DOCSLIB.ORG

Quentin-Skinner-CV-.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

1 October 2016 QUENTIN SKINNER Curriculum vitae and list of principal publications PERSONAL DETAILS Full name: Quentin Robert Duthie Skinner Birthplace: Oldham, Lancashire, England Date of birth: 26th November, 1940 Nationality: British Marital status: Married to Professor Susan James Children: One daughter (b. 1979); one son (b. 1982) Address: School of History, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS. E-mail: [email protected] CAREER Higher education 1965: M.A., University of Cambridge 1962: B.A., University of Cambridge 1959: Entrance Scholar, Gonville and Caius College Cambridge Academic appointments Since 2008: Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities, Queen Mary, University of London 1996-2008: Regius Professor of History, University of Cambridge 1999: Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge 1979-96: Professor of Political Science, University of Cambridge 1974-79: The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton: Longer-term Member, School of Social Science, 1976-79 Member, School of Historical Studies, 1974-75 1967-74: Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge 1965-67: Assistant Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge 1962-2008: Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge Visiting Appointments 2014: Spinoza Visiting Professor, University of Amsterdam 2013-14: Laurence Rockefeller Visiting Professor, Princeton University 2011: Distinguished Visiting Professor, Northwestern University 2008: Visiting Scholar, Center for European Studies, Harvard University 2006: Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, A.N.U. 2003-4: Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2003: Ford’s Lecturer, University of Oxford 1997: Professeur invité, Collège de France 1995: Avalon Visiting Professor, Northwestern University 1994: Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, A.N.U. 1992: Cardinal Mercier Visiting Professor, University of Leuven 1991: Professeur Associé, Université Paris X 1989: Visiting Fellow, Humanities Research Centre, A.N.U. 1987: Directeur d’Etudes Associé, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris 2 1987: Visiting Lecturer, Newberry Library, Chicago 1982: Lewin Visiting Professor, Washington University, St. Louis 1980: Carlyle Lecturer, University of Oxford 1970: Visiting Fellow, Research School of Social Science, A.N.U. ACADEMIC DISTINCTIONS Awards and prizes 2008: The Bielefelder Wissenschaftspreis 2007: The David Easton Award, American Political Science Association 2006: The Balzan Prize 2006: The Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize, British Political Studies Association 2001-04: Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship 2001: The Benjamin E. Lippincott Award, American Political Science Association 2001: The Pilkington Teaching Prize, University of Cambridge 1997: The Medal of the Collège de France 1979: The Wolfson History Prize Honorary Degrees and Honorary Fellowships 2014: Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris causa, University of Copenhagen 2011: Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris causa, University of Oslo 2009: Miembro Académico Honorario, Universidad Adolfo Ibáňez, Santiago 2008: Honorary Fellow, Christ’s College Cambridge 2007: Doctor of Letters, Honoris causa, The University of Aberdeen 2007: Doctor of Letters, Honoris causa, The University of Athens 2005: Doctor of Letters, Honoris causa, The University of St Andrews 2005: Doctor of Laws, Honoris causa, Harvard University 2004: Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris causa, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 2000: Doctor of Letters, Honoris causa, The University of Oxford 2000: Honorary Fellow, Queen Mary University of London 1997: Honorary Fellow, Gonville and Caius College Cambridge 1997: Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris causa, The University of Helsinki 1992: Doctor of Letters, Honoris causa, The University of East Anglia 1992: Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris causa, The University of Chicago Membership of learned societies 2015: Foreign Member, Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters 2009: Corresponding Fellow, Österreichische Academie der Wissenschaften 2007: Foreign Member, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 1999: Honorary Member, Royal Irish Academy 1997: Foreign Member, American Philosophical Society 1996: Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts 1989: Fellow of the Academia Europea 1986: Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1981: Fellow of the British Academy 1971: Fellow of the Royal Historical Society Named lecture-series 2015: The Agnes Cuming Lectures, University College Dublin 2014: The Spinoza Lectures, University of Amsterdam 2013: The Academia Sinica Lectures, Taiwan 2012: The Clark Lectures, Trinity College Cambridge 2011: The Clarendon Lectures, University of Oxford 2005: The Adorno Lectures, University of Frankfurt. 