“Renaissance Medievalisms”

Renaissance Medievalisms 1 “Renaissance Medievalisms” An international conference at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Victoria College, University of Toronto Friday-Saturday, 6-7 October 2006 Abstracts PLENARY 1: Paul F. Grendler (U of Toronto) Continuity and Change in Italian Universities, 1400-1600 The second most important and longest enduring medievalism, after the Roman Catholic Church, is the university, a creation of the Middle Ages. Like their medieval counterparts, universities today teach and award degrees in law, medicine, philosophy, and the humanities. Professors lecture, students study, and civil authorities meddle, as they did in the Middle Ages. But many changes have occurred as well. Determining the extent and magnitude of change and continuity between medieval and Renaissance universities is a complex and much discussed issue. It is sometimes seen as an issue of scholasticism vs. humanism in sixteenth-century universities. But that was only one issue. In so far as time allows, the paper will reflect on continuity and change in Italian Renaissance universities in such areas as the practice of disputations, the teaching of natural philosophy, law, and medicine, and the role of civil authorities. PLENARY 2: Alexander Nagel (U of Toronto) When medieval is not medieval: alternative antiquities in the Renaissance Traditional scholarship on Renaissance art emphasized the period’s debt to the antique— a Greco-Roman “antique” understood in primarily neoclassicist terms. And yet a good deal of art that we now class as “medieval” was of great importance to Renaissance artists. Mosaic and “cosmateque” work, for example, underwent a revival under the direction of Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence and in the Rome of Bramante, Raphael, and Peruzzi. An interest in Byzantine icons informed some of the most significant works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and others. Byzantine and Romanesque church designs were arguably more important for Renaissance architects than ancient Roman models. Rather than claim these as “medieval” revivals, however, this paper argues that these models and traditions were also understood in their own way as antique. The most famous case—and it has turned out to be typical, not exceptional—is that of the 11th-12th- century baptistery in Florence, which was believed by virtually everyone in the period to be an ancient Roman building. A whole range of artifacts and monuments that are no longered classed as ancient art were considered antiquities in the Renaissance. A more variable antiquity emerges, one defined less by a historically motivated interest in classical culture than by an ideologically grounded interest in pristine and archaic forms. SESSION 1A Medieval Aesthetics and Strategies in Art - 1 Renaissance Medievalisms 2 Michael Grillo (Univ. of Maine-USA) Renaissance Historical Revision: The Old Conversant with the Ancient in a New Critical Language of Aesthetics In his first Introduction in the Vite…, Vasari separates the Italian Renaissance from its Medieval predecessors in a manner that resonates with earlier writings from the Quattro- and Trecento, of Alberti and Petrarch. In framing a critical language of Renaissance art, however, their arguments focus on formal aesthetics, undermining any possibility of considering alternatives to Classical forms as possibly more appropriate to both Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Renaissance Historical Revision first looks back to the French Gothic, to establish a separation between Classical form and thought, as a means of then setting the stage for how Tre- and Quattrocento artists could draw from a variety of historical traditions according to the specific needs of each project. The extreme foment of their era in politics and religion, encouraged experimentation with disparate cultural forms as a means of articulating new ideas pertinent to these changes. The paper will look to three eras as models of how Medieval aesthetics played out in Renaissance strategies, in the works of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Ghiberti and Donatello, and finally, Raphael. Ultimately, such a study becomes possible only with a break from a linear, teleological history of Renaissance Art. Erik Inglis (Oberlin College-USA) Lightly-worn antiquity: Early Gothic Architecture in Fifteenth Century France The monastery of Saint Denis and the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris were both begun in the mid-twelfth century, and largely finished by the middle of the thirteenth. After their completion, they remained central monuments in France. My paper would examine their meaning in the fifteenth century by using three types of evidence: their depiction in works of art; the celebration in texts; and their important role in diplomatic visits. Taken together, these three forms of evidence suggest that the buildings’ antiquity was both recognized and worthy of praise. By treating Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis as an honorable architectural heritage, the French behave in the same way that the Romans treated the Colosseum and Pantheon. The difference, of course, is that the Romans celebrate classical antiquities, while the French celebrate antiquities of medieval origin. Ethan Matt Kavaler (U of Toronto) The Gothic of the Renaissance Although little discussed, Gothic remained the leading architectural style throughout Northern Europe until at least 1530, decades after Italianate forms had entered the local repertory. Indeed, Gothic architecture witnessed a burst of creative development at the end of the fifteenth century, a dramatic renewal of an authoritative manner that was nurtured by the most talented artists and prominent patrons. These monuments have generally ceded place to considerations of Italianate developments, partly a consequence of a Burkhardtian enshrinement of the Renaissance as the birthplace of the modern world. Yet the lack of attention paid to the Late Gothic impedes our ability to deal with questions of artistic mode or language at a time when conscious choice replaced inevitable recourse. Moreover, it dulls our sensibility to Gothic design as a concentrated marker of the sacred during this period, as a means of equipping monuments and framing spaces for religious service. Renaissance Medievalisms 3 SESSION 1B Shakespeare and Middle Ages Gary Waller (Purchase College – USA) Shakespeare's Reformed Madonna: All's Well that Ends Well and the Madonna del Parto In this paper, I will be drawing on my ongoing study of the Mariological underground in early modern England which hearkened back, with a mixture of nostalgia and deliberate provocation, to medieval modes of thinking and apprehension. Specifically I will focus on the final scene of All’s Well that Ends Well. The momentary tableau of Helena’s reappearance in 5.3 links the play with a very specific medieval miracle and artistic tradition that is a powerful reminder of the rich ideological contradictions in the ways medieval and early modern women were represented. Helena is the Pregnant Virgin. Behind her appearance is the artistic tradition of the Madonna Gravida, Helena may embody the Reformation’s emphasis on virginity transformed into domesticated and fertile chastity; she also (literally) embodies the ‘old’ religion’s contradictory affirmation of virginity and incarnational sexuality. These Reformation rival discourses paradoxically combine with a vigorous affirmation of sexuality. I will speculatively make a further link to the radical Reformation’s rediscovery of spiritual sexuality and to recent Italian work on the merging of the chaste Virgin and the sexuality of the ‘other’ Mary in late medieval/early Renaissance art. Philippa Sheppard (CRRS) Shakespeare’s Joan of Arc My paper will examine the ways in which Shakespeare in his play Henry VI, Part I, alters the image he finds in the English Chronicles of the iconic medieval figure of Joan of Arc for his own dramatic purposes. Holinshed writes very little about Joan’s activities apart from relating her initial private conference with the Dauphin, and her confession and burning at the stake. He ignores the fact that the Catholic Church had overturned its earlier condemnation of her as an heretic. Shakespeare enlarges her role in English history, using her as a foil for Talbot, another medieval hero, and draws on Elizabethan models for her military rhetoric. Her dialogue is marked by careful logic, in contrast to the portrait of her in Holinshed, in which she had “the name of Iesus in her mouth about all hir businesses” (III 600). Throughout the play, Shakespeare depicts Joan much more as a military adversary to Talbot than as a visionary or mystic. She is pragmatic and wily, rather than saintly and inspiring as she is in earlier Continental depictions (Christine de Pisan). Yet the jingoistic portrait that Shakespeare obviously set out to achieve thwarts him, and she is a more positive character than he intended, balancing the play’s slant towards Talbot. We see in embryo Shakespeare’s great gift: his ability to capture our interest and sympathy for all his characters, even his villains. Deanne Williams (York Univ.) Love on the Rocks: Cymbeline and the Franklin's Tale The connections between Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale and Shakespeare’s Cymbeline have received surprisingly little attention. Accounts of Shakespeare’s use of Chaucer are, for the most part, limited to what we may consider the usual suspects: Troilus and Cressida, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and, to a lesser extent, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This paper forms part of a larger argument in which I propose that Shakespeare’s romances offer a sustained reading of Chaucer’s romances: a reading instigated, at least in part, by the publication of Speght’s Chaucer in 1598. It elucidates the many connections between Renaissance Medievalisms 4 the Franklin’s Tale and Cymbeline – from the shared character Arveragus (which Cymbeline spells Arviragus) to the concern with what Chaucer calls “olde gentil Britouns;” from its concern with the enforced separation of a happily married couple, with a jealous suitor, and with the questions of freedom and trust within marriage. Most importantly, each romance hinges upon the deceptive potential of sight.

Load more