LA NOTTE DELLA TARANTOLA at the museum

Friday 17 August

In the "Pietro Cavoti" Civic Museum, a large section is dedicated to Tarantism and to the various forms of art that inspired it.

From 4.00 to 8.00 pm it will be possible to visit the new exhibition of the Tarantismo Museum through a guide that will accompany visitors through the exhibited collections.

 

The museum houses photographs of Franco Pinna, the photographer who in 1959 documented the anthropological expedition led by Ernesto De Martino, in an exhibition that dialogues with the colorful works of the painter Luigi Caiuli, interpreter of the mystery of the tarantate, in a cycle that traces the drama of desperate Menadi in search of attention and peace, under the protection of Saint Paul. Numerous photographic testimonies on the ritual, from 1954 to 1980 in a video montage with an enthralling charm; an anthology of writings "On the Tarantula" from 1350 to 1961, which deal with the study of the spider, of the poison and its effects, of the various types of healing in the different Apulian provinces. On display important documents such as the edition of 1696 "De anatome, morsu et effectibus tarantulae" by Giorgio Baglivi, a doctor who exalted the benefits of musical therapy to expel the spider's venom, and the text of 1908 by the physician Francesco de Raho, " Tarantolism in superstition and science "in which the causes of pathology are traced not in the venom of the spider but in the social and psychological conditions in which the rural masses of the period were involved.

 

At the Palazzo della Cultura, Piazza Aligheri 51, the heart of Tarantismo.