My research is about the irrational and the ways it was dealt with and accomodated through the visual arts of the early modern era. In particular I investigate the relationship between the figures of Dionysus, Apollo and Orpheus.

Ever since Nietzsche’s formulation of the Dionysiac and Apollinean principles, the polarity of the two gods has been codified in western culture. Yet while their discrepancy as opposites has been widely discussed it can be demonstrated that they are two sides of the same coin and as such are often represented with similar traits. In fact, strong analogies between the two can be evidenced both in images and texts produced in antiquity as well as in art and literature from the Renaissance onwards.

 

However, I shall further argue that the most intimidating and potentially dangerous aspects of both Dionysus and Apollo are expressed and mitigated in the figure of Orpheus. Often regarded as the “mortal” counterpart of Apollo (or, in some versions, his son) Orpheus ends his life in desperation and is torn apart by maenads (just like Pentheus, in Euripides’ Bacchae, or Dionysus Zagreus who was dismembered by the Titans). According to Aeschylus, Orpheus had been a follower of Dionysus and was killed at the order of the irate god who punished the mortal for then preferring Apollo. Torn between the two gods and the concepts they represent, Orpheus was invented to encapsulate their conflict and, at the same time, to embody the synthesis of the two.

In this sense, he shares the same iconography of Apollo and Dionysus and is often represented as the “ alter ego” of one or the other.

 

Starting with the cultural climate of the 19^thCentury and the background for Nietzsche’s ideas, I argue that the theme expressed in the “ Geburt der Tragödie” (1872)had been anticipated by several exponents of German Romanticism and found even earlier sources in 15^thCentury Italian Humanism. In fact it was the Florentine Neoplatonists who rediscovered Plato’s writings in praise of “madness” and it was in the learned Renaissance circles that specific images and narratives of Dionysiac character were re-produced.

 

I completed my BA degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art (1989-92) where I also graduated with a Double Distinction and an MA in Classical Art (1993). Since then I worked for Sotheby’s in Rome and the Thyssen Museum in Madrid, wrote for Blue Guides and published in 2004 a guidebook to Rome (the city where I was born). Since 2005 I teach History of Art for Study Abroad Programs run by American Universities in Italy (including Rutgers, Vanderbilt, New Haven, Richmond). In March 2009 I attended the Warwick Summer School in Venice (Global Arts: Exchange and Innovation of Visual and Material Culture across the World, 1300-1800) and in October 2009 began my PhD at Warwick on a part time basis.