True tears from your painted sorrow. The Practice of Ekphrasis in Italian Romanticism

The first decades of the nineteenth century saw a gradual crisis in the traditional relationship between literature and visual arts. This essay shows how this revolution, still unseen in the poetical production by Vincenzo Monti, the undisputed leader of Italian Neoclassicism, takes place already in the works by Ugo Foscolo, Leopold Cicognara and Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi, who were engaged in the interpretation and celebration of Antonio Canova's work of art. These authors tried to refuse the traditional of subordination of visual arts to poetry. This phenomenon is completely achieved in the poetic production of the second romantic generation of Italian poets, and mainly in Andrea Maffei's Lyrics, where the ancient formula "ut pictura Poesis" is reinterpreted in terms of a complete harmony between image and word.