2005: The Robert P. Benedict Lectures, Boston University 3 2003: The Page-Barbour Lectures, University of Virginia 2003: The Ford Lectures, University of Oxford 1995: The T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures, University of Kent 1984: The Tanner Lectures, Harvard University 1983: The Messenger Lectures, Cornell University 1980: The Carlyle Lectures, University of Oxford 1980: The Gauss Seminars, Princeton University Named lectures: 2016: The Mudd Center for Ethics Lecture, Washington and Lee University 2015: The Carl Schmitt Lecture, The Humboldt University, Berlin 2015: The Balzan Lecture, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome 2015: The Max Weber Lecture, European University Institute, Florence. 2015: The Director’s Lecture, Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago 2014: The John Burrow Memorial Lecture, University of Sussex 2013: The AMIAS Lecture, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton 2013: The George S. Parthemos Lecture, University of Georgia 2012: The T. M. Knox Memorial Lecture, University of St Andrews 2012 The 1814 Lecture, University of Bergen 2012 The Creighton Lecture, University of London 2011: The Kantorowicz Lecture, University of Frankfurt 2010: The Sheffield Lecture, University of Sheffield 2010: The Roy Porter Memorial Lecture, University College London 2009: The Sykes Lecture, Pembroke College Cambridge 2008: The BBC History Lecture, University of London 2008: The Lady Margaret Lecture, Christ’s College Cambridge 2008: The Ramsay Murray Lecture, Selwyn College Cambridge. 2008: The Annual British Academy Lecture 2008: The Una’s Lecture, University of California at Berkeley 2008: The Lansdowne Lecture, University of Victoria, Canada 2008: The Anson G. Phelps Lecture, New York University 2008: The James A. Moffett Lecture, Princeton University 2007: The Research Institute in Humanities Lecture, University of Bristol 2007: The Dr. Lee Seng Tee Lecture, Wolfson College Cambridge 2007: The Årets Sløk Lecture, University of Aarhus 2007: The Nicolai Rubinstein Lecture, Queen Mary University of London 2006: The Kossmann Lecture, University of Gröningen 2006: The Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture, University of Sydney 2005: The Morrell Address, University of York 2004: The Annual European Journal of Philosophy Lecture 2003: The Lady Margaret Lecture, Christ’s College Cambridge 2003: The John Coffin Memorial Lecture, University of London 2001: The Isaiah Berlin Memorial Lecture, The British Academy 2001: The Rowland Egger Memorial Lecture, University of Virginia 2001: The Marc Bloch Lecture, École des Hautes Études, Paris 2000: The Neale Lecture, University of London 2000: The Henry Tudor Memorial Lecture, University of Durham 2000: The Patrides Lecture, University of York 2000: The John Passmore Lecture, Australian National University 1999: The Lionel Trilling Seminars, Columbia University 1998: The Judith Shklar Memorial Lecture, Harvard University 1998: The Martin Hollis Memorial Lecture, University of East Anglia 4 1998: The Bickley Memorial Lecture, St Hugh’s College Oxford 1996: The A. B. Emden Lecture, St Edmund Hall Oxford 1995: The Charlton Lecture, Warwick University 1994: The F. W. Bateson Memorial Lecture, Corpus Christi College Oxford 1993: The Iredell Lecture, University of Lancaster 1991: The Matthew Vassar Lecture, Vassar College 1991: The Hannah Arendt Lecture, University of Southampton 1990: The Dawes Hicks Lecture on Philosophy, British Academy 1989: The Prothero Lecture, Royal Historical Society 1988: The Warrender Lecture, University of Sheffield 1988: The H. L. A. Hart Memorial Lecture, University of Oxford 1986: The Raleigh Lecture on History, British Academy 1985: The James Ford Special Lecture, University of Oxford TEACHING Supervision of graduate students 31 PhD students successfully supervised. Guest Lectures: Lectures at Universities in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. ADMINISTRATION Since 2012: Co-Chair, Centre for the Study of Political Thought, Queen Mary University of London. 2010: Member of Jury, Francqui Prize in the Humanities Since 2008: Member of Prize Committee, Balzan Foundation 2006-10: Member of Advisory Board, Centre of Excellence, University of Jyväskylä 2004-09: Trustee of the Isaac Newton Trust, Trinity College Cambridge 2003-08: Member of Research Council, European University Institute, Florence 1999: Pro-Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge 1996-2008: President, Cambridge Historical Society 1993-1995: Chairman, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge 1992-2008: Membre du Jury, Prix Guizot 1987-92: Member of Management Committee, The Warburg Institute 1987-90: Member of Council, British Academy PROFESSIONAL SERVICES Refereeing 1. Between
Recommended publications
  • An Example for Others

