On 2 March 2023, Fabio Barry will lead a workshop that examines the relationship between poetry and early modern architecture. Students, Ph.D. candidates, post-docs and faculty are welcome to join. Lunch will be provided.

“I have raised a monument more lasting than bronze and loftier than any pyramid,” reads Horace’s epilogue to the Odes and his epitaph as a poet. Beyond mere description, to what degree could poetry become an intermedial embodiment of building?

This workshop will examine three buildings in Rome:
a) a medieval tower, the “Casa dei Crescenzi,” with an anonymous poem on mortality inscribed over its doorway (incipit: Non fuit ignarus, 12th century).
b) a semi-imaginary poem about a half-built villa, the Villa Madama (Francesco Sperulo, Villa Iulia Medica versibus fabricata, 1519).
c) a verse description of the building, images, materials, and mosaics of the Cappella Gregoriana in St. Peter’s (Lorenzo Frizolio, Sacellum Gregorianum, 1583)

Readings will be circulated beforehand. Please write Elizabeth Merrill to register your attendance.