Italy Archive
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Sylvia Plath’s Use of Dantean Structure
Posted on December 10, 2013 | No CommentsMany people have remarked on the genius of Sylvia Plath's poetry. However, it has come to my attention that Plath has been grossly misunderstood by her critics, such as the famous critic, Harold Bloom who left Plath out of his book The Western Canon. -
Legal Competition in the Medieval World
Posted on December 6, 2013 | No CommentsLegal Competition in the Medieval World Aaron L. Bodoh-Creed (Cornell University) Cornell University: Working Paper, June 30 (2009) Abstract We develop a model of competition between legal systems with overlapping jurisdictions based... -
Projecting Power in Sixth-Century Rome: The church of Santi Cosma e Damiano in the late antique Forum Romanum
Posted on December 4, 2013 | No CommentsIn the year 526 CE, the bishop of Rome, Pope Felix IV, petitioned the Ostrogoth king Theoderic for permission to convert a small complex in the Forum Romanum into a place of worship dedicated to the Saints Cosmas and Damian...This paper critiques traditional interpretations of this church—its physical location and its apse mosaic—in light of new research that nuances our understanding of the historical context in which it was commissioned. -
‘Selling stories and many other things in and through the city’: Peddling Print in Renaissance Florence and Venice
Posted on December 4, 2013 | No Comments‘Selling stories and many other things in and through the city’: Peddling Print in Renaissance Florence and Venice Rosa M. Salzberg (University of Warwick) Sixteenth Century Journal: XLII/3 (2011) Abstract... -
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments
Posted on December 4, 2013 | No CommentsRenaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments Samuel Cohn, Jr. Economic History Review: University of Glasgow, 19 October (2012) Abstract Over the past decade ‘material culture’... -
Renaissance Table Manners
Posted on November 28, 2013 | No CommentsHow should one behave at parties or dinners, in the company of friends and relatives? Every society has its list of do's and don'ts, including in Renaissance Italy. -
Donatello and Ghiberti: The Choice Betewen Compositional Unity and Narrative Force
Posted on November 26, 2013 | No CommentsