Late Quattrocento Research Articles

From Leonardo to Caravaggio: Affective Darkness, the Franciscan Experience and Its Lombard Origins

The function of affectivity has generally focused on post-Council of Trent paintings, where artists sought a new visual language to address the imperative function of sacred images in the face of Protestant criticism and iconoclasm, either guided by the Council’s decree on images, post-Tridentine treatises on sacred art, or by the Counter-Reformation climate of late Cinquecento and early Seicento Italy. This essay redirects the origins of the transformation of the function of chiaroscuro from objective to subjective, from corporeal to spiritual, and from rational to affective to a much earlier period in late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento Milan with Leonardo da Vinci. By tracing the transformation of chiaroscuro as a vehicle of affect beginning with Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, it will become evident that chiaroscuro became a device used to focalize the viewers’ experience dramatically and to move viewers visually and mystically toward unification with God under the influence of the Franciscans.

«Бьюти-пространство» Боттичелли, поп-арт и гностики (к вопросу о становлении классического искусства)

<p>The article continues the series of publications by the author on the art of the Renaissance and the work of Botticelli. The author's concept of “classical art” allows us to establish closer connections with subsequent stages of artistic development, as well as with the Early Renaissance. The multi-level structure of Botticelli’s art and the “collage” nature of his works are substantiated. The “universality” of the classics correlates with the gaming strategies of Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. The features that bring the intellectual culture of the Renaissance closer to modern scientific and artistic trends are revealed. New contexts and parallels (Michael Psellus, Honore de Balzac, Arthur Schopenhauer, Alois Riegl, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein) allow us to re-evaluate the transformation of the Neoplatonic tradition in European culture. The author rejects rigid interpretations of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism in connection with the work of Botticelli, preferring an “aesthetic” or “poetic” reading. Within the framework of this essentially psychological approach, the author draws attention to the problem of “presence” (“life-likeness”), characteristic of both medieval and modern art. Social issues of interpretation of classical art are touched upon in the article in connection with elements of elitism in the culture of the Medici circle. The concept of “poetry”, developed by Petrarch and Boccaccio and going back to ancient prototypes, is fully consistent with this type of “court” culture, which played a decisive role in the development of classical art. The "decadence" of the late Quattrocento and the work of Botticelli as its highest expression were thus the result of very complex intellectual strategies that were continued during the High Renaissance and Mannerism. Particular attention in the article is paid to the revision of the usual views on the historiography of the Renaissance, the actualization of classical art historical concepts. The article returns to the problem of the origins of the semiotic concept of art. Pragmatism and the “irrational” concept of art (appealing to the unconscious) turn out to be quite compatible, that has particular theoretical significance for the revaluation of conventional approaches to the classical heritage.</p>

The Shrine of Heaven: The Organization of Curial Ceremony inside the Sistine Chapel in Late Quattrocento Rome

The following paper proposes an interpretation of the first pictorial program inside the Sistine Chapel on the basis of the development of Curial Ceremony. With the construction of a new chapel inside the Vatican Apostolic Palace, which effectively replaced the previous cappella magna, an ambitious program in stratifying the Caeremoniale Romanae Curiae according to Pope Sixtus IV’s administration of the Roman Church through the construction and affirmation of papal ecclesiastical supremacy.

АНСАМБЛЬ КАПЕЛЛЫ СИКСТА IV В СТАРОЙ БАЗИЛИКЕ САН ПЬЕТРО В РИМЕ

The Chapel of Sixtus IV (also known as the Chapel of the Choir, and the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception) was not only the last addition to the old Basilica of San Pietro, but also one of its the longest-preserved parts (it was destroyed only in 1609). Only a few studies by foreign authors are devoted to this highly valued monument of the late Quattrocento in Rome. The main attention is paid to the tombstone of the pontiff, that fortunately has survived until now. For the first time, the present paper is focused on analysis of the position of the Chapel of Sixtus IV within the general complex of Vatican buildings and offers a reading of the spatial ensemble of the chapel, taking into account all its components, as well as the perspectives both of the world of people and of the sphere of the sacred. As a result, it is shown how an organic synthesis of not only different arts, but also of ancient and Christian cultures was achieved in this unique monument, and the versatility of the personality of Sixtus IV himself was vividly embodied.

ПРОВИНЦИАЛЬНЫЙ ТОСКАНСКИЙ ЖИВОПИСЕЦ ПЕРВОЙ ТРЕТИ XVI В. В ПОГОНЕ ЗА БОЛЬШИМ СТИЛЕМ: СЛУЧАЙ АГОСТИНО МАРТИ

This paper concerns the paintings of Agostino Marti, who was active in Lucca in the 1510–1530s. His early work was based on local tradition at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, which was strongly influenced by Florentine models, though in the 1520s he began to adopt the visual language of the High Renaissance. The main source of his paintings in this period was the art of Fra Bartolomeo, who was well known in Lucca. But citations from Raphael’s and Michelangelo’s Roman works in his “Marriage of Virgin” (1523) and the evidence of Lucchese archives both suggest that he visited Rome in 1517. The image of St. Andrew from the Parish Church in Capannori provides further argument in favour of this suggestion. However, some spectacular details in Marti’s later paintings are similar to the prominent works of Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino, executed in Florence (1523) and Bologna (1527) respectively. So we may suppose that he also travelled much in the 1520s. Generally, his borrowings from High Renaissance and from Mannerist art were ingenuous and not systematic. They were anticipated by the eclectic character of late Quattrocento Lucchese painting, which was evidently more familiar to him. The use of older models, such as altarpieces painted by his teacher Michele Angelo di Pietro Membrini or by Filippino Lippi, who was an iconic figure for the Lucchese school, seems more natural for Agostino Marti.

Ethiopian Christians on the margins: Symbolic blackness in Filippino Lippi's Adoration of the Magi and Miracle of St Philip

AbstractNew identifications of prominent but overlooked black figures in two major works by Filippino Lippi enrich our understanding of how Africans were seen in late Quattrocento Florence. The African in the Adoration of the Magi, neither king nor attendant, represents the first gentiles who accepted Christ, as discussed in St Augustine’s Epiphany sermons. The black man in the Miracle of St Philip fresco, in the Strozzi Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, represents (or alludes to) the Ethiopian eunuch baptised by St Philip. These and other Florentine paintings from the 1490s, by various artists, shows black Africans as recent or future Christian converts. This hitherto unnoticed phenomenon reflects an increased awareness of Ethiopian Christians, who visited Italy repeatedly in the Quattrocento. Many Italians saw these African coreligionists as different from themselves: both insiders and outsiders. Filippino used various visual strategies to express both inclusion and alterity. Specifically, he depicts both black figures on the margins, both literally and symbolically: they stand at the edge of the miracle scenes.

Parentino a New York. Un antefatto del Polifilo

The paper focuses on a drawing by Bernardino da Parenzo, the Antique scene (Triumph of Jupiter?) in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Starting with a critical revision of the chronology of Parentino's drawings, the New York Antique scene's subject will be considered in the light of the inscription, bearing the unusual dedication to a mysterious «dio ambiguo». By presenting different possibile identifications, none of them really convincing, Triumph of Ambiguity will be proposed as a new title for the drawing, since for the humanist collectors in the late XVth century Veneto Ambiguity had a positive meaning. The same dedication to the «dio ambiguo» appears in a xylography in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a novel written by Francesco Colonna and published in 1499 in Venice by the famous printer Aldo Manuzio. Bernardino da Parenzo was well known among venetian typographies and he was employed by the monks of Santa Giustina in Padua in the years immediately preceding the publication of Colonna's work. The monks were also commissioners to Benedetto Bordon, a paduan miniaturist who was the principal draftsman involved in the realization of Hypnerotomachia's xylographic illustration. Therefore, we can assume that drawings like Parentino's New York sheet were known to Colonna, who, conforming to his habits, re-used elements from the drawing, treating a modern antique scene as a real roman triumph. The conclusion of the article is devoted to this particular 'anachronic' attitude towards time and to the relationship with antique sources in the late Quattrocento Veneto.

Portal to the Past: Depiction of Space in the Book Miniatures in the Renaissance Venice

This article investigates the painted miniatures of manuscripts and early printed books of the second half of the 15th century performed in the art workshops of the Renaissance Venice and Padua. The author determines the main development stages of the principles of space depicting in the picturesque design of manuscripts and printed books. The relevance of study of this topic is caused by the fact that it has been on the periphery of research attention for a long time, obscured by other historical and artistic problems. The scientifi c novelty of the research revealed the new principles of constructing spatial composition and formation of new typology of landscape in Venetian art. For the main research method, the author uses the formal-style analysis and structural analysis. It demonstrates how simultaneously with the change of the sheet decoration structure there appeared the new opportunities for the placement of spatial composition. At an early stage, the manuscript sheet decoration consisted of the depiction of painted architecture treated in the guise of triumphal arch or classical altar with inscription, which gradually has been getting form of imaginary façade with ornaments and fragments of text upon it (the so-called architectural frontispiece type). The next faze consists in the emergence of natural motifs near it and its progressive development in the form of autonomous landscape, which one can see in the works of leading Venetian illuminator in the time circa 1500 Benedetto Bordon. The author investigated the basic types of manuscript decoration that included the depiction of landscape as well as its basic iconographical formulae. The signifi cance of the study lies in that fact which helps to explore the new sources of Venetian mythological painting, going back to the stylistic features and compositional principles of the Late Quattrocento miniature.

Singing Lyric in Late Quattrocento Naples: The Case of a Neapolitan Songbook

Singing lyric poetry in Aragonese Naples was a practice that spanned multiple levels of aristocratic and court culture. From the improvised performances of humanist poet-singers, like Serafino Aquilano and Benedetto Gareth, to the lyric creativity of Neapolitan barons and aristocrats, like Pietro Jacopo de Jennaro and Francesco Galeota, the varied strains of Neapolitan song created a complex oral tapestry of popular melodies, which often intermingled with other musical and literary traditions more rooted in written culture. As a result, many of the manuscript sources from late Quattrocento Naples embody a state of what Blake Wilson has called “mixed orality” in which both oral and written practices coexist and exert their influence in different ways. As testaments to this oral-literate culture, the three major literary anthologies of Neapolitan lyric produced from the late 1460s to the early 1490s—Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. it. 1035; Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticano latino 10656; and Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2752—reveal an expansive image of the poetic parameters of vernacular song that goes beyond what musical sources transmit. This paper investigates the oral performance tradition of singing vernacular lyric in late fifteenth-century Naples through a detailed case study of one of these literary anthologies—Paris, BnF, f. it. 1035 (also known as the Cansonero napoletano) — and its relationship to musical manuscripts and practices of the day. I argue that the Cansonero napoletano is a carefully constructed songbook with clear connections to the practice of singing lyric poetry within a vibrant community of poets from the Kingdom of Naples. In fact, a deeper analysis of this collection reveals a substantial body of Neapolitan songs that greatly exceeds the number of texts for which musical settings survive. As music scholars, our perspective is often skewed toward musical sources, even when investigating a primarily oral tradition like that of Neapolitan song; and yet, it is from literary sources like the Cansonero napoletano that we may construct the most vivid picture of that repertory and its performance practice.

Political Implications of Portraiture of the Late Quattrocento - Cases of Urbino, Bologna, and Milan -

15세기에 피에로 델라 프란체스카에 의해 제작된 페데리코 다 몬테펠트로와 부인인 바티스타 스포르차의 두폭 초상화는 가까운 볼로냐의 조반니 벤티볼리오 2세에게 영감을 주어 유사한 형태의 두폭 초상화를 남기게 했다. 조반니 2세의 두폭 초상화는 배경이 볼로냐와 도시 외곽의 영지임을 쉽게 알아볼 수 있게 묘사되었으며, 독특한 배경처리방법을 통해 정점에 오른 참주의 권력와 위엄을 잘 드러내었다. 조반니 2세는 또한 가문 전용 예배당에 있던 아버지의 기마상 부조 옆에 옥좌에 앉은 성모자 아래 자신의 온 가족들이 모두 등장하는 대형 벽화를 주문하면서 자신의 권력 계승의 정당성 또한 드러내었다. 밀라노의 루도비코 스포르차는 스스로 권력을 잡기 위해 당시의 밀라노 공작을 암살했다는 의혹을 받고 있었고, 또한 레오나르도의 담비를 안은 여인의 주인공인 체칠리아 갈레라니와의 부적절한 연애로 구설수에 올랐다. 정권 유지를 위한 돌파구가 필요했던 루도비코는 볼로냐의 조반니 2세의 가족초상화에 영감을 받아 자신의 권력을 굳건하게 하기 위하여 자신과 정실 가족이 모두 등장BR하는 스포르차 제단화를 제작하였다. 군주의 가족이 모두 등장하는 제단화는 군주가 인민들로부터 깊은 신임을 받거나 강력한 전제 통치를 수행하여 가족들의 신변이 분명할 때 제작되어질 수 있었다. 하지만 밀라노의 루도비코의 경우처럼 본인의 정치적 입지가 흔들릴 때의 타개책으로 제작되는 정치적 의미의 초상화도 존재했다. 본 연구는 초상화라는 장르가 가지는 1차적 기능 외에 각기 다른 정치적 상황에서 초상화가 어떻게 생산되고 소비되는지에 대해 주목한다.

Итальянские полиптихи конца XIII — начала XV века: от предмета культа к музейному экспонату

This article studies the history of existence, viewing and studying of the Early Italian panelpaintings (mostly polyptychs of Trecento and Early Quattrocento) during the period from the 15th to the 21st centuries. Based on several keyexamples like Maesta by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Sassetta’s altarpiece from the Church of San Francesco in Borgo San Sepolcro, and others, the article presents this history as a one proceeding from the creative dialogue with the early polyptychs in the Late Quattrocento painting towards the continual loss by the early polyptychs of their original status, function and, spatial context due to the Counter-Reformation church interiors transformations in the second half of the 16th century. In the later centuries many panels lost even their physical entity and original appearance, being dismembered and sold out as objects of collecting and/or museum exhibits. This history is inevitably a history of losses, sometimes fatal, but simultaneously this is also a history of gaining. During the course of these centuries, the painted panels have gained new status and new values, new viewers and new devotees as objects of art and masterpieces of painting. And after being reevaluated as something totally different from what they had been originally, the painted panels ended up as objects of research. Thus, this reevaluation became the basic premise of the scientific recovering (wherever possible) of what has been lost: the original appearance and spatial collocation, patrons’ concernsand first viewers’ attitudes.

The Rabbi and the Crocodile: Interrogating Nature in the Late Quattrocento

The Rabbi and the Crocodile: Interrogating Nature in the Late Quattrocento

«Ornamenti infiniti» и наследие античности в творчестве Бенедетто да Ровеццано

The article focuses on tomb monuments and decorative settings carved by a Florentine artist Benedetto da Rovezzano (1474 – after 1554), and his borrowings from Ancient Roman art. Benedetto’s narrative scenes do assume many explicit citations (motifs or isolated figures) and compositional principles from the sarcophagi reliefs. At the same time, Benedetto proves himself a direct heir of the ornamental settings of the late Quattrocento, which combine delicate form and lines with great variety of decorative motifs and animated narrative, while the problem of their arrangement is not less important than a thorough search for a direct archaeological source. The artist’s creations with their enigmatic messages composed of rich and well-elaborated decorative settings and emblems demonstrate influence of Andrea Sansovino, Giuliano da Sangallo, and strong references to Filippino Lippi, probably of a programmatic nature.

THE SOCIAL CONNOTATIONS OF SINGING VERSE IN CINQUECENTO ITALY

The singing of verse in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy could be associated with social classes to varying degrees. Private performances among the upper classes centred on lyric verse. In the late Quattrocento the courtly poetry of performers such as Serafino Aquilano found an audience outside the social elite, but in the early Cinquecento Bembo promoted a separation of written lyric verse from poetry that might be associated with popular culture. Musical settings of madrigals remained characteristic of fashionable elite performance throughout the century. However, the Tuscan tradition of improvising lyric verse continued to bring together singers from different classes, and narrative verse performed in the piazza by singers from outside the elite drew audiences from across society, to judge from references within the poems and from eyewitness accounts.

The myth of the Jewish origins of philosophy in the Renaissance: from Aristotle to Plato

The myth of the Jewish origins of philosophy and science is an ancient tradition dating from the Hellenistic period. It originated with pagan scholars, as part of the Greek-Hellenistic myth of the eastern origins of wisdom. Hellenistic-Jewish scholars acquired this theme from them, developed it further and transmitted it to the Church Fathers. In time, this myth achieved great popularity among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Aristotle’s prominence in medieval culture gave rise to traditions claiming that he studied with Jewish sages and was deeply impressed and influenced by Jewish books. Some of these traditions even maintain that he converted to Judaism, or was born a Jew. Although stories about the Judaized Aristotle continued to circulate, many accounts of the Jewish sources of Plato also began to appear in various forms among Christian and Jewish scholars. Stories about Plato proliferated especially following the decline of the Aristotelian-Averroist tradition, when kabbalistic-hermetic influences were first discernible in the writings of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola in the late Quattrocento.

Transient Possessions: Circulation, Replication, and Transmission of Gems and Jewels in Quattrocento Italy

AbstractThis article examines the circulation of gems, jewelry, and antique hardstones, through merchant-banking networks in Italy in the late Quattrocento. The practices of pawning and exchange facilitated the circulation of objects, causing those goods to change hands constantly and to come into contact with a wide range of individuals, a process through which these artifacts accrued histories. Particular gems were sought after, not only for their material or artistic worth, but also for their histories and their previous illustrious owners, and many jewels were invested with names. Aside from their physical circulation, these objects were disseminated in visual form through replication across media, which raises questions around ownership, copies, and collections in the late fifteenth century.

Per la anima della donna: Pregnancy and Death in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Visitation for the Tornabuoni Chapel, Cestello

The Visitation altarpiece (Louvre, Paris) by Domenico Ghirlandaio has been previously examined as a work in the artist’s oeuvre, and as one of the paintings adorning Santa Maria Maddalena di Cestello (today called Santa Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi) in late fifteenth-century Florence. It has not been recognized as one of the few funerary altarpieces that commemorate a young patrician woman in Renaissance Florence. While funerary objects for men have been extensively studied, little work has been done on art objects remembering women. Commissioned by Lorenzo Tornabuoni, son of the Medici banker Giovanni Tornabuoni, the altarpiece graced the memorial chapel he founded in honor of his first wife, Giovanna degli Albizzi, who died while still with child. Examining the Visitation via the religious narratives depicted and Giovanna’s biography, this article demonstrates that the altarpiece focuses on themes of importance to married Renaissance women, namely, fertility and childbirth, as well as death and the hope for life after death for those women who died while performing their reproductive duties, a common occurrence in late Quattrocento Florence.

Revivalism and Populism in the Franciscan Observance of the Late Quattrocento

Revival, as this volume shows, has had many different meanings within Christian history, and has taken many different, forms. Institutional revitalization, for example, is one thing; popular revivalism is another. Of course, they may be intertwined, as they were in the case of the Franciscan Observance of the late Quattrocento. The ‘re’ of ‘revivalism’ is usually taken in a retrospective sense -that which previously existed is brought to life once more. Renaissance classicism is an obvious instance. With the Franciscan Observance, it is true, one does get a sense of the desire to restore, to re-institute, the idealized primitive poverty of the order in the days of St Francis. For the Observants, pristine Franciscanism would have been the equivalent of the early Church in the eyes of the Protestant reformers. Yet ‘revivalism’ can also be thought of as pertaining to remarkable occasions of religious intensity, moments of collective enthusiasm, moments, as Emile Durkheim puts it, of ‘general effervescence.’ But champagne is too light-headed and celebratory to do justice to the phenomenon. A better symbol of ‘revivalism’ would be the flames of Pentecost. Here I shall attempt to show how the Observance rose to prominence, and eventually triumphed within the Franciscan order, through the raging fires – creative as well as destructive – of popular, indeedpopulistrevivalism.

Raphael: From Urbino to Rome ed. by Hugo Chapman, Tom Henry, Carol Plazzotta (review)

REVIEWS 288 ers and nobility and the process of nation building. Foreigners and nobles were in similar positions during the Revolution. As the Germinal laws affected both nobles and foreigners, they provide an understanding into how new forms of nationality and citizenship were created. It is interesting to note that nobles and foreigners were alleging that they were transformed by the state into members of a nation or in the alternative that they had always been members of such a nation. Woolf discusses the constituent elements of the Italian nation. Italy’s historiography, as that of other European nations at this time, exalted the state and scientific progress. Unlike other European nations however, Italy lacked a strong central administration. Abigail Green discusses what it meant to be German in two different time periods. She also looks at how different political institutions shaped an emerging nationhood. Zimmer discusses the transformation of the different meanings of nation while analyzing the relationship between the nation as a focus of collective identity and nationalism as an ideological and political movement. He distinguishes between three phases of nationhood, each giving light to a different kind of nationalism and related discourse of national identity. Mandler supports the traditional historiographical argument that the British state was different from European norms while still incorporating the view that power in Britain was based on the idea of cultural hegemony more than institutional government. MIHAELA L. FLORESCU, Cerritos College, Norwalk Raphael: From Urbino to Rome, ed. Hugo Chapman, Tom Henry, and Carol Plazzotta (London: National Gallery Company 2004) 320 pp., 240 ill. This exquisitely illustrated catalogue to London’s National Gallery’s ambitious exhibition, Raphael: From Urbino to Rome, is an essential addition to the library of any Renaissance scholar. Covering roughly a dozen years of Raphael’s artistic production, this magnificent catalogue traces the artist’s brilliant early career and “meteoric rise to fame” from his humble beginnings in Urbino through the death of his first papal patron, Julius II (59). The book includes color illustrations of over ninety of Raphael’s paintings and drawings; each accompanied by detailed catalogue entries. The introductory essay by Tom Henry and Carol Plozzotta is exceptional in its synthesis of the most recent Raphael scholarship. Distinguished scholars Arnold Nesselrath and Nicholas Penny both contribute outstanding critical essays which attest to the continued resonance of Raphael’s career with contemporary scholars. Henry and Plazzotta provide tantalizing evidence for Raphael’s early artistic education in the workshop of his father, Giovanni Santi, who died when Raphael was just eleven years old. While earlier generations of scholars have rejected the possibility that the young Raphael could have learnt anything from his father before the latter’s untimely death, the authors cite textual and visual evidence that suggests it was Santi, and not Pietro Perugino, from whom Raphael received his first artistic training. The young Raphael’s artistic debt to his father is demonstrated in his first documented commission, the St. Nicholas of Tolentino Altarpiece for the church of S. Agostino in Città di Castello, ca. 1500–1501 (cat. 15–17), where Raphael’s use of color and technique clearly reflects Santi’s influence. The authors consider fascinating evidence for Santi’s career and contribution to the artistic sphere; he emerges as a significant—if REVIEWS 289 relatively minor—player in central Italian art of the late Quattrocento. This hypothesis is in marked contrast to traditions that maintain Raphael’s artistic training began under the tutelage of Perugino. The authors maintain that the lack of any documentation for Raphael’s apprenticeship to Perugino confirms that the established master was not so much the young artist’s mentor as he was his artistic contemporary. Raphael’s ability to skillfully maneuver with in the social circles of the rich and powerful is also attributed to the influence of his artist/courtier father. It is clear that Raphael was extremely well connected throughout his career and was able, through his charm and social savvy, to adapt quickly and successfully to the different environments in which he worked (21). Henry and Plazzotta present Raphael as a great draftsman and synthesizer, able to assimilate and develop upon the work of contemporary artists...

