The Alchemist

Enrico Sorrentino
Enrico Ermanno Sorrentino (Venice, 1975) studied architecture and modern history in Venice. He is interested in social history and Venetian culture between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, with particular regard to the phenomena of libertinism, popular unbelief and witchcraft. He published the study on the inquisition Giuseppe Pelizzari e quel sicuro mezzo dell’olio santo. Un processo inquisitorio veneziano del 1682-83 (ed. CLEUP 2012) as well as several contributions on eremitical architecture, including L’isola di San Francesco del Deserto, in Sistemi progettuali e paesaggi culturali, atti del quarto convegno internazionale di studi, La Verna 2013 (ed. EDIFIR 2013). Collector of ancient books and prints of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of esoteric character, fond of philosophy, of esoteric literature, of serial and dodecaphonic music, as well as of viticulture and oenological production, he started an experimental wine production in 2000 in order to apply alchemical principles to cultivation operations and to the winemaking process, which represent a means for him to “complete the unfinished, since the winemaker is an alchemist”.