Series of Engravings for Ludovico Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” (1580) from the Collection of the Russian Academy of Sciences Library: Features of Visual Narrative Construction
Keywords:
Vincenzo Valgrisi, Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, Venetian typography, narrative engraving, text and image, visual narrativeAbstract
The article deals with the prints created for a mid-16th-century Venetian edition of L. Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The series of 46 woodcuts ordered by a typographer of French origin V. Valgrisi, as well as the book itself had a permanent success among readers. It was reprinted in four different formats nineteen times. The Russian Academy of Sciences Library holds two dozen books published by V. Valgrisi in the second half of the 16th century. The Orlando Furioso 1580 reprint edition definitely stands out among them. The article analyses some features of visual narrative formation, both in the case of a separate engraving and the whole xylographic series. This analysis is based on modern research works (I. Andreoli, S. Pezzini, A. Benassi etc.), the comparison of different reprints, looked through (de visu) in the National library of Russia, and on the investigation of digital copies in European libraries. As a result, several questions, which are very important for static images, arise. They are the following: how the scenes in the engraving pictorial space, are divided and the borders between them created; what means of narrative unity formation are engaged in order to establish connection between separate scenes within single engraving and between different engravings as well. And at last, what are the main features of the perception of narrative illustrations by the viewer/reader?
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