"Lo studio italiano". The Italian workshop

Leader - Marina Vladimirovna Vlasova, Researcher, State Hermitage

The Italian workshop offers study of Italian art as a foundation of European culture.

"Everything came from Italy…" was what Joseph Brodsky remarked when speaking about the importance of Italian culture. The very rich collections of the Hermitage make it possible to become acquainted with Italian art from antiquity to the 20th century. Time spent in the rooms of the museum as well as lectures and conversations in the Student Club form the basis on which the students themselves build their independent, creative work. The main objective of these sessions is to make figurative sense out of works of art. The students in our section prepared a small show which they called 'Italian Christmas' A lot of time was spent studying the sources of Italian culture in Antiquity, then on the Italian Middle Ages with its specific features and interaction with other European countries. But we see the main task as tracing the bonds linking the different forms of art, namely painting and literature, architecture and music. What music did Dante and Giotto listen to? Which dances were performed at that time? What did people read? How were they dressed? Images of medieval Italy enliven the Novellas of Franco Sacchetti, a writer of the 14th century whose motifs were used for the production 'Scenes from Florence'. Students from the 'Reverenza' ensemble devoted to early dances also took part in this and thanks to them we saw dances and heard music from the 14th century.

The age of the Renaissance was one of the most brilliant periods in the history of Italian art. Our studies of this topic were accompanied by informal concerts devoted to the music and dance of the time of Leonardo. The culmination of this large program about the culture of the Renaissance was a show entitled 'The Grotesque. A Theme and Variations', devoted to the exhibition on 'The Magical World of the Grotesque' which was being held in the Hermitage.

In our studies we looked at Italian art in the 16th and 17th centuries. We also were interested in the question of interaction of cultures, as between Italy and Russia, for example.

St Valentine's Day. Book of Life party. Italian page

Italian Christmas, a show. December, 2002