15th Century Florence

Il Coniurationis commentarium, l’unica opera storica composta da Angelo Poliziano, è la prima e la più importante fonte sulla Congiura dei Pazzi, il sanguinoso colpo di stato perpetrato contro i Medici a Firenze il 26 aprile 1478, che causò la morte del giovane Giuliano e il ferimento di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Poliziano, già intellettuale di primo piano della Firenze medicea e presente al tragico attentato in Santa Maria del Fiore, compose il suo racconto nel burrascoso scenario politico scaturito dal fallimento della cospirazione: una testimonianza storica autoptica, concepita come rapida e necessaria risposta sull’onda del clamore suscitato dal crimine e realizzata con le armi della più raffinata cultura umanistica, un ritratto intenso e coinvolgente degli eventi, che si distingue per la brevitas sallustiana e per la limpida potenza delle sue immagini. Da subito fatta circolare grazie ai nuovissimi mezzi della stampa, l’opera divenne uno dei pilastri più robusti su cui si edificò l’articolata propaganda medicea all’indomani della congiura.
Questa nuova edizione del Coniurationis commentarium, dopo l’edizione critica pionieristica curata da Alessandro Perosa nel 1958, si propone di offrire uno strumento di lettura più completo e aggiornato dell’opera, grazie a nuove indagini condotte in ambito filologico, storico e critico. Nuove acquisizioni sul Commentarium presentate in questo volume riguardano inoltre i modelli classici ai quali Poliziano si ispirò e le implicazioni e le prospettive storico-politiche dell’opera nel contesto della congiura. Il testo latino dell’edizione Perosa, riproposto qui con alcuni emendamenti scaturiti da un vaglio più completo della tradizione, è corredato di una nuova traduzione italiana e di puntuali note di commento, aggiornato ai più recenti studi e finalizzato all’illustrazione di personaggi ed eventi storici menzionati e della fitta trama di fonti classiche che sottendono l’opera.

