Late Italian Renaissance Research Articles

Addiction: A treatise from 1561.

In 1561, physician and philosopher Pascasius Justus Turq published a monograph on the description and treatment of pathological gambling. When the monograph came to the attention of the authors in 2006, there existed no known translation of it in any modern language. In 2014, it was translated and published in French. This paper analyses the monograph's key content elements and its place in the history of the concept of addiction. A contextual analysis of the late Italian Renaissance, followed by key excerpts from the text and commentaries on the meaning and significance of the monograph. Pascasius Justus Turq's 1561 monograph on pathological gambling outlines a disease view of gambling, identifies cognitive processes and biological vulnerabilities as aetiological factors, avoids religious or moral judgements and recommends cognitive treatment to change the beliefs and expectancies of gamblers. This study shows that a 'disease formulation' of addiction was enunciated as early as the 16th century, and its contemporary resonance suggests that current clinical features of addictive disorders have existed for centuries.

Michelangelo and the English Martyrs. By Anne Dillon. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2012. xxvii + 356. $134.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Michelangelo and the English Martyrs . By Anne Dillon . Farnham, U.K. : Ashgate , 2012. xxvii + 356. $134.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesFrom research into Roman broadsheet of 1555 Anne Dillon of Cavendish College, Cambridge, has produced an intriguing study of the intersection of Marian English propaganda, Tridentine Nicodemism, and late Italian Renaissance printing and art. The work consists of six scenes of English Carthusians undergoing grisly tortures and deaths at York and London (though the depicted settings are Roman) between 1535 and 1537. They suffered for having refused to accept Henry's headship of the Church of England. Beneath is text that describes each image and specifies the dates of the martyrdoms being depicted. Step by step, through nineteen compact chapters, Dillon unpacks the history and meaning of the images, moving between descriptive and interpretive modes. Along the way Dillon provides useful and well-constructed discussions on topics that underlay her analysis, such as the technology and business of printing broadsides, the presence and nature of Protestantism and other heretical undercurrents in mid-century Rome, and the state of anatomical illustration. The inclusion of 82 illustrations, including 28 in color, makes her points and conclusions come alive.The creation of the work occurred in the context of Mary Tudor's marriage to Spain's Philip II in July 1554 and the Catholic/Counter Reformation initiative to re-Catholicize England. The impetus came from Cardinal Juan Alvarez. The Spanish creator of the images, Gaspar Becerra, was student of Daniele da Volterra, himself pupil of Michelangelo. The book's title stems from this last connection, since Dillon finds in the broadsheet formal similarities to figures in Michelangelo's decoration of the Vatican's Capella Paolina and other Michelangelesque studies to which Becerra may have had access as Daniele's student. She even goes so far as to speculate that Michelangelo himself may have prepared studies for the broadsheet. Here the reader is reminded of Dan Brown's treatment of Leonardo. Dillon connects Michelangelo to the reform-minded English Cardinal Reginald Pole through their common Roman noble friend Vittoria Colonna. All three were Nicodemites, Dillon develops, believers in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone who had to keep their beliefs hidden after their condemnation by the Council of Trent in 1547. The broadsheet, like the Capella itself, she claims, is Trojan horse for sola fide dissent by Michelangelo and other Nicodemite spirituali . Her encapsulation of this thesis refers to the inclusion of similar figures in both artistic works as a signal, code and the broadsheet breathtaking act of subversion (135).Dillon's is bold thesis and in developing it she presents much that is of value to the student of the period. …

Training Tennis Players through Natural Philosophy: From Scaino’s Trattato to Garsault’s Art du paumier

The motion of tennis balls has always been taken as a particularly interesting example of the complexity of the laws of motion. In this essay I survey the historical and cultural background of the use of the tennis ball as a scientific example of motion and its laws from the late Italian Renaissance onwards. I have examined in particular Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del giuco della palla (1555) and its scientific sources. Scaino’s effort to provide his readers with a scientific explanation of various tennis shots inspired the authors of other texts on sports to adopt an approach that combined science and leisure activities. However, the mysterious irregular trajectory of the tennis ball remained unexplained until 1852 when the German physicist Heinrich Gustav Magnus demonstrated mathematically how the action of air was the cause of the variation in motion of projectiles.

Lycidas and the Theory of Pastoral Poetry

The purpose of this paper is to discuss various theories of the pastoral as they have evolved and been described in the critical works of their time and to relate Lycidas to those theories. Even though this is not an exhaustive study, examples of commentaries will be discussed from the Roman period, the early Italian Renaissance, the late Italian Renaissance, and the Elizabethan period: Maurus Servius Honoratus, Scholia Bernensia, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Badius Ascensius, Marco Girolamo Vida, Antonio Sebastiano Minturno, Giason Denores, Giovanni Battista Guarini, Giulio Cesare Scalige, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Webbe, and George Puttenham. Then, Lycidas will be related to the theories of the pastoral that have been presented. With more theoretical information, more accurate analyses of the artistic pieces related to the theory can be made, and thus the tradition can be elaborated more fully.

Attitudes to Work and Commerce in the Late Italian Renaissance: A Comparison between Tomaso Garzoni's La Piazza Universale and Leonardo Fioravanti's Dello Specchio Di Scientia Universale

SummaryThis article compares two highly successful treatises written in the second half of the fifteenth century: Tomaso Garzoni's La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo [The Universal Workplace of All the Professions in the World], and Leonardo Fioravanti's Dello specchio di scientia universale [On the Mirror of Universal Knowledge]. It examines how each of these books presented and considered commercial activities such as the manufacture and trading of silk and wool – which were of great importance to the Italian economy of the day – and other more humble occupations. This is an interesting comparison since Garzoni and Fioravanti personified two very different spirits of the Renaissance. The former was a learned man, anxious to construct a moralistic-literary monument, complete in every detail, while the latter was a great observer, intent on making full use of every kind of knowledge, even that which seemed lowly and contemptible.

The Gesualdo hex: music, myth, and memory

In this vivid tale of adultery and intrigue, witchcraft and murder, Glenn Watkins explores the fascinating life of the Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo-a life suffused with scandal and bordering on the fantastical. An isolated prince, Gesualdo had a personal life that was no less eccentric and bewildering than the music he composed; his biography has often clouded our perception of his oeuvre, which music scholars have periodically dismissed as a late Renaissance deformation of little consequence. Today, however, Gesualdo's music, once deemed so strange as to be unperformable, stands as one of the most vibrant legacies of the late Italian Renaissance with an undeniable impact on a host of twentieth-century musicians and artists. The incendiary details of Gesualdo's life recede, and his grip on our musical imagination comes to the fore. Watkins challenges our preconceptions of what has become a nearly mythic persona, weaving together the cumulative experience of some of the most vibrant artists of the past century from Stravinsky and Schoenberg to Abbado and Herzog. Beyond questions of mere influence, however, The Gesualdo Hex offers a profound meditation on cultural memory and historical awareness: how composers attempt to shape the legacy they will bequeath to the world, and how music and history inevitably take on a new guise as they are revisited by subsequent generations and reinterpreted in light of contemporary experience. In examining Gesualdo's life, music, myth, and memory intertwine with one another to reveal an uncanny affinity with our own time. With his elegant and engaging prose, Watkins asks us to grapple with our understanding not only of art and the artists who create it but also of history itself.

Lucrezia Marinelli and Woman's Identity in Late Italian Renaissance

In this paper the Italian Humanist Lucrezia Marinelli (1571-1653) will be examined from the two complementary perspectives on her place in the late Italian Renaissance Studies and her contribution to the philosophy of woman. Marinelli is remarkable in both areas of intellectual history; and her relatively unknown contributions make it even more exciting to present to the English speaking public an assessment of her work. In Part I of this paper, Filippo Salvatore, examines her writing as an epic poet in the first part of the seventeenth century; in Part II Sr. Prudence Allen, considers her significance as a philosopher of the concept of woman at a crucial turning point in western intellectual history; finally, in Part III, Filippo Salvatore underlines Marinelli's significance as a political thinker.

Abandoned children of the Italian Renaissance: orphan care in Florence and Bologna

Nearly half of the children who lived in the cities of the late Italian Renaissance were under fifteen years of age. Grinding poverty, unstable families, and the death of a parent could make caring for these young children a burden. Many were abandoned, others orphaned. At a time when political rulers fashioned themselves as the fathers of society, these cast-off children presented a very immediate challenge and opportunity. In Bologna and Florence, government and private institutions pioneered orphanages to care for the growing number of homeless children. Nicholas Terpstra discusses the founding and management of these institutions, the procedures for placing children into them, the children's daily routine and education, and finally their departure from these homes. He explores the role of the city-state and considers why Bologna and Florence took different paths in operating the orphanages. Terpstra finds that Bologna's orphanages were better run, looked after the children more effectively, and were more successful in returning their wards to society as productive members of the city's economy. Florence's orphanages were larger and harsher, and made little attempt to reintegrate children into society. Based on extensive archival research and individual stories, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance demonstrates how gender and class shaped individual orphanages in each city's network, and how politics, charity, and economics intertwined in the development of the early modern state.

Giles of Viterbo: A Reformer's Thought on Renaissance Rome

Giles of Viterbo (Egidio da Viterbo, 1469-1532) has been receiving increasing attention as his place in early sixteenth-century intellectual and religious history becomes clearer: he combined a central and effective position in ecclesiastical administration with an active role in the leading scholarly and literary circles of the late Italian Renaissance. As prior general of the Augustinian friars from 1508 until 1518 he undertook from Rome a vigorous reform of the order. He was a trusted adviser of Pope Julius II, under whose powerful patronage he had been elected head of the Augustinians, and he enjoyed a very cordial relationship with the two Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII, the former of whom created him a cardinal in 1517.

Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance

Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance

Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance

Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance

Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance

1. The problem of dialogue in the late Italian Renaissance 2. Putting questions (in)to language: Sigonio's theory 3. Writing under pressure: Speroni and the dialogical mask 4. The reasons for asking: Castelvetro and Tasso on philosophy and fiction 5. Illusions of difference: the poetics and pragmatics of dialogue after Tasso Notes Selected list of works consulted Index.

Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance.

William McCuaig explores the intellectual turbulence of the late Italian Renaissance through a full examination of the work of one scholar--the humanist Carlo Sigonio (1523-84), whose insistence on critical methods for reconstructing the past revolutionized the study of ancient Roman history and the Italian Middle Ages. An internationally published scholar caught in the political tension of the Counter-Reformation, Sigonio was harshly censored by ecclesiastical authorities in Rome, who opposed his application of critical methods to the history of the post-classical world. McCuaig traces Sigonio's interactions with his opponents and supporters, both academic and clerical, to provide a fascinating and detailed portrait of a cultural milieu. On a general level, this study of Sigonio's works helps explain how the republican ethos of the Italian Renaissance came to an end and how the modern study of ancient history evolved in Italy and France after 1550. Among many topics, this book emphasizes Sigonio's contributions to social history, and points to parallels between the changing social stratifications of ancient Rome and those of early modern Italy. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the work also touches upon the history of education, political theory, the book trade, and historiography.Originally published in 1989.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Jon R. SnyderS. J. . Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. xi + 297 pp. $35.

Jon R. SnyderS. J. . Writing the Scene of Speaking: Theories of Dialogue in the Late Italian Renaissance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. xi + 297 pp. $35.

:The Draftsman's Eye; Late Italian Renaissance Schools and Styles

:<i>The Draftsman's Eye; Late Italian Renaissance Schools and Styles</i>

Edward J. Olszewski, with the assistance of Jane Glaubinger. The Draftsman's Eye: Late Italian Renaissance Schools and Styles. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with the Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1981. 222 figs. +1 map + x+178 pp. $27.50.

Edward J. Olszewski, with the assistance of Jane Glaubinger. The Draftsman's Eye: Late Italian Renaissance Schools and Styles. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with the Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1981. 222 figs. +1 map + x+178 pp. $27.50. - Volume 35 Issue 4

Giovanni Della Casa and the Galateo on Life and Success in the Late Italian Renaissance

Giovanni Della Casa and the Galateo on Life and Success in the Late Italian Renaissance

The Baroque Revival in Quebec

VICTORIAN ECLECTICISM appears to have had almost as much sense of direction as the styles of earlier, more settled centuries. This principle is particularly well illustrated by the Baroque Revival, or more properly perhaps the Late Italian Renaissance Revival, of the mid-nineteenth century in Quebec. On the surface, this movement appeared to complete the ruin of Quebec's traditional style which the Gothic Revival of the 1820's had begun; actually, neither the Baroque nor the Gothic Revival in Quebec was really alien in spirit to its traditional architecture, both were simply manifestations of that same spirit in forms suitable to nineteenth-century taste. The history of the Baroque Revival in a curious way repeats the essential process whereby the Quebec tradition was originally formed. That tradition, as it developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, represented a fusion between academic and elements. On the one side were the academic ideas of men who were theoreticians and amateurs in architecture, and often clergymen such as Bishops Laval and Saint-Vallier, and Chaussegros de Lery; on the other was the practical adaptation of these ideas to the Quebec climate and resources by builders trained up in traditions-Claude Baillif, Jean Maillou-and local artisans of all sorts. It was in precisely this way that the Baroque Revival developed. Two clergymen-Bishop Ignace Bourget of Montreal and Father Felix Martin-and John Ostell, an English architect, provided the literary and theoretical ideas behind it; an artisan trained up in the native craft idiom, Victor Bourgeau, made the necessary adaptation of these ideas to the older Quebec tradition to give the new style its practical vitality. The story begins in 1842 when Mgr. Bourget, a Canadian born at Levis in 1799, became second Bishop of Montreal. Eager to embellish his new diocese with buildings suitably expressing its fast-growing wealth and population, the bishop looked about for a suitable advisor and discovered Felix Martin, a thirty-eight year old Jesuit from Brittany, who arrived in Montreal in May of 1842. They at once became and remained the closest of friends. By the standards of mid-nineteenth-century Quebec, Father Martin was excepti nally well informed on architectural matters; he had travelled and studied all over France and Spain and acquired a much more than dilettante command of archaeological scholarship.1 Father Martin's interest in architecture, however, was largely incidental. His basic turn of mind was antiquarian, showing a ra her indiscriminate interest in old things simply because th y were old.2 Associative and romantic qualities in archit cture, rather than practical problems of form and structure, concerned him most. But in Martin's case, this typically nineteenth-century attitude was precisely what made him such a key figure in the Baroque Revival of Quebec-for not only could he talk to Mgr. Bourget about architecture in terms the bishop could best appr ciate, but his romantic interest in antiquities soon led from an earlier interest in Gothic to the older Quebecois tradition.:' Martin became a leading authority in this field and in turn brought Mgr. Bourget to an appreciation of it. And through the Quebecois tradition Mgr. Bourget was pre ared to move towards a revival of Baroque from original sources. Two churches best illustrate Father Martin's eclectic