Romano Alberti between art and literature
Study Day curated by Donata Levi, Ciro Perna, and Vita Segreto
Art, literature, weapons, academia: these are the aspects that Romano Alberti, engraver, poet and treatise writer, managed to combine in his turbulent life, becoming the emblem of the “militant” intellectual at the end of the 16th century.
From the Alberti di Sansepolcro branch, and having grown up in a very flourishing artistic environment, Romano actively participated in the reorganisation of the Accademia di San Luca in the 1580s, traces of which remain in his work as an art treatise writer. He then participated in the Neapolitan literary scenes, gravitating around the Accademia degli Svegliati and the group of partisans of Tasso’s poetry, with whom he exchanged several satirical compositions from his vast (and partly unpublished) collection of songs in defence of the Gerusalemme Liberata as part of the famous quarrel with the Furioso.
Unspecified events led him to enlist in the Venetian outposts of the Aegean, as evidenced by his extensive madrigalistic-encomiastic production, before returning to Rome, where he obtained the position of secretary again at the Roman Academy of Design, under the principality of Federico Zuccari and the protection of Cardinal Federico Borromeo.
The Study Day, curated by Donata Levi, Ciro Perna and Vita Segreto, is organised in an iconic venue such as the Memofonte Foundation, established by Paola Barocchi, the first curator of Alberti’s Trattato della nobiltà della pittura (Treatise on the Nobility of Painting) in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, the Department of Literature and Cultural Heritage of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” and the National Edition of the works of Federico Zuccari.
The aim is to shed light on this versatile and dynamic figure of Italian and European culture, investigating his original paths between art and literature.
Programme:
10:30 am – 12:30 pm:
Greetings from the President of the Memofonte Foundation
Donata Levi, Memofonte Foundation and University of Udine
The 16th-century art treatises by Paola Barocchi
Ciro Perna, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
The madrigals of Romano Alberti
Salvatore Carannante, University of Trento
“A guisa di filosofo naturale”. Notes on painting and philosophy in Romano Alberti
2:30 pm – 4:30 pm:
Emilio Russo, “Sapienza” University of Rome
Romano Alberti and the controversy over the “Liberata”
Vita Segreto, Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Romano Alberti, secretary of the Roman Academy of Drawing
Andrea Mazzucchi, University of Naples “Federico II”
Exegetical and iconographic sources in the “Dante historiato” by Federico Zuccari
Discussion
Communications Office of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome
Coordination: Prof. Guglielmo Gigliotti g.gigliotti@abaroma.it
Collaboration: Chiara Picco, Marianna Pontillo comunicazione@abaroma.it