«Gli affetti e le cose» nel teatro figurato dell'Adamo di Giovan Battista Andreini (1613 e 1617)

The printing of Giovan Battista Andreini's Adamo (Milan 1613 and 1617), with many illustrations and great typographic care, is a stage of the formation of the comico dell'Arte's identity as a devoted actor and cultured professional. Andreini enriches the biblical tale with episodes that expand the spectacular level of the plot (e.g. with interventions of angels and demons) to solicit the rational comprehension of the spectator / reader through visual language and sensible perception. The forty Carlo Antonio Procaccini's engravings that correlates the dramatic text present elements most likely taken from contemporary theatrical practices; the strict interaction between text reading and images watching should have activated the imagination of the user to memorize read events and to move toward an internal conversion, to be realized through memory and meditation on the biblical tale.