INTRODUCTION – CAVALIER MARINO AT THE GALLERIA BORGHESE

Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625) was one of the most important poets of the 17th century, known for his great work Adone (1623) and for La Galeria (1619), a collection of hundreds of poems composed in relation to just as many works of art.
He bore witness to the greatest art collections of his age, sparking a lifelong admiration which he carried through Italy and France, before returning to Rome in 1623, at the height of his fame. It was a dramatic return, however, due to the accusations of heresy which forced the poet into the
humiliation of a public retraction and exile to Naples, where he died in 1625. In this eventful life, Marino crossed paths with the leading artistic protagonists of his age, forming relationships with many artists from whom he collected drawings and paintings. The aim of this exhibition is to
use the lens of Marino’s verses to reveal the relationship between art and literature in the early 17th century, the very moment that Baroque literature was born.
The exhibition also endeavours to relate Marino’s ideal collection with the one Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633) began to assemble. The poet and the cardinal – both art lovers and among the most influential people of their age – collected and commissioned paintings from all over Italy, despite the distance between them due to their enormous social difference. Nonetheless, the two did not have a good relationship. Marino tried many times to endear himself to the powerful cardinal, but Borghese, unable to tolerate the erotic nature of Marino’s poems, remained one of his key adversaries and one of those primarily responsible  or the Inquisition’s accusations which would lead to his condemnation in 1623. As presented in this exhibition, the enmity between the cardinal and the poet dissolves in the name of their mutual passion for the splendour of works of art—described, celebrated, and collected.

 

 

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