(March 21, 2017) “Words, Images, and Music: A Dialogue on Torquato Tasso and the Arts at The Library of Congress”: this is the title of the conference to be held on March 24 at the Library of Congress, organized in partnership with the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Institute of Culture in Washington. A meeting aimed at exploring the links between the Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso, the visual arts and music. Laura Benedetti (Georgetown University) and Peter Lukehart (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) will talk about the role played by Tasso’s poem as inspiration to artists and composers through the centuries. “The meeting itself is conceived as a dialogue – explains Benedetti -. Analysis and interpretation of significant pieces of the “Jerusalem Delivered” will alternate the images and notes inspired by them, in a meaningful exchange of ideas and suggestions which we will try to evoke and examine. ” For Lukehart the Tasso’s poem is part of a shared European cultural heritage. “Since its publication in 1581, the text of the Jerusalem Delivered has emerged as a source of narrative material for carvers, painters and craftsmen, as evidenced by the lavishly illustrated editions and residences decorated with scenes of the poem in Italy and France. Bernardo Castello, Domenico Tintoretto, Annibale and Agostino Carracci, and Nicholas Poussin are just some of the artists who have been inspired by Tasso’s genius, in a movement that has spanned over centuries and national borders. ” The meeting will be held in the largest library in the world, the Library of Congress, along with an exhibition of rare editions of the poem edited by Lucia Wolf, librarian of the European Division, which on this occasion will expose some of the treasures of the collection. (Red)
