Renaissance Iconography Research Articles

Leonardo północy. O estetyce Albrechta Dürera

Albrecht Dürer was German, but it was Italy he loved and followed the example of. Along with Erasmus of Rotterdam, he was one of the first to instil the ideas of Italian humanism in northern Europe, paying attention to the study of ancient culture, and thus fighting for the renewal of art in the spirit of the Renaissance. Dürer believed that using the patterns developed in Florence, the art of imaging would achieve unprecedented narrative power. The uniqueness of the artist from Nuremberg was also that he was able not only to assimilate and synthesise German Gothic art with the achievements of the Florentine school, but also to develop his own vision of the theory of art taking into account the specifics of native art. His research on the theory of movement, the implementation of objects into the structure of the image, the search for the perfect beauty in woodcut and copper engraving can be considered to be unique and pioneering projects in Germany. The influence of Dürer on the sphere of Renaissance iconography is invaluable, but unfortunately it is often omitted in the literature as secondary or even insignificant. The article shows that Dürer’s theoretical influence on the shape of early modern art is noteworthy.

A woman saint in the Parisian colleges: Claude Roillet's Catharinae Tragoedia (1556)

AbstractThis article introduces and examines a hitherto little‐discussed tragedy by the French humanist Claude Roillet, professor and principal at the Collège de Bourgogne in the University of Paris during the reign of Henri II. This brief five‐act play entitled Catharinae tragedia, which presents the life of the iconic saint Catherine of Alexandria, based principally upon information gleaned from late‐mediaeval, Latin prose sources, was first printed amongst the author's collected Varia Poemata in 1556. This study shall examine Roillet's debt to his Latin sources, with some consideration of possible influences exercised by the vernacular, dramatic mysteries devoted to Catherine and presented in France during the first half of the sixteenth century. The objective is to situate this Latin play within the tradition of texts of all genres devoted to this well‐known character who is frequently met with in mediaeval and early Renaissance iconography. The article will also discuss the didactic aspects proper to Roillet's presentation of the story.

Plato's myths

List of illustrations List of contributors Preface Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction Catalin Partenie 1. Plato's eschatological myths Michael Inwood 2. Myth, punishment and politics in the Gorgias David Sedley 3. Tale, theology and teleology in the Phaedo Gabor Betegh 4. Fraternite, inegalite, la parole de Dieu: Plato's authoritarian myth of political legitimation Malcolm Schofield 5. Glaucon's reward, philosophy's debt: the myth of Er G. R. F. Ferrari 6. The charioteer and his horses: an example of Platonic myth-making Christopher Rowe 7. The myth of the Statesman Charles H. Kahn 8. Eikos muthos M. F. Burnyeat 9. Myth and eschatology in the Laws Richard Stalley 10. Platonic myth in Renaissance iconography Elizabeth McGrath Suggested further reading Bibliography Index.

The Marian Lyrics of Jacopone da Todi and Friar William Herebert: The Life and the Letter

THE MARIAN LYRICS OF JACOPONE DA TODI AND FRIAR WILLIAM HEREBERT: THE LIFE AND THE LETTER It is not until the thirteenth century, largely under the influence of Franciscan spirituality, that the Middle Ages first saw the development of a rich tradition of Marian poetry. Indirectly, this tradition marks the culmination of centuries of patristic writing on Mary, beginning with the early Christian controversy over the exact nature of the Virgin Birth. During the early days of the Church's development, this controversy assumed crucial importance in the affirmation of Christ's divine paternity. In response to attacks against the Virgin Birth, the third-century writer Origen developed an original and effective defense. According to Marina Warner, "[b]y mining the multi-layered meaning of the word Logos, he [Origen] suggested that Mary had conceived Jesus at the words of the angel," a suggestion which "quickly acquired a literal stamp."1 Other Christian writers, including St. Ambrose and St. Thomas Aquinas, expanded the notion of Christ as Logos in their accounts of the Incarnation. St. Ambrose asserted explicitly that the Word was made flesh not through human seed but through the mystical breath of the Spirit, an assertion which St. Thomas affirmed through a rigorous series of deductive arguments, effectively proving that through the Incarnation the Virgin was the Mother of the Word of God.2 St. Thomas, moreover, envisioned Mary as having been specially instructed by Gabriel before the Incarnation on the mystery of the Word and the significance of the task she was about to accomplish. As a result of these various interpretations, Mary came to occupy a unique position in Biblical tradition. Of all the characters figured in the Bible, only she could be actually said to read the Logos. No one bears witness to the Bible's original incarnation of the Logos, where God says "'Let there be light'; and there was light." •Marina Warner, Alone ofAll Her Sex (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 37. 2See St. Ambrose's De Officiis 1.18.68-69, and St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles, 4.34. 221 Francisan Studies, 55 (1998) 222KATHRYN J. READY (Genesis 1:3) In this way, the Incarnation represents an unprecedented event—the single instance where a human being witnesses the enfleshment or the manifested meaning of the Logos. While God speaks to numerous figures throughout the Old Testament, none of them experience the creative power of His words. Mary alone fully comprehends the Logos, since she alone directly experiences its effects. On this subject, St. Thomas states: But one never reads the "Word of the Lord was made" Moses, or Jeremías, or one of the others. Yet thus uniquely was the union of God's Word to the flesh of Christ marked by the Evangelist: "The Word was made flesh," as was explained before.")3 Through the Incarnation Mary becomes, then, the quintessential Reader. For this reason, St. Ambrose casts Mary as the patron saint of readers, in which guise she often appears in medieval and Renaissance iconography, particularly in paintings of the Annunciation, where she is typically depicted bowing her head piously over a book.4 Mary's unique position as Reader indirectly explains her popularity as a subject for medieval devotional verse. Through the act of conceiving Christ Mary establishes a precedence for human interpretation of the Logos, literally endowing it with human meaning. In this sense, she is central to the Christian reader's understanding of the divine, and also the natural choice as Mediatrix.5 Origen's ingenious theory of the Virgin Birth thus '"Numquam autem legitur quod verbum Domini factum sit vel Moyses, vel Ieremias, vel aliquis aliorem. Hoc autem modo singulariter unionem Dei- Verbi ad carnem Christi désignât Evangelista, dicens [loan. I, 14], Verbum caro factum est, ut supra [cap. praec] expositum est." The Latin text is taken from the Leonine edition, as reproduced Hi St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. R. Bernier and F. Kerouanton (France: P. Lethielleux, 1957), 194, and the English translation from St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles: Book Four: Salvation, trans. Charles J. O'Neil (Garden City, New York: Image...

Savonarolan Prophecy in Leonardo's Allegory with Wolf and Eagle

Previous articleNext article No AccessNotesSavonarolan Prophecy in Leonardo's Allegory with Wolf and EagleJosephine JungićJosephine Jungić Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Volume 60, Number 11997 Published for the Warburg Institute and the Courtauld Institute Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/751235 Copyright © 1997 by The Warburg Institute. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

This collection considers a wide range of texts, authors, and concerns--from the Man of Law's Tale to Tis Pity She's a Whore; from the mysterious Thomas Malory to the widely visible Ben Jonson; from the image of St. Paul's thorn in Troilus and Criseyde to the Renaissance iconography of Ganymede.

Aureola super Auream:Crowns and Related Symbols of Special Distinction for Saints in Late Gothic and Renaissance Iconography

In scholastic theology aurea and aureola are terms used to distinguish degrees of merit among the saints. Aurea, meaning in this context a “golden crown,” refers metaphorically to the condition of sainthood enjoyed by all the blessed; in works of art this crown is represented by what is now called a halo. Aureola, that is, a “small golden crown,” designates an additional, higher reward reserved for virgins, martyrs, and doctors, three categories of particularly meritorious saints according to scholastic writers. Since the eighteenth century scholastic teaching about the aureola has been largely forgotten as the doctrine ceased to be of theological interest, and the two terms have come to be confused and conflated. Consequently, the meaning of the aureola crowns so commonly found in late medieval and Early Renaissance art has been lost. This study, complementing an earlier article, applies the theology of the aureola to clarify the meaning of a number of Italian works of the Early Renaissance; to elucidate...

Aureola super Auream: Crowns and Related Symbols of Special Distinction for Saints in Late Gothic and Renaissance Iconography

Aureola super Auream: Crowns and Related Symbols of Special Distinction for Saints in Late Gothic and Renaissance Iconography

Shakespeare and the Emblem: Studies in Renaissance Iconography and Iconology ed. by Tibor Fabiny

Reviews 89 At the outset, the author expresses his confidence that complex argu­ ments “can be communicated in clear language.” Lindenberger’s style is indeed lucid and free of the jargonistic terminology of literary criticism (though he might have gone the full distance and avoided the use of foreground as a verb and the habitual preference of utilize over use). In a concluding “Retrospect” Lindenberger writes: “Throughout its . . . history opera has . . . practiced a certain outrageousness in its interactions both with other art forms and with the various social con­ texts in which it has flourished.” In Opera: The Extravagant Art the author practices a certain theoretical outrageousness of his own. Doubt­ less he will find his Beckmessers to chalk up indiscretions and “mistakes,” but I am confident that many readers of this book will find its enthusiastic extravagance in perfect harmony with its subject. GARY SCHMIDGALL University of Pennsylvania Shakespeare and the Emblem: Studies in Renaissance Iconography and Iconology, ed. Tibor Fabiny. Szeged, Hungary: Attila József Univer­ sity, 1984. Pp. 480 + illus. 60. This symposium represents both ongoing and innovative concerns of the University at Szeged, ongoing in that it is the third volume of “Papers in English and American Studies,” and innovative in that the papers published here “are the fruits of a two year project, which was partly launched by a deeply felt need to stimulate Shakespeare Studies in Hungary.” In this case, the goals and the results are admirable. I shall begin by disposing of a few rather technical observations. The volume is published by reproduction of typescripts, all apparently pre­ pared on a single machine so as to provide (as it does) a pleasant and uniformly readable text throughout, thereby reducing costs and also speeding publication. This works very well except for some illustrations which lack clarity and detail; in future publications of this kind, I hope that technological developments will make it possible to provide less “fuzzy” images. As for the language, the English throughout is clear and effective, although typographical errors occasionally appear. The contributors build upon the past fifteen years of international research into relations between visual and verbal icons and images, but they also attend carefully to such monumental earlier contributions as those by Samuel Chew, Erwin Panofsky, and others. Toward the end of the book, seventy-five pages are devoted to reviews of some two dozen seminal books, reviews which will no doubt be especially helpful in Hungary but which would be useful to any scholars interested in explor­ ing iconographical research for the first time. Eight principal essays make up the published symposium. Of these the first two are methodological. Tibor Fabiny begins with a broadly introductory essay entitled “Literature and Emblems: New Aspects in Shakespeare Studies,” to be followed by J. Pal’s “Some Iconological Aspects of the Poetic Sign,” which together set a clear-headed course. 90 Comparative Drama Six more particularized essays follow, of which two are by “foreign” scholars: Peter M. Daly, the Canadian who is contributing so much to emblematic research, provides examples (some original, others cited derivations) of how “interest in the iconograph and the emblem can help to bridge the gap between page and stage,” while warning that we should not exaggerate the importance of these new tools, “nor should they be regarded as an infallible code for the deciphering of a text, gesture, or stage property.” And the American Clifford Davidson pro­ vides in a briefer essay a balanced survey of the iconography of Wisdom and Folly in King Lear. Hungarian scholars, however, are the principal contributors, as they should be. Tibor Fabiny provides two interesting and well documented essays, one on the veritas filia temporis theme in Shakespeare, exploring also the general iconography of time and truth, and another on motifs of the theatrum mundi and the ages of man. There follows a short, rather methodological, consideration by Z. Szilassy of emblems as action, convention, and dramatic mechanisms on stage. Finally, Gyorgy E. Szonyi contributes a study of Alma’s House in The Faerie Queene, the only non-Shakespearean focus, but a subject clearly relevant to the dramatist. It is impressive indeed to see what has been achieved in these...

