On "incrostazioni sui corpi" and the river Elsa:
A long way from Dante (or perhaps it isn't): it might be worth looking at
the sources -- a deliberate pun (cf. David Quint's wonderful book) -- for
the various artificial grottoes of the later sixteenth century. At least
one (I'm thinking of the Grotta Grande, Boboli) features all manner of
animate and inanimate things and creatures, including humans, imagined as
transformed into stone through a flood of "hard water." And of course the
gardens at Castello replicate the topography, not least the hydrographic
topography, of Tuscany.
At least one grotto at Castello is very famous (though it doesn't seem
iconographically relevant to this specific issue); there may well be more,
though. See Claudia Lazzaro's excellent book.
Charles Burroughs, CEMERS, Binghamton
At 11:20 PM 9/26/99 PDT, you wrote:
>
>Caro Tor,
>mi sembra che Cecilia nella voce dell'Enciclopedia dantesca, riferisca la
>citazione da Ovidio e Plinio non tanto all'Elsa, piccolo fiume vicino a
>Firenze, quanto alla "proprieta' [delle acque dure], nota fin
>dall'antichita' (Ovidio, Plinio) di formare incrostazioni sui corpi che vi
>si immergono". E in questo senso forse bisogna cercare. Se hai bisogno di
>informazioni sull'Elsa si possono trovare, ma mi sembra che qualcuno le
>abbia già fornite nella mailing-list.
>Buon lavoro
>
>Domenico De Martino
>
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