Displaying items by tag: mannerism

On the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Dante Alighieri's birth (1265-1321), the Italian Cultural Institute wishes to honor Italy's greatest poet by presenting, for the first time in the United States, Dante's Portrait, a masterpiece by mid-16th-century painter Bronzino; and by holding a continuous reading of the Divine Comedy's first Cantica, the Inferno.

American-Italian actor, writer and director John Turturro will open the night, by reading the first Canto.

How can you maintain fame if people can’t say your name? This is one question that might have occurred to the 16th-century Dutch artist Joachim Wtewael if he had cared about lasting fame, which, apparently, he only sometimes did. Over the span of his well-cushioned life in Utrecht, Wtewael — pronounced, approximately, oo-tuh-vawl (even the Dutch have a hard time with it) — seems to have paid more attention to selling flax and buying stocks than he did to making art, even though art was his first calling and did bring him local renown.