VERONA. NOT ONLY THE ARENA AND JULIET

The Scaliger city preserves important artistic masterpieces relegated to the background by the presence of the amphitheater and the house of the Shakespearean girl.

by Fabio Massimo Penna

Not only the Arena and Juliet's house. The Roman amphitheater has become a symbol of the city and is an extraordinary temple of opera. Tradition has it that the Shakespearean character lived in a medieval palace in via Cappello. Shakespeare also sets The Two Gentlemen of Verona between the Venetian city and Milan, a work in which the precision in describing some sites (in particular in the well of San Gregorio near Milan) has given rise to two hypotheses: either a stay in Northern Italy in the Bardo or " the alternative to the hypothesis of a trip to Northern Italy is that Shakespeare learned those details from some Italian living in London ”(Mario Praz, History of English literature , Sansoni editore, Florence, 1979). The great English playwright exalts the Scala city in his works. Now, however, let's see some of the many sites that the city offers as an alternative to these places that have now become inevitable stops.

Among the greatest architects of the sixteenth century stands the Veronese Michele Sanmicheli (1484 - 1559) who, due to the sack of Rome, in 1527 abandoned the Eternal City to return to his native Verona. However, his stay in Rome left important traces on the Venetian architect who was able to learn about ancient art in the capital and confront his brilliant contemporaries Bramante and Raffaello. Sanmicheli brings elements taken from Roman antiquity into Venetian architecture which he combines with experimental motifs in a personal interpretation of the Mannerist novelties. In Verona he leaves important works. The façade of Palazzo Bevilacqua vibrates with lighting effects thanks to the various stylistic features used by the fluted columns, the statues that rest on the round arches of the French windows, the tympanums alternating with circular pediments, the rustic bugno on the first floor. An extremely lively facade characterized by a mannerist theatricality. Its defensive city interventions are also of considerable importance with the construction of the doors of the new fortified wall in which it combines functionality and courtly language, combining a rustic coating with refined pediments on which the city emblem stands out. Among them we remember Porta Nuova and Porta Palio .

The International Gothic in Verona is characterized by the presence in the city of one of the greatest artists of the fifteenth century Antonio Pisano, called Pisanello . The Church of Sant'Anastasia preserves the extraordinary fresco with San Giorgio and the princess . The landscape in the background depicted with great attention to detail features crenellated towers, spiers, castles together with the terrifying detail of two hanged men. St. George is depicted preparing for the ordeal in an ensemble characterized by a fairytale tone and a chivalrous tale. The tension for the departure is diluted in a scene of great formal elegance in which the exceptional qualities of Pisanello's drawing emerge, which can be seen above all in the horses in the foreground, animals to which the artist had dedicated a series of studies. At San Fermo there is, however, the fresco with The Annunciation in which the great technique of drawing is combined with a chromatic clarity that refers to Gentile da Fabriano.

One of the greatest painters of the Renaissance left an extraordinarily significant work in Verona. The altarpiece of San Zeno by Andrea Mantegna , preserved in the church of San Zeno, stands out as one of the most original works of the Italian fifteenth century. A fundamental feature is the correspondence between the gilded wooden frame and the painting. The wooden columns of the frame are taken from the painted columns so that the frame and the picture form an inextricable whole. It is a sacred conversation set in a structure framed in perspective. The classic incisive line of the painter from Isola Carturo defines the figures in enameled colors bathed in light, in an ensemble in which the perfect assimilation of Brunelleschi's perspective to a single vanishing point is combined with an extraordinary interest in Venetian tonalism (Mantegna marries the sister of Giovanni Bellini who discovered the "chromatic perspective").