The series of encounters entitled “The travelling Genius : Italians Art, humanities, science … in the world“, is a space for discussion and cultural dialogue that the Italian Cultural Institute has developed especially for young Italians in world. Italians who, beyond any orientation, are the bearers of knowledge accumulated in Italy and diffuse the following, even without their knowledge, a provision or a vocation of ancient origin: the generous exchange of culture, comforted by a keen sense of human comprehension.
April 20, 2018, 6pm Free Admission
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montreal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Conference in Italian
This presentation will center on the Neapolitan production of Caravaggio, in order to show how the artist’s painting both incorporated and propelled the epistemological shift occurring at the beginning of the seventeenth century – a shift that is understood and explained within the frame of Michel Foucault’s intellectual history. By highlighting the persistence of Renaissance’s symbolic strategies, all the while opening to the Baroque allegory in the representation of marginality, the presentation focuses on the interval years between these two cultural phases. More specifically, also thanks to the recent recovery of two lost Caravaggio’s paintings, the presentation aims to shed new light on the agency Caravaggio assigned to female figures from all walks of life.
Alessandro Giardino, (Ph.D., McGill 2013) is Assistant Professor of Italian & Francophone Studies, and Coordinator of European Studies at St. Lawrence University, NY. His research covers early modern visual culture and intellectual history, Mediterranean literature in Italian and French, French philosophy, and psychoanalysis. He has written for collective volumes and journals. His most recent articles have appeared in NeMLA Italian Studies, Mnemosyne, Aries, Cuadernos de Filologia Italiana, The Italianist, and Quaderni di Italianistica. His book Giorgio Bassani. Percorsi dello sguardo nelle arti visive (G. Pozzi, 2013) was awarded the Roberto Nissim-Haggiag Prize. His presentation stems from his recently published book, Corporeality and Performativity in Baroque Naples: The Body of Naples (Rowman&Littlefield, 2017; Lexington Books Series).
Reservation no longer available