Incubi su carta. Gli illustratori di Edgar Allan Poe

A talk with Alessandro Botta

Edgar Allan Poe’s tales have been among the most successful subjects of the history of illustration between the nineteenth and twentieth century, also thanks to the extraordinary acclaim that the American author gained in Europe through Baudelaire’s translation. Moving from these premises, artists and illustrators took on Poe’s entire narrative and poetic corpus, or individual tales, which stimulated the symbolist imagery typical of the threshold of those two centuries: a nocturnal and disquieting world, which reflected the anguishes and fears of the time. The iconographic popularity of Poe’s Tales and Poems roots its intrinsic characteristics in his works: on the one hand, allusive and symbolic imagery well suited an idealised rendition of the literary content; on the other hand, the minute description of settings and characters allowed artists a solid apparatus of visual references onto which to articulate their own interpretations. Starting with the work of Édouard Manet and Gustave Doré, interest spread across the last years of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, testifying to the constant attention of artists and illustrators towards the literary topoi of the American writer and poet.

Alessandro Botta is professor of contemporary art history at the Academy of Fine Arts of Turin. After studying in Turin, he earned a Ph.D at the University of Udine. He studied Italian art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including issues linked with art criticism on the threshold of those centuries and on the relationship between figurative arts and literature.  Among his main publications are Illustrazioni incredibili. Alberto Martini e i racconti di Edgar Allan Poe (Quodlibet 2017). He has also worked as a curator for Italian and international museums, including GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna di Torino, Castello Sforzesco di Milano and Chengdu Art Museum.