The Italian Renaissance, the Jews, and the Arts: “Leone de’ Sommi: A Hebrew Playwright of the Italian Renaissance.”
Event description
- Academic events
Led by Daniel Stein Kokin (ASU)
About the lecture: This sixteenth-century Mantuan Jew composed numerous Italian dramatic works, the first-ever treatise on stage direction, and the earliest known play in Hebrew. In this lecture, we consider how the Jewish and Italian sides of Leone’s identity stimulated his remarkable creativity, focusing on the playful subversiveness of his “Comedy of Betrothal,” written as entertainment for the holiday of Purim (March 13 - 14, 2025).
About the series: As the arts (visual, sculpture and theater) flourished across fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, how did they intersect with the Jews who inhabited the region and with Jewish themes more broadly? The series explores this question from the vantage points of language, lore and literature.