I. In the 17th century, the Florentine engraver Stefano Della Bella (1610-1664) realized two fans, one dedicated to Love and the other to Fortune. Both are in form of rebus – alternating letters and images – and illustrate Italian proverbs about the two topics. Fortune though, appears on the fan always as a woman with wheel or sail: the name of the goddess must be pronounced entire, whereas the other words are obtained by means of images and upper-case letters. In this paper, the third proverb on the fan is fully explained thanks to an interview with Carlo Lapucci (author of a dictionary of Italian proverbs 2007) who indicated the correct name of the part of the key ("ingegno") represented in the image. II. A divination game with an old Penguin copy of Wuthering heighst by Emily Brontë, visible in the 1997 Mike Leighs' movie Career Girls, is one of the most recent examples of the tradition of bibliomancy, testified also in fictional literature. Excerpts of significant passages of novels in which books are consulted as oracle are collected and discussed, focusing on the creative aspects of this practice that, in 20th century – with the idea of chance – involves artistic movements such as Dada and Fluxus. III. New media and the web offer up-to-date versions of bibliomancy: classical sacred books, as well as Tarot cards have been "transferred" into digital, allowing immediate interrogations. Even the 15th century Libro delle Sorti by Lorenzo Spirito Gualtieri can be consulted on line, through virtual dice rolls. The web, nevertheless, enhances the idea of fortune, of chance, of random (see the 'random article' in Wikipedia homepage), of serendipity.
L'articolo analizza l'iconografia della fortuna dai rebus seicenteschi di Della Bella (proponendo una nuova interpretazione per un rigo del Rebus sulla Fortuna) all'immaterialità delle opere digitali, passando per i procedimenti creativi legati al caso nell'arte contemporanea e nei sistemi di ricerca.
Tre puntate su Fortuna. Ventagli, libri-oracolo e web / Sbrilli, Antonella. - In: LA RIVISTA DI ENGRAMMA. - ISSN 1826-901X. - ELETTRONICO. - 92, agosto 2011:(2011).
Tre puntate su Fortuna. Ventagli, libri-oracolo e web
SBRILLI, Antonella
2011
Abstract
I. In the 17th century, the Florentine engraver Stefano Della Bella (1610-1664) realized two fans, one dedicated to Love and the other to Fortune. Both are in form of rebus – alternating letters and images – and illustrate Italian proverbs about the two topics. Fortune though, appears on the fan always as a woman with wheel or sail: the name of the goddess must be pronounced entire, whereas the other words are obtained by means of images and upper-case letters. In this paper, the third proverb on the fan is fully explained thanks to an interview with Carlo Lapucci (author of a dictionary of Italian proverbs 2007) who indicated the correct name of the part of the key ("ingegno") represented in the image. II. A divination game with an old Penguin copy of Wuthering heighst by Emily Brontë, visible in the 1997 Mike Leighs' movie Career Girls, is one of the most recent examples of the tradition of bibliomancy, testified also in fictional literature. Excerpts of significant passages of novels in which books are consulted as oracle are collected and discussed, focusing on the creative aspects of this practice that, in 20th century – with the idea of chance – involves artistic movements such as Dada and Fluxus. III. New media and the web offer up-to-date versions of bibliomancy: classical sacred books, as well as Tarot cards have been "transferred" into digital, allowing immediate interrogations. Even the 15th century Libro delle Sorti by Lorenzo Spirito Gualtieri can be consulted on line, through virtual dice rolls. The web, nevertheless, enhances the idea of fortune, of chance, of random (see the 'random article' in Wikipedia homepage), of serendipity.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
