DOCSLIB.ORG

Inferno Canto I

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Inferno Canto I Medieval Italian communes (city states) 11-12th C. Consular commune - nobles, aristocrats Slides: Age of the Towers: urban civil warfare between rival noble consorterie (family groups) 13th C. Guelf-Ghibelline conflict with & between communes Rise of the popolo = guild regimes San Gimignano in Tuscay Bologna Due Torri (Two Towers) Left after the razing of the towers by the popular/ guild regime in 13th C Artist’s reconstruction of the towers of Bologna before the guild regime • Northern Italian city states • Self governing communes ( Italian = comune Latin = res publica) • Regionalism, loyalties to one’s own city • Campanalismo: campanile = bell tower = attachment to one’s own bell tower • Expansion of cities’ control over rural countryside (contado) along with conquest of smaller cities • Example of Florentine conquest of Fiesole 1125 and later conquest of many cities in Tuscany View of Fiesole from Florence – Fiesole conquered by Florence in 1125 Giotto’s Bell tower Campanile 1334-37 begun 13th C. Florence: (see Course Readings Link) 1216 Buondelmonte murder: legendary origin of Guelf Ghibelline conflict in Florence What is the origin & setting of the dispute? What values are at stake? What is the proposed settlement? How is that settlement undermined? Where does the murder take place? 1250-60 Primo Popolo (first popular government) 1252 Florin: gold coin of Florence 1250 Gold Florin Fleur de lys St. John the Symbol of Baptist: patron France and of Florence Guelf alliance Guelf-Ghibelline conflict 1248-1266 1266 Guelf victory: Secondo Popolo = second guild regime guild regime is Guelf, pro-papal 1282-1434 Republican Florence 12-13th C. Rise of the popolo (people): guild regimes (arti) associated with local militias (armi) Guild organization: upper guilds / popolo grasso lesser guilds / popolo medio Workers below guild structure: sottoposti / popolo minuto Privileged groups: nobility (lose political rights in most guild regimes) new elites: called patriciate, magnates, gsrandi some (but not all) have noble backgrounds such as Pitti) GUILD REGIME in FLORENCE 1282-1434 new office of priors: elected for 2 month terms 1293 Ordinances of Justice: exclude nobility, only guild members eligible for office 1295 amendment: lesser nobility admitted to office if they join guild (over the next century many old noble families take up trade and join guilds) Dante Alighieri 1265-1321 joins Guild of Physicians & Apothecaries Offices held 1295-1301: Council of the Popolo, Prior, 1301: Ambassador to Rome Factional split within Guelf party: Black Guelfs: older Guelf aristocracy allied with Papacy leader Corso Donati: Dante’s brother-in-law White Guelfs: leader Guido Cavalcanti = Dante’s best friend newer families, banking and trade: Vieri dei Cerchi 1301 POPE BONIFACE VIII -- family name = Caetani sends in military force to Florence under French Charles of Valois Blacks take power; Whites exiled as “Ghibellines” Dante condemned in absentia, exile in Verona, Ravenna Boniface: canon lawyer, powerful Pope, begins tradition of Jubilee 1303 founds La Sapienza, University of Rome 1300 as Jubilee year (this is year in which Dante sets poem) pilgrims to Rome get indulgences from Pope: spiritual merit indulgence = remission of temporal punishment for sin which means time off in Purgatory (not stressed by Dante but later one cause of the Lutheran Reformation in Germany) 13th C Florence Baptistery of San Giovanni St. John the Baptist “CIVITAS FLORENTIE” DANTE ALIGHIERI 1265-1321 1293 Dante La vita nuova (New Life) Poems dedicated to Beatrice Portinari 1302 exiled from Florence as White Guelf after invasion by French & Pope Boniface VIII 1310-1313 Emperor Henry VII invades Italy Dante De monarchia: pro-Empire after 1313 Divine Comedy: autobiography on a cosmic scale Dante as pilgrim, Virgil as reason Beatrice as divine love, revelation Florentine Baptistery of San Giovanni, patron saint of Florence Ghiberti’s Baptistery doors 1430’s with Roman porphry columns (detached on right & left) Ancient Roman porphry columns gift from Pisa in 1117 after military aid Mosaics in Cupola 12th C. Christ as Pantokrator = ruler of all the world Mosaics of Hell in Florentine Baptistery, source for Dante’s three headed demon Bargello, first Palazzo del Popolo Portrait of Dante by Giotto Traditional image of Dante Botticelli 1495 Pope Boniface VIII 15th C. illuminated manuscript of the Divine Comedy INFERNO CANTO I Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita In the middle of the course of our life mi ritrovai per una selva oscura I found myself in a dark forest ché la diritta via era smarrita. Having lost the straight path. Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura Oh, how hard a thing it is to say esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte What this forest was, savage, bitter and strong, che nel pensier rinova la paura! Which even in thought renews the fear. Tant'è amara che poco è più morte; So bitter is it, that death is only a bit more; ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai, But to treat of the good which I found there dirò de l'altre cose ch'i v'ho scorte. I will speak of the other things which I saw there. Dante’s Hell Map of world with Jerusalem at top and Mount of Purgatory Journey from Hell through Earth to Mountain of Purgsatory Dante’s universe Spheres of the planets bounded by the sphere of the fixed start and the primum mobile .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Political Persecution of a Poet: a Detail of Dante's Exile
    Parkland College A with Honors Projects Honors Program 2012 The olitP ical Persecution of a Poet: A Detail of Dante's Exile Jason Ader Parkland College Recommended Citation Ader, Jason, "The oP litical Persecution of a Poet: A Detail of Dante's Exile" (2012). A with Honors Projects. 44. http://spark.parkland.edu/ah/44 Open access to this Article is brought to you by Parkland College's institutional repository, SPARK: Scholarship at Parkland. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE POLITICAL PERSECUTION OF A POET A Detail of Dante's Exile By Jason Ader John Poling History 101 April 2012 Durante degli Alighieri, known throughout the world as simply Dante, was a fourteenth century Italian poet, philosopher, literary theorist, and politician. He is best known for his epic Commedia, which was later dubbed The Divine Comedy. Commedia is generally considered the greatest Italian literary work and a masterpiece of world literature.1 Due to the turbulent political atmosphere of his time and place, Dante spent over a third of his life living in exile. This paper will explore the details of Dante's exile and the influence that it had upon his work. Dante was born in Florence around 1265 to an aristocratic family of moderate wealth and status. Dante's father was a notary, and Dante was the only child of his father's first marriage. Dante's mother died when he was about thirteen years old. His father then remarried and his second wife bore another son and two daughters before he too died when Dante was about eighteen.2 It is thought that at around six years of age Dante entered school.
    [Show full text]
  • Dante's Political Life
    Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies Volume 3 Article 1 2020 Dante's Political Life Guy P. Raffa University of Texas at Austin, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/bibdant Part of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Italian Language and Literature Commons, and the Medieval History Commons Recommended Citation Raffa, Guy P. (2020) "Dante's Political Life," Bibliotheca Dantesca: Journal of Dante Studies: Vol. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/bibdant/vol3/iss1/1 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/bibdant/vol3/iss1/1 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Raffa: Dante's Political Life Bibliotheca Dantesca, 3 (2020): 1-25 DANTE’S POLITICAL LIFE GUY P. RAFFA, The University of Texas at Austin The approach of the seven-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s death is a propi- tious time to recall the events that drove him from his native Florence and marked his life in various Italian cities before he found his final refuge in Ra- venna, where he died and was buried in 1321. Drawing on early chronicles and biographies, modern historical research and biographical criticism, and the poet’s own writings, I construct this narrative of “Dante’s Political Life” for the milestone commemoration of his death. The poet’s politically-motivated exile, this biographical essay shows, was destined to become one of the world’s most fortunate misfortunes. Keywords: Dante, Exile, Florence, Biography The proliferation of biographical and historical scholarship on Dante in recent years, after a relative paucity of such work through much of the twentieth century, prompted a welcome cluster of re- flections on this critical genre in a recent volume of Dante Studies.
