Dante. The vision of art

Through the Dante. The vision of art exhibition, with Intesa Sanpaolo as Main Partner, the Musei San Domenico, Forlì, Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì and the Uffizi Gallery are celebrating the 700th anniversary of the death of the great poet, with the support of the Italian Ministry of Culture.

Open at the Musei San Domenico, Forlì, from 30 April to 11 July, the exhibition is not only a chance to bring Dante’s anniversary to life: at a time like the present, marked so profoundly by the global pandemic, it provides Italy and the art world with an opportunity for redemption and rebirth, through a journey from the Middle Ages to the modern day.

Conceived by Eike Schmidt, Director of the Uffizi Gallery, and Gianfranco Brunelli, Director of major exhibitions at Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forlì, the exhibition is curated by Professor Antonio Paolucci and Professor Fernando Mazzocca.

The San Domenico museum complex is hosting a selection of over two hundred masterpieces from the 13th to the 20th centuries: works by Giotto, Filippino Lippi, Lorenzo Lotto, Michelangelo and Tintoretto, as well as Casorati, Sartorio and many other maestros from the 1900s. In partnership with the Uffizi Gallery, which has jointly organised this major event, the exhibition also features some fifty paintings, sculptures and sketches depicting the Florentine poet and charting his life and work.

Intesa Sanpaolo is firmly committed to promoting the value, beauty and knowledge of Italy’s great artistic heritage, with a keen sense of responsibility towards its home country. This is reflected through the Bank’s long-standing and ongoing Progetto Cultura programme and through Gallerie d’Italia, its three museum hubs that optimise and share the Group’s art collections at historic palazzos in the heart of Milan, Naples and Vicenza.

Intesa Sanpaolo is also supporting the exhibition by lending a piece by Domenico Robusti (Venice, 1560 -1635), also known as Domenico Tintoretto: Paradiso (sketch), 1588-1592, oil on canvas, 145 x 450 cm, from the art collection of Intesa Sanpaolo, on loan to the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice.

Forlì is the city of Dante. Dante found refuge in Forlì for over a year after leaving Arezzo in the autumn of 1302, staying with the Ghibelline Ordelaffi family. He returned to Forlì on occasion in later years. Choosing the city of Forlì as the backdrop for the exhibition is part of a wider strategy of nurturing local areas, in keeping with the Bank’s Progetto Cultura programme: working closely with communities, it supports major exhibitions on the artists, periods and collections that represent Italy’s rich local cultures.