History Commons^™

Architectural Chastity Belts: The Window Motif As Instrument Of Discipline In Italian Fifteenth-Century Conduct Manuals And Art, Jennifer Megan Orendorf

Quidditas

Offering advice on a range of topics from the quotidian to the extraordinary, from superstition to scientific, fifteenth-century conduct manuals appealed to readers of all Italian social classes. This essay focuses specifically on manuals which prescribe behaviors for women, and investigates the reception of these precepts and the extent to which these notions informed and transformed women’s lives. Specifically, I examine one piece of advice which recurs throughout instructional literature during this time: the prescribed notion that women should remain far removed from their household windows for the sake of their honor, reputation and chastity. Widely read manuals, such as …

Milan And The Development And Dissemination Of Il Ballo Nobile: Lombardy As The Terpsichorean Treasury For Early Modern European Courts, Katherine Tucker Mcginnis

Quidditas

"Le mosche d'Italia in una poppa, Volando in Francia, per verder i ragni...." In these lines, titled "Di Pompeo Diabone," the Milanese artist and poet Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo celebrated the Italian dancing masters who, lured like flies to the web of the spider, served in the courts of France. In the sixteenth century there were many Italians in France, including a large number of influential and prosperous dancing masters. In spite of obvious connections with Florence via Catherine de’ Medici, the majority came from Lombardy, an area long considered the center of il ballo nobile, the formalized social …

The Experience Of The Black Death In Bologna As Revealed By The Notarial Registers, Shona Kelly Wray

Quidditas

The Black Death of 1348 has fascinated readers and scholars for centuries. In this century it has been the subject of innumerable debates. Historians have argued back and forth about the demographic effects of the plague, about whether or not it instigated a period of economic depression, or even whether it represented a major event in history. Similarly, disagreement has raged, both inside and outside of the historical discipline, about the medical history and epidemiology of the plague. Fewer studies, however, have focused on the more immediate effects of the plague in localized areas. These scholars have attempted to uncover …

The Artist As Entrepreneur: Long-Term Professional Bonds In Quattrocento Florence, Yael Even

Quidditas

A number of comparatively recent publications on collaboration in Quattrocento art attest to the renewed interest in reassessing the nature of professional exchange among artist. These studies continue to shed more light on the prevalence and extent of collaborative artistic undertakings in Florence during this period. Originating in archival research, the studies reject the romanticized, traditional view of Early Renaissance painters, sculptors, and architects as solitary geniuses, suggesting instead that these creative talents operated as entrepreneurs who collaborated to establish profitable careers.

Review Essay: Timothy Verdon And John Henderson, Eds., Christianity And Renaissance: Image And Religious Imagination In The Quattrocento, Edward J. Olszewski

Quidditas

Timothy Verdon and John Henderson, eds., Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, Syracuse University Press, 1990, xix, 611 pp., ill., $55.00 (cloth), $18.95 (paperback).

Gaspara Stampa's Poetry For Performance, Janet L. Smarr

Quidditas

During the mid-sixteenth century in Italy, when a remarkable number of women joined in the production of poetry, one of the channels open to their pursuit of intellectual life and fame was the Venetian saloon. There music and poetry mingled as poems were frequently sung or recited before an audience rather than read privately in silence. The poetry of Gaspara Stampa was produced for this milieu. Published in 1554, a year after her death, her collection of more than three hundred poems has been approached in two main ways: as the autobiographical self-expression of a passionate woman and more recently …

Review Essay: Suzanne Noffke, O.P., Trans., The Letters Of St. Catherine Of Sienna, Vol. 1, Francis X. Hartigan

Quidditas

Suzanne Noffke, O.P., trans., The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, Vol. 1, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1988.

Review Essay: James R. Banker, Death In The Community: Memorialization And Confraternities In An Italian Commune In The Late Middle Ages, Dennis Romano

Quidditas

James R. Banker, Death in the Community: Memorialization and Confraternities in an Italian Commune in the Late Middle Ages, University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Review Essay: Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare's Italian Settings And Plays, Jay Farness

Quidditas

Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare's Italian Settings and Plays, St. Martin's Press, 1989.

The 'Finiguerra' Venus And Her Children: The Iconology Of A Fifteenth-Century Florentine Engraving, Gwendolyn Bryant

Quidditas

Interpreting Finiguerra's engraving of the planetary Venus and those born under her aegis not only entails an analysis of the engraving itself and other related images, but it calls for a reassessment of the work of Aby Warburg, whose research on this and other series of the planets cleared the way for many subsequent studies. Since Warburg's followers have consistently ignored many of his theoretical concerns, it is essential to outline them briefly if we are to understand his analysis of the 'Finiguerra' Venus.

On Ferrera And Chivalric/Epic Poetry In Italian Criticism Today, Maristella De P. Lorch

Quidditas

Gennaro Savarse, Il "Furioso" e la cultura del Rinascimento. Letteratura italiana: Studi e testi 10. Roma: Bulzoni, 1984. 94 p. Lire 7,000.

Riccardo Bruscagli, Stagioni della civiltà estense. Saggi di varia umanità, 25. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1982. 236 p. Lire 15,000.

Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli, L'immaginario cavalleresco nel Rinascimento ferrarese. L'Ippogrifo, 29. Roma: Bonacci, 1983. 301 p. Lire 16,000.

Observations On Pulci's Reworking Of The Anonymous Orlando, Madison U. Sowell

Quidditas

As a preface to the observations which follow on Luigi Pulci's treatment of the anonymous Orlando in the composition of his chief work, Il Morgante, it should be noted that in the past four decades several scholars in Italy have published significant books on Pulci's chivalric poem. Giovanni Getto published the first edition of his renowned Studio sul "Morgante" in 1944; Gaetano Mariani produced his long comparative essay on Il Morgante e i cantari trecenteschi in 1958; in 1967, the year of the second edition of Getto's study, Angelo Gianni gave us his interpretation of the Morgante's two …

Machiavelli's The Prince: A Lexical Enigma, Jeane Luere

Quidditas

Italians today, especially Florentines, unreservedly venerate their native son, Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th century Italian political figure, along with Francesca Petrarcha, Dante Alighieri, and Michelangelo Buonarroti; they attach no stigma, no unfavorable connotation, to the adjective "Machiavellian," coined from the name so famous in literature and legend. An American abroad encounters this total veneration of Machiavelli with some bewilderment, for we are prone to attitudes like that of Thomas Babington Macaulay, who wrote, "We doubt whether any names in literary history be so generally odious as that of Machiavelli."