Renaissance Masterpieces Research Articles

Hypotheses of urban regeneration. Small towns in the Veneto region, Italy

This work considers the small towns of the Veneto region, Italy, as a case study, concentrating analysis and proposals for a new urban design on areas that has been affected by a rapid post 2nd world war reconstruction and by following building speculation, thus losing their organic unity with the surrounding parts. The violence that often characterizes the insertion in the twentieth century of disproportionate volumes into the urban fabric inherited from the medieval culture and enriched by Renaissance masterpieces is easily recognizable. This is the reason why a lower standard of living is now perceived, if we accept the idea that standard of living is proportionated to the level of culture expressed by the context. The methodology looks at the town as a result of its spatial structure. More than political, social, and economic systems, reasons for its special nature can be found because of its constancy. Planning new buildings starts from understanding the context, that is, its physical structure. The method adopted is based on studying the history of the place to understand the urban morphology of it. The physical specificity of the urban form is explored with the aim of elaborating a design process to reinforce the public space as a reference point for the community. The spatial aspects and formal image of the transformations have been studied as a premise for the design of the new architecture that has developed because of necessity and the events that have occurred in the territory. Intervening through a process of urban redevelopment inside the city involves measuring according to the values that have become rooted in the areas with the passage of time. Good regeneration practice must not leave recovering the old together with its values out of consideration. This point of view leads us to consider that urbanism as a group of skills and bureaucratic apparatuses must occupy itself with the city and above all with its formal structure rather than be occupied so much with the contents of the legal, financial-economic, and administrative order.

Da Vinci’s Cat by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Reviewed by: Da Vinci’s Cat by Catherine Gilbert Murdock Elizabeth Bush Murdock, Catherine Gilbert Da Vinci’s Cat; illus. by Paul O. Zelinsky. Greenwillow, 2021 [288p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780063015258 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780063015272 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 Polite company refers to him as the guest of Pope Julius II, but it’s more honest to say that eleven-year-old Federico Gonzaga is the pope’s pampered hostage, held as security for his father’s loyalty as head of the Pope’s army. The sixteenth century is an interesting time to be captive at the Vatican, with artists Raphael and Michelangelo embellishing Pope Julius’ palace and sparring with and spying on each other in a most unprofessional manner. Federico is even more diverted, though, by the appearance of a cat named Juno and a 1928 New Jersey time traveler named Herbert Bother, both of whom pop out of a wardrobe in the palace. Juno and the wardrobe trace their provenance to a failed experiment of Leonardo da Vinci, which was later discovered by Herbert and exploited to build his career as an art dealer, swiping Renaissance masterpieces and selling them in the twentieth century. Enter Bee—also through the wardrobe—on her own mission to restore the fortune of a Herbert Bother descendant by securing Raphael’s signature on a drawing of Bee that will bring big bucks at an auction run by her two art historian moms. Many lively hijinks and much time travel ensue, as unfortunately does a great deal of confusion that will likely distract both fans of historical fiction (who will undoubtedly prefer more details about the child hostage) or time travel (who will find the mechanics foggy and the family relationships annoyingly tangled). An author’s note supplies more information on historical figures and will hopefully send some readers on a quest to dig up more gossip on sneaky Raphael and seedy Michelangelo. Reviewed from an unillustrated galley. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Informational Aesthetics—What Is the Relationship between Art Intelligence and Information?

The author examines the notion of informational aesthetics. The origin of aesthetics lies in Epicurus’s notion of aesthesis and the integration of artistic activity within ethics and the ‘good life’—as in the aesthetic theory and practice of the East. The debasement of the word ‘aesthetic’ reflects the increasing alienation of beauty from imagination. The fragmentation of art now packaged as media objects in our digital world is the legacy of this alienation. The author retraces the history of the concept of information aesthetics developed in the 1960s by Birkhoff, Bense and Mole and which sought to marry mathematics, computation and semiotics with artistic activity, based on Birkhoff’s aesthetic measure, and to bridge the gap between science and the humanistic imagination. The failure of the cognitive school is attributed to the limitations of its data-driven view of art itself as an affordance of perception (Arnheim). The roles of algorithmically generated art and of Computational Aesthetic Evaluation (CAE) are assessed. An appeal is made to the more fertile conceptual ground of information civilization—an idea developed by Professor Kun Wu. The author introduces the concept of digital iconography and applies it to Renaissance masterpieces such as Raphael’s School of Athens and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. In conclusion, Informational Aesthetics is identified as a future discipline for the Philosophy of Information.

Ephemeral Spenser

This essay approaches Edmund Spenser’s Renaissance masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, through a hitherto unknown series of twenty-four vignette illustrations that the eighteenth-century painter and book illustrator, Thomas Stothard, contributed to the nowadays little-known annual, The Royal Engagement Pocket Atlas, in 1794. Apart from making sense of Stothard’s visual interpretation of Spenser’s romance, the article will pay attention to how the painter creates an anthological miniature gallery of moments with which the users of the pocket diary may have been familiar. In other words, these vignettes may have conveyed mnemonically a prior reading experience of The Faerie Queene or have stimulated recall of other engagements with the moments represented. Understanding Stothard’s illustrations as iconic interventions in the reception history of Spenser’s work that, by being included in a disposable, annual pocket diary, were significantly more ephemeral than illustrations issued as part of an edition, I shall investigate how Stothard mediates the text by providing textual excerpts and how these one-line cues evoke a particular allusive experience of the text that affects the reading experience.

Giovanni Freppa, ‘Jack of all Trades’

ABSTRACTGiovanni Freppa (1795–1870), a well-known antiquarian, was instrumental in propelling the Ginori maiolica firm to reinvent the technique of Renaissance lustreware. The so-called ‘Freppa Scandal’ resulted after he sold as authentic Renaissance pieces a number of plates made by Ginori. Freppa was also famous, or rather infamous, for his exploitation of the young sculptor Giovanni Bastianini, whose remarkable neo-Renaissance portrait busts were sometimes sold as authentic Renaissance works. The Louvre purchased for an enormous price a bust believed to be a Renaissance masterpiece; but it was actually executed by Bastianini in 1864 on commission from Freppa, resulting in ‘the Benivieni Affair’. But this article is not primarily intended to expand on Freppa’s transactions in the art world; rather, it highlights his activities in many other spheres, including a failed publishing project with Giacomo Leopardi, among other activities. Freppa was a more complex individual than indicated merely by the two above-mentioned scandals.

Anglican Indigenization and Contextualization in Colonial Hong Kong: Comparative Case Studies of St. John’s Cathedral and St. Mary’s Church

Abstract The British Empire expanded into East Asia during the early years of the Protestant Mission Movement in China, one of history’s greatest cross-cultural encounters. Anglicans, however, did not accommodate local Chinese culture when they built St. John’s Cathedral in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. St. John’s had a prototypical English style and was a gathering place for the colony’s political and social elites, strengthening the new social order. The Cathedral spoke a Western architectural language that local residents could not understand and many saw Christianity as a strange, imposing, foreign religion. As indigenous Chinese Christians assumed leadership of Hong Kong’s Anglican Church, ecclesial architecture took on more Chinese elements, a transition epitomized by St. Mary’s Church, a Chinese Renaissance masterpiece featuring symbols from Taoism, Buddhism, and Chinese folk religions. This essay analyzes the contextualization of Hong Kong’s Anglican architecture, which made Christian concepts more relevant to the indigenous community.

Breaking the silence of the 500-year-old smiling garden of everlasting flowers: The En Tibi book herbarium.

We reveal the enigmatic origin of one of the earliest surviving botanical collections. The 16th-century Italian En Tibi herbarium is a large, luxurious book with c. 500 dried plants, made in the Renaissance scholarly circles that developed botany as a distinct discipline. Its Latin inscription, translated as “Here for you a smiling garden of everlasting flowers”, suggests that this herbarium was a gift for a patron of the emerging botanical science. We follow an integrative approach that includes a botanical similarity estimation of the En Tibi with contemporary herbaria (Aldrovandi, Cesalpino, “Cibo”, Merini, Estense) and analysis of the book’s watermark, paper, binding, handwriting, Latin inscription and the morphology and DNA of hairs mounted under specimens. Rejecting the previous origin hypothesis (Ferrara, 1542–1544), we show that the En Tibi was made in Bologna around 1558. We attribute the En Tibi herbarium to Francesco Petrollini, a neglected 16th-century botanist, to whom also belongs, as clarified herein, the controversial “Erbario Cibo” kept in Rome. The En Tibi was probably a work on commission for Petrollini, who provided the plant material for the book. Other people were apparently involved in the compilation and offering of this precious gift to a yet unknown person, possibly the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand I. The En Tibi herbarium is a Renaissance masterpiece of art and science, representing the quest for truth in herbal medicine and botany. Our multidisciplinary approach can serve as a guideline for deciphering other anonymous herbaria, kept safely “hidden” in treasure rooms of universities, libraries and museums.

Exhibition: Charles I — King and Collector

Royal Academy of Arts, London , 27 January 2018 to 15 April 2018 This majestic exhibition contains many wonders, and is well worth a visit. Per Rumberg, curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, and Desmond Shawe-Taylor, surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, have done a fantastic job in bringing together about 150 canvases that formed part of the royal collection of Charles I in the early 17th century. Many have come to London from the Museo del Prado and the Louvre for the first time; many more are from the Queen’s Collection. The story began in 1623 when Charles travelled to Madrid in an ill-fated attempt to explore the possibility of marriage to the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain. He came home without a wife, but with some Titians and a Veronese, and a determination to collect works of art that would rival the splendours of the Italian Renaissance masterpieces he had seen in the Spanish court. He was crowned king …

Derivative Narratives: The Multiple Lives of a Masterpiece on the Internet

Over the last three decades, the digitisation of art collections has become a priority for an increasing number of museums all over the world. Regarded as a means of promoting public access to culture, the dissemination of collections on the Internet has also proven to be crucial for communicating with different audiences. Through museum websites, social media and common platforms—such as Google Arts & Culture or Europeana—digital images are now made widely accessible and come to acquire a life of their own; a life that transcends the original artwork, as it takes place largely outside the institutional sphere. Moreover, the open online circulation of these reproductions paves the way for multiple uses, reinterpretations and recreations.In this article, I will discuss the creative potential of open access to art collections, questioning whether museums are effectively dealing with these new cultural dynamics because, although many of these experiments can easily be found by browsing the Internet, they are rarely accessible through institutional channels. After a brief contextualisation, the text focuses on an emblematic case‐study: The Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Domenico Ghirlandaio, housed at the Thyssen‐Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. My research involves a comprehensive online tracking of artistic projects either inspired by or derived from this Renaissance masterpiece. Based on a critical analysis of Internet sources, as well as interviews with the museum and the artists themselves, I argue that exploring the links between institutional and alternative narratives contributes to multiple visions of the collections and fosters digital engagement.

Iconic images in propaganda

Italian visual propaganda often makes use of well-established imagery, to exploit its proven impact. Renaissance masterpieces with religious subject matter were recurrently reproduced on political posters in the early post-war years and during the referenda campaigns of 1974 and 1981, mostly to characterise the parties as Christian. In Italy and elsewhere these images now tend to be employed in a secular way, for instance to denounce injustices and atrocities, and invite compassion and solidarity for the victims. Symbolic motifs traditionally associated with specific ideological traditions also used to feature strongly in Italian visual propaganda; they virtually disappeared in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Christian-Democrat and Socialist parties in the wake of theMani puliteinvestigations, and the Communist Party’s transformation into a social-democratic party. They have been replaced by new icons. Iconographic motifs dear to fascism and Nazism, however, continue to be used, by stealth or unabashedly, by Italian far-right organisations.

Sculpture in the age of Donatello: Renaissance masterpieces from Florence Cathedral

Sculpture in the age of Donatello: Renaissance masterpieces from Florence Cathedral

1. Michele Lazzaroni (1863-1934), tra contraffazione e restauro

A Fake Renaissance ? Research on the history of the art market and collecting in the 18th and 19th century often evoke, albeit until now in passing, the singular figure of an amateur dealer : Baron Michele Angelo Lazzaroni (1863-1934). These essays explore the dealing and collecting activities of Michele Lazzaroni, a great mind and financier at the time of the Italian unification. I. Michele Lazzaroni, between Counterfeiting and Restauration The first essay uses hitherto unpublished documents to shed light on Baron Lazzaroni’s activities as a dealer, carried out, often shamelessly, between Rome, Paris and Nice. In order to feed continuously the high demand – coming in particular from the American art market – for Italian “masterpieces” of the High Renaissance, he regularly had damaged or inferior works extensively over painted to create works of art in a Renaissance style that was as showy as it was implausible. These could in fact be called authentic fakes. II. Baron Michele Lazzaroni and Sculpture. Through the review of the unpublished correspondence with Adolfo Venturi and the discovery of a series of contemporary photographs, this essay sheds light on the strategies and cautious literary manoeuvres that aimed to consolidate Michele Lazzaroni’s status on the global art market. By disseminating works of art presented as authentic, whether presumed so or counterfeit, the Baron managed to position them on the market by endowing them with the aura of potential Renaissance masterpieces. With this in mind, it is interesting to examine Lazzaroni’s keen interest in sculpture and reconstruct the history of a few examples that once formed part of his collection, such as the Bust of the Emperor Palaeologus attributed to Filarete.

Pure Gold: Golden Age Sacred Music in the Iberian World: A Homage to Bruno Turner. Ed. by Tess Knighton and Bernadette Nelson.

All the gold on earth originated in supernova explosions untold billions of years ago. Most terrestrial gold resides in the earth’s core, where it descended along with molten iron during the planet’s formation. The gold we have mined over the millennia was probably deposited by asteroids and meteors on or near the earth’s surface. Gold’s atomic characteristics prevent it from oxidizing and thus maintain its attractive yellow lustre. The quest for gold has motivated some of the largest and culturally most transformative migrations in human history. Its untarnished appearance also makes it a potent metaphor for things of enduring quality and significance, and for the people and cultural epochs that produce, preserve, and promote works of great beauty. One such epoch was the Iberian golden age of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, and one such promoter is Bruno Turner. Indeed, as interesting as the story is of gold’s journey from meteor to metaphor, it is musical gold that propelled Turner’s career, and his personal journey is the subject of a fascinating interview with Luis Gago at the conclusion of this remarkable book. Turner is renowned for his achievements as an editor and publisher of early music. For many years he was a radio personality on BBC’s Third Programme, researching, performing, and talking about Spanish music in particular. Using personal wealth acquired through a successful wall-covering business, in 1977 he founded Mapa Mundi, a company devoted to the publication of Renaissance music in performing editions. Not content merely to publish music, he also founded and conducted the group Pro Cantione Antiqua in London, which recorded its landmark performances of Renaissance masterpieces on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Among Turner’s seminal recordings with this ensemble and on that label are the complete motets of Francisco de Peñalosa.

Princely Armor in the Age of Dürer: A Renaissance Masterpiece in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Princely Armor in the Age of Dürer: A Renaissance Masterpiece in the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Discovering the great masters: the art lover's guide to understanding symbols in paintings

Discover the secret symbols and meaning behind 62 featured paintings in this unique volume. Ranging from Giotto's 14th-century painting of the Last Judgment to the 19th-century symbolist Gustave Moreau's depiction of Jupiter and Semele, each work has been selected for its own symbolic enigma. This book's innovative design pairs each painting with a page of die-cut windows that help the reader focus on specific aspects of each painting and features captions that highlight the most important symbols. Other works in this unique and fascinating book include Renaissance masterpieces such as Botticelli's Primavera and The Birth of Venus, Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, and Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.

Looking Into the Mirror of Time: Reflections on the Life and Work of Edwin T. Layton Jr., 1928-2009

Looking Into the Mirror of Time:Reflections on the Life and Work of Edwin T. Layton Jr., 1928-2009 Eda Kranakis (bio) Looking into the mirror of time, back to the fall of 1975, the first reflection I see in my mind's eye is the image of Ed Layton's guardian angel—Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia—looking down from his office wall at the University of Minnesota. That autumn he was a newly appointed professor at the university, and I was a new Ph.D. student intent on studying the history of technology. It seems long ago, and it seems like yesterday. Ed explained to me that the angel depicted the essence of the historian's life: the quest for knowledge combined with the inevitable loneliness of scholarly work. Looking back from thirty-five years, I see that Dürer's print also captures some of the deepest characteristics of Ed Layton as a scholar. On one level, this Northern Renaissance masterpiece expresses the great humanistic spirit that pervaded his life and teaching. On another level, the angel's paraphernalia—from mathematical shapes to measuring instruments and [End Page 543] workmen's tools—convey his love of technology, science, and mathematics, which directed the corpus of his scholarly work. And on still another level, the image's Neoplatonic, allegorical character reflects Ed's philosophical side, his unrelenting desire to discover the deeper, simpler truths and structures beneath the complex surface of historical events. Ed was as much philosopher as historian, which partly explains the enduring impact of his contributions to the history of technology. Ed Layton was not only a great humanist and brilliant scholar and teacher; he was also a leader of the Society for the History of Technology's institutional and intellectual development, serving on all the major prize committees, on the executive council, and finally as vice president and president between 1983 and 1986. For more than two decades he was an advisory editor for Technology and Culture or a key member of the SHOT editorial committee. In 1971 he received the society's Dexter Prize for The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession, cited as "a model of research and synthesis in the social history of technology," and nineteen years later he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal. Through his intellectual contributions, Ed influenced our understanding of technological knowledge, the interaction of science and technology, issues related to engineering design, ethics, and ideology, and the nature and history of engineering professionalization. Yet the scope of his interests ranged much further. Indeed, few have matched the depth and breadth of his knowledge of human culture and society from ancient times to the present. In his last year of life, despite declining health, he was still reading voraciously in subjects as diverse as ancient and medieval music, cosmic physics, poetry, film, astronomy, and naval history. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Edwin Thomas Layton Jr. rose above a childhood that left him with a sense of abandonment. His father and namesake was an Annapolis-trained naval officer who became the head of intelligence for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, reaching the rank of rear admiral, and who gained fame posthumously from his book And I Was There (1985), which recounted events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ed had only limited personal interaction with his father, however. Layton senior was sent overseas when his son was less than one year old, and his parents soon divorced, both of them eventually remarrying and founding new families. At the age of seven, when his mother remarried, Ed was left without explanation to be raised by his grandmother. His mother remained emotionally aloof, and, though he tried several times throughout his life to establish a personal relationship with his father, he was rebuffed. Still, Ed always took a keen interest in naval affairs. He joined the U.S. Navy Reserve while still a teenager, leaving only when he got his first full-time teaching position, and later presented talks on naval intelligence relating to his father's career. Ed's psyche also bore the imprint of growing up during the Great...

