Della calunnia: da Luciano a Torelli attraverso Dante. Letteratura ed ecfrasi

The essay proposes a diacronic and descriptive investigation into the literary and iconographic geography of slander. This path combines Dante’s excerpts of Inferno XIII to the mise en éspace of the tragedy of Pier della Vigna in the philosophical and scenic writing of Pomponio Torelli. The latter tends to make use of the iconographic and iconological tradition de calumnia, which can be traced back to the work of Lucian of Samosata. The images of the allegories of Botticelli, Vasari and Zuccari give voice and body to the protagonists of an ethical and political reflection, « mescendo la menzogna e il vero », in a visual hyperbole entrusted to the word and to a clever game of mirrors, whose grinding irrevocably marks the limit of specularity as the paradigm of natural and perfect visibility, and opens the passage to madness.