Renaissance Rome Research Articles

Is This Love? Same-Sex Marriages in Renaissance Rome

In 1578, a same-sex community that gathered in a church, performing marriages between men, was discovered in Rome. Documentary evidence now verifies this story, reported by many sources, including a passage of Michel de Montaigne's Travel Journal, but which was for a long time denied by scholars. While briefly reconstructing this affair, this article explores the complex emotional regime surrounding the episode. In particular, it argues that those who participated in the ceremonies did so not only as an expression of affection for their partners, but also in an attempt to legitimize their relationships in a rite that imitated the Counter-Reformation sacrament of marriage. This approach challenges the predominant historiography on the birth of homosexuality and helps us to better understand the sentiments of those who were part of a same-sex community in Renaissance Rome.

Historical ground: the role of history in contemporary landscape architecture

1. Preliminary orientations 2. History as geology, topography and weather 3. Examples of history in earlier landscape architecture (Renaissance Rome, Desert de Retz, Les Buttes Chaumont) 4. Five Paris sites: a scale of contemporary interventions and inventions 5. History found and exploited in a specific place today 6. History invented for a site today 7. Land Art, Garden Festivals & historical ground 8. Afterword/Afterlife

Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome

Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome

Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447 by Elizabeth McCahill (review)

Reviewed by: Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447 by Elizabeth McCahill Carol M. Richardson Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447. By Elizabeth McCahill. [I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History.] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2013. Pp. 302. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-674-72453-2.) Reviving the Eternal City is a very welcome addition to the limited number of studies in English that consider the first half of the fifteenth century in Rome. Here the focus is the humanists, men devoted to classical learning and generally frustrated at having to earn a living to support their habit. Through an array of the works they produced at the papal court, Elizabeth McCahill has produced a rich and rewarding insight into the relationships that made the Roman papal machine work. The problematic papacies of Martin V and Eugenius IV are established as the threshold between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Well before Nicholas V, there were signs that the city would be reborn, its future deeply rooted in its classical past. [End Page 600] Each of the six chapters views papal Rome through the work of writers or humanists. Niccolò Signorilli’s Descriptio urbis Romae, the main focus of chapter 1, flatters Martin V by stressing Rome’s permanence. As a member of the upwardly mobile nobiles, Signorilli had a great deal to lose if the popes deserted their city again. Chapter 2 turns to humanists’ attempts to ingratiate themselves with powerful patrons at the papal court by celebrating—and selling—their new humanist curriculum. At the same time they bemoaned their lot at the papal court: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) described the inferior wine served to curialists while the pope enjoyed the best. Who would want to be a prince, Matteo Vegio argues, when all they can do is make enemies? Overall, whether prince or servant, the human condition finds more failure than fortune. It was ever thus. Humanists did not merely observe but helped shape the reforming agenda led by Pope Eugenius IV. But very often they appear as both partisans and as critics. In chapter 3 Leon Battista Alberti and Poggio Bracciolini represent “the curial humanist as an elegant tightrope walker” (p. 96). They were, at one and the same time, irreverent critics and loyal servants of the Church. Chapter 4 examines the thorny issues of reform. Although humanists described clerical abuses and immorality, they also celebrated and promoted models of the personal reform (in membris) that balanced conciliar focus on the pope (in capite). But as a result, McCahill suggests, reform was destined to fail at an institutional level. Chapter 5 turns to the rich area of papal ceremony, and in particular the void it often filled between the myth and reality of the Renaissance papacy. Codifying and preserving the long tradition of curial ceremonial, the humanists improved the liturgies and protocols that continue to bear on the public performance of papal power to this day. Chapter 6 continues the argument that papacy and humanists were interdependent: the popes needed Rome’s classical past, and the humanists needed the popes to believe in their agenda. Reviving the Eternal City is a great deal more than the story of the scholars who sought to earn a living at the papal court. It provides a useful overview of two neglected papacies, a rich insight into the key sources for Renaissance Rome and an astute analysis of humanist writings. McCahill wears her erudition lightly; her book is a pleasure to read and will be as essential to students as it is to professors. [End Page 601] Carol M. Richardson University of Edinburgh Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Suzanne M. Scanlan. Review of "Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome" by Barbara Wisch and Nerida Newbigin.

Suzanne M. Scanlan. Review of "Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome" by Barbara Wisch and Nerida Newbigin.

Acting on faith. The confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome. By Barbara Wisch and Nerida Newbiggin. (Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, 7.) Pp. xxii+514 incl. frontispiece and 249 black-and-white and colour plates. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's University Press, 2013. $100 + $9 post and packing. 978 0 916101 74 9

Acting on faith. The confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome. By Barbara Wisch and Nerida Newbiggin. (Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series, 7.) Pp. xxii+514 incl. frontispiece and 249 black-and-white and colour plates. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph's University Press, 2013. 9 post and packing. 978 0 916101 74 9 - Volume 65 Issue 2

:Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome. Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series 7

:<i>Acting on Faith: The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome. Early Modern Catholicism and the Visual Arts Series 7</i>

Acting on Faith. The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome

Acting on Faith. The Confraternity of the Gonfalone in Renaissance Rome

Empire without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527

'Empire without End' traces the history of antiquities collecting in early modern Rome from the fourteenth century to the Sack of Rome in 1527. It considers the question of how antique images in this era went from pagan idols to be smashed or re-used as building materials to ‘works of art’ displayed in collections, paying particular attention to the role of collecting in the invention of fictive genealogies, the paragone between sculpture and poetry, and the reception of antique sculpture by academic sodalities. The book includes a catalogue that maps out the history of the most important sculpture collections of this period.

