Giuseppe Capriotti is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Art History at University of Macerata (Italy), where he teaches “History of Images”, “Artistic Geography” and “Iconography and Iconology”. After an interdisciplinary thesis in History of Religion – Early Modern Art History (2000), he won a scholarship for a PhD at University of Macerata (2000–2003), during which he studied at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, under the direction of Daniel Arasse and Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux.
He gave seminars at Université Pierre-Mandès-France of Grenoble (France), at University of Zagreb (Croatia) and at University of Oviedo (Spain). He was Visiting Professor at University of Split, Croatia (January–April 2016), Marie Curie Fellow Researcher at Pwani University, Kilifi, Kenya (February–March 2018), Visiting Professor at UNED of Madrid, Spain (March 2019), Marie Curie Fellow Researcher at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya (March 2020). He published several articles or books on the anti-Jewish and anti-Turkish painting, on the fortune of the Greek mythology in art (in particular on the fortune of the Ovid’s Metamorphosis) and on the connection between texts, images and mystical visions. He recently published Lo scorpione sul petto. Iconografia antiebraica tra XV e XVI secolo alla periferia dello Stato Pontificio (Roma, Gangemi, 2014) and L’alibi del mito. Un’altra autobiografia di Benvenuto Cellini (Genova, Il melangolo, 2013).
Symbols and Personifications beyond visual literacy. Reading Bronzino’s Allegory between Italy and Kenya
Bronzino’s Allegory, conceived between 1540 and 1545 in Florence and now preserved at the National Gallery of London, is an extraordinary didactic tool to explain to students the meaning and functioning of symbols, personifications and allegories in Western art. Even though many art historians have dealt with this painting and explained the sense of each single character, the basic interpretation made by Erwin Panofsky still remains valuable: the image is an allegory of the pleasures and displeasures of both sexual and mental love.
The aim of this paper is to discuss the results of two didactical workshops focused on this painting and conducted with two different groups of students. The first workshop was held in November 2019 at University of Macerata, Italy, with a group of bachelor and master students of cultural heritage, with a double purpose: to reach an exhaustive interpretation of the picture using only the resources available on line (and discerning which online essays and papers are really scientific); and to write a short didactical text to explain the deep meaning of the picture to the visitors of the museum. The second workshop was held in March 2020 at Kenyatta University of Nairobi, Kenya, with a group of bachelor and master students of arts (fine arts, cinema, animation, and drama) with the purpose to reach an exhaustive reading of the picture perceived as an example for creating an allegoric work of art reflecting the current economic and social problems of Kenya. Comparing these two workshops focused on the issue of visual literacy, it is possible to prove that some images are effective in delivering the content even in different cultural contexts. Although it is difficult to establish the role of the postcolonial educational system in this activity, the power of Bronzino’s Allegory as a complex system of symbols and personifications of the Western culture seems to go beyond educated visual literacy.