Astronomical Connections: An Intermedial Journey at Calvino’s Exhibition in Rome

Favoloso Calvino: Il mondo come opera d’arte. Carpaccio, de Chirico, Gnoli, Melotti e gli altri (Scuderie del Quirinale, 13.10.2023–04.02.2024) takes you on a journey through images: on one side, those that inspired Italo Calvino’s works, and on the other, the images and artworks that Calvino’s writing and creativity have inspired. Both threads are intricately woven into a meaningful dialogue within the two levels of the Scuderie del Quirinale dedicated to Calvino.

Pedro Cano, Fedora, da Le città invisibili, acquerello su carta, Blanca, Fundación Pedro Cano.

I went to the exhibition for a very specific reason: I hoped to see somehow materialized the world of cosmicomic tales, to which an entire room is indeed dedicated. The pleasure of entering it was all the more intense as it was the first room sufficiently distant from the hypnotic repetition of the proposed musical background that one finds from the beginning of the journey into this exhibition until the very end. The setup, in which the first editions of the “astronomical” volumes (Le cosmicomiche, Ti con zero, La memoria del mondo) are exhibited alongside the originals of their respective cover works, is structured by a large diagonal that connects a painting by Richard Serra dedicated to Calvino, possibly depicting a large black hole, and the historic map of the Luna by Gian Domenico Cassini preserved at the Paris Observatory, on which the eye bounces from a more playful lunar illustration taken from a book. In this room, the connections underlying Calvino’s narratives become tangible: fragments of reality integrate into poetic and fairy-tale constructions, as in the microcosms of Joseph Cornell and Mark Dion.

Vittore Carpaccio, San Giorgio che uccide il drago e quattro scene del suo martirio, 1516. Venezia, Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore, Benedicti Claustra Onlus.

Invisible but dynamic connections that have more to do with travel than with the network: between the observation of the real and the imaginary, between the given and the possible, between historical or physical space and the world of fairy tales. Normally, the reader is supposed to travel through these itineraries that Calvino creates and tells us through the act of reading, while in the exhibition, the audience is invited to physically traverse them inside the writer’s “mental workshop.”

Tullio Pericoli, Italo Calvino, 2012. Collezione dell’artista / © Tullio Pericoli.

An exhibition succeeds when its narrative transcends the limitations of mere written words, invoking a unique essence that cannot be easily replicated by a simple essay, as it intimately connects with and draws inspiration from the showcased works. In Favoloso Calvino the physical dimension of the writer’s visual imagination allows, much more than illustrating his writings, to experience his gaze.

What I truly admire about Calvino is his unpretentious naturalness in describing and narrating reflections that arise from diverse occasions, including visits to art exhibitions. One cannot but wonder, what he would have thought about not only this exhibition, but the overall turmoil in Rome as well as in Genoa with the exhibition Calvino Cantafavole at the Palazzo Ducale to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of his birth.

Arianne Palla studied art history at the Sorbonne before specializing in restoration at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, focusing on mosaic techniques. Currently, she works as a restorer between Paris and Florence, maintaining her research interests in the field of visual and applied arts with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches.