The Newsletter of the ITALIAN ART SOCIETY XXIV, 1 Winter 2012 An Affiliated Society of the College Art Association, Society of Architectural Historians, and the Renaissance Society of America President’s Message from Kirstin Noreen also through the sponsorship of the Kress Foundation, on ―Kairo. On the Efficacy of a Classical Motif in Italian February 1, 2012 Medieval Art‖ at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in the IAS session dealing with Italian Dear Italian Art Society Members: Art and the Confluence of Cultures. Competition was particularly strong for funding, with numerous worthy It is with pleasure that I would like to announce the applicants for these grants. We encourage members to apply speaker of the third annual Italian Art Society-Kress for all of these opportunities in the future; details and Foundation Lecture Series in Italy, which this summer deadlines are posted on the IAS website. will take place in Venice. On June 6, 2012, Debra Pincus will speak on ―The Lure of the Letter: We are considering some changes in IAS procedures that we Renaissance Venice and the Recovery of Antique hope will allow greater access for more members to IAS Writing‖ at the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti, seat of the activities and positions. By the time of this newsletter, you Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. More details will have received a link for a survey related to IAS grant will be circulated through the Notes of the Society and offerings and to the voting process for electing officers and posted on our website and Facebook page. committee members. We are currently evaluating the types of funding that would be most useful to the membership and I am also happy to congratulate the 2012 recipients of whether or not a slightly higher membership fee for the IAS funding awarded to support the presentation of papers should be used to support new grant opportunities. Your about the art or architecture of Italy. The IAS offers two opinions, as expressed through this survey, will help to Travel Grants of $500 each to graduate students and shape future IAS grants. Further, the IAS is considering the recent Ph.D.s to subsidize conference presentations. use of on-line voting for the election of new Karen Lloyd, Visiting Assistant Professor at Tulane officers/committee members. Unlike many of our peer University, has received an award to present ―A New organizations, the IAS continues to approve our new slates Samson: Scipione Borghese and the Representation of during the business meeting at CAA. With increasing Nepotism in the Vatican Palace‖ at CAA and Kristin international membership and more limited travel funding, Huffman Lanzoni, Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke many members are unable to attend this yearly gathering; University, is the recipient of a grant to present ―Ducal on-line voting would therefore provide the opportunity for Fraternity and Family Glory: Girolamo and Lorenzo greater engagement of the membership in the election Priuli‖ at RSA. process. The results of the survey will be discussed at the IAS business meeting at CAA and be posted on the IAS In addition to these two grants, the IAS also provides website. Additional thoughts or comments on grant support, through the generosity of the Kress Foundation, offerings or the voting procedure can also be directed to me to U.S. or foreign scholars traveling from abroad to at [email protected]. If approved by the present papers in IAS-sponsored sessions. In 2012, Dr. membership via the survey, on-line voting will necessitate Michele Luigi Vescovi will receive a Kress-funded grant an amendment to the current IAS by-laws; the text of this to speak on ―Defining Territories and Borders in Italian revision will be sent to the membership for a final vote Romanesque Architecture: Regions, Sub-regions, Meta- following CAA. regions‖ in the IAS session Territory and Border: Geographic Considerations of Italian Art and For those attending CAA in Los Angeles in February, the Architecture at CAA. Dr. Daniele Rivoletti has been IAS will be sponsoring two stimulating sessions: Urbanism awarded funding to discuss ―Pinturicchio‘s Coronation in Italy: From the Roman City to the Modern Age, chaired of Pius III: The Interests of a Family in a Republican by Areli Marina and Phillip Earenfight as well as Territory Context‖ at the RSA meeting in the IAS-sponsored and Border: Geographic Considerations of Italian Art and session on Public Art and Contested Spaces in Early Architecture, chaired by Nicola Camerlenghi and Catherine Modern Italy. Dr. Christine Ungruh will present a talk, IAS Newsletter, Winter 2012, p. 2 McCurrach. Details of these sessions are found below in Berlin museums. This meant integrating various art forms, this newsletter. I look forward to seeing many of you at with attention to themes and functions, in what Bode, a our business meeting on Friday, February 24, 2011, 7:30- disciple of Jacob Burckhardt, conceived as a museum of