GALLERIA BORGHESE | Pittura e poesia nel Seicento. Giovan Battista Marino e la "meravigliosa" passione

**Galleria Borghese**

presents

**Painting and Poetry in the Seventeenth Century.**

**Giovan Battista Marino and the "Wonderful" Passion**

curated by Emilio Russo, Patrizia Tosini, and Andrea Zezza

An unpublished project that investigates the connections

between the work of Giovan Battista Marino and the visual arts,

intertwining his preferences with the collection of Scipione Borghese,

from Titian to Tintoretto, from Correggio to the Carracci,

from Rubens to Poussin

**November 19, 2024 – February 9, 2025**

With *Painting and Poetry in the Seventeenth Century. Giovan Battista Marino and the "Wonderful" Passion*, the exhibition scheduled from November 19, 2024, to February 9, 2025, the Galleria Borghese explores with a new project the connections between poetry and painting, sacred and profane, literature, art, and power in the early seventeenth century.

Following the path offered by the texts of Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625), the exhibition maps a journey through great Renaissance and Baroque art, from Titian to Tintoretto, from Correggio to the Carracci, from Rubens to Poussin, celebrating the greatest Italian poet of the seventeenth century and his "wonderful" passion for painting.

Curated by Emilio Russo, Patrizia Tosini, and Andrea Zezza, the exhibition focuses on the golden age of Baroque in painting and literature, a period during which the relationship between the two arts perhaps found its highest expression in the life and works of the poet.

Known for his poem *Adone* (1623), centered on the love story between Adonis and Venus, Giovan Battista Marino is also the author of *La Galeria* (1619), a collection of 624 poetic compositions dedicated to as many works of art divided among Paintings and Sculptures, Fables and Stories, created with a play of reflections and continuous expressive challenge between poetic texts and works of art, real or imaginary.

The life and literary production of Giovan Battista Marino are closely linked to the masters and masterpieces of early seventeenth-century visual art, with whom he came into contact in the most important intellectual circles and courts of the time, such as Matteo di Capua's in Naples, Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini's in Rome, Giovan Carlo Doria and Giovan Vincenzo Imperiali's in Genoa, and Carlo Emanuele I's in Turin; in these environments, in the presence of rich collections, the poet formed direct relationships with artists like the Cavalier d'Arpino, Bernardo Castello, Caravaggio, Agostino Carracci, Ludovico Cigoli, and Palma the Younger.

In 1615, persecuted by the Inquisition, Giovan Battista Marino was forced to leave Italy, finding refuge in Paris at the court of Louis XIII and Maria de' Medici, where he remained until 1623: there he met Nicolas Poussin, for whom he wrote a sort of introduction letter that the artist would bring with him on his arrival in Rome. With this symbolic passage, the poet's last phase ties to the decisive Roman arrival of the great French painter.

With its unique collection of masterpieces started by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the early decades of the seventeenth century, the care of the works and the purely Baroque scenic arrangement, the Galleria Borghese represents the ideal context to reinterpret the figure of Giovan Battista Marino, poet and his relationship with the visual arts, and how in the seventeenth century the latter began to mutually influence with literary production.

With *Painting and Poetry in the Seventeenth Century. Giovan Battista Marino and the "Wonderful" Passion*, the Galleria Borghese invites the public to explore the fascinating intertwining of words and images that enchanted Giovan Battista Marino, leading to rediscover the seminal legacy of a writer who knew how to weave the beauty of poetry and the allure of visual art.
Web: www.galleriaborghese.benicu...