Sgraffito as a decorative element of the exterior of 14th and 15th century Florentine buildings has long been known, although seldom granted much attention. The present dissertation, therefore, examines the phenomenon of sgraffito, a technique in which motifs are scratched into smoothened or whitewashed plaster. These decorations can be found as wall decorations on public and semi-public buildings, religious structures, and private dwellings. For the period in question 34 buildings with sgraffito decorations—preserved or otherwise accounted for—could be identified. They have been compiled into a catalogue of the objects under investigation in this study; their documentary value is assessed in a separate chapter. Since many of the sgraffito renderings have only been preserved fragmentarily, extensively restored, or reconstructed, the question of their testimonial value must be treated with caution. The chapter about the history of the technique explores its invention and further development. Scrutiny of the characteristics of the earliest known examples allows the origins of the sgraffito technique—unclear until today—to be traced back to stone work designs and masonry joints. Furthermore, the material suggests a dating of the adoption of grey coloring to the mid-quattrocento, connecting it with the design of the Palazzo Medici’s inner courtyard. The chapter on technology addresses how artists and artisans executed the decorations before and after the Palazzo Medici. Written sources and, most importantly, close study of the decorated objects are the foundation for a reconstruction of the technique in its different stages, taking materials, tools and the time taken to execute these steps into account. The fact that sgraffito decorations were used on both public and private buildings of importance suggests that they were intended to give the buildings a cachet of distinction. The chapter on the significance of sgraffito decorations examines which buildings were so decorated, and investigates who gave the work in commission and what their social standing was. The success of the inexpensive and uncomplicated wall decorations was owed above all to their inherent pictorial character, as the chapter Architektur/Bild argues on the basis of the first and simplest motif—the ashlar. The final chapter compiles examples of the technique’s dissemination from Florence. In particular Rome and Pienza, where many examples of sgraffito have survived, are key locations in this context.
Andreas Huth
Florentiner Sgraffito-Dekorationen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts Erfindung, Technologie, Bedeutung
Abstract (Deutsch)
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht mit den Florentiner Sgraffito-Dekorationen des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts eine in der Forschung seit langem bekannte, aber wenig erforschte Form der Außengestaltung von Bauwerken. Mit Sgraffito wird eine Technik bezeichnet, bei der in die geglättete oder geweißte Oberfläche eines Putzes Motive eingeritzt werden. Sgraffito-Dekorationen sind an öffentlichen/halb-öffentlichen Bauwerken, Gebäuden in religiösem Kontext und privaten Wohnbauten zu finden. Für die Arbeit wurden für den Untersuchungszeitraum insgesamt 34 Bauwerke ermittelt und in einem Katalog erfasst. Die erhaltenen und nachweisbaren Sgraffito-Dekorationen bilden das Untersuchungsmaterial, dessen dokumentarischer Wert im einleitenden Kapitel diskutiert wird, da viele der Wandgestaltungen nur fragmentarisch, stark restauriert oder als Rekonstruktionen überliefert sind. Ein Kapitel zur Geschichte nimmt die Erfindung und die weitere Entwicklung der Technik in den Focus. Mit Blick auf die Charakteristika der frühesten bekannten Dekorationen wird die bislang unbekannte Herkunft der Sgraffito-Technik aus Formen der Mauerwerks- und Fugengestaltung erklärt. Darüber hinaus kann der Zeitpunkt der Einführung der Grau-Färbung auf Mitte des Quattrocento eingegrenzt und mit dem Innenhof des Palazzo Medici verbunden werden. Wie Handwerker und Künstler Sgraffito-Dekorationen vor und nach den Palazzo Medici ausführten, behandelt ein Kapitel zur Technologie. Auf Basis von schriftlichen Quellen, vor allem aber Beobachtungen an den Objekten wird hier die Technik in ihren Einzelschritten und unter Berücksichtigung der verwendeten Materialien und Werkzeuge sowie der Ausführungszeit rekonstruiert. Der Einsatz von Sgraffito-Dekorationen für bedeutende öffentliche und private Gebäude erlaubt die Annahme, dass es sich bei ihnen um eine besondere Form der Aus- und Kennzeichnung der Bauwerke handelt. Ein Kapitel zur Bedeutung der Sgraffito-Dekorationen fragt, welche Gebäude verziert wurden, wer die AuftraggeberInnen waren und welchen gesellschaftlichen Status sie besaßen. Der Erfolg der kostengünstigen und technisch wenig aufwändigen Wanddekoration verdankt sich vor allem ihrem bildlichen Charakter, wie das Kapitel ‚Architektur/Bild‘ anhand der Quaderung als dem ersten und einfachsten Motiv zu zeigen versucht. Das letzte Kapitel versammelt Beispiele für die von Florenz ausgehende Verbreitung der Sgraffito-Dekorationen. Hierbei kommt vor allem Rom und Pienza eine Schlüsselstellung zu, wo sich zudem zahlreiche Bauwerke mit Sgraffito-Gestaltungen erhalten haben.

The reception of Plato’s Timaeus during the Early Renaissance coincided with ground-breaking developments in the conceptualisation of architectural space and the ‘invention’ of perspective. This gave rise to fertile areas of influence of Platonic principles on artistic/architectural creativity, that consciously drew upon the Timaean commentary tradition of Calcidius and others through the intellectual exchanges of humanists, artists and architects. In this chapter I will highlight how the Timaeus influenced architectural representation through a combination of harmonic proportional systems, deployed to convey building as a ‘cosmological receptacle’, and the creation of a new projective (illusory) space, that drew direct alignment between human and divine vision. The study will focus on early fifteenth century Florence, when architects, artists, theologians and humanists were engaged in creative and intellectual initiatives that were influenced in various ways by Plato’s account of Divine Creation.

