Free Thinking

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The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Dante's Visions

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Dante's Visions

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Dante's Visions

Art historian Martin Kemp and painter Emma Safe, parallels with Proust and a Dante website

Visions of heaven in Renaissance art that take their cue from Dante's sense of divine light are explored in the new book by Martin Kemp. Dante Alighieri died on 14 September 1321.

Descending into the nine circles of Hell is one of the key ideas set out in Dante's Inferno.  Today's Free Thinking looks at the way his thinking and imagery have been taken up by other artists and writers. Rana Mitter's guests include the art historian Martin Kemp, the painter Emma Safe, the scholar and Dante website creator Deborah Parker and the New Generation Thinker Julia Hartley from Kings College London. 

Professor Martin Kemp's latest book is called Visions of Heaven: Dante and the Art of Divine Light.   He is a leading authority on the work of Leonardo da Vinci and has written explorations of science and art.

Dr Julia Hartley has written a book called Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy. The clip from the Dante dramedy she's developing features Sam Ferguson as Dante and Matthew Salisbury as Guido Cavalcanti.

Deborah Parker is Professor of Italian at the University of Virginia and has created worldofdante.org 

You can see examples of Emma Safe's artwork at https://www.emmasafe.com/

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The most recent episode of Words and Music sets extracts from different translations of the key works by Dante with music including by Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Puccini. That will be available on BBC Sounds and the Radio 3 website for 28 days. 

For a discussion of Dante's writing in The Divine Comedy the Free Thinking Landmarks playlist features a discussion with the scholars Prue Shaw and Nick Havely, poet Sean O'Brien and writer Kevin Jackson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05tq3st

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