Announcement: 08.06.2022 Poster exhibition: Einbildungskraft in ‚Gold- und andern Farben‘. Illustrationen der Göttlichen Komödie am Beispiel des Codex Altonensis
4 May 2022
The poster exhibition entitled »Einbildungskraft in ‚Gold- und andern Farben‘« results from Gerd Micheluzzi's seminar "Images Beyond Experience. Illustrations of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy" (Winter Term 2021/22). It addresses the question of whether and to what extent early illustrators knew how to respond to the detailed and highly figurative descriptions of this epochal work. In order to do so, the author Dante uses, among other things, the rhetorical device of enargeia, aiming at the imaginatio of the recipients by appealing not only to the visus but also to the other senses. At the center of the student project is the Codex Altonensis (14th century), whose former owner, Johann Peter Kohl (1698-1778), already speaks in a letter printed in 1750 of a manuscript in which "[...] with the most vivid gold and other colors, figures, of all kinds, imaginations and forms are to be seen." The students approach these imaginaria in a variety of ways. Drawing on specific passages but also on more general ideas, they analyze the relationship between text and illustration, the way illustrators use the medium in order to address beholders, artistic prototypes, historically and culturally specific ideas, but also the way in which the imagination of the pilgrim Dante was transformed into pictorial representations.
Opening of the exhibition »Einbildungskraft in ‚Gold- und andern Farben‘. Illustrationen der Göttlichen Komödie am Beispiel des Codex Altonensis«
Date: Mittwoch, 8 June 2022, 7:00 p.m.
Venue: ESA West, 1st floor, corridor of the Department of Art History