Owing to the loss of most 15th-century music manuscripts from France and Burgundy, chansonniers of Italian origin are of special significance for our knowledge of the French song repertory and its dissemination during the second half of the century. Florence appears to have been a particularly important center of collecting, judging from a group of nine chansonniers copied there between the 1440s and the early 1490s. In recent decades the Berlin Chansonnier (Berlin, Staatliche Museen der Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78.C.28) has held a special place among these Florentine sources, partly because it is the only one from before the 1490s for which there is external evidence that seemed to provide a precise dating, and partly because that evidence indicated that it was our only surviving Florentine music manuscript from the 1460s. More than 30 years ago Peter Reidemeister identified the two Florentine families whose impaled arms decorate the first chanson in the collection. These arms led him to propose that the manuscript was made in connection with a wedding involving these two families, which he claimed took place in 1465 or 1466, a dating that has been accepted as a terminus ad quem in subsequent scholarship. The manuscript thus appeared to pre-date by 15 or more years the next earliest sources in the Florentine group, and the significant repertorial differences between the Berlin manuscript and those of the early 1480s seemed to confirm this time gap.
Documents in the Archivio di Stato in Florence change this picture considerably. New evidence calls for a series of crucial adjustments to the theories proposed by Reidemeister that together force a reassessment of the dating of the Berlin Chansonnier. This reassessment affects in turn its relation to several other manuscripts, both from Florence and elsewhere in Italy, and provides new insight into the repertory of songs (in particular those of Busnoys) that was circulating in Florence between the 1460s and the early 1480s.

In 1795, publisher John M’Creery printed in Liverpool The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici called The Magnificent. A huge editorial success, it was written by William Roscoe, a quite gifted figure, who dedicated himself equally to his legal profession and passion for literature, philanthropy and art collecting. This essay aims at providing a close reading of his celebrated Medicean biography, pointing out the fundamental role it played in the creation of the Florentine Renaissance myth. Deconstructing Roscoe’s idealization of Lorenzo’s personality will not only allow to highlight a transitional stage in the European historiographical tradition, between the end of the Ancien Régime and the birth of liberal states, but also to observe from within the tricks employed in writing a biography, an ambiguous genre always suspended between history and fiction.

ENG. This essay aims to clarify what was the craft activity carried out by Florentine armourers (armaioli), enrolled in the Arte di Por Santa Maria and the importance of this profession between the 14th and 15th centuries.The research is mainly based on three archival sources: the Sta-tute of Art, to identify what their work consisted; the lists of ma-triculated, in order to be able to evaluate the number of craftmen present in the city and the trend of their enrollments in the chro-nological period of which we have sources; the Catasto of 1427, through which we will have more information on the Florentine armourers active in this year, as the location of their workshops in the city or their wealth.Finally it will conclude with some hypotheses on why this flourishing commercial and productive activity, disappears from the Florentine craft organizations in the end of Middle Ages.

The law "De testamentis", passed by the Florentine legislative councils in March 1477 under pressure from Lorenzo de’ Medici, often recurs in historical narrative in connection with the tragic event that occurred the following year, the Pazzi conspiracy, being considered one of its underlying causes. So far, however, no detailed survey has been carried out about the estate litigation between the Borromei and Pazzi families, which drove the legislative action of Lorenzo the Magnificent, nor about the law itself, by which the interpretation of the statutory rules concerning female rights on inheritance was substantially changed while leaving the text untouched. My study aims to fill this gap in the context of a more general survey of the policies implemented by Lorenzo de’ Medici towards the major families of the Florentine patriciate.

The analysis of two Renaissance drawings offers the occasion for a discussion of light in ecclesiastical architecture.
The first exemple considers the well-known drawing – drafted on parchment by Giovanni di Gherardo Gherardi da Prato in competition with Filippo Brunelleschi for the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore – which constitutes both the first fifteenth-century graphic testimony concerning the natural illumination of the church’s interior, and the only drawing contemporary to its construction that has survived and is datable to 1425.
The second drawing is a “studio dal vero” by Baldassarre Peruzzi of Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome, dating from the beginning of the sixteenth-century. It offers a perspective view of the interior of the monument, portraying a system of artificial lights as evinced by the sharp double-shadows on the pavement, and which remind one of the contemporary studies of Leonardo da Vinci. Because of the importance it attributes to light, this drawing is an unicum among those depicting ancient structures all along  the Renaissance. It is precisely with the depiction of light, with the irregularity of its reflections and of its shadows, that this study gives the impression of a captivating and suggestive space, actualizing ancient architecture as if it were visible to the present. And it is also thanks to the pictorial sensibility of Peruzzi, who knew how to combine a philologic spirit with an unsurpassed expressive naturalism in the Renaissance’s corpus of architectural drawings

ENG: The study of most of the Florentine Arti Minori, has aroused until today, a scarce interest by the scholars. This first survey, concerning the Arte dei Fabbri (Art of Blacksmiths) in Florence and its countryside. between the end of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, based on the analysis of the statute and the matricole, shows the great importance of this economic and productive sector in the reality of that time. Particular attention is paid to the structure of this (work specializations, access modalities), to the production of artifacts and to the activities carried out, as well as to the general trend in the chronological period examined.

ITA: Lo studio della maggior parte delle Arti Minori fiorentine, ha suscitato sino ad oggi, uno scarso interesse da parte degli studiosi. Questa prima indagine, riguardante l’Arte dei Fabbri a Firenze e nel suo contado, tra la fine del XIV ed il XV secolo, basata sull’analisi dello statuto e delle matricole, mostra la grande importanza di questo settore economico e produttivo nella realtà dell’epoca. Una particolare attenzione è rivolta alla struttura di questa (specializzazioni lavorative, modalità di accesso), alle produzioni di manufatti ed alle attività svolte oltre che all’andamento generale nell’arco cronologico preso in esame.

This article takes the two exhibitions dedicated to the Florentine Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo as well as their respective catalogues as a point of departure for a wider discussion of the questions they inspired. It focuses on five interrelated aspects: Piero’s relationship with Filippino Lippi; the impact of Netherlandish art on his style; his altarpieces and issues of chronology and his responses to the art of his day and his patronage networks.

Manetto di Jacopo Ammanatini, Florentine woodcarver (cc.1384/87–cc.1451/52), started to work for Pippo Scolari known as lo Spano, in the Kingdom of Hungary, around 1409. Pippo (1368/69-1426) as a baron of the Hungarian crown, was patron of several building projects, among them the construction of a castle in the center of his estates in Ozora. The castle was constructed between c. 1416 and 1426 while Ammanatini was probably living in Ozora and employed as the baron’s architect.

This study is devoted to the emotional experience of the famous Renaissance sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), as it is portrayed in his life writing, the Vita. Providing the variety of arguments on the connection between the artist and contemporary intellectuals, who attended the Florentine Academy (1540–1583) together, I demonstrate that Cellini’s literary production can be examined productively against the background of Neoplatonic thought. In particular, Marsilio Ficino’s On Love, first published in the vernacular Italian in 1544, helps to establish an explanation of what Cellini meant when he decided to play the cornet while falling in love simultaneously with a young boy and girl, or  how he justified kicking or punching his servants, or why he did not kill his adversary, the artist Baccio Bandinelli, when he had the chance. These cases of radical affectivity are inscribed into Ficino’s concept of the “melancholy genius” manifesting melancholic madness. In Cellini’s Vita, the latter can not only turn humans almost into beast, literally (for example, in a bat); but, properly tempered by the means of music and poetry, as well as of individual and collective magic, it elevates one’s soul “on high,” which corresponds to the Neoplatonic concept of divine madness.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1.  Benvenuto Cellini and the Florentine Academy
1.1 Why did the Italian academies emerge?
1.2 Academic movement before the Florentine Academy
1.3 The Florentine Academy
1.4 Benvenuto Cellini’s writings in the context of the Florentine Academy
Chapter 2.  “Essendo io per natura malinconico”: Benvenuto Cellini and the Ficinian Legacy
2.1 “Grand theories” and “grounded” early-modern artists
2.2 Marsilio Ficino’s On Love
2.3 “Melancholy genius” concept
2.4 (Neo)Platonic love
Chapter 3.  “Tu ten sei gito a contemplar su ’n Cielo l’alto Fattore”: Benvenuto Cellini Ascending on High
3.1 Esoteric knowledge and censorship
3.2 “Furor divino” and “diabolico furore”
3.3 Different kinds of furor divino in the Vita
Conclusion

