Manzoni and the Aesthetics of the Lombard Seicento

Book excerpt: Aligning these historical treatises with what little Manzoni said about art in his critical treatises, justifies a methodology that combines elements of ekphrasis and a comparison of the variants from the first to the final version of the novel. Such methodology allows us to identify how both dramatic and pictorial influences common in seventeenth-century Lombard art manifest themselves in Manzoni's narrative constructs.