    An Example for Others

    An Example for Others Public Execution and the Symbolism of Urban Space in Florence’s Crisis Oskar Edgren A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of BA (Hons) in History, University of Sydney October, 2017 1 Abstract This thesis examines the Florentine Grand Council’s use of public execution to demonstrate political power in the crisis of 1494-1512. Using the example of Antonio Rinaldeschi’s execution for blasphemy in 1501, it explores how the Council appropriated humanist and republican symbolism and urban space to tighten their grip on the increasingly unstable and fractured republic. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my wonderful supervisor Julie Smith for her thoughtfulness, prudence and kindness in the guidance she has given me over the year. I also give thanks to my parents, for their never-ending support, helpfulness and interest, and my partner Katie for her constant encouragement and unfailing patience. Dedicated to my grandfather, Bruce Mansfield (1926-2017), for bestowing me with a love of history that I will have for the rest of my life. 3 Contents Introduction.........................................................................................................5 Chapter 1, ‘Dice & Dung’: The Crime and Punishment of Antonio Rinaldeschi……………………………………………………………………13 Chapter 2, ‘Blood & Ink’: Civic Humanism and the Republic in Crisis………………..........................................................................................32 Chapter 3, ‘Bonfire & Brimstone’: Girolamo Savonarola
  • Annotated Guide to Secondary Literature on Medieval

    Annotated Guide to Secondary Literature on Medieval

    THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY HIEU 390 Constantin Fasolt Fall 1999 TU TH 11:00-12:15 POLITICS, SOCIETY, AND SOCIAL THOUGHT IN EUROPE I: 400-1300 A GUIDE TO READING This guide is designed to explain my choice of readings for this course and to lead you to further readings appropriate for you, depending on how much or how little you already know about European history in general and the history of European political thought in particular. It is divided into three parts. The first part deals with general works, background information, and introductory readings of various sorts. The second part is arranged, roughly speaking, according to the topics that will be addressed in the course. The third part is a reference section, in which I simply list the most important books and articles and offer a few comments on some of them. I wrote this guide mostly for beginners. I have therefore placed special emphasis on introductory works and have tried to limit myself to works in English. But where it seemed useful or necessary I have not hesitated to mention works written in other languages. I have also made a special effort to single out books and articles that have struck me as especially telling or informative, never mind how difficult or advanced they may be. I hope that this procedure will make it easy for you to start reading where it will be most profitable for you, and to keep reading for a long time to come once your interest has been awakened. Table of Contents Part one: General works __________________________________________________ 3 A.
  • Principle and Politics in the New History of Originalism

    Principle and Politics in the New History of Originalism

    Digital Commons @ Georgia Law Scholarly Works Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2017 Principle and Politics in the New History of Originalism Logan E. Sawyer III Associate Professor of Law University of Georgia, [email protected] University of Georgia School of Law Research Paper Series Paper No. 2017-18 Repository Citation Logan E. Sawyer III, Principle and Politics in the New History of Originalism , 57 Am. J. Legal Hist. 198 (2017), Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_artchop/1326 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Georgia Law. Please share how you have benefited from this access For more information, please contact [email protected]. UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA SCHOOL OF LAW RESEARCH PAPER SERIES Paper No. 2017-18 May 2017 PRINCIPLE AND POLITICS IN THE NEW HISTORY OF ORIGINALISM AM. J. LEGAL. HIST. (forthcoming). LOGAN E. SAWYER III Associate Professor of Law University of Georgia School of Law [email protected] This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network electronic library at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2933746 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2933746 PRINCIPLE AND POLITICS in The New History of Originalism The emergence of a new form of originalism has sparked an interest in the theory’s past that is particularly welcome as developments on the Supreme Court and in the Republican Party unsettle the theory’s place in American law and politics.
  • The Conceptualization of Time and Space in the Memory Theatre of G Camillo

    The Conceptualization of Time and Space in the Memory Theatre of G Camillo

    Nordisk Museologi 2003 • 1, s. 51–70 The conceptualization of time 51 and space in the memory theatre of giulio camillo (1480?–1544)1 Anne Aurasmaa In the 17th century collections became ideally more or less the presence of all things material. Interest leaned towards the mundane and the common and collecting became a gathering of everything. This trend can already be seen to some extent in the natural history collections of the 16th century. As a counterbalance to this I would like to put forward in this paper the idea that the 16th century collections pictured the whole universe as a construction combining time and space. It was not the intention just to fill rooms with collected material examples but to present the phenomena by showing their boundaries and to help the spectator to understand the building blocks of the universal hierarchy. The theatrum mundi – or curiosity cabinet, as 16th century collections are more commonly referred to – was conceived as a presence of all that existed in one place. Instead of collecting everything, and claiming that such a collection would represent the world as it is (or as it can be perceived by the senses), rhetorical themes, abstract ideas and universal structures were visualized by means of displaying the strangest objects from the most faraway places. The function of such displays was to bridge the gap between the universal logos2 and the human logos. Logos meaning reason and structure is the opposite of myth and personal sensory experience and as such includes thinking, speech, relations and regularities. The concept can be used both in reference to universal order and to the faculties of the human mind.
  • Further Particulars

    Further Particulars

    CHRIST’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE JH PLUMB COLLEGE LECTURESHIP AND FELLOWSHIP IN HISTORY FURTHER PARTICULARS Teaching at Cambridge University is provided by the University and also by the Colleges. The majority of College Fellows are holders of University posts, taking on additional College responsibilities for which they usually receive extra remuneration. However, from time to time, Cambridge Colleges make appointments to College Lectureships. When appointed, College Lecturers not only provide core teaching for the College (or sometimes for other Colleges under swap arrangements) but may also be asked to act as Directors of Studies or take on other College offices or duties as appropriate. These Fellows may, if the opportunity arises, also teach for the University on occasional lecture courses, for extra remuneration. College Lectureships at Christ’s College are intended to provide an opportunity to an individual at the beginning of his or her academic career to develop teaching skills, a publication record and other academic activity with a view to obtaining a University appointment in Cambridge or elsewhere. They are offered for a fixed term of four years, which will not be renewed or extended. College Teaching College teaching takes the form of small group teaching (referred to as supervisions) each week, usually in groups of one or two. There are two Terms of eight weeks (Michaelmas and Lent); the third Term (Easter Term) has four weeks of teaching and three weeks set aside for University examinations. The successful candidate would be expected to supervise at least 120 hours per year for the College, equivalent to an average of six hours per week in Full Term.
  • Historical Argument and Practice Bibliography for Lectures 2019-20

    Historical Argument and Practice Bibliography for Lectures 2019-20

    HISTORICAL ARGUMENT AND PRACTICE BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR LECTURES 2019-20 Useful Websites http://www.besthistorysites.net http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/index.html http://www.jstor.org [e-journal articles] http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ejournals_list/ [all e-journals can be accessed from here] http://www.historyandpolicy.org General Reading Ernst Breisach, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946) Donald R. Kelley, Faces of History: Historical Inquiry from Herodotus to Herder (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998) Donald R. Kelley, Fortunes of History: Historical Inquiry from Herder to Huizinga (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003) R. J. Evans, In Defence of History (2nd edn., London, 2001). E. H. Carr, What is History? (40th anniversary edn., London, 2001). Forum on Transnational History, American Historical Review, December 2006, pp1443-164. G.R. Elton, The Practice of History (2nd edn., Oxford, 2002). K. Jenkins, Rethinking History (London, 1991). C. Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York, 1983) M. Collis and S. Lukes, eds., Rationality and Relativism (London, 1982) D. Papineau, For Science in the Social Sciences (London, 1978) U. Rublack ed., A Concise Companion to History (Oxford, 2011) Q.R.D. Skinner, Visions of Politics Vol. 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge, 2002) David Cannadine, What is History Now, ed. (Basingstoke, 2000). -----------------------INTRODUCTION TO HISTORIOGRAPHY---------------------- Thu. 10 Oct. Who does history? Prof John Arnold J. H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction (2000), particularly chapters 2 and 3 S. Berger, H. Feldner & K. Passmore, eds, Writing History: Theory & Practice (2003) P.
  • Crisis of Rhetoric Launch Event: Committee Room G, House of Lords, 15Th October 2019

    Crisis of Rhetoric Launch Event: Committee Room G, House of Lords, 15Th October 2019