Continuity in the Art of Dying: The Duchess of Malfi

the death scenes in Act IV of the Duchess of MalfiA By 1612 or shortly afterwards when the Duchess was written, Webster employed his inventive dramatic imagination to refurbish the worn garments of the popular ars instruction so that they virtually glitter with poetic paradox. The art of dying well, at the heart of medieval and Renaissance iconography of death, had shifted in the last ten years of the sixteenth century from a major focus on its reassuring tragi-comic ending to an increasing emphasis upon one of the temptations. Literature of the nineties reflects a growing fear of falling victim to the temptation of despair.2 In spite, however, of such a seeming shift towards darkness, many writers, devotional and literary, continued in the first quarter of the seventeenth century to explore paradoxical reconciliations of hope and despair within the tragic frame. Webster, known for his interest in death scenes, orchestrates a fearful comfort through the murder of the Duchess by Bosola. Such a macabre tour de force transcends all earlier questions of the Duchess's guilt or innocence in what Clifford Leech has called the long ecstasy of pain3 in Act IV. It is Webster's genius that he creates this transcendence through an integration of symbolism from the ars tradition with his own poetic voice. The sophistication of Webster's dramatic poetry does not therefore spring forth miraculously without roots. The symbolism of the ars moriendi in varying degrees of literalism and displacement is integral, for example, to many earlier plays of Shakespeare. The conscience scene the night before the death

Falstaff as Actaeon: A Dramatic Emblem

N the final act of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare confronts his audience with an obvious burlesque of the myth. In impersonating Herne the Hunter, Sir John becomes a comic counterpart of the legendary hunter from Thebes. As Professor Bullough has observed, there is a certain T in Shakespeare's exploitation of this parallel. Actaeon had become a cant-name for a cuckold, and when Falstaff dons the horns which he would have placed on Ford's brows he suffers the poetic justice of a failed Don Juan. 1 Professor Bullough has likewise emphasized the dramatist's indebtedness to Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses: That Shakespeare had Ovid in mind when Falstaff assumed the disguise is proved by the latter's allusions at V.v. 2-I7 to the amorous metamorphoses of Jove.... was bitten by his own dogs, of whom Ovid names thirty-five and Golding calls one 'Ringwood' (a common name). Shakespeare substitutes the fairies who burn and pinch the fat knight; and for this part of the scene he takes hints from Lyly's Endimion (p. i8). Nevertheless, Shakespeare's treatment of the Falstaff-Actaeon parallel also displays several marked affinities with the representation of this myth in Renaissance iconography and mythography. The knight's disguise is virtually identical with a conventional illustration of in Renaissance emblem literature? and editions of the Metamorphoses.3 Moreover, the moral significance of Falstaff's ordeal-the punishment the unclean knight receives for his corrupted heart and lecheries-closely resembles a familiar Renaissance interpretation of Actaeon's fate. As Green's study of Shakespeare's relation to the emblem books does not consider the implications of Falstaffs disguise,4 it seems advisable to examine this problem in some detail.

SPENSER AND RENAISSANCE ICONOGRAPHY

SPENSER AND RENAISSANCE ICONOGRAPHY Get access GRAHAM HOUGH GRAHAM HOUGH Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Essays in Criticism, Volume XI, Issue 2, April 1961, Pages 233–235, https://doi.org/10.1093/eic/XI.2.233 Published: 01 April 1961

Giovannino Battista: A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism

THE figure of the Infant St. John became such a commonplace in fifteenth century art that it has rarely been thought to question whether or not there are specific sources for its appearance. Yet the problem acquires particular interest and importance when it is realized that the saint was almost never shown in this form before the Italian Renaissance. At that time the aged hermit of tradition was transformed into a child as young even as the Infant Christ with whom he was so frequently portrayed. Generally it has been believed that the numerous domestic scenes bearing such titles as Madonna and Child with the Infant St. John, or Holy Family with the Infant St. John, were simply manifestations of Renaissance naturalism, and that the reduction in John's age was merely a result of Florentine interest in the graces of childhood.1 However, art historical experience amply demonstrates that Renaissance artists were not in the habit of introducing new representational forms casually and without basis in tradition. Consequently, the hypothesis of naturalism, adequate or not as a definition of the phenomenon's cause, is certainly unsatisfactory as a description of its source. Since this perhaps more than any other single religious subject typifies the period, our ignorance of its real meaning and origin constitutes a major gap in our knowledge of Renaissance iconography.