Media Library
A short film about the myth of the Perseus statue in Florence, made in 1554, the sonnets written for it at the time and their first translation into German.
When the statue of Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini was unveiled in Florence in 1554, a number of poets affixed sonnets in praise of the artist to its pedestal. Six translators have now for the first time translated these texts into German. They celebrate the tension between seeing and writing, bronze and life, mythology and might.
The film tells the story of Cellini and the Perseus statue, providing an insight into the translation workshop and working on the texts. The statue and the sonnets are given visual presentation by the typographer Andrea Schmidt.
The results in their entirety will be staged in Autumn 2020.
Curated by: Tobias Roth
Project organiser: Jutta Büchter
with Asmus Trautsch (Germany), Daniel Bayerstorfer (Germany), Victoria Lorini (Italy), Theresia Prammer (Austria), Moritz Rauchhaus (Germany), Tobias Roth (Germany), Andrea Schmidt (Germany)
The trailer for the Poets’ Evening – Perseus in Verse is supported with the kind assistance of the Italian Culture Institute.