On the occasion of the XXI Settimana della Lingua Italiana nel Mondo, dedicated to “Dante, l’Italiano” the Italian Institute of Culture is pleased to invite artist Monica Dengo to host the calligraphy workshop: From the Time of Dante Alighieri to the Contemporary. Practising an art of line and rhythm.
This online workshop will focus on the evolution from the bastard hand from a Divina Commedia manuscript into a cancelleresca, which is the foundation of our modern cursives.
According to Monica Dengo, writing by hand means going back to the root of our need to express ourselves, blending sign, word, body into a whole. Practice is the only way to understand its importance.
Cursive is the most advanced form of Latin writing. Its forms are the most rhythmical and can develop into a dance of the hand. In cursive writing, each sign is a gesture of the hand and body, and so everything is executed with rhythm – even when we are unaware of it.
All the cursives we use today have their roots in the writings of late medieval times and Renaissance: the bastard hand, i.e. hybrid between gothic textualisms and cursive, and the cancelleresca hand, a cursive. During the time of Dante Alighieri, a bastard hand was in use. Very recent discoveries may confirm that Dante’s own handwriting was indeed a bastard.
Monica Dengo is an artist and teacher working with handwriting, lettering and calligraphy. She has taught in Japan, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, France, Canada, Russia and United States. Currently she teaches at ISIA Urbino and in a three years long course on historical calligraphy in Venice -Italy, for CIAC – Centro Internazionale Arti Calligrafiche.
The workshop will be held in English.
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