“Un personaggio forse troppo diletto”. La rappresentazione dell’artista nell’opera di Anna Banti

Abstract

During her whole life, Anna Banti wrote about the works and the biographies of real or fictional artists: as an art historian, as a narrator, as a literary and cinematographic critic, as an editor and cultural journalist. The essay aims to enquire the complexity of this wide and heterogeneous production, analysing Banti's representation of the artist through a critical journey divided into several thematic aspects: Anna Banti and the genre of the historical novel; her approach to the visual text; the dialogical relation between Banti's authorship and that of the artists she decides to represent; the feminist nature of her female characters. In order to better dwell Banti's poetics, the essay will also take into account her own concept of umanità, finally proposing a "humanitarian" reading of the connection between the author and her "personaggi forse troppo diletti".