Studying, Translating, and Editing the Greek Fathers in Lorenzo's Florence: Pico, Poliziano, and Ficino.

This chapter argues that the relations between the Florentine humanists and their scholastic contemporaries were rather complex, and that mutual influences existed between two groups of intellectuals. The context of scholastic philosophy and theology in the Florentine Renaissance has been surprisingly neglected by most modern historians. The idea that the Renaissance was a modern and secular phenomenon became ingrained in intellectual history at least since Burckhardt. Relating the superiority of the will, through the importance of love, to Plato and the Platonists, can indeed be regarded as an anti-intellectualistic reaction to some Aristotelian and Averroist doctrines. Another reaction to scholastic discussions was that of the humanists. In the dedicatory letter to Lorenzo de' Medici, Vincenzo Bandello presents some essential details regarding the recently held dispute. Marsilio Ficino's view seems to reflect the Augustinian and Dionysian arguments presented in medieval authors.Keywords: Burckhardt; Florentine renaissance; Lorenzo de' Medici; Marsilio Ficino; Plato; scholastic philosophy; scholastic theology; Vincenzo Bandello

No abstract available.

Reviewed by: La congiura dei Pazzi: I documenti del conflitto fra Lorenzo de’ Medici e Sisto IV. Le bolle di scomunica, la “Florentina synodus,” e la “Dissentio” insorta tra la Santità del Papa e i Fiorentini. Edizione critica e commento ed. by Tobias Daniels Melissa Meriam Bullard La congiura dei Pazzi: I documenti del conflitto fra Lorenzo de’ Medici e Sisto IV. Le bolle di scomunica, la “Florentina synodus,” e la “Dissentio” insorta tra la Santità del Papa e i Fiorentini. Edizione critica e commento. Edited by Tobias Daniels. [Studi di Storia e Documentazione Storica.] (Florence: EDIFIR Edizioni Firenze. 2013. Pp. 206. €18,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-7970-649-0.) “The pen is mightier than the sword.” So spoke Cardinal Richelieu’s character in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s popular 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy. The playwright could just as easily have written that line about the hostile propaganda campaigns [End Page 159] launched between Pope Sixtus IV and the Florentines that erupted following the Pazzi Conspiracy. Tobias Daniels’s critical edition and comment brings together for the first time Sixtus IV’s three bulls of excommunication against Lorenzo de’ Medici and his Florentine supporters; the Florentina Synodus, a Florentine defense against them written by Gentile Becchi; and a further little-known papal response, the Dissentio. The latter, aimed to arouse anti-Medici feeling at the imperial court in Germany, was apparently not widely circulated in Italy. The most famous document associated with the Pazzi Conspiracy, Angelo Poliziano’s defense of Lorenzo and condemnation of the Pazzi in his Coniurationis commentarium, is not included in this collection. The second half of the volume contains the documents in their original Latin. Daniels’s meticulous editing records numerous variations in manuscript and incunabular versions of the texts, and he provides erudite notes on persons and events referenced. Close editing is labor-intensive and commendable work, as is the assemblage of the texts themselves. Placed side-by-side, they demonstrate that the exchange of invective reached beyond personal animosities between Sixtus IV and Lorenzo. Rather, it had wider ecclesiastical and European import when viewed in the context of the grander fifteenth-century contests between papal and conciliar authority in which swirled many a war of words. Becchi crafted the Florentine Synodus for Lorenzo to use in drumming up interest, especially at the court of French king Louis XI, for summoning a church council to depose the pope for immoral conduct and abuse of authority. On the other side, in the bulls and Dissentio, Sixtus IV and his secretaries sought to arose support for the expulsion of Lorenzo as unjust tyrant of Florence and for disrespect of the Church. The historical introduction in the first half of the volume leaves one uneasy on several counts for its lacunae and unsubstantiated attributions. The author perememptorily excludes discussing the political implications in the Pazzi Conspiracy regarding the roles of King Ferrante of Naples and Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. The latter served as condottiere in papal hire and, according to the most recent scholarship by Marcello Simonetta, was certainly implicated in the anti-Medici plot. Strangely, Simonetta’s work (New York, 2008) remains unacknowledged by the author. Yet at the same time, Daniels goes into excruiating detail on other aspects of the Pazzi Conspiracy, most of it derived from the many publications of Riccardo Fubini, author of the preface. In his treatment of the Synodus, Daniels ignores Simonetta’s 2012 edition and commentary, which he dismisses with the erroneous statement that it had been based on a later printed edition by Fabroni rather than an autograph manuscript in the Florentine state archive. For another example, when discussing Giovanni Caroli’s dissent from the Florentines’ call for a church council (pp. 76–78), Daniels makes no mention, even in a footnote, of recent scholarship on the Dominican friar and his views on the Medici. The massive bibliography at the volume’s end obscures these and other lacunae. Daniels’s work is useful but oddly skewed. [End Page 160] Melissa Meriam Bullard University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

An idealized type of Virgin Mary prevails in Florentine painting of the second half of the fifteenth century. Painters depicted Mary according to Florentine art theory, philosophy, and poetry of the fifteenth century as a woman of physical and spiritual beauty. Ideal female beauty was very precisely defined and it was used not only for images of the Virgin but also for other female figures in art – and, as can be seen from contemporary female portraits, it was also followed by Florentine women (and women from some other Italian regions as well) in the fifteenth century. Treatises on painting by Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci were very important for the development of the idealized human figure in Florentine fifteenth-century art theory. Both authors agreed that nature is the only true source of beauty, but they urged painters to select the most beautiful parts of nature and create a new, ideal whole. They emphasized the significance of shading, and da Vinci considered sfumato a means of beauty. Both authors connected body movements with inner feelings, “movements of the soul;” movements must coincide with inner feelings. They presented the ideal proportions of the human body: Alberti’s figure measures 7.5 head heights and Leonardo’s 8, and both proportional systems can be found in Florentine fifteenth-century painting. Marsilio Ficino, the leading Florentine renaissance Neoplatonist, defined beauty as an idea that dwells in the world of ideas and shows itself in the terrestrial world as beautiful bodies. He connected beauty with good, and considered beauty as a splendor of good. Poetry of the Medici circle presented idealized women with much in common: they had blonde hair with shiny curls, pale skin, dark sparkling eyes, a long neck, round shoulders, a slim waist, long elegant arms and legs, and small feet. The ideal woman was virtuous, intelligent, and pious. She smiled so lovingly that she could open the gates of Heaven. Descriptions of female beauty originate in earlier poetry, such as troubadour lyrics and the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. These descriptions influenced Medicean poets such as Luigi Pulci, Agnolo Poliziano, and Lorenzo de’ Medici. Fra Filippo Lippi represents an important starting point in depicting the idealized Virgin Mary in Florentine painting of the second half of the fifteenth century. His ideal beauty was based on poetics, and the painters of Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop followed it. One of these painters was Sandro Botticelli, who represents the peak of the trend in idealized depictions of Mary. Botticelli connected the beautiful form, grace, and melancholy into an ideal figure of Mary. His paintings of the Virgin can be understood as an allusion to Ficino’s philosophy: the Virgin is complete in form and spiritual beauty; she is an image of the ideal that embodies perfection and rises above terrestrial beauty. This idealizing manner was concluded by Botticelli’s pupil Filippino Lippi with a sweet and gentle Virgin. Leonardo da Vinci initially followed Verrocchio’s ideal beauty of a round face and ornamented hairstyle, but later developed his own ideal beauty of a narrow face, high cheekbones, and a gentle smile. Sfumato is used to depict the soft skin and her ethereal expression. Domenico Ghirlandaio developed his own ideal of female beauty. He concentrated on plastic form, and his Virgin is less melancholy than his contemporaries’. Florentine painters of the second half of the fifteenth century succeeded in connecting the spiritual and physical beauty in Virgin Mary and depicting her as the most beautiful woman that ever lived.

An idealized type of Virgin Mary prevails in Florentine painting of the second half of the fifteenth century. Painters depicted Mary according to Florentine art theory, philosophy, and poetry of the fifteenth century as a woman of physical and spiritual beauty. Ideal female beauty was very precisely defined and it was used not only for images of the Virgin but also for other female figures in art – and, as can be seen from contemporary female portraits, it was also followed by Florentine women (and women from some other Italian regions as well) in the fifteenth century. Treatises on painting by Leon Battista Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci were very important for the development of the idealized human figure in Florentine fifteenth-century art theory. Both authors agreed that nature is the only true source of beauty, but they urged painters to select the most beautiful parts of nature and create a new, ideal whole. They emphasized the significance of shading, and da Vinci considered sfumato a means of beauty. Both authors connected body movements with inner feelings, “movements of the soul;” movements must coincide with inner feelings. They presented the ideal proportions of the human body: Alberti’s figure measures 7.5 head heights and Leonardo’s 8, and both proportional systems can be found in Florentine fifteenth-century painting. Marsilio Ficino, the leading Florentine renaissance Neoplatonist, defined beauty as an idea that dwells in the world of ideas and shows itself in the terrestrial world as beautiful bodies. He connected beauty with good, and considered beauty as a splendor of good. Poetry of the Medici circle presented idealized women with much in common: they had blonde hair with shiny curls, pale skin, dark sparkling eyes, a long neck, round shoulders, a slim waist, long elegant arms and legs, and small feet. The ideal woman was virtuous, intelligent, and pious. She smiled so lovingly that she could open the gates of Heaven. Descriptions of female beauty originate in earlier poetry, such as troubadour lyrics and the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. These descriptions influenced Medicean poets such as Luigi Pulci, Agnolo Poliziano, and Lorenzo de’ Medici. Fra Filippo Lippi represents an important starting point in depicting the idealized Virgin Mary in Florentine painting of the second half of the fifteenth century. His ideal beauty was based on poetics, and the painters of Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop followed it. One of these painters was Sandro Botticelli, who represents the peak of the trend in idealized depictions of Mary. Botticelli connected the beautiful form, grace, and melancholy into an ideal figure of Mary. His paintings of the Virgin can be understood as an allusion to Ficino’s philosophy: the Virgin is complete in form and spiritual beauty; she is an image of the ideal that embodies perfection and rises above terrestrial beauty. This idealizing manner was concluded by Botticelli’s pupil Filippino Lippi with a sweet and gentle Virgin. Leonardo da Vinci initially followed Verrocchio’s ideal beauty of a round face and ornamented hairstyle, but later developed his own ideal beauty of a narrow face, high cheekbones, and a gentle smile. Sfumato is used to depict the soft skin and her ethereal expression. Domenico Ghirlandaio developed his own ideal of female beauty. He concentrated on plastic form, and his Virgin is less melancholy than his contemporaries’. Florentine painters of the second half of the fifteenth century succeeded in connecting the spiritual and physical beauty in Virgin Mary and depicting her as the most beautiful woman that ever lived.

Apocalyptic and in Demonic Structures Michelangelo's Love Poetry SARA GELBER Francesco Berni, in his Capitolo a fra Bastian Del ei dice cose, e voi dite parole. ^ Piombo of particularly 1534, succinctly described Michelangelo 's poetic talents as follows: The word cose was well chosen, for Michelangelo, in his poetry, gives weighty considera- tion to his innermost thoughts. These, in turn, were shaped by Michelangelo 's early formai education. As the poet was under the patronage of the Medici family and was wont to spend many hours Lorenzo de'Medici's home, he was undoubtedly influenced by Lorenzo 's circle of friends. Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino and Pico at della Mirandola. His training in Neoplatonic structural basis of his poetry thought was to be the expounding his theories of art and his experiences with love. The adherence to the rigid doctrines of Neoplatonism provoked movement is best poems which are metaphorically structured on his artistic theory. The struggles and resolutions of the poems follow narrative movements of descent and ascent.^ The structural descent is from Michelangelo 's world of experience to a demonic conflicts in the poet's inner self. This dialectical exemplified in his love world. In these poems, addressed to Tommaso Cavalieri, Vittoria Colonna, and to a few undefined women including la donna bella e crudele, the motif of amnesia is prominent as Michelangelo loses his identity, becomes a prisoner to his body, and experiences feelings

This chapter takes the form of a loose commentary on the passage reported in the epigraph concerning philology and philosophy, Lamia . It first analyses chapter 4 of Angelo Poliziano's Miscellaneorum Centuria prima (1489) since it contains his famous statement describing philology's field of study as encyclopedic. The chapter then addresses how the disciplinary relationship between philology and philosophy in late fifteenth-century Florence has been anthropomorphized in modern scholarship as a personal opposition between Poliziano and his contemporary Marsilio Ficino. Next, it explains how the famous statement from Poliziano's Praelectio de dialectica (1491) has been taken by many to be a programmatic statement condemning Ficino's theologized dialectic. Finally the chapter moves up the interpretative hierarchy to explain Poliziano's allegorical comment on Plotinus's philosophical message. Poliziano does in fact comment on Neoplatonic dialectic through his allegorical use of Penelope's weaving of the shroud of Laertes. Keywords: Angelo Poliziano; Lamia ; Marsilio Ficino; Neoplatonic dialectic; philology; philosophy; Plotinus

When Giovanni Boccaccio undertook to compile the myths of Greco-Roman antiquity in the mid-fourteenth century, he was working within a long tradition of medieval commentaries on Ovid's mythological works (principally the Metamorphoses and the Fasti) and mythographical compendia, such as Alberic of London's De deis gentium. His Genealogie deorum gentilium libri, on which he worked until the final years of his life, also falls within the traditions of biblical exegesis and of philosophical commentary on texts, such as Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae and Virgil's Aeneid. The complex and eclectic nature of Boccaccio's learning, however, along with the antimodern organizational structure of the treatise, has led to the underestimation of its importance in the history of medieval and Renaissance approaches to ancient myth. As Charles Osgood's partial translation of the work demonstrates, the focus of critics has been limited to the final two books of the treatise, in which Boccaccio defends both poetry and his work from detractors. The fourteenth and fifteenth books of the Genealogie have been by far the most long-lived sections of the work. The straightforward defense of poetry through recourse to the topos of the poeta theologus places the work in a historical continuum that leads from Albertino Mussato and Francesco Petrarca to Coluccio Salutati, Marsilio Ficino, and Angelo Poliziano, not to mention the poetic theorists of the English Renaissance, such as Sir Philip Sidney.

The Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (b. 1463–d. 1494) is best known today for his Oratio de hominis dignitate, a speech often touted as an emblematic expression of the Renaissance. Originally, however, the Oratio was intended to open a debate in Rome where Pico had hoped to dispute his Conclusiones nongentae, a work of nine hundred theses covering a vast array of philosophical, theological, and esoteric topics that Pico had published in late 1486. A papal prohibition by Innocent VIII, however, canceled the planned disputation, and Pico was excommunicated after he authored in 1487 his Apologia, a sharp defense of thirteen of the nine hundred theses that had been identified as doctrinally problematic by an ecclesiastical commission. Pico was only fully rehabilitated in 1493 by the new pope Alexander VI. Pico’s other extant works testify to his wide-ranging interests and training. In addition to studying ancient and scholastic philosophy, Pico learned Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, and he was one of the first to use Kabbalah to support points of Christian doctrine. He had a life-long interest in reconciling philosophers of the past, arguing that the main oppositions between Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics were simply verbal, and he intended to publish a work titled Concordia Platonis Aristotelisque. He had an early epistolary debate with Ermolao Barbaro on the relationship of philosophy and rhetoric, wrote on metaphysics in De ente et uno, engaged in biblical exegesis in the Heptaplus, and criticized astrology in his longest book, the unfinished Disputationes. Pico enjoyed the protection of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his intellectual contacts included Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Girolamo Savonarola. Much of Pico’s work was published posthumously in 1496 by his nephew and literary executor, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola. Pico was introduced to an English audience in the early 16th century by Thomas More, who produced an abbreviated English rendering of Gianfrancesco’s biography of his uncle, along with translations of three letters and several short spiritual writings by Pico.

Reviewed by: La biblioteca di Pietro Crinito: Manoscritti e libri a stampa della raccolta libraria di un umanista fiorentino by Michaelangiola Marchiaro Sabina Zonno Michaelangiola Marchiaro, La biblioteca di Pietro Crinito: Manoscritti e libri a stampa della raccolta libraria di un umanista fiorentino, Textes et Études du Moyen Âge 67 (Porto: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales 2013) 342 pp. As Michaelangiola Marchiaro explains in her introduction to the volume, she publishes here the most significant results of her doctoral dissertation devoted to the Florentine humanist Pietro Crinito (1474–1507) and his book collection. Her work won the international prize for the doctoral dissertations of the Fundación Ana María Aldama Roy de Estudios Latinos that sponsored her publication. The aim of the research was to identify and catalogue, systematically and for the first time, all the manuscripts written by Crinito and also the codices and incunables he owned. This series of books had never been investigated as a whole by the critics who focused mainly on the part of the collection formed by those codices previously in the hands of a more prominent humanist, Angelo Poliziano. As a result, Crinito was known to the scholars just because he had the privilege of inheriting and keeping some of the papers of Poliziano. Marchiaro consequently intends to document Crinito’s literary and philosophical interests and his prolific activity, highlighting for the first time his role as an active intellectual in the Renaissance Florentine context. The work is addressed to the specialists who are already skilled in the field but a deeper description of Florence at the time when the city was uniquely enlivened by the revival of classical literature, art, and architecture would have probably helped also the non-specialist readers appreciate more the research enjoying the distinctive nature of Florentine humanism and its protagonists. The first chapter of the volume contains the biography of Pietro Crinito. The information on his life, education, and knowledge derived from the examined manuscripts update the entry on Crinito published in the Dizionario biografico degli Italiani in 1990. The investigation into his book collection lets us know he was a learned and enlightened man who came into contact with many distinguished people of high intellect and good education. The list of tutors he was taught by is particularly interesting: first, Paolo Sassi da Roncigliano who had instructed him in grammar from 1486 as the initial part of a manuscript in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence testifies to; second, Ugolino Verino who was his tutor till September 1491 at least. In this period, Crinito was also in contact with the very illustrious intellectuals of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s court probably because of his studies at the library of St. Mark’s and the Florentine studium. For example, he knew Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Lorenzi, Bartolomeo Scala, and Angelo Poliziano. Crinito writes that Poliziano was his preceptor but there are no information on the classes he could have attended. It was after the death of Poliziano that Crinito acquired various autograph manuscripts written by the master. He also rearranged and edited some of his works. As a private teacher, he encouraged his students to devote themselves to the studia humanitates as in the case of his disciple and friend Giovanni Ugolini. Crinito travelled in Italy visiting some of the most active cultural cities in the country: he was in Venice, as he writes in a chapter of his work entitled De honesta disciplina, and in Rome in 1503. There, he met the most distinguished [End Page 281] scholars of the time such as Tommaso Fusco, Lucio “Fosforo” Fazzini, and Bernardo Carafa, as some pieces dedicated to them in the Pöemata confirm. In February 1507, he was professor of rhetoric and poetry at the Florentine studium, but he enjoyed his academic life for a short time because he died in July. There were no heirs who could inherit his volumes eventually obtained by Benedetto Varchi and Pier Vettori. In particular, the series of books in the hands of the Vettori family were in Italy till 1778 when Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria bought them. Now, they are kept in the Bayerische...

This paper examines how the Renaissance poet and scholar Angelo Poliziano draws on Ovid's Tristia, Ibis, and Epistulae ex Ponto to shape his own experiences as a “poet of exile” during a six-month period of self-imposed absence from Florence in 1479–80. In four Latin epigrams, the Sylva in scabiem, and a lengthy letter of apology from the Gonzaga court in Mantua Poliziano appeals to his patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici, to call him back to Florence. Poliziano’s appeals to Lorenzo invoke Ovid’s appeals from exile to the Roman emperor Augustus, who becomes in turn a model for a Renaissance ruler well aware of the importance of historical precedent. In appealing thus to his patron to have himself restored to Florence, Poliziano also lays claim to a powerful poetical exemplum in the figure of Ovid.

This article aims to analyse how and to what extent juridical and diplomatic issues influenced Angelo Poliziano's Coniurationis commentarium, the very famous literary account of the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici brothers (1478). Written immediately after the plot, Poliziano's work is a sophisticated literary transposition of the historical events and is conceived as the cornerstone of the Medici propaganda, aimed at supporting the Florentine government against the accusations by the instigators of the attack, Pope Sixtus IV and the King of Naples, Ferdinando of Aragon. In particular, the juridical controversy between Florence and Rome, which is built on different legal texts and doctrinal documents, plays a not irrelevant role in the composition of Poliziano's work. The Commentarium indeed shows unspoken but direct correlations with the legal consilia commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici from the most eminent Italian jurists, who formulated the Medici's official defence against the pope. Poliziano himself actively collaborated in the collection of these consilia and was influenced by diplomatic and legal issues also in the revision of his literary work two years after the composition, in 1480, in a changed political context.

