Tano Festa e Michelangelo: un episodio di fortuna visiva a Roma negli anni Sessanta

This essay analyses a group of works created by Tano Festa between 1963 and 1967 and investigates the possible sources for the artist’s working on Michelangelo Buonarroti’s iconographies. The stylistic analysis of Festa’s works is based on his own correspondence and on his well known statements, here newly reconsidered. It helps to clarify that Festa’s thinking on Michelangelo is contemporary to his experimenting with mechanical techniques of image production. Tano Festa’s choice of subjects reflects a series of figurative and literary references, which allow to highlight the role played in his imagination by the celebrations for the IV Centenary of Michelangelo’s death (1964). On that occasion, Michelangelo’s work was subjected to a critical process which took advantage of media such as photography and cinema. This critical interpretation focused on the investigation of the process of vision, a central concern in contemporary art, and was explored by Tano Festa through the suggestions he elicited from Art and Visual Perception a psychology of the creative eye by Rudolf Arnheim.