On 23 May 1498 Girolamo Savonarola, one of the most spell-binding figures of the Italian Renaissance, was publicly burned at the stake on the main piazza of Florence on trumped-up charges of heresy and sedition. Thus ended the friar’s meteoric rise to power and his unprecedented influence over Florentine society. Though his ashes were unceremoniously dumped into the River Arno the moment the cinders had died away, the fire of his teachings could not be extinguished, nor could Florentines forget the rivetting preacher from Ferrara who, in four short years, had turned their city upside down. Neither could Italians nor, more generally, European reformers, for they soon turned Savonarola into a prophet of renewal and into a symbol of the struggle against corruption. Whether he was one or the other or neither, is still very much under debate.

This collection of texts from Savonarola’s extensive body of works seeks to provide the English reader with a variety of entry points into this controversial figure. With samples from his letters to his poems, from his sermons to his pastoral works, it more than doubles the number of Savonarola’s works currently available in English. In so doing, it makes his teachings that much more accessible to wide range of scholars and students alike.

Includes:
Letters

    To his father explaining why he became a friar (25 Apr. 1476)
    To his mother explaining that a prophet is not listened to in his own country (25 Jan. 1490)
    To Elena Savonarola consoling her on the death of her brother Borso (5 Dec. 1485)
    To Giovanna Carafa Pico, congratulating her for wishing to die rather than sin (15 Dec. 1495)
    To Beatrice Savonarola with a copy of his lauda for St Mary Magdalene (3 Nov. 1496)
    To Giovanna Carafa Pico and Eleonora Pico della Mirandola telling them not to worry about venial sins (3 Apr. 1497)
    To Polissena Petrati and Lucrezia de’ Rana (?) congratulating them on entering a convent (24 May 1497)
    To Angela Sforza d’Este encouraging her to listen to God’s call (24 May 1497)
    To Caterina Sforza, duchess of Imola and Forlì, in answer to her request for advice (18 June 1497)
    To Giovanna Carafa Pico saying tribulations merely prepare the way to heaven (13 Aug. 1497)
    To the nuns of Annalena instructing them on how to read sacred texts (17 Oct. 1497)
    To Giovanna Carafa Pico advising her to set aside scruples of conscience and live more cheerfully (6 Nov. 1497)

Poems

    Canzone I. On the Ruin of the World
    Canzone II. On the Ruin of the Church
    Canzone III. Song to St Catherine of Bologna
    Sonnet I. On the Lord’s Ascension
    Sonnet II. On the Assumption of the Virgin Mary
    Sonnet III. to the Virgin
    Lauda I. Omnipotent God
    Lauda II. Song of Praise to the Crucifix
    Lauda III. My heart, why linger here?

Sermons

    On Haggai, Sermon No. 1 (1 Nov. 1494) `Do penance’
    On the Psalms, Sermon No. 3 (13 Jan. 1495) `Behold the sword of the Lord’
    On Ruth and Micah, Sermon 28 (2 Nov. 1496) `On the Art of Dying Well’
    On Exodus, Sermon No. 1 (11 Feb. 1497) `Renovation Sermon’

Pastoral Works

    Ten Rules to Observe in Time of Great Tribulations
    On the Prudent and Judicious Way of Living in the Order
    A Guide to Righteous Living
    The Book on the Life of the Widow
    Exposition on the Prayer to the Virgin

Through the analysis of some case-studies this paper aims to unveil an unknown genre of defamatory painting, which involved milites and condottieri. Contrary to common belief, city-states and urban lords were not the only ones to make use of images to pillory people, since the military also resorted to “pittura infamante” to settle their accounts. This essay investigates the analogies and discrepancies between public (or official) rituals and military customs. In addition, it traces some regional differences, linking them to the diverse political context.

In this paper I will revisit the debates surrounding Lorenzo Ghiberti’s approach to ‘perspectivist’ optics, with the aim of shedding new light on the complex intersections between the new developments in pictorial space and the traditions of Medieval optics in early fifteenth century Florence. My aim, however, is not to examine these influences in the context of the techniques and methods of pictorial construction, which have been done by others, but rather to consider broader cultural, artistic and theological issues underlying the relationships between perspectivus naturalis and perspectivus artificialis, that Ghiberti recognised and drew upon in his own work.

The first part of this article presents technical information clarifying the original function of the scenes known as the Stories of Esther by Jacopo del Sellaio (Florence, ca. 1441/1442 – Florence, 1493). The five fragments, now divided between Florence, Paris and Budapest, have long been recognised as belonging to the same ensemble, but there has been no consensus among scholars about their original arrangement and physical setting. The new technical results published here prove that all five paintings are fragments of two front panels from a pair of “cassoni” (wedding chests), rather than being parts of a frieze, a lettuccio (daybed) or a spalliera (painted backboard or wainscoting), as most researchers in the last thirty years have suggested.
The reconstruction of the two wedding chests also affects how the paintings are interpreted, for the fact that they once decorated two separate items of furniture that could be easily compared with each other accentuates the didactic message of the depictions. Iconographical analysis in the second part of the article suggests that this pair of wedding chests exploits the interpretative possibilities of the Old Testament story to present the bride with both a positive and a negative model of wifely conduct.
At present, the Florence–Paris–Budapest wedding chests seem unique in that the space allotted by the commissioner to Vashti’s story is equal to that given to Esther’s, and for this reason it would be more appropriate to call their subject the Stories of Vashti and Esther.

THIS STUDY describes and analyses the design and theory of Classical interior detail from its Italian origins through its development into a shared European style around 1700. It presents a close study of some forty chosen interiors in Italy, France and Sweden dating from antiquity to the close of the seventeenth century. One point of departure is the text of the ancient architectural theoretician Vitruvius. The role of Vitruvian theory in the history of interior detail has previously received relatively little attention. The actual impact of Vitruvius on Classical interior details is investigated in comparing the interiors and their components with local tradition as well as with contemporaneous architectural theory and with Vitruvius’s rules.
The study is divided into ten chapters. Chapter one develops a model which can be used to describe the relationship between interior detail and the Classical room as a whole. Chapter two deals with the ancient origins of architectural profiles. Chapter three systematises the ancient proportional system that came to be used for Classical interiors. Chapter four describes and compares the ancient vis-à-vis the Medieval frame profile. Chapters five to nine outline the development of interior detail from 1400 to 1700 as seen in a selection of the most renowned interiors in European architecture. Each chapter concludes with a summary of the principles and ideals behind the proportion and design of the rooms and their parts for the period in question. Chapter ten examines the treatment of mouldings in European architectural theory from 1450 to 1990.
Interior detail is described here using two variables, on the one hand its factual form, and on the other the way it has been proportioned in relation to the structure of the room. The form of interior details as well as their heritage from antiquity are essential for the continuity of the Classical tradition. This thesis shows that small variations in the shape of architectural profiles provide new options for interplay between the building as a whole and the form of the room, walls and details within. This possibility has to a great extent been used to adapt Classical detail to the artistic language of different times and spirits.
ISBN 91-1-301624-5.

This book examines the inter-relationships between language and architecture in early modern Italy, from the early 15th to the early 18th centuries. Focusing on the linguistic debates and architectural/artistic activities in Florence and Rome, the book evidences the rich cross-fertilisation of ideas between both areas, and how humanists, theologians, philosophers, artists and architects recognised the importance of buildings and urban spaces as communicative settings for vocal and gestural exchanges that drew upon a legacy of ancient and medieval literature, from Cicero to Dante. The book is divided into four historical periods: early 15th century (Early Renaissance), late 16th century (Late Renaissance), 17th century (Baroque) and early 18th century (beginnings of Neo-Classicism).