    Crisis of Rhetoric Launch Event: Committee Room G, House of Lords, 15th October 2019 Event Transcript Speaker names and abbreviations: Dr Henriette van der Blom (HvdB), Prof. Alan Finlayson (AF), Phil Collins (PC), Prof. Mary Beard (MB), John Vice (JV). [??? Indicates indecipherable speech on the recording]. HvdB: Welcome, everybody, we should probably get started. Thank you so much to all of you for coming through all the security, all the barricades at Parliament, we are very pleased to see you here. My name is Henriette van der Blom, I’m a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Birmingham and I am the principal investigator of the Crisis of Rhetoric research project sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, together with my colleague Professor Alan Finlayson, Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia. We’ve been conducting this project for a couple of years now and this is the finale that you’ve been invited to come and share in, where we are launching the findings that you have all received on your seat. I should also say that this booklet is available in PDF on the project website, which you will see on the inside cover, page 3 – one of the text boxes. So, if you want it in PDF, you can go and download it for free, share it with friends, colleagues as you wish. Now we are very pleased to be here because the whole idea of this project was to find out what’s going on with political speech today and to join up two groups who perhaps don’t speak often enough with each other; that is, our own world of academia with practitioners: speakers, orators, speech writers and everybody who help the speakers prepare and deliver the speeches in as effectful and thoughtful manners as possible.
  • RENAISSANCE CIVIC HUMANISM Reappraisals and Reflections

    RENAISSANCE CIVIC HUMANISM Reappraisals and Reflections

    RENAISSANCE CIVIC HUMANISM Reappraisals and Reflections JAMES HANKINS The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , UK www.cup.cam.ac.uk West th Street, New York, –, USA www.cup.org Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne , Australia Ruiz de Alarco´n , Madrid, Spain © Cambridge University Press This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Baskerville /. pt [] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections / edited by James Hankins. p. cm. – (Ideas in Context; ) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN X . Italy – Politics and government – –. Humanism – Italy. Renaissance – Italy. Republicanism – Italy – History. I. Hankins, James. II. Series. DG.R '' –dc - x hardback Contents List of contributors page ix Introduction James Hankins The republican idea William J. Connell ‘‘Civic humanism’’ and medieval political thought James M. Blythe Civic humanism and Florentine politics John M. Najemy The two myths of civic humanism Mikael Ho¨rnqvist Rhetoric, history, and ideology: the civic panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni James Hankins De-masking Renaissance republicanism Alison Brown Civic humanism, realist constitutionalism, and Francesco Guicciardini’s Discorso di Logrogno Athanasios Moulakis Bruni and Machiavelli on civic humanism Harvey C. Mansfield Rhetoric, reason, and republic: republicanisms – ancient, medieval, and modern Cary J. Nederman vii viii Contents Situating Machiavelli Paul A. Rahe Index of manuscripts and archival documents General index The republican idea William J.
  • Hobbes and Republican Liberty Quentin Skinner Frontmatter More Information

    Hobbes and Republican Liberty Quentin Skinner Frontmatter More Information

    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88676-5 - Hobbes and Republican Liberty Quentin Skinner Frontmatter More information Hobbes and Republican Liberty Quentin Skinner is one of the foremost historians in the world, and in Hobbes and Republican Liberty he offers a dazzling comparison of two rival theories about the nature of human liberty. The first originated in classical antiquity, and lay at the heart of the Roman republican tradition of public life. It flowered in the city-republics of Renaissance Italy, and has been central to much recent discussion of republicanism among contemporary political theorists. Thomas Hobbes was the most formidable enemy of this pattern of thought, and his attempt to discredit it constitutes a truly epochal moment in the history of Anglophone political thought. Professor Skinner shows how Hobbes’s successive efforts to grapple with the question of human liberty were deeply affected by the claims put forward by the radical and parliamentarian writers in the course of the English civil wars, and by Hobbes’s sense of the urgent need to counter them in the name of peace. Skinner approaches Hobbes’s political theory not simply as a general system of ideas but as a polemical intervention in the conflicts of his time, and he shows that Leviathan, the greatest work of political philosophy ever written in English, reflects a substantial change in the character of Hobbes’s moral thought, responding very specifically to the political needs of the moment. As Professor Skinner says, seething polemics always underlie the deceptively smooth surface of Hobbes’s argument. Hobbes and Republican Liberty is an extended essay that develops several of the themes announced by Quentin Skinner in his famous inaugural lecture on Liberty before Liberalism of 1998.
  • 1 Isabella Lazzarini, All Souls College, Oxford; University Of

