMatha Wind Ensemble (pictured) recorded a performance of Scenes from the Mountain in April 2021.

Many thanks to Zachary Cheng and his teacher, Mr. Homer Twigg of the Department of Theology at DeMatha Catholic High School, for permission to share the composition.

The Dante Alighieri Diploma (2020/21)

September 25, 2020 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

“To celebrate the genius of Dante Alighieri, experimenter of the language and recall his gaze always turned beyond the borders, the sections of Ravenna, Florence and Verona of the Italian Radio Amateurs Association (ARI), organize, as part of the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of the death, the ‘Dante Alighieri Diploma.’

“Participation in the diploma is open to all radio amateurs and SWLs in the world. The diploma will be awarded to radio amateurs or SWL who will connect or activate ‘Dante places.’
Dante places are defined as:

Places related to the life of the poet (birth, residence, death, travel)
Places expressly mentioned in the Divine Comedy or in other Dante compositions
Places not explicitly mentioned, but whose identification is possible through periphrases or adjectives and which are normally accepted by Dante’s criticism.

“The Dante Places were identified using the database developed by Prof. Andrea Gazzoni of Pennsylvania University who surveyed over 300 geographic references in the Divine Comedy between cities, regions, rivers, mountains and nations.

“Prof Gazzoni’s database can be consulted on the website www.mappingdante.com.

“The diploma will begin on September 1, 2020 and end on September 30, 2021.” –“Introduction,” Diploma Dante Alighieri

Contributed by Andrea Gazzoni

Dante. The Vision of Art Exhibition

September 14, 2020 By lsanchez

“The Uffizi is providing Dante-centric artworks for the major exhibition Dante. The Vision of Art held in Forlì from March 12 to July 4, 2021.

The show is part of the nationwide celebrations for the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, but also aims to symbolize the rebirth of Italy and the art world.

The project is based on an idea by Eike Schmidt, director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, and Gianfranco Brunelli, director of major exhibitions of the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì, while Professors Antonio Paolucci and Professor Fernando Mazzocca are the show curators. The decision to hold the exhibition in Forlì is part of an overall strategy to promote the area that acts as a natural bridge between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. Dante sought refuge in Forlì in the Autumn of 1302 after leaving Arezzo. The poet stayed with the city’s noble ruling family, the Ordelaffi, for more than a year.

Several works will be loaned to Forlì by the Uffizi, including Andrea del Castagno’s portraits of Dante and Farinata degli Uberti, which are not usually not public view in Florence, given their placement in the San Pier Scheraggio church, which is where the council met on which Dante once served. A second Dante portrait, by Cristofano dell’Altissimo, will be displayed in the Forlì exhibition. Pontormo’s Exile from Paradise and a Michelangelo’s drawing depicting a doomed man in Divine Comedy’s Inferno, in addition to a selection of fine sketches by Federico Zuccari for the 500th illustrated edition of the text. Other highlights include a marble bust of Virgil by the eighteenth-century sculptor Carlo Albacini, and the nineteenth-century canvas by Tuscan proto-romantic Nicola Monti, titled Francesca da Rimini in the Inferno.” –Editorial Staff, The Florentine, July 10, 2020

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