    [Show full text]
  • Purgatório Político”: a Concepção De Poder Unitário De Dante Alighieri Na Florença Do Século Xiv
    “PURGATÓRIO POLÍTICO”: A CONCEPÇÃO DE PODER UNITÁRIO DE DANTE ALIGHIERI NA FLORENÇA DO SÉCULO XIV “POLITICAL PURGATORY”: DANTE ALIGHIERI’S CONCEPTION OF UNITARY POWER IN THE 14TH CENTURY FLORENCE “PURGATORIO POLÍTICO”: EL CONCEPTO DE PODER UNITARIO DE DANTE ALIGUIERI EN LA FLORENCIA DEL SIGLO XIV Rodrigo Peixoto de Lima1 Mariana Bonat Trevisan2 Resumo Através desse estudo buscamos compreender as concepções políticas defendidas por Dante Alighieri, pensador laico florentino do século XIV, em suas obras. Particularmente, pretendemos analisar as voltadas à valorização do pensamento e do poder laicos (o poder temporal em comparação com o poder espiritual) presentes em sua obra Divina Comédia (em específico, no texto referente ao Purgatório), traçando comparativos com outro escrito do autor: De Monarchia. Palavras-chave: Dante Alighieri. Divina Comédia. Da Monarquia. Pensamento político na Baixa Idade Média. Abstract Through this study, we seek to understand the political conceptions defended by Dante Alighieri, a 14th century Florentine secular thinker, in his works. In particular, we intend to analyze the political conceptions aimed at valuing secular thought and power (the temporal power in comparison with the spiritual power) present in his work Divine Comedy (specifically, in the text referring to Purgatory), drawing comparisons with another writing by the author: De Monarchia. Keywords: Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. The Monarchy. Political thought in the Late Middle Age. Resumen A través de este estudio tratamos de comprender las concepciones políticas defendidas por Dante Aliguieri, pensador laico florentino del siglo XIV, en sus obras. Particularmente, pretendemos analizar aquellas dirigidas a la valoración del pensamiento y poder laicos (el poder temporal en comparación con el poder espiritual) presente en su obra Divina Comedia (en específico, en el texto referido al Purgatorio), estableciendo comparaciones con otro escrito del autor: De la Monarquía.
    [Show full text]
  • The Chronicle of Dino Compagni / Translated by Else C. M. Benecke
    #m hbl.stx DG 737.2.C613 le i?mnP/!f? of Dino Compagni / 3 1153 0DSMS117 t, % n WRITTEN •T$' FIRST PRINTED • IN • 1726- PLEASE NOTE It has been necessary to replace some of the original pages in this book with photocopy reproductions because of damage or mistreatment by a previous user. Replacement of damaged materials is both expensive and time-consuming. Please handle this volume with care so that information will not be lost to future readers. Thank you for helping to preserve the University's research collections. THE TEMPLE CLASSICS THE CHRONICLE OF DINO COMPAGNI Digitized'by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/chronicleofdinocOOcomp mmyi CHRPNICE 92DINO COMPAGNI TRANSITED ^ELSE CM. BENECKE S§ FERRERS HOWELL MDCCCCVI PUBL15H6D- BY-^M D6NT- •AMP-CO : ALDlNe-HOUSe-LOMDON-W-O PRELIMINARY NOTE vii PRELIMINARY NOTE Though Dino Compagni calls his work a Chronicle, it is not (like Giovanni Villani's, for example) a Chronicle in the sense in which the term is now used to express a particular kind of narration dis- " tinguished from a history ; the terms " chronicle and "history" being in Dino's time interchange- able. Dino's book is in form the history of a particular fact, namely, the division of the Guelf party in Florence into the White and the Black Guelfs, with its attendant circumstances, its causes, and its results : but under this form is unfolded at the same time the history of the steps by which the wealthy traders of Florence (jfropolani, popolani grassi, and collectively popolo grasso) organised in the greater guilds (see Appendix II.) acquired and retained the control of the machinery of govern- ment in the city and its outlying territory (contado), excluding (practically) from all participation therein on the one hand the Magnates (i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • Appendix A: Selective Chronology of Historical Events
    APPENDIX A: SELECTIVE CHRONOLOGY OF HIsTORICaL EVENTs 1190 Piero della Vigna born in Capua. 1212 Manente (“Farinata”) degli Uberti born in Florence. 1215 The Buondelmonte (Guelf) and Amidei (Ghibelline) feud begins in Florence. It lasts thirty-three years and stirs parti- san political conflict in Florence for decades thereafter. 1220 Brunetto Latini born in Florence. Piero della Vigna named notary and scribe in the court of Frederick II. 1222 Pisa and Florence wage their first war. 1223 Guido da Montefeltro born in San Leo. 1225 Piero appointed Judex Magnae Curia, judge of the great court of Frederick. 1227 Emperor Frederick II appoints Ezzelino da Romano as commander of forces against the Guelfs in the March of Verona. 1228 Pisa defeats the forces of Florence and Lucca at Barga. 1231 Piero completes the Liber Augustalis, a new legal code for the Kingdom of Sicily. 1233 The cities of the Veronese March, a frontier district of The Holy Roman Empire, transact the peace of Paquara, which lasts only a few days. © The Author(s) 2020 249 R. A. Belliotti, Dante’s Inferno, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40771-1 250 AppeNDiX A: Selective ChrONOlOgY Of HistOrical EveNts 1234 Pisa renews war against Genoa. 1235 Frederick announces his design for a Holy Roman Empire at a general assembly at Piacenza. 1236 Frederick assumes command against the Lombard League (originally including Padua, Vicenza, Venice, Crema, Cremona, Mantua, Piacenza, Bergamo, Brescia, Milan, Genoa, Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Treviso, Vercelli, Lodi, Parma, Ferrara, and a few others). Ezzelino da Romano controls Verona, Vicenza, and Padua.
    [Show full text]
  • Download a Pdf File of This Issue for Free
    Issue 70: Dante's Guide to Heaven and Hell Dante and the Divine Comedy: Did You Know? What a famous painting suggests about Dante's life, legend, and legacy. Big Man in the Cosmos A giant in the world of which he wrote, laurel-crowned Dante stands holding his Divine Comedy open to the first lines: "Midway this way of life we're bound upon, / I woke to find myself in a dark wood, / Where the right road was wholly lost and gone." Of course, his copy reads in Italian. Dante was the first major writer in Christendom to pen lofty literature in everyday language rather than in formal Latin. Coming 'Round the Mountain Behind Dante sits multi-tiered Mount Purgatory. An angel guards the gate, which stands atop three steps: white marble for confession, cracked black stone for contrition, and red porphyry for Christ's blood sacrifice. With his sword, the angel marks each penitent's forehead with seven p's (from Latin peccatum, "sin") for the Seven Deadly Sins. When these wounds are washed away by penance, the soul may enter earthly paradise at the mountain's summit. Starry Heights In Paradiso, the third section of the Comedy, Dante visits the planets and constellations where blessed souls dwell. The celestial spheres look vague in this painting, but Dante had great interest in astronomy. One of his astronomical references still puzzles scholars. He notes "four stars, the same / The first men saw, and since, no living eye" (Purgatorio, I.23-24), apparently in reference to the Southern Cross. But that constellation was last visible at Dante's latitude (thanks to the earth's wobbly axis) in 3000 B.C., and no one else wrote about it in Europe until after Amerigo Vespucci's voyage in 1501.
    [Show full text]
  • Dante: Christian Thought Expressed Through Poetry
    CVSP 202/205: DANTE 1 Dante: Christian Thought Expressed through Poetry Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Key writings: La Vita Nuova De vulgari eloquentia Convivio De monarchia La (Divina) Commedia -Inferno -Purgatorio -Paradiso (Domenico di Michelino, 1465) LECTURE TOPICS • Beginnings, Middles, Ends • The Divine Comedy: Structure and Narrative • The Divine Comedy: Christianity and Antiquity • Medieval reading practices • Dante and Florence: politics and exile ANTIQUITY CHRISTIANITY Reason (philosophy) Faith (theology) Representative authors: Representative authors: -Aristotle, Virgil -Augustine, Aquinas Virgil leads Dante from the gates of Beatrice leads Dante from the Hell to the ascent of Mount Earthly Paradise through the Purgatory heavenly spheres STRUCTURE NARRATIVE 3 Spaces, subdivided: 3 Canticles, subdivided -Hell (circles) -Inferno (34 cantos) -Purgatory (terraces) -Purgatorio (33 cantos) -Heaven (spheres) -Paradiso (33 cantos) Organizing principle: divine love Organizing principle: journey Comprehended by: Dante the poet Apprehended by: Dante the pilgrim “Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono” (“I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul” Inf. II.32) CVSP 202/205: DANTE 2 DANTE’S VERSE Dante’s epic is composed in a verse form of his own invention known as terza rima: staggered, alternating triplets of lines rhyme, while consecutive lines are grouped into “tercets” of three lines each. The result: the first and last lines of each tercet rhyme, while the ending of the middle line gives the rhyme-sound that will appear in the next tercet. Follow this effect in the poem’s opening (Inferno I.1-9) both in the Italian text and the rhymed translation by M. Palma. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Midway through the journey of our life, I found mi ritrovai per una selva oscura myself in a dark wood, for I had strayed ché la diritta via era smarrita.
