The National Galleries of Ancient Art present from 15 November 2023 to 29 February 2024 at Palazzo Barberini the exhibition Dante's gaze - The Mimetic Observer curated by Alessandro Coco and Peter Lang with the coordination of Giorgio Di Noto, promoted by the Central Institute for the Catalog and Documentation (ICCD) of the Ministry of Culture .

Housed in room no. 9 on the ground floor of Palazzo Barberini, intended for dossier exhibitions with insights into individual works or specific themes, the exhibition is in its second stage after its opening at the ICCD from 30 March to 21 April 2023.

Flaminia Gennari Santori , director of the National Galleries of Ancient Art, underlined: "After the exhibition Italia awaiting created with the ICCD in 2021, we are now continuing this fruitful collaboration by hosting an exhibition that explores the past in a contemporary key".

On display are the 27 photographic works created by Carlotta Valente , with the collaboration of Joaquin Paredes , on the theme of light and Dante's imagery in the Divine Comedy and organized in three series of nine images that recall Dante's canticles, in turn presented according to a different and precise light intensity.

If in Hell the Poet finds darkness and in Purgatory he finally sees a glow, in Paradise he is overwhelmed by a blinding brilliance.

The photographic processes used to create the works characterize the three songs, alternating silver salt printing on matte paper, cyanotype on glass and daguerreotype on metal plates.

Paper, glass and metal are the three photosensitive supports used with the intention of offering a sort of visual translation, or more simply a suggestion, of Dante's imagery according to those luminous phenomena realistically described in the Divine Comedy.