Project data

Funding entiy: Italian Ministry of University and Research

Call: PRIN 2017

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA

UNISI Principal Investigator: Carlo Caruso

Department: Philology and literary criticism

Start date: 20 January 2020 – End date: 20 July 2023

 

Description

This project considers the patronage of arts and letters in the late Italian Renaissance as a characteristically integrated phenomenon. Its objective is a study of literary celebrations of the visual arts and of the ways in which princes, churchmen, the nobility, academies and private citizens operated in conjunction with literati and artists (and their public) producing new and influential forms of patronage and self-promotion.

The project will be primarily concerned with the study of documentary evidence. It will concentrate on four centres – Rome, Siena, Milan and Turin – over a period comprised between the beginning of the pontificate of Clement VIII (1592) and the publication of G.B. Marino’s Galeria (1619-20), the most famous book of poems celebrating the visual arts in European literature. Marino’s work constitutes the ideal meeting point of the project’s main lines of enquiry. The results will include a database registering the extraordinary coeval success of ekphrastic poetry; a monograph on Rome under Clement VIII; the edition of the two main sections of Marino’s Galeria (“Favole” and “Historie”); several articles (2 in top-range journals); an edited volume; and preparatory work for an exhibition – currently planned for 2021-22 – on G.B. Marino and the visual arts.