This course will be taught in Italian and is open to students who have completed Italian 202.  It will explore the relationship between literature and the visual arts in Italian culture. After tracing the relationship between poetry and painting in Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, we will focus on the role of art in humanist education and on the debate on the sister arts and the "paragone" in the Quattrocento, particularly in Leonardo's Tratise on Painting. Our exploration will then continue on to later periods and texts ranging from tratises such as Ludovico Dolce's Dialogo della pittura to Giambattista Marino's poems on works of art, Foscolo's Carme ad Antonio Canova, futurist manifestos and visual poetry, to conclude with the intertwining of literature and painting on film.