    [Show full text]
  • Italian Poet, Born at Florence, 1265; Died at Ravenna, Italy, 14 September, 1321
    “Dante Alighieri” Catholic Encyclopedia Italian poet, born at Florence, 1265; died at Ravenna, Italy, 14 September, 1321. His own statement in the "Paradiso" (xxii, 112-117) that he was born when the sun was in Gemini, fixes his birthday between 18 May and 17 June. He was the son of Alighiero di Bellincione Alighieri, a notary belonging to an ancient but decadent Guelph family, by his first wife, Bella, who was possibly a daughter of Durante di Scolaio Abati, a Ghibelline noble. A few months after the poet's birth, the victory of Charles of Anjou over King Manfred at Benevento (26 February, 1266) ended the power of the empire in Italy, placed a French dynasty upon the throne of Naples, and secured the predominance of the Guelphs in Tuscany. Dante thus grew up amidst the triumphs of the Florentine democracy, in which he took some share fighting in the front rank of the Guelph cavalry at the battle of Campaldino (11 June, 1289), when the Tuscan Ghibellines were defeated by the forces of the Guelph league, of which Florence was the head. This victory was followed by a reformation of the Florentine constitution, associated with the name of Giano della Bella, a great-hearted noble who had joined the people. By the Ordinances of Justice (1293) all nobles and magnates were more strictly excluded from the government, and subjected to severe penalties for offences against plebeians. To take any part in public life, it was necessary to be enrolled in one or other of the "Arts" (the guilds in which the burghers and artisans were banded together), and accordingly Dante matriculated in the guild of physicians and apothecaries.
    [Show full text]
  • Di Piero Gualtieri
    Oltre Bianchi e Neri. I rapporti fra Pistoia e Firenze negli anni della vita politica di Dante di Piero Gualtieri Reti Medievali Rivista, 18, 1 (2017) <http://www.retimedievali.it> Dante attraverso i documenti. II. Presupposti e contesti dell’impegno politico a Firenze (1295-1302) a cura di Giuliano Milani e Antonio Montefusco Firenze University Press Reti Medievali Rivista, 18, 1 (2017) <http://rivista.retimedievali.it> ISSN 1593-2214 © 2017 Firenze University Press DOI 10.6092/1593-2214/5151 Dante attraverso i documenti. II. Presupposti e contesti dell’impegno politico a Firenze (1295-1302) a cura di Giuliano Milani e Antonio Montefusco Oltre Bianchi e Neri. I rapporti fra Pistoia e Firenze negli anni della vita politica di Dante di Piero Gualtieri Il rapporto fra Firenze e Pistoia alla fine del Duecento fu un rapporto profondo e complesso, che trovò diretta eco nella vita e nelle opere di Dante. Il contributo intende analizzare, dal punto di vista pistoiese, i principali ambiti di interazione (sociali e familiari, economici, istituzionali) fra i due contesti cittadini negli anni dell’impegno politico di Dante, evidenziando le reciproche in- fluenze e l’impatto che esse ebbero sulle vicende di entrambe al di là dell’importazione a Firenze del conflitto fra Bianchi e Neri. The relationship between Florence and Pistoia at the end of the Thirteenth century was a deep and complex one, and it had a direct impact on the life and the works of Dante. The paper aims at analysing from a Pistoian perspective the social, familiar, economic and institutional con- nections between the two cities in the years of Dante’s political engagement.