Ne kete punime seminarike per lenden Historia e Mesjetes gjat shekujve XIII-XV, ne shtrojme pyetjete dhe mundohemi te pergjigjme ne qeshtja e caktuare rrethe temes Periudha kalimtare e Humanizmit. Ku ne do zgjerohemi  fillimisht ne konceptet qe ekzistonin per kohen kur po flasim, si fuqia e papatit, dopsimi i saje pergjate kesaj periudhe, me pase do flasim per sistemin feudal dhe fillet e rrenimit  te saj, ngritja e perandorve ne evrope, konfliktet e tyre me papatin, fuqizimi I mbreterve e princave lokale.  Do shqyrtojme lindjen e reformave politike, kulturore, sociale e religjioze ne evrope, ndikimi dhe rivaliteti I kishes ndaj ideve te reja qe u shfaqen gjate kesaj periudhe, ku ne do ndalemi ne thekse te veqante ne saqrimin e ndikimit te rolit te Humanizmit si ideologji dhe aspektin e saj historike si faze kalimtare mese dy periudhave historike, ku roli I saj ne fundin e mesjtes do jete nder qellimet kryesore te keti punimi seminarike. Ne punime seminarik do te shqyrtojme literaturate e ndryshme, te shkurara dhe gjithashtu nga internet te cilat do te jene burimet kryesore gjate punimit te seminarit.

Fjale kyce: Humanismi, Mesjeta e vone, Evropa, Papati, Renesanca.

This thesis analyzes Andrea del Castagno's fresco of the Last Supper in the refectory of Sant'Apollonia, Florence. This study investigates the details of the commission, Castagno's fresco in the iconographic tradition of representations of the Last Supper, the aspects which separate this Last Supper from previous examples in Florentine refectories, the fresco's purpose in relation to its conventual setting, and also the artist's use of both classicizing and contemporary elements and techniques. The central focus of my work is the significance of this fresco in terms of both the imagery Castagno employs and his possible sources. The purpose of this thesis is to recognize the innovative aspects of the fresco, as well as the role that Castagno played in the development of Florentine Renaissance art.

WONDER WOMEN: SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA, LAVINIA FONTANA AND ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE SELF-PORTRAIT PAINTING BY FEMALE ARTISTS

by Rosa Lena Reed Robinson

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts in Art History at
Studio Art Centers International
Florence, Italy

2017


This  thesis is focused on the self-portrait painting practice by three female artists from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods: Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi. Chapter I introduces the self-portrait as it developed specific to the Renaissance and in relation to a Greco-Roman classical ideal. The chapter focuses on Renaissance concepts of art and the very role of the artist. Chapter II studies the numerous self-portraits of Sofonisba Anguissola, the first great Renaissance female artist to have an international career. The artist’s self-portraits both became a foundation for those of later female artists and self-consciously expressed the new elite status achieved by this Lombard artist of noble lineage who worked as court portraitist for the Spanish monarchy. Chapter III examines the self-portraits and innovative identity self-portraiture of Lavinia Fontana of Bologna. It is demonstrated how her two early self-portraits built on the precedent established by Sofonisba, and yet, are of somewhat greater iconographic complexity. While in her maturity the artist developed self-portraiture into the identity self-portrait through the subject of Judith and Holofernes. Within her treatments of the theme in some examples she put herself into the figure of Judith and in others into Judith’s maid Abra. Lavinia Fontana’s final masterpiece, the improbable painting Minerva Dressing done at the end of her extensive career was likewise arguably an identity self-portrait. Minerva Dressing constitutes the first female fully nude figure painted by a female artist. Chapter IV focuses on Artemisia Gentileschi. This thesis designates the artist’s Pommersfelden Susanna and the Elders as both Artemisia’s first exact self-portrait and the first female full-length nude self-portrait painted by a female artist. The work is also an identity self-portrait. This chapter continues with a discussion of both versions of Artemisia’s infamous Judith and Holofernes (Capodimonte/Uffizi). Both works are arguably exact self-portrait paintings and identity self-portraits. Artemisia’s Allegory of Painting in London, often referred to as a self-portrait in scholarship, is suggested a perhaps better understood as an ideal identity self-portrait rather than a literal self-representation. The Allegory of Painting is considered together with other attributed self-portraits and portraits of the artist. A major theme in Chapter IV is the transition from literal self-representation to allegorical and ideal portrayal of the self. This thesis suggests that, as the artist’s career advanced, Artemisia Gentileschi did continue to paint both the exact and the ideal self-portrait. Finally, in the Conclusion, the legacy of the self-portraits of the Wonder Women, to adopt a phrase from Giorgio Vasari, is considered in reference to future female artists such as Elisabetta Sirani, Angelica Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vigée Le-Brun and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