New approaches for investigating paintings by ion beam techniques

Abstract Up to now, among the IBA techniques, only PIXE has been used for analyzing paintings. However, quantitative PIXE analysis is sometimes difficult to interpret due to the layered structure, the presence of varnish and organic binder and, in some cases, discoloration of the pigments has been observed due to the interaction of the ion beam with the compounds. In order to improve the characterization of paintings, we propose some alternative experimental procedures. First of all, backscattering spectrometry (BS) and PIXE are simultaneously combined in order to collect complementary information such as layer thickness and organic compound quantification. The simultaneous PIXE and BS experiments also have the advantage of being able to analyze the same area in one experiment. This combination, implemented with an external beam, was directly applied on paintings and on painting cross-sections for the study of Italian Renaissance masterpieces. We have obtained valuable results not only on the pigment itself but also, for the first time, on the binder to pigment proportion which is not well documented in the ancient recipes. Moreover, in order to restrain beam damages due to the ion stopping power, we propose to analyze very thin painting cross-sections by a combination of PIXE–RBS and Scanning Transmission Ion Microscopy (STIM).

New radiocarbon data to study the history of roman and medieval Florence

Florence is a town worldwide known for its Renaissance masterpieces. It is often forgotten that it was founded during Roman times and remained a small village until the end of the early Middle Ages, practically confined within the ancient Roman boundaries. Since 2003, an extended archaeological research executed by the University of Sienna has studied the most ancient layers in the centre of Florence with the aim to enhance both the archaeological and paleo-environmental reconstruction of this area. One of the peculiarities of these excavations is that the early medieval layers were poor in datable ceramics, thus charcoals were sampled from different stratigraphic layers in order to contribute to the dating. Several data have already been published; here we focus on the excavation site of Palazzo Vecchio, now the seat of the municipality of Florence. This area is located close to the Arno river, along the eastern margin of the slightly elevated height upon which the Roman town was founded; actually, in the layers beneath the surface, the Roman theatre is still preserved. Radiocarbon dating of charcoals was performed in the LABEC laboratory in Florence, at the AMS beam line of the AMS-IBA 3 MV Tandetron accelerator. Comparison of these new data with the former ones and with the archaeological and geological data adds new information especially on natural phenomena like floods and on the human occupation of this area in the past.

Composition of Renaissance Paint Layers: Simultaneous Particle Induced X-ray Emission and Backscattering Spectrometry

Particle induced X-ray emission spectroscopy (PIXE) is now routinely used in the field of cultural heritage. Various setups have been developed to investigate the elemental composition of wood/canvas paintings or of cross-section samples. However, it is not possible to obtain information concerning the quantity of organic binder. Backscattering spectrometry (BS) can be a useful complementary method to overcome this limitation. In the case of paint layers, PIXE brings the elemental composition (major elements to traces) and the BS spectrum can give access to the proportion of pigment and binder. With the use of 3 MeV protons for PIXE and BS simultaneously, it was possible to perform quantitative analysis including C and O for which the non-Rutherford cross sections are intense. Furthermore, with the use of the same conditions for PIXE and BS, the experiment time and the potential damage by the ion beam were reduced. The results obtained with the external beam of the Accélérateur Grand Louvre pour l'Analyse Elementaire (AGLAE) facility on various test painting samples and on cross sections from Italian Renaissance masterpieces are shown. Simultaneous combination of PIXE and BS leads to a complete characterization of the paint layers: elemental composition and proportion of the organic binder have been determined and thus provide useful information about ancient oil painting recipes.

European tapestries in the Art Institute of Chicago

This lavishly illustrated book presents a rich variety of European tapestries from the Art Institute of Chicago. These exquisite tapestries include medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque examples, manufactured at almost all the major centers of production in many of the foremost workshops. Among the works discussed are The Annunciation, a Renaissance masterpiece designed by an artist in the circle of Mantegna; Autumn and Winter, based on designs by Charles Le Brun; and The Elephant, woven after a design by Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. An international team of scholars explain the history of this previously unpublished collection and offer new designer and workshop attributions, design and source identifications, and provenance information.