Divina Sezione. The Italian Architecture for the Divine Comedy is the catalogue of the homonymous exhibition carried out by Luca Molinari with Chiara Ingrosso, which has been first displayed in the marvelous chambers of Reggia di Caserta in the months of March and April 2018.
Mirroring the exhibition the publication collects a new vision on the three afterlife worlds of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, the allegorical poem which has been inspiring visionary artists, illustrators and scientists through the centuries until today. From Botticelli to Galileo, passing through Gustave Dorè and Salvador Dalì, there have been many artists who have ventured to draw and shape spaces, atmospheres and landscapes of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.
The rationalist architect Giuseppe Terragni was the first to give an architectural shape to Dante’s eschatology through the never built Danteum project in Rome, imagining the otherworldly journey as a spatial experience through architecture media.
The book collects more than seventy works, including drawings by architects of different generations. Designers have conceived a personal, often unexpected, interpretation of the three main worlds of Dante’s journey. Francesco Venezia, Paolo Portoghesi, Cherubino Gambardella, Aimaro Isola, Francesco Librizzi, Andrea Branzi, Michele De Lucchi and Franco Purini are just some some of the architects who have contributed with original drawings in this figurative and intellectual challenge.
The exhibition has provided an opportunity to stage a new visual and conceptual connection between Dante’s world and the contemporary one, between narration and image through powerful and original visions that ponder on the fragile nature of the contemporary world.
The catalogue is enriched by the critical contributions of Dante scholar Riccardo Bruscagli, professor Alfonso Gambardella, Chiara Ingrosso, Luca Molinari, Aurora Riviezzo, Luigi Maffei, director of the Department of Architecture at the University of Campania Luigi Van Vitelli and Simona Ottieri, author of the exhibition design project.