According to the vulgate, which perhaps has no historical roots but which in Polesine is considered a "dogma", the Poet owes his salvation to this green giant. It is in fact handed down that Dante, returning from an embassy in Venice, got lost in the tangle of waters and woods of the Delta. To find his way back, he would have climbed a particularly powerful tree, identified in the colossal "Grande Rovra di San Basilio". “Rovra”, in the Polesine dialect, means oak or English oak.
Specifically, the monumental specimen of Quercus robur which dominated the bank of the Po di Goro, near San Basilio. A tree that is mentioned, for its height and majesty, in a notarial deed of 1548.
In the summer of 1321 Dante actually passed through San Basilio, a guest of the Hospitium run by the Monks of Pomposa.
Dante's Rovera no longer dominates the landscape of the Delta. In 2013, time got the better of the Patriarch of the Delta, a tree over 26 meters tall, with a trunk that required 10 children or 6 adults to embrace. For Polesine it was the loss not only of his dean of trees but of a particularly loved symbol.
In Rovigo, at Palazzo Roncale, an exhibition will recall the history of the "Great Oak", proposing images of the tree and its fall, also exhibiting a "relic" of the Patriarch and the shroud that an artist spread on its felled trunk, obtaining a kind of "shroud".
The Homage to the Great Oak will be accompanied by a Homage to the Poet. Its fulcrum will be the exhibition "Visions of Hell", re-enactments of the first Cantica entrusted to three international artists, one for each of the last three centuries.
Hell in the nineteenth-century version could only be the universally known one by the French Gustave Doré, of which the entire corpus of 75 plates will be on display.
To evoke Hell in a twentieth-century version, the images of “Dante's Inferno (1958–60)” by the American Robert Rauschenberg have been brought together.
A female artist, the German Lastly, Brigitte Brand was called upon to illustrate her vision of Hell today with an original work. The artist will also exhibit his Homage to the Great Oak.
For this project, some precious, ancient editions of the Comedy will also emerge and be exhibited from the Accademia dei Concordi and the Library of the Episcopal Seminary of Rovigo, while a corner will be reserved for the original volume “Dante's Inferno. Una storia naturale” (Mondadori, 2010) illustrated and commented by Patrick Waterhouse and Walter Hutton, two young artists in residence at Fabrica, Benetton's creative laboratory. A further corner will exhibit the 1949 “Mickey Mouse's Inferno”, designed by Angelo Bioletto and scripted by Guido Martina in Dantesque tercets. A truly original tribute to Dante is that of the most famous mangaka master in the world, Go Nagai, who reinterpreted the Divine Comedy like him. The exhibition offers some tables.
However, the "Dante's Oak" project is not limited to just the exhibition. During the review, meetings with men of thought are scheduled to stimulate original visions and reflections around Dante's Inferno, the complete reading of which is scheduled for May, during a long marathon.
Particular attention will be paid to the symbolic tree of the project, Dante's Oak or "Rovera". From its uprooted roots some new shoots have sprouted. With the collaboration of the technicians of the Po Delta Park and the Regional Forestry Service, a young specimen will be selected among these to perpetuate the memory of the Poet's passage.
Visitors to the Exhibition are invited to discover the places of the Great Oak, in the territory of San Basilio, in the municipality of Ariano nel Polesine. To immerse yourself in a truly unique area, to admire the remains of what was once one of the most important ports in the Mediterranean.
Here, the Fossil Dunes remind us that once upon a time the sea was where the land is today, even if today it has moved away by kilometres. The ruins of the Roman era, the finds preserved in the local museum, confirm the importance of this ancient city. On the Dunes stands the early medieval church of the Benedictine settlement that welcomed Dante. From the floor of the sacred building, the remains of a previous building can be glimpsed.
Testimonies of a story that is still partly to be written, as confirmed by the excavations that are returning the Etruscan settlement. All immersed in a natural environment of absolute beauty.
The event sees the participation of the Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo Foundation, the Municipality of Rovigo, the Accademia dei Concordi, the Regional Park of the Po Delta Veneto (Unesco MAB Biosphere Reserve), the Municipality of Ariano nel Polesine.