Scholars of Botticelli's Munich Pietà, which is known to have come from the Florentine church of San Paolino, often noted the lack of information concerning the fabric of the church prior to its destruction in the second half of the seventeenth century. In light of Poliziano's and Lorenzo de' Medici's active involvement, this lacuna has been particularly regrettable. Based on newly discovered archival documents, this paper will reconstruct this important Florentine priory. Investigating the architecture, interior decoration and patronage networks, it will reinstate San Paolino within its urban context and shed new light on the setting of the high altarpiece.

This paper, which was first presented at the Colóquio de História da Arte e da Cultura do Renascimento, Museo de Arte de São Paulo Masp (16-17 May 2016), illustrates the social and art-historical context of the production of embroideries and figurative textiles in Florence in the fifteenth century. Besides being one the most flourishing activities of Florentine economy, silk industry was a sector particularly receptive of contemporary art tendencies, both through the direct involvement of the most innovative artists of the time, like Botticelli and Antonio Pollaiolo, and through the reiteration and contamination of successful pictorial and sculptural models. It is possible to distinguish various kinds of objects, among embroideries as well as figurative fabrics: from those made after specific commissions through cartoons realized by the great masters, up to serial production based on models created in weavers' and embroiderers' workshops, which reelaborated compositions by then become part of the artistic repertoire and widespread also through woodcuts and prints. In the composite Florentine art world operated, and at times cooperated leading and secondary artists, weavers, printers, embroiderers, cloth-designers, engravers. The paper reconstructs the vivacious interrelations between artists' and embroiderers' workshops, and female convents with their specialized laboratories.

The famous "Seal of Nero, a Roman intaglio depicting Apollo, Marsyas and Olympus, was once in the collection of Lorenzo il Magnifico and is now in the National Museum of Naples. Two gems related to that "Seal of Nero" are published here for the first time: one, a severely damaged intaglio kept in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, is supposed to date from the third quarter of the first century BC. Another gem with a similar motif, a refined Renaissance cameo, recentlya ppeared in Oxfordshire and is now in a private collection in London. It is presumed that this perfectly preserved piece originally was in the possession of the Medici. The author considers a possible attribution of this work to the young Michelangelo Buonarroti and discusses a copy shown in a portrait painting by Botticelli now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt on the Main. (summary by Matthias Barth)

Il presente seminario si propone sia di analizzare brevemente le influenze che il mito egizio esercitò sull'ambiente culturale della Toscana rinascimentale sia di stabilire alcuni collegamenti tra queste suggestioni e le opere del pittore fiorentino Piero di Cosimo

This paper offers an art historical approach to the study of cultural networks. Specifically, it examines the extent to which they influenced the early career of the Italian Renaissance sculptor Andrea Sansovino. Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it focuses on the dynamic ways in which network connections were transformed into durable relationships. Ongoing archival research, it sheds light on connections that all too often elude scholarly attention.

A key strand of research for social and economic historians of the pre-industrial period is the relationship between city and countryside. Sometimes urban and rural environments enjoyed mutually beneficial relationships, though in other cases cities reduced their rural hinterlands to poverty and decay – the question is, why? By focusing on late-medieval Florence and Tuscany, this paper moves away from approaching this question through an ‘urban bias’, and suggests the answers can be found within the structural configuration of rural societies themselves. Essentially, some rural regions were well set up to repel urban predatory tendencies, while other societies were susceptible to exploitation.