Francesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta (1255–ca. 1285) was the daughter of Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. She was a historical contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy.
Life and death
Daughter of Guido I da Polenta of Ravenna, Francesca was wedded in or around 1275 to the brave, yet crippled Giovanni Malatesta (also called Gianciotto; "Giovanni the Lame"), son of Malatesta da Verucchio, lord of Rimini. The marriage was a political one; Guido had been at war with the Malatesta family, and the marriage of his daughter to Giovanni was a way to solidify the peace that had been negotiated between the Malatesta and the Polenta families. While in Rimini, she fell in love with Giovanni’s younger (and still hale) brother, Paolo. Though Paolo too was married, they managed to carry on an affair for some ten years, until Giovanni ultimately surprised them in Francesca’s bedroom sometime between 1283 and 1286, killing them both.
Francesca da Rimini, Op. 4, is an opera in four acts, composed by Riccardo Zandonai, with libretto by Tito Ricordi, (1865–1933), after a play by Gabriele d'Annunzio. It was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 19 February 1914, and is still staged occasionally.
This opera is Zandonai's best-known work. In the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Renato Chiesa calls it "one of the most original and polished Italian melodramas of the 20th century, [which] combines a powerful gift for Italian melody ... with an exceptional command of orchestration." Celebrated performers of the title role have included Gilda Dalla Rizza, Magda Olivero (who recorded excerpts from the opera in 1969, for Decca Records) and Renata Scotto. In 2013 it was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role.
Francesca, daughter of Guido I da Polenta, for state reasons, is to be married to Giovanni, known as Gianciotto, the malformed son of Malatesta da Verucchio. But as Francesca would certainly refuse to marry the lame and deformed Gianciotto, she is introduced in the first act, by means of a well-laid plot, to his handsome younger brother, Paolo, known as Il bello. Under the impression that Paolo is her destined bridegroom, Francesca falls deeply in love with him at first sight; he also falls passionately in love with her, although they do not exchange a single word.
Rossetti's real name was Charles Gabriel Dante Rossetti, but his admiration for the great Florentine poet led him to change it to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and he proceeded to sign all his work so. In the specific, the very subject of this painting is taken from Dante Aligheri's Inferno, Canto V – it is a small watercolour triptych executed in the archaic, medievalising style of this period in Rossetti's art, and was never painted in oil. Although the artist had been sketching the subject for many years, the watercolour took him just one week to complete. The buyer was the writer and critic John Ruskin. The drawing is simple and the colours generally muted. Only Francesca's long golden hair looks forward to the more sensuous creatures of Rossetti's later works. The picture was originally planned as a triptych in oil, with the same scenes as in the watercolour, but with the lovers kissing as the central motif.
Paolo and Francesca is painting by the French artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, produced in seven known between 1814 and 1819. It derives from the story of Paolo and Francesca in Dante's Inferno. With Ingres' The Engagement of Raphael, these works represent one of the first examples of the troubador style.
Of the seven known versions, that in the Musée des beaux-arts d'Angers is considered the most complete, notably in the exaggerated form of Paolo, whose neck recalls the same artist's Jupiter and Thetis. The frontality of the composition and the details of the room and clothes refer back to the Northern Renaissance.
Bibliography
Daniel Ternois, Ingres, Paris, Fernand Nathan, 1980 (ISBN 2-09-284-557-8)
Robert Rosenblum, Ingres, Paris, Cercle d'Art, coll. « La Bibliothèque des Grands Peintres », 1986 (ISBN 2-7022-0192-X)
Rimini (Italian pronunciation:[ˈriːmini]; Latin: Ariminum) is a city of 146,606 inhabitants in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and capital city of the Province of Rimini. It is located on the Adriatic Sea, on the coast between the rivers Marecchia (the ancient Ariminus) and Ausa (ancient Aprusa). It is one of the most famous seaside resorts in Europe, thanks to its 15-kilometre-long (9mi) sandy beach, over 1,000 hotels, and thousands of bars, restaurants and discos. The first bathing establishment opened in 1843.
An art city with ancient Roman and Renaissance monuments, Rimini is the hometown of the famous film director Federico Fellini as well.
Founded by the Romans in 268BC, throughout their period of rule Rimini was a key communications link between the north and south of the peninsula, and on its soil Roman emperors erected monuments like the Arch of Augustus and the Tiberius Bridge, while during the Renaissance, the city benefited from the court of the House of Malatesta, which hosted artists like Leonardo and produced works such as the Malatesta Temple. In the 19th century, Rimini was one of the most active cities in the revolutionary front, hosting many of the movements aimed at the unification of Italy. In the course of World War II, the city was the scene of clashes and bombings, but also of a fierce partisan resistance that earned it the honor of a gold medal for civic valor. Finally, in recent years it has become one of the most important sites for trade fairs and conferences in Italy.
The Rimini Baseball Club is a team that plays in Serie A1Italian Baseball League. The team is based in the city of Rimini and plays its home games at the Stadio dei Pirati since 1973.
Rimini has won 12 national championships and three European Cups during its entire history.
Among them are Francesca da Rimini and her brother-in-law Paolo, Dante’s most celebrated adulterers, who succumb to temptation and drop the book they are reading in countless 19th-century paintings ...
Francesca da Rimini by William Dyce (1837), depicting Dante's Francesca and Paolo... As a cautionary tale, in the bowels of Dante’s Inferno (1320), lovers Paulo and Francesca are forever blown about by the winds of their own passion.
Francesca da Rimini by William Dyce (1837), depicting Dante's Francesca and Paolo... As a cautionary tale, in the bowels of Dante’s Inferno (1320), lovers Paulo and Francesca are forever blown about by the winds of their own passion.
Such vivid pictorialism was certainly Tchaikovsky’s goal in composing a tone poem inspired by the story of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, the tale from Dante’s Comedia most often chosen by Romantic artists for visual illustration.
And, as an example of this tenderness, here is the famous passage in The Inferno, Canto V, when Francesca da Rimini tells Dante how she and her brother-in-law Paolo fell in love - over a book! ... esser basciato da cotanto amante,.
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