WEBSITE IMAGES

Carnival & Commedia dell'Arte

All throughout the website you will find the imagery that these two big cultural events (Carnival and Commedia dell'Arte) have given birth.

This popular art was more similar to a news photo reportage of our times than to the "rich and devote people art lovers" image making of those times.

And Gutenberg helped too, a real revolution in habits. Printed paper! Not only "monks' hand written & drawn manuscripts" available only to the CHURCH and to the hyper-rich!

Less Madonnas and an opening to what will become "newspapers", public information.
Modern times from Carnival? Mhhhh …

All images you will find in this website have been a little bit tweaked in Photoshop by me.

What I have changed/added to make them more readable/enjoyable:

• borders, sometimes
• background elimination, if it could better show the subject
• changed/added ancient print/paper color. There are several, not too many, though, I tried to stay as much as possible “in the real”, considering that old paper had surely yellowed and old printing ink has almost for sure quite faded out with the time passing. Tried not to do too much.
• I have made colors a little better from how they were in my original sources. To make them as they must have been in the first place, maybe.

All images are coming from books I have scanned, or from free internet material.
So … no copyright!! Cool.

Sometimes they came out from commercial websites which sell these public domain images to whom can afford to pay.

All these images won’t bring any money to the artists or their descendants.
So … copyleft? You decide.

I have used all my retouching skills to remove what was not needed (in my opinion!), to bypass watermarks and limitations, with the purpose of displaying on the site and offering the people navigating it, THE BEST POSSIBLE IMAGERY AVAILABLE.

And all text has been quite researched - not superficial but essential - to give a good idea of the history behind Carnival and its imagery.

Hope you will appreciate my choices.

Francesco Bertelli:
"Cart of Carnival musicians" - etching (1642)

"Di soni e canti fù tal il concerto,
Ch l' gran Pluton humiliato, e vinto,
Un'anima gli die fuor de l'Inferno"

"There were so many chants and singing in the concert,
That the great Pluto, humiliated and won,
Took out one soul from Hell"