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Stefano Cracolici awarded prestigious Getty Scholarship (2012-13)

(25 May 2012)

for a project entitled 'Medusean Colours'...

Stefano Cracolici, Dept of Italian (MLAC) and IMRS, has been awarded a prestigious Getty Scholarship (2012-13) from the Getty Research Institute. This project explores the healing power of colours by examining the therapeutic ritual of Tarantism in Renaissance art theory and humanistic literature. Tarantism is figuratively understood as a manic behaviour provoked by the symbolic bite of the tarantula spider and cured through the exposition to music, dance and colours in various combinations.  The overall goal of the project is to further our cognitive and historical understanding of the emotional dynamics inherent in the combination of shapes and colours in a work of art. It consists of three parts: the first one centres on Matteo Zaccolini's Prospettiva del colore (1618-22), transmitting the historically most thorough treatment of the ritual in relation to sound and colour; the second one investigates the specific interest in Tarantism on the part of some Renaissance artists (from Leonardo to Caravaggio) engaging in a dialogue with theorists of art, architecture, medicine and music of the time; the third one explores the different inflections of the ritual in the Mediterranean area through an ethnographic approach particularly attentive to the recirculation of chromatic symbols in visual and musical choreographies.