Il braccio della morte: arte in parola e arte in figura

Abstract

The publication of I Promessi sposi in the Einaudi series «I Millenni» aroused fierce discussions about Alberto Moravia’s introduction, rather disapproving of Manzoni’s novel. Little attention was paid therefore to Renato Guttuso’s drawings, which enhanced the modernity of the text by emphasizing the presence of Evil in history. This article, based on unpublished documents from the Einaudi Historical Archive and the Alberto Moravia Foundation, outlines the background of the controversy and analyzes an iconographic theme, the dangling arm of dying persons and corpses, which Guttuso gleaned from Manzoni’s pages, from Gonin’s drawings, and from pictorial examples, such as David’s Death of Marat. Guttuso’s path was followed by other artists who have illustrated Manzoni’s works, namely Bruno Caruso (2007) and Mimmo Paladino (2012).