Hermes' Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella by Sherry Roush (review)

230 Reviews and in Dante's lyric poems, the central part of the book examines Dante's metapho? rical language in the three cantiche, but focuses primarily on the Paradiso. Gibbons attributes the high incidence of metaphors in the Paradiso to the religious and spiritual nature of its subject matter. Collectinga number of pertinent references, he maintains that Dante renewed traditional Christian metaphors in ways that affect the linguistic and metric structure. Gibbons hypothesizes that to rejuvenate his sources the poet employed three strategies or techniques: the selection of uncommon words, the extension of the metaphor by means of grammatical construction based on neologisms, and the search forrimas caras. He then analyses with convincing precision what he calls the 'grammar' of metaphor, that is to say 'the syntactic formin which the various elements are juxtaposed' (p. 81). Gibbons finds that Dante achieved striking effectsby combining the two terms of the comparison with a copulative verb ('e letizia era ferza del paleo' (Par. xvm. 42)), or through the use of a genitive link ('la punta del disio' (Par. xxn. 26)), or through the accumulation of adjectives, pronouns, and relative clauses that qualify individual metaphorical words. More commonly, in Gib? bons's view, Dante employed verb metaphors. The verbs he selected are traditional, but 'familiar ideas are revitalized simply by the brevity with which they are restated* (p. 85). The variety,the expansion, and the repetition of terms employed by the poet also contribute to this process of renewal of the common stock of imagery. Chapter 6 is a case study of metaphors in Canto 28 of the Paradiso. But in fact metaphoric pas? sages from the whole of the Divine Comedy are taken into account, thus transforming this brief but dense chapter into a reading that reveals the complexity and the level of formal elaboration of Dante's language which 'encourage the reader to re-evaluate a mode of expression that might otherwise have been taken forgranted' (p. 114). The closing section of the volume is perhaps less compelling but no less useful. It concentrates on the reader's response to Dante's metaphoric language. Three kinds of readers are considered: Dante's ideal reader, the Trecento and Renaissance com? mentators, and finally Petrarch. In the firstof these chapters, Gibbons examines the reactions that Dante expected from the model readers of his works, in particular the Vita nuova, the Convivio, and the Comedy, and concludes that Dante's model reader 'will use literal improprieties as signals to interpret the text metaphorically rather than resist the poetic driftand make carping criticisms' (p. 130). In the chapter dedicated to the medieval and Renaissance commentators' reading of the Comedy, Gibbons highlights how none of the early exegetes matches his own interpretation of Dante's use of metaphor. The only exception appears to be, at times, Benvenuto da Imola, whose appreciation of the stylistic features ofthe Comedy is well known. In the closing chapter of his book, Gibbons invites the reader to a deeper understanding of Dante's metaphors through their reception in Petrarch's poetry. Gibbons argues that Petrarch felt the violence with which Dante's metaphors 'disrupt the logic of semantics' as well as 'the formal experimentalism with which they challenge the reader's preconceptions' (p. 174). Metaphor in Dante is an important and noteworthy contribution to the understand? ing of Dante's use, creation, and renewal ofthe poetic language. University of Reading Paola Nasti Her mes' Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella. By Sherry Roush. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2002. ix + 249 pp. ?32. ISBN 0-8020-3712-7. This book examines six authors who, as poets, comment on their own work; the Hermes ' lyre of the title corresponds to the view that poetic self-commentary combines MLR, ioo.i, 2005 231 both hermeneutic and lyric dimensions. The authors selected are paired (DanteBoccaccio ; Lorenzo de' Medici-Girolamo Benivieni; Giordano Bruno-Tommaso Campanella) and located within three broad historical contexts (late Duecento to mid-Trecento; late Quattrocento Florence; and the milieu of Catholic Reformation at the turn of the seventeenth century). Each pairing involves contrasting forms of self-commentary (prosimetrical and self-gloss), and while individual authors are...