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Quattrocento Eloisa Morra, Harvard University QuattroCento Eloisa Morra, Harvard University 1. General E. Crouzet-Pavan, Rinascimenti italiani (1380–1500), ed. Amedeo De Vincentiis, trans. Lorenzo Biagini, Rome, Viella, 2012, 464 pp., covers the period in the title by analysing four main themes: the relation with the classic tradition, politics, religion and social relationships (Chapter 4 offers an accurate analysis of the economic development of the whole of Italy in the 15th century). Far from being a simple summary, this probably the best fresco of the long Quattrocento ever written. Autografi dei letterati italiani. Il Quattrocento, I, ed. Francesco Bausi et al., Rome, Salerno, 488 pp., is the second volume of an important new series devoted to the autograph manuscripts of Italian literati. For each author (Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, il Pontano, Boiardo) the essays cover the manuscript tradition, along with a detailed description of the evolution of the usus scribendi and a partial reproduction of the autographs. In 2013 the important volume by Guido Cappelli, L’Umanesimo italiano da Petrarca a Valla, Rome, Carocci, 2010, 392 pp., was reprinted. Connors Vol. collects 177 essays written by Villa I Tatti appointees for their Director, on subjects ranging from literature and the figurative arts to history and music. Contributions related to Quattrocento culture include: Louise A. Waldman, ‘Octahedron Tattianum’ (1–16); A. Dunlop, ‘On the Problem of Visions in Florentine Art’ (127–132); Alison K. Frazier, ‘Who Wrote the First ‘Life’ of Lorenzo de’ Medici?’ (59–65); Keith Cristiansen, ‘Ghiberti and painting’ (76–101); Gabriele Pedullà, ‘Una nuova fonte per il Ciompo. Niccolò Machiavelli e il De Nobilitate di Antonio de’ Ferrariis’ (73–83); Federica Ciccolella, ‘When a Dead Tongue Speaks Again: The Revival of Greek Studies in the Renaissance’ (407–13); S. Foschi, ‘Poesia e cultura antiquaria nell’Umanesimo. Scritti di Ciriaco d’Ancona nel codice Colombino 7.1.13’ (413–27); Marc Laureys, ‘Friendship and Exile: On Francesco Filelfo’s Ode IV.6’ (425–32); Jozef Matula, ‘Marsilio Ficino as a Critic of Averroes’ (432–38); Maude Vanhaelen, ‘Marsilio Ficino and the Irrational’ (438–44); Maria Agata Pincelli, ‘Gli umanisti e il rinoceronte. Passando per Dürer’ (445–52); and Patrick Baker, ‘Launching the ars historica: Paolo Cortesi’s Dialogue with Cicero on Historiography’ (453–63). Gianvito Resta studioso e maestro. Atti del Convegno dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome, 8–9 February 2012), Rome, Scienze e Lettere, 221 pp., on the reception of the classics in Quattrocento Humanism, is devoted to the memory of the philologist Gianvito Resta, who died in 2011, and includes Gabriella Albanese, ‘Il ritorno dei classici nell’Umanesimo: l’ultima impresa di Gianvito Resta’ (73–104), on Resta as scholar and editor of Humanistic texts, and a useful ‘Bibliografia di Gianvito Resta studioso e maestro’ by G. Albanese and C. Resta. History and Politics. Elizabeth McCahill, Reviving the Eternal City: Rome and the Papal Court, 1420–1447, Cambridge, MA, Harvard U.P., 302 pp., investigates the urban and political projects of Pope Martin V (1417–1431) and Eugenius IV (1431–1447) and their humanist collaborators, analysing the moment of transition at which curialists contributed to the creation of a cultural myth based on Rome’s ancient legacy. Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars. Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan, Cambridge, MA, Harvard U.P., 392 pp., examines the political effects of astrology in Italian court culture: far from being considered an elusive 300 Italian Studies science, astrology was an excellent source of information (and stability, a key factor in a period of political crisis) for Italian Renaissance rulers. Sarah Cockram, Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, Burlington, Ashgate, 274 pp., uses archival material to argue for a re-evaluation of the couple, convincingly demonstrating how Isabella and Francesco used strategic teamwork to affect common diplomatic policy and to consolidate their authority. Caroline James, ‘Marriage by Correspondence: Politics and Domesticity in the Letters of Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga’, RQ, 65:321–52, uses epistolary evidence to analyse how the couple built familiarity and affection in their relationship. Literature and the Visual Arts. Based on a Berenson lecture at Villa I Tatti in 2008, Charles Dempsey, The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture, Cambridge, MA, Harvard U.P., 2012, 398 pp., convincingly argues that the most famous examples of early Renaissance art from Martini to Botticelli were the result of ‘a remaking of the present, its language, arts, and culture, by assimilating [...] both Latin and Italian, and testing the results against the standards and achievements of the ancients’ (pp. 205–06). Christophe Poncet, La scelta di Lorenzo. La Primavera di Botticelli tra poesia e filosofia, Pisa, Serra, 2012, 110 pp., is an analysis (in the tradition of Wind, Warburg and Gombrich) of the literary and philosophical sources of this celebrated painting. According to P., Botticelli’s Venus epitomizes the two types of ‘love’ (on the one hand the physical attraction toward Simonetta Cattanei’s beauty, on the other hand the platonic affection for Lucrezia Donati’s angelical presence) between which Lorenzo de’ Medici had to choose. Daniel W. Maze, ‘Giovanni Bellini: Birth, Parentage, and Independence’, RQ, 66:783–832, employs archival materials to argue for a reassessment of the traditional lineage of Bellini’s parentage and to suggest that Giovanni Bellini was not Jacopo Bellini’s son, but his half- brother. Jane C. Long, ‘Dangerous Women: Observations on the Feast of Herod in Florentine Art of the Early Renaissance’, RQ, 66:1153–1205, is an investigation of four famous versions of the story of the Feast of Herod between 1320 and 1465, exploring the personal variants of each visual translation by examining the pictorial composition in the light of early Renaissance didactic literature. Tommaso Ranfagni, ‘La libreria Piccolomini nel duomo di Siena. Ipotesi per un’esegesi iconologica’, Schifanoia, 42–43, 2012:285–94, is a study of the ambiguities of destination of a unique tridimensional ‘figurative text’, the Libreria Piccolomini. Henri Vredevelde, ‘“Lend a voice”. The Humanistic Portrait Epigraph in the Age of Erasmus and Dürer’, RQ, 66:509–67, focuses on the attribution, modes and scopes of the Greek and Latin epigraphs used by famous artists of Northern Europe (Cranach, Dürer, Holbein) in their portraits of Humanist writers and patrons. Also on the art of portrait and poetical insertions in artworks, Marcello Ciccuto, ‘Per il Triumphus Aeternitatis dei Montefeltro: Piero della Francesca e la metafisica del tempo umano’, pp. 15–39 of Piero della Francesca. Altre prospettive visive, ed. Marcello Ciccuto et al., Erreciemme, Rome, 2012, 200 pp., and Lina Bolzoni, ‘Le iscrizioni nel dittico di Urbino di Piero della Francesca. Il ritratto di Battista e la tradizione metrica’, Connors Vol., 196–207. I mondi di Vasari. Accademia, lingua, religione, storia, teatro, ed. Alessandro Nova and Luigi Zangheri, Venice, Marsilio, 248 pp. + 32 pls, collects eight lectures held at the Sala delle Adunanze of the Accademia Fiorentina in 2011, adopting a multidisciplinary approach to the writing of Le Vite. Relevant contributions include Amedeo Quondam, ‘Vasari e la virtù’ (99–141), and Lina Bolzoni, ‘Citazioni letterarie nella Giuntina: per una mappa delle loro funzioni’ (141–61). Women’s writing. Abigail Brundin, ‘On the Convent Threshold: Poetry for New Nuns in Early Modern Italy’, RQ, 65:1125–65, covers the genre of occasional poems composed to celebrate a woman’s entry to a nunnery, dealing with the adaptation of literary tropes of both Petrarchan lyric and poesia giocosa (such as anagrams, play on the women’s names and other jeux de mots) in the cultural milieu of the Reformation, showing how rare poems by women could overcome .
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