From “Fuoco” to “Notturno” The Interpretation of Light and Shade in D’Annunzio’s Work by his Friends Among Italian Symbolist Illustrators

Italian poet and writer D’Annunzio’s role is well known as a promoter of arts in Italy and for his fondness towards Symbolist painters since his youth. One of his passions was graphics as it is seen in the numerous illustrations of his writings. His first very important collection of poems “Isaotta Guttadauro” (1886) presented for the first time in Italy a sophisticated product with multi-colored illustrations, that included the work of several artists living in Rome: Sartorio, De Carolis, Marius Pictor, Cellini. In their different styles and with the various inflections of Roman Symbolist taste at that time, the deep colors and themes are translated into ambiguous and mysterious shadowy tones, in the French and international manner (from Redon to Rops), with a sense of the permeability of light, and of the Pre-Raphaelite and neo-classical grace. Then later during all his life the Poet nurtured an interest in drawing and graphics and unfailingly published his most famous writings with illustrations by important Italian Symbolist artists who knew how to interpret with great refinement D’Annunzio’s decadent poetics and to pay attention to creating an atmospheric environment characterized by the strongly luminous effects and deep shadows that unfolded in the verses, in Byzantine Rome and in Venice with its scenes of death and corrosion. The essay shows some examples of the links and mutual influences between the text and the illustrations. The theme of light and shadow through the styles of D’Annunzio’s illustrators is seen in the panorama of graphics dedicated to the body of literary work produced in Italy between the 19th and the 20th centuries.