Few Italian concepts have had such a wide European currency as "capriccio”, the term that, starting in the sixteenth century, came to indicate a fashionable multimedia genre associated with liberty of form.
The European vogue for capriccio extended from the arts and music to literature and even, I argue, to medicine and philosophy, where the term came to signify, like the cognate concept of paradox, an unprecedented theory that freely defied conventional wisdom and orthodoxy.
In this lecture, I will investigate the Italian roots of the European taste for capriccio. In the arts, the genre’s hallmark was a coupling of mimetic realism and fantasy, as in the paintings that combined antiquarian expertise with imaginary urban views and landscapes. This peculiar mix of accurate observation and fanciful imagination was rooted, I will argue, in the aesthetic and intellectual experiences of the Italian Grand Tour.
Italy’s cityscapes offered the immediate perception of ancient relics and ruins, while inviting at the same time the imaginative, fanciful re-living of the classical past. Seventeenth and eighteenth century pictorial capriccios anticipated and fostered the taste for the mix and match of fact and fiction, which would later find expression in the European historical novel.
The open lecture is organized in collaboration with Bodies in Translation (BiT) and the research project “The Civilization of Anatomy” (PI: Linda Bisello, USI).
About the lecturer
Trained in Italy and with a career spanning both Europe and the United States, Pomata has taught at the Universities of Bologna and Minnesota and at Johns Hopkins (2007–2019). Her research focuses on early modern European social and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on the history of medicine.
Interested in attending?
You can participate both in person and online.
For in-person participation in Rome, please register by Monday 1 December at noon: https://nettskjema.no/a/eveninglecture
To participate via Zoom, it is sufficient to follow this link:
https://uio.zoom.us/j/61356557381