Depicting the Heavens: The Use of Astrology in the Frescoes of Renaissance Rome

This paper explores the use of astrological imagery in four ceiling frescoes painted during the Renaissance in Rome: the scenes of the Sala di Galatea in the Villa Farnesina, and those of the Stanza della Segnatura, the Sala dei Pontefici, and the Sala Bologna, all within the Vatican Palace. Significantly this imagery was not confined to the pages of private manuscripts as it had been in the Middle Ages, but took the form of frescoes on the walls and ceilings of public rooms, allowing viewers to bask in the celestial glory of the patron. Commissioned in 1575 by Pope Gregory XIII, I argue that the Sala Bologna imagery represents a critical juncture in attitudes toward natural philosophy, and demonstrates a shift from astrological interpretation, as condemned at the Council of Trent, to astronomical calculation, as promoted by the Catholic Church. I argue that the placement of these murals demonstrates that this type of pictorial aggrandizement was intended to reach a wide audience and was used by the patron, popes being the most prominent among these, as a form of visual self-promotion. I also examine how contemporaneous events - notably the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent - affected astrological practice and the monumental display of these horoscopes. Astrological imagery is not limited to Rome, but the four examples I discuss represent the peak of such decoration and offer insight into a widespread feature of early modern Italian culture that has yet to be adequately explored.

Antiquity and the Renaissance in Oceanside: The European Legacy of the Last Judgment at Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

Like much of the art of the Upper California missions, the painting of the Last Judgment at Mission San Luis Rey de Francia reveals a long and vibrant pedigree in the European tradition. The composition is based on a Flemish print of a French masterpiece. Some elements of the French composition trace back to Classical and Renaissance works of art. This essay will identify these particular artistic details and explain how they made their way from Antiquity and Renaissance Rome, to Paris, Antwerp, Seville, Mexico City and, ultimately, to what is now Oceanside, California

The Ruin of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome (review)

The Ruin of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome (review)

Katherine Bentz. Review of "Empire Without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527" by Kathleen Wren Christian.

Katherine Bentz. Review of "Empire Without End: Antiquities Collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350–1527" by Kathleen Wren Christian.

The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (review)

The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: Printing and Collecting the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (review)

Review: La memoria de las piedras. Anticuarios, arqueólogos y coleccionistas de antigüedades en la España de los Austrias by Miguel Morán Turina

Miguel Moran Turina . La memoria de las piedras. Anticuarios, arqueologos y coleccionistas de antiguedades en la Espana de los Austrias . Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanic: 2010, 451 pp., 80 color and 96 b/w illus. €40, ISBN 9788493606077 The story Miguel Moran Turina tells is one seldom told. It is an obscure tale, one could even argue. In a word, antiquarian. Why, then, painstakingly trace the story of these early modern Spanish lovers of Roman antiquity, of their quixotic struggle against the inexorable forces of time to salvage, whether textually or graphically, the memory of stones, as the title of the book poetically evokes? It is not the least of La memoria de las piedras ' merits that it demonstrates the presence and relevance of the Roman past in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, most notably among its cultural and political elite. Superbly edited by the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanica (CEEH), which has been promoting the study of the Habsburg monarchy and early modern Spanish visual culture for close to a decade now, and lavishly illustrated with judicious selections from a vast array of little-known manuscript and printed sources, this book fills a long-standing gap in a field dominated by historians of art and architecture, who have traditionally been interested in and fascinated by the royal or private collecting of chiefly Italian paintings and the reception of Italian art forms. La memoria de las piedras starts off with two introductory chapters, the first on the interest in and appreciation for Roman ruins in medieval Spain, and the second focusing on Spanish travelers to the Eternal City as well as perceptions and descriptions of Rome in Spanish Renaissance writing. This initial section is followed by some fascinating pages on the development among Spanish erudites of a more systematic and rigorous method of studying Roman coins, transcribing Latin inscriptions, surveying the …

Archaeology and the Anxiety of Loss: Effacing Preservation from the History of Renaissance Rome

It is a famous paradox that Renaissance builders, despite their avowed reverence for classical antiquity, caused widespread archaeological destruction in Rome. As early as the 14th century, humanists criticized the devastation caused by new construction in the papal capital, and later archaeologists applied the scientific techniques of their new discipline to substantiate these claims. But the blanket condemnation of Renaissance destruction is both unfair and misleading. This article investigates how fear for the survival of archaeological artifacts, or the anxiety of loss, has distorted our understanding of early modern interventions on ancient sites. By drawing on new evidence for preservation practices, it explores why these were effaced from the historical record and invites us to rethink the history of archaeology in Renaissance Rome.

Archaeology and the Anxiety of Loss: Effacing Preservation from the History of Renaissance Rome

Archaeology and the Anxiety of Loss: Effacing Preservation from the History of Renaissance Rome

A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (review)

A Sudden Terror: The Plot to Murder the Pope in Renaissance Rome (review)

Empire without end: antiquities collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350-1527

Empire without end: antiquities collections in Renaissance Rome, c. 1350-1527

City as Political Form: Four Archetypes of Urban Transformation

AbstractPier Vittorio Aureli focuses on the category of archetype as an alternative to the idea of type. Four examples – the axial streets of Renaissance Rome, the 17th‐century Parisian place, the 19th‐century independent block in Berlin and the 20th‐century Viennese superblock – are explored here to describe the emergence of modern urban forms that explicitly embody power relations.