the 9:00 am in Concourse Meeting Room 406AB; as usual, Renaissance. continental breakfast will be served and all members are welcome. The show traces the ―geography of likeness,‖ as Patricia Rubin aptly terms it. In the eight New York galleries the Looking further ahead, the IAS will also sponsor republics bracket the courts, with the first four galleries numerous sessions at RSA in Washington, D.C. in assigned to Florence, and the final one to Venice. Two wall March. Joaneath Spicer has organized the session The colors—deep indigo blue and warm beige—alternate with Appeal of Sculpture in Renaissance Italy: Collecting, expressive effect. The dark blue in the first room heightens Patronage, Style, and the Role of Touch, which will be the luminous presence of Donatello‘s gilded bronze chaired by Eleanora Luciano. Further, three linked reliquary of San Rossore, a forerunner of the Renaissance sessions organized by Felicia M. Else will deal with portrait bust. The saint, imagined with a contemporary‘s Public Art and Contested Spaces in Early Modern uneasy face, appears all the more provocative next to the Italy: Sacred and Communal Spaces: Pisa, Siena and relatively inexpressive profiles of men that constituted the Venice and Princely and Papal Power: Genoa, first independent painted portraits in Florence. The second Lombardy and Rome will both be chaired by Felicia room gives an impression of daylight with Florentine images Else; Machinations of Power in the Republic, Duchy and of young women, their beauty proclaiming their virtue as Beyond: Florence will be chaired by George L. Gorse. explored in the exhibition of 2001/2 in Washington. Niccolo Fiorentino‘s 1486 medal of Giovanna degli Albizzi, Best, with the flow of bronze becoming the flow of her curls, has a Kirstin place near the earlier profile panels by the Pollaiuolo brothers. These delicate SPECIAL FEATURES and by definition inaccessible figures contrast with the vivacious marble bust The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to known as ―Marietta Strozzi‖, an iconic Bellini: Objects and Installation in the Bode- treasure of the Bode-Museum on its first visit to America, and with the strangely Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art intimate informality of the Botticelli By Alison Luchs (National Gallery of Art) woman at a window. The comparatively immense Botticelli panel of a woman gowned as a goddess, often identified as Dedicated to the rise of the Simonetta Vespucci, suggests the difference between a autonomous secular portrait in portrait and a cult image. fifteenth-century Italy, this exhibition stands out both for the important works assembled and its focus on the An indigo blue gallery houses four generations of Medici interacting forces that affected portraits, ranging from the sensitive 1465 medal of the portraiture. Subjects and functions, ancient Cosimo to the sprightly terracotta bust identified as political strategies, social and regional his grandson Giuliano, tossing his curls beside the conventions, poetic ideals of beauty, interacting with the downward-gazing Botticelli paintings of Giuliano, which abilities, aspirations and exchanges of artists, and not Weppelmann unconventionally proposes as lifetime least with their media, are addressed in the galleries and portraits. The mask of Lorenzo the Magnificent on the catalogue. opposite wall broaches the topic of Florentine portraits cast from life and death. In Berlin the board on which the mask The number of works of sculpture, with subjects similar is mounted, above an elegiac verse, was inclined at a 30 or even identical to those of the paintings or drawings, degree angle as if to place viewers at Lorenzo‘s deathbed. makes the paragone a subtheme. The gallery dedicated In New York Lorenzo confronts us straight on, charismatic to the court portrait 1470-1500 in Mantua, Rome, even in posthumous plaster, a disconcerting hint of a smile at Urbino, and Naples, for instance, contains nine busts, one corner of his mouth. Placed in the center of the gallery two marble reliefs, two medals, a cameo, and ten for viewing in the round, is the bust of his father Piero, in paintings. The organizers, Keith Christiansen and Stefan which Mino da Fiesole reinvented the ancient genre of the Weppelmann who are both curators of paintings, deserve marble portrait bust around 1453. The younger Piero, credit for this comprehensive approach, heralded by the Lorenzo‘s son, stares from the introductory page of a Greek differently-focused Renaissance Faces exhibition at the first edition of Homer of 1488, endowed by the miniaturist National Gallery, London in 2008/9. As the directors‘ Gherardo di Giovanni with a composure that little foretells introduction states, they collaborated with Bode-Museum the subject‘s tragic incompetence. head of sculpture Julien Chapuis to pursue the vision of Wilhelm Bode, early twentieth-century director of the In the next gallery of other male Florentines, three sculpted IAS Newsletter, Winter 2012, p.