An Italian gallery documenting Rabindranath Tagore’s visits to that country has been set up at the Rabindra Bharati Museum in Jorasanko.
Inaugurated by the consul general of Italy in Kolkata, Gianluca Rubagotti, and Rabindra Bharati University officiating vice-chancellor Subhro Kamal Mukherjee on December 11, the gallery is the sixth foreign gallery at the museum.
The museum has galleries documenting the poet’s visit to China, Japan, the US, Thailand and Hungary. The Japan gallery is under renovation.
Talks are on for a Bangladesh gallery and a France gallery, said curator Baisakhi Mitra of the Rabindra Bharati Museum.
Housed in a room at the Jorasanko Thakurbari, the newly inaugurated gallery has photographs, timelines, newspaper cuttings, creatives, and book covers displayed on the three walls and a window that takes the viewer through the poet’s three visits to Italy in 1878, 1925 and 1926.
A marble-top table has a map of Italy with the eight cities that Tagore visited etched on it.
At an impressionable age of 17, Tagore had landed at the southern port of Brindisi on a fall night in 1878. “His first visit was en route to the UK and was brief,” pointed out Mukherjee.
In his later visits in 1925 and 1926, Tagore spoke about Italy, its cities, its people and culture on several occasions. Tagore became famous in Italy after winning the Nobel Prize, when his works became available at bookstores throughout the country.
The dominant wall in the gallery titled Tagore Speaks has his quotes and photographs in Italy, giving the viewer a feel of what the poet was thinking and experiencing there.
Fascinated by Venice, Tagore wrote: “Benares reveals her mystic, philosophical nature. Venice reveals its nature of life and art. [Look at] her splendid domination of the seas....”
His most controversial visit to Italy was in 1926, when he met Mussolini. “We have not got his photographs with Mussolini. But the gallery has documented the fact that he did meet Mussolini,” said VC Mukherjee.
There are photographs of him at the La Sapienza University of Rome with Rector Professor Giorgio Del Vecchio. A group photograph after a reception shows Tagore with Pratima Devi, prince of Tripura, Nirmal Kumari Mahalanobis, professor Carlo Formichi and professor Del Vecchio.
The wall to the right, titled Italy Speaks, has newspaper reports of his visits to the nation and comments by Italian intellectuals on Tagore. This wall has a photograph of Tagore that appeared in the Italian press after his Nobel win. The left wall holds Tagore’s poem dedicated to Italy with Formichi’s translation of it.
A corner is dedicated to how Tagore influenced several illustrious representatives of contemporary Italian culture, including Gabriele D’Annunzio, a stalwart of the early 20th-century Italian literature.
A glass window at the Jorasanko room has been inspired by a window of the Grand Hotel (now Ritz Hotel) in Rome where Tagore stayed.
Speaking about the gallery, Rubagotti said: “Kolkata is the only Indian city to host a space in a major museum specifically dedicated to Italy and we all hope that the Italian Gallery will be a long-lasting testimony to the cultural links between this part of India and Italy.”
Mario Prayer from La Sapienza University of Rome was in charge of research and content curation.
Rubagotti visited the museum in Santiniketan to collect pictures of the poet in different Italian cities.
Sonia Guha curated the exhibition. Baishakhi Mitra and her team at RBU also collaborated on the project.