    1 Isabella Lazzarini, All Souls College, Oxford; University Of

    1 Isabella Lazzarini, All Souls College, Oxford; University of Molise The Words of Emotion: Political Language and Discursive Resources in Lorenzo de Medici’s Lettere (1468-1492)* Introduction The Florentine vernacular used in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a dry proverb to underline that a man, knowing that he did everything he could to sort out a problem, could not blame himself anymore: “fa che dei, sia che può”.1 Lorenzo de’ Medici at the end of the fifteenth century changed, softened and polished the old dictum and by absorbing it into an intimate self portrait he altered definitively its popular and formulaic nature into a much more sophisticated, personalized and intellectual discourse about his natura. His discourse introduces a fine analysis of the balance between feelings and reason, and between self representation and reality: “pure io non sono apto a disperarmi per questo, perché, facto che ho quello che debbo, tu sai che non sono di natura che pigli troppa molestia di quello che adviene”.2 Lorenzo de Medici represents a milestone in research and imagination on the Italian Renaissance: the edition of Lorenzo de Medici’s letters was inaugurated in 1955 “with the hope that a less romanticized portrait of him would result”. Ironically, rather than painting a more ‘realistic’ portrait of Lorenzo, recent research is discovering instead that “it is not possible to separate the man from the aura of legend and that the latter constitutes an indissoluble aspect of his historical character”.3 Lorenzo’s image-making was a political
  • Renaissance Political Theory and Paradoxes of Power 57

    Renaissance Political Theory and Paradoxes of Power 57

    Renaissance Political Theory and Paradoxes of Power 57 CHAPTER 3 Renaissance Political Theory and Paradoxes of Power Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa testifies to the fact that coercion and force were central to Cosimo I’s rise to power and to his vision of state formation. The Medici duke’s political bravado was responsible for his entry into Florence as a larger-than-life sovereign. And yet, aspects of early modern theory on gender and the state which problematize virtù inform Cellini’s bronze in ways that could have reminded viewers of problems with the construction of the ruler’s power, specifically, the transformation of Florence from republic to duchy. Flo- rentines, who held the value of republican liberty close to their hearts, would have been keenly aware of the insecure foundation of their past traditions as times changed rapidly while Cosimo consolidated his power. The controversy over the merits of government by the many versus by the few was still an unre- solved point of tension in sixteenth-century Florence. Some of the legal and cultural constraints imposed on Cellini were signs of the tighter vigilance and control of the public and private spheres besetting the development of the early modern state.1 Those restrictions affected Cellini’s vision of the Perseus and Medusa in a provocative fashion. Much political writing and visual imagery dating from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance treats the ruler’s head and body as symbols of the state. Six- teenth-century art epitomizing the body of the male ruler adoring, or over- coming the state personified as a woman’s body include Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine, a later pro-Medici sculpture, on the Piazza della Signoria (Fig.
  • 16 Rubinstein 1226 15/11/2004 10:40 Page 312

    16 Rubinstein 1226 15/11/2004 10:40 Page 312

    16 Rubinstein 1226 15/11/2004 10:40 Page 312 NICOLAI RUBINSTEIN The Warburg Institute 16 Rubinstein 1226 15/11/2004 10:40 Page 313 Nicolai Rubinstein 1911–2002 NICOLAI RUBINSTEIN was born in Berlin on 11 July 1911. His father was a publisher and his parents were Hungarian (i.e. initially Austro- Hungarian) subjects, though his father had come to Berlin from Riga and had taken Hungarian citizenship on the insistence of his future parents- in-law. Both parents were Jewish by descent. In Berlin he attended the Französische Gymnasium, but left at fourteen on account of health problems and spent two and a half years first in Switzerland and then in the Black Forest. He began his university studies in Berlin in 1930, his subjects (after a false start with political economy) being history and philosophy. An influential teacher whose seminar he attended was Erich Kaspar, historian of the early medieval papacy, but he also went to lectures by Friedrich Meinecke—an impressive link with the past! At the end of 1933 Nicolai and his family emigrated when the Nazi regime came to power, his parents and sister to France, he to Italy. He reg- istered as a student at the University of Florence, where he proceeded to the laurea in 1935, his principal teacher being Nicola Ottokar, Professor of Medieval History and of Russian. Ottokar, author of Il comune di Firenze alla fine del Dugento, was a big influence on the historical tech- nique and outlook of Rubinstein, who became his assistente. At this stage he knew Robert Davidsohn, the great historian of medieval Florence, but gained the impression that in Davidsohn’s view there was no room for fur- ther treatment of that field.