    [Show full text]
  • “TWO SUNS THEORY” and the MONARCHIA of DANTE 99 Ministro Seu Vicario4 (1.2.3)
    History Research, April-June, 2015, Vol. 5, No. 2, 98-108 doi: 10.17265/2159-550X/2015.02.003 D DAVID PUBLISHING Further Discussion on the “Two Suns Theory” and the Monarchia of Dante* Sabina Tuzzo Università del Salento, Italy The De Monarchia can be considered the summa of Dante’s political thought, of which we can also find some starting points in the Convivio, in the Epistles and in the Divine Comedy. Here, in Purgatorio XVI, Marco Lombardo, after stating that the misrule of the popes led the world to the sin, articulates Dante’s view of the Empire and Papacy as separate authorities and cites the instance of Rome at the pagan Age, when Rome used to possess two autonomous institutions to drive mankind both towards the material happiness and the spiritual one (vv. 106 ff. “soleva Roma, che ‘l buon mondo feo/ due soli aver, che l’una e l’altra strada/ facean vedere, e del mondo e di Dio”). The image of “two suns” also returns in the III Book of De Monarchia by Dante. Here Dante, inquiring into the relationship between “the two greatest luminaries”, that is the Roman Pontiff and the Roman Prince, wonders if the authority of the Roman ruler descends directly from God or from someone of His ministers. For Dante the Emperor, whose authority is given to him directly by God, does not depend on the Pope, but the Emperor is absolutely independent of the Pope. Keywords: Two Suns, Dante, De Monarchia, Empire and Papacy Dante’s Monarchia1, probably completed in the last years of his life2, can be considered the summa of his political thought3.
    [Show full text]
  • Combat Trauma in Dante's Inferno Patrick
    A Hell of One’s Own: Combat Trauma in Dante’s Inferno Patrick Whalen Must you have battle in your heart forever? —Odyssey 12:132 ante Alighieri was twenty-four years old in 1289 when he saw combat in the Battle of Campaldino as a “feditore”, a cavalry soldier from Florence.1 From what we D know of the battle,2 Dante’s unit would have been one of the first to be engaged by the oncoming Aretine cavalry, and for the first several minutes of the battle, Dante would have faced the prospect of imminent death when he saw the men and horses of his unit dying as their resistance crumbled before the Aretine’s charge. The historian Herbert Oerter notes that the catastrophe of this initial attack actually saved the Florentine forces, and likely Dante with them, because it caused Corso Donati, the flamboyant commander of the Florentine reserves, to disregard his orders and commit to the battle immediately. His orders, on pain of death, were to wait for a signal from one of the senior officers, Guillaume de Durfort. But Guillaume was dying— bleeding out on the plain—and would never give the signal. As it happened, Corso’s reserve position was in defilade to the attacking Aretine’s northern flank. When Corso attacked, his cavalry pierced the unexpecting and unprotected flank of the Aretine force, causing massive chaos and an almost immediate disintegration of the Aretine attack. The battle was over in a few 1 Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Inferno (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 88.
    [Show full text]
  • Celebrating the City: the Image of Florence As Shaped Through the Arts
    “Nothing more beautiful or wonderful than Florence can be found anywhere in the world.” - Leonardo Bruni, “Panegyric to the City of Florence” (1403) “I was in a sort of ecstasy from the idea of being in Florence.” - Stendahl, Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio (1817) “Historic Florence is an incubus on its present population.” - Mary McCarthy, The Stones of Florence (1956) “It’s hard for other people to realize just how easily we Florentines live with the past in our hearts and minds because it surrounds us in a very real way. To most people, the Renaissance is a few paintings on a gallery wall; to us it is more than an environment - it’s an entire culture, a way of life.” - Franco Zeffirelli Celebrating the City: the image of Florence as shaped through the arts ACM Florence Fall, 2010 Celebrating the City, page 2 Celebrating the City: the image of Florence as shaped through the arts ACM Florence Fall, 2010 The citizens of renaissance Florence proclaimed the power, wealth and piety of their city through the arts, and left a rich cultural heritage that still surrounds Florence with a unique and compelling mystique. This course will examine the circumstances that fostered such a flowering of the arts, the works that were particularly created to promote the status and beauty of the city, and the reaction of past and present Florentines to their extraordinary home. In keeping with the ACM Florence program‟s goal of helping students to “read a city”, we will frequently use site visits as our classroom.
    [Show full text]