Reviewed by: Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Directions in Renaissance Ethics, c.1350–c.1650 ed. by David A. Lines and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer Anne-Marie Sorrenti Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Directions in Renaissance Ethics, c.1350–c.1650, ed. David A. Lines and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Cursor Mundi 3 (Turnhout: Brepols 2013) 351 pp. In this volume, the editors and contributors affirm the importance of moral philosophy as a serious discipline in the Renaissance, inherently rejecting Cartesian claims that, because of the rhetorical methodologies employed by humanists, Renaissance philosophy is a misnomer. David Lines’s informative introduction and his articles in the collection focus on the uninterrupted use, from the medieval period to the Renaissance, of Aristotle’s Ethics as the foundational text for the study of moral philosophy in Europe. The contributions in the volume support his view that the commentary tradition existed well into the sixteenth century alongside innovations in methodology, sources, and genre in the teaching of ethics from the age of Petrarch to the mid-seventeenth century. The field of Renaissance ethics is so rich and complex, he claims, because the influx of Platonic, Ciceronian, Stoic, Epicurean, and newly discovered Aristotelian sources was met with attempts to reconcile these various strands of thought with existing Aristotelian commentary, Christian doctrine, and the Bible. In her epilogue, co-editor Sabrina Ebbersmeyer focuses on the displacement of Renaissance ethics in the seventeenth century by the new grounding of moral philosophy on reason, and by the preoccupation with human self-preservation as opposed to the cultivation of personal virtue. The collection is divided into three parts, namely, Contexts, Approaches and Genres, and Themes. In the first part, David Lines and Jill Kraye summarize the sources available from 1350 to 1650 for the study of ethics. In addition to a study of Marsilio Ficino and Lorenzo de’ Medici, they also include analyses of English Aristotelian John Case, Justus Lipsius’s interpretation of Stoic ethics, and Francisco de Quevedo’s reading of Stoic and Epicurean moral thought. These are refreshing and novel contributions in a field that has tended to concentrate on Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism in the Italian context. The second paper, also by David Lines, provides a survey of how and where moral philosophy was taught and discussed throughout Europe, including schools, universities, religious studia (especially of the Dominican order), humanist circles, academies, and courts. He makes the important point that the teaching of ethics became accessible to a much broader audience because of the new appearance of vernacular texts on the topic of ethics and the emergence of new and popular [End Page 317] genres for ethical instruction, including dialogues, poems, and essays. Risto Saarinen’s article concentrates on ethics in the sixteenth century European Reformations, and provides clear analyses of both the Lutheran and Calvinist contexts. He makes the point that while the former concentrates on doctrine and theory, the latter focuses on the practice of ethical living. The second part of the collection includes an important paper by Eckhard Kessler in which he identifies two distinguishing features of Renaissance moral philosophy that set it apart from medieval approaches to the discipline. The first is the new awareness of the contingency involved in making moral judgments. The second is the self-conscious reliance on rhetorical methods that the humanists used to deliberate on these issues. Luca Bianchi, in contrast, argues that the commentary tradition survived well into the sixteenth century. He also acknowledges the co-mingling of different strands of thought and the gradual mutation of the traditional forms of commentary into a much looser and more accessible formats that could be composed in vernacular instead of Latin, and that often include references to literature, poetry, the visual arts, history, contemporary affairs, the New World, and autobiographical details. This is a fitting segue to Ann Moss’ article about the proliferation of the printed commonplace book in the sixteenth century, and its status as a new and widely accessible genre for moral instruction. These handbooks blended short, easily referenced quotes from philosophy, poetry, and the Bible. She also discusses the genesis of the emblem book and its blending of text with image as an enhanced means of communicating on ethical...

Summary Research has established that Luca Signorelli's puzzling depiction of Pan can be interpreted as a visual programme of the (Neo)Platonic academy in Careggi and a tribute to Marsilio Ficino and Lorenzo de’ Medici. The picture portrays the nature god in his Orphic‐Pythagorean guise—as an exemplification of the human condition (firmly rooted in the sensual world while aspiring to the divine). Our thesis is that Signorelli's mythological “Sacra Conversazione” also contains a representative of what the Neoplatonists considered the motor of the apperception of God—Love. The youth lying on the ground at the front is, in our opinion, Eros. Initially he had triumphed over Pan, afflicting him with an unrequited passion for the nymph Syrinx, but now it is the nature god that triumphs: by substituting a divine musical instrument (the panpipes) for the woman, he has “sublimated” physical love. The motif used to express the idea of sublimation is curious: with her pipe, Syrinx, symbol of the reed (left, in the attitude of the Muse Calliope), so transforms Cupid's Dionysian power of love that it can give impetus to ecstatic flights of the soul.

Giovanni Nesi’s experience of life and thought show the complexity of cultural and political situation in the middle fifteenth-century Florence: from Donato Acciaiuoli’s civic and ethic aristotelianism to Marsilio Ficino’s neoplatonism and Girolamo Savonarola’s spirituality. Nesi’s Oraculum de novo saeculo speaks of Savonarola as ‘Socrates Ferrarese’ sent by God to cure Florence’s ills with his salubrious learning for its reformation. The meeting of Savonarolan reformation of the city and of Ficinian philosophical instances is the decisive principle of Nesi’s (and laurentians intellectuals’) mental attitude against the crisis of Florentine society after Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death and the liberty’s defeat.