A five-week art and music lecture series, celebrating the poet’s 700th death anniversary
Presented by Victoria Martino
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
6:30 PM
Join art and music historian Victoria Martino on September 14, the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, as she begins a five-week celebration of the poet’s power of inspiration, ranging from medieval to modern times.
The name Dante has become synonymous with Italian language and culture. The study of the great poet’s work is, in itself, a liberal arts education. His writing was informed by a vast and profound knowledge of theology, philosophy, history, politics, music, sculpture, painting, and the sciences. The first poet to write in the vernacular, Dante is credited as the founder of the Italian language. So influential was he in his political views, the protagonists of the Risorgimento harkened back to him as the champion of unity and freedom in Italy. Yet Dante’s legacy has been most manifest in the multitude of artistic creations by artists and composers, whose imaginations were ignited by his immortal verses.
According to Dante scholars, more artists in all media have responded to Dante’s La divina commedia than even to the Bible. The poet T.S. Eliot attributed this fact to Dante’s gift for realizing his ideas in clear visual images. La divina commedia has inspired artworks in every epoch, from the original miniatures and illuminated manuscripts of the 14th and 15th centuries, to the lithograph illustrations by Salvador Dali and the complex multimedia drawings of Robert Rauschenberg in the 1950s.
Similarly, each century has produced musical compositions based upon Dante’s poetry: from canzoni by the poet’s friend, Casella (who even appears as a character in Purgatorio), to contemporary operas and song cycles. In fact, more music has been created for Dante’s poetry in our time, than in all previous centuries combined.
About Victoria Martino:
Interdisciplinary scholar Victoria Martino is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and the University of California. She has academic degrees in literature, art history, and music. Victoria Martino studied La divina commedia in the original Italian at Harvard University, with legendary Dante scholar Dante Della Terza. She analyzed and wrote on the relationship between Dante’s text and William Blake’s watercolor illustrations in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums. This lecture series is lovingly dedicated to the memory of Professor Della Terza, who passed away on April 6, 2021.
The lectures will be livestreamed via Zoom webinar. Ticket holders will receive a link before the lecture. Following each lecture, ticket holders will have 48-hour access to a recording. An email will be sent at 10 AM the day after the lecture with the link to the recording.