Poetry and Painting in the 17th Century. Giovan Battista Marino and the "Marvelous" Passion

After the season of the great Renaissance painters, the prestige of the figurative arts grew as never before in history. During the 16th century, the artist went from being a common craftsman to holding a status equal to that of the greatest intellectuals of his time. The inseparable relationship between poetry and painting was consolidated in the 17th century, and became close, reciprocal, even competitive when artists and men of letters confronted each other with the same themes in the arena of the arts. In this framework, the poetry of Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625) plays a fundamental role, whose compositions live on continuous exchanges with contemporary painting and sculpture. His poetic production is rich in visual suggestions, derived as much from direct contact with the art collections he visited during his itinerant life as from the memory of the images of the great artists of the past, starting with La Galeria (1620), which projects onto the walls of an imaginary gallery the names of the artists and works of art that marked the poet's courtly experience, while not neglecting the numerous figurative relationships of the Adonis (1623) and the Strage de gl'innocenti (1632). The catalogue is also enriched by an anthology of Marino's texts in dialogue with the works on display, as well as numerous colour plates.