
A
total of one hundred and thirty photographs were selected from those taken by
Luigi Pio Tessitori during his sojourn in India from 1914 to 1919 for an exhibition
held at the Torre di S. Maria in Udine. The photographs portray the sun-burnished
faces of the men, the figures of the women in festive attire and the profound
expressions of the people with whom Tessitori worked most closely: his assistant
Kishor Dan, the scholar Vijaya Dharma Suri and the Maharaja of Bikaner, Ganga
Singh. There are also photographs that bear witness to Tessitoris vocation for
archaeology. Visitors were able to admire columns, decorative bas-reliefs, fortresses
and ancient sites linked with the warrior clans. Tessitori's interest in anthropology
is also evident in the photographs taken at popular festivals at Jodhpur and
Bikaner. A series of other cultural events took place in conjunction with the
exhibition, which was open to the public from 9 to 30 November 1994. On 10 November
at Palazzo Belgrado, the seat of the Provincial Authority of Udine, Manlio Michelutti,
chair of the Società Filologica Friulana "G. I. Ascoli", and
Giovanni Pessina, chair of the Accademia di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, presented
Tessitori and the Friuli of his Time. On 18 November in the conference
hall of the Udine Chamber of Commerce, Enrico Fasana (University of Trieste)
spoke on Tessitori in Rajasthan. On 25 November in the hall of the Astoria
Hotel Italia, Mario Piantelli (University of Turin) presented the Italian-language
version of the Bhagavad-gîtâ - Il Canto del glorioso Signore
(Cinisello Balsamo 1994) edited by Stefano Piano (University of Turin).
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