Poetry and Painting in the 17th Century. Giovan Battista Marino and the Marvelous Passion

Exhibition display including Portrait of the Italian Poet, Giambattista Marino by Frans Pourbus the Younger, ca. 1621, Detroit Institute of Arts.

Poetry and Painting in the 17th Century focuses on the golden age of the Baroque in painting and literature, a period during which the relationship between the two arts finds perhaps its highest expression in the life and works of the poet. Following the texts of Giovan Battista Marino (1569-1625), the exhibition traces a journey through the 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 17th century and his 'marvelous' passion for painting.

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 an equal number of works of art, divided between Paintings and Sculptures, Fables and Histories. This collection was crafted with a play of reflections and a continuous expressive challenge between poetic texts and works of art, real or imaginary.

The life and literary production of Giovan Battista Marino are closely tied to the masters and masterpieces of early 17th-century figurative art, with whom he came into contact in the intellectual circles and most important courts of the time: that of Matteo di Capua in Naples, of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini in Rome, of Giovan Carlo Doria and Giovan Vincenzo Imperiali in Genoa, and of Carlo Emanuele I in Turin. In these environments, surrounded by rich collections, the poet established direct relationships with artists such as Cavalier d'Arpino, Bernardo Castello, Caravaggio, Agostino Carracci, Ludovico Cigoli, and Palma il Giovane.

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 kind of letter of introduction that the artist would take with him upon his arrival in Rome. With this symbolic passage, the final phase of the poet's life becomes linked to the pivotal Roman sojourn of the great French painter.

With its unique collection of masterpieces initiated by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the early decades of the 17th century, the care of the works, and the distinctly Baroque scenographic display, Galleria Borghese represents the ideal context to revisit the figure of Giovan Battista Marino as a poet and his relationship with the figurative arts, and how, in the 17th century, the latter began to mutually influence literary production.

Divided into five sections, the exhibition path opens with several great masterpieces by Correggio, Titian, and Tintoretto, collected in the section titled Poetry and Painting in the 17th Century. Introduction to Giovan Battista Marino, which introduces the viewer to the relationship between poetic tradition and figurative tradition already present during the 16th century. This relationship becomes the lens through which to observe Baroque art, of which Giovan Battista Marino, with his interests and transversal connections, was an exemplary representative.

In the section La Galeria and Giovan Battista Marino's Dialogue with Artists, dedicated to the collection La Galeria, the exhibition retraces Giovan Battista Marino's relationship with the great art of the Renaissance and Baroque through a close comparison between paintings, sculptures, and their literary transpositions. Here, masterpieces by Luca Cambiaso, Titian, Palma the young, Peter Paul Rubens, Cavalier d'Arpino, Alessandro Turchi, and Pietro Bernini are displayed, all artists in some way connected to the life and writings of Giovan Battista Marino.

In the section on The Massacre of the Innocents, named after one of the poet's masterpieces, another theme addressed by Giovan Battista Marino is explored, starting from the figurative tradition. The work was published posthumously only in 1632, but at the beginning of the century, the biblical theme had also regained popularity in painting, thanks to large-scale works created by, among others, Guido Reni, Giovanni Battista Paggi, Nicolas Poussin, and Pietro Testa, who grappled with the representation of a horror capable of evoking wonder.

The section titled Adonis between Sacred and Profane collects works related to the myth of Adonis—a beautiful youth loved by Venus, destined for a tragic end—who is the protagonist of the homonymous poem by Marino, which can be considered the symbolic work of 17th-century Italian literature, a triumph of poetry that blends sacred and profane elements, constructed as tableaux or arrangements of poetic pictures. This section features masterpieces by Palma the young, Scarsellino, and Poussin related to the myth, works that range from the most sensual outcomes, characteristic of the love story between Adonis and the goddess, to the more tragic aspects concerning his death and the lamentation of Venus, which also subtly reference sacred representations.

The final section of the exhibition, Farewell: The Apotheosis of Giovan Battista Marino and the Discovery of Nicolas Poussin, pays tribute to the most significant legacy of Giovan Battista Marino's artistic passion: the insight into the greatness of the young Nicolas Poussin. The meeting between the two at the court of Maria de’ Medici in Paris is the premise for Poussin's journey to Rome and the subsequent creation of several works such as The Lamentation over the Dying Adonis, The Parnassus, and The Inspiration of the Poet, all clearly linked to the celebration of Marino's poetry.

The website includes links to further information and images from the exhibition.