Italy in the biography of F. M. Dostoevsky: several introductory notes about the archival finds of Valentina Supino

The role of Italy in the work and biography of Fedor Dostoevsky is indisputably great, independently of the not so long time that he passed in this country. The writer visited Italy three times (in 1862, 1863 and 1868-69) and each journey took on a specific importance and peculiar meaning in his work and biography. Moreover, since his youth Dostoevsky cultivated ties with Italy: he loved Renaissance painting and the Italian opera, he read about the main figures of the Italian history, the country’s political situation and its relation to the religious stances connected with the “holy city” of Rome and the Catholicism. Nonetheless, the links between Dostoevsky and Italy have not yet become a subject of research for a monographic work and therefore his three sojourns in the country hide lots of undetermined aspects. First of all, the present annotations open up a series of questions about the situation of the biographical researches that pertain the Italian period of the writer’s life. Secondly, they are an introduction to the subsequent article by Valentina Supino who has discovered new interesting facts about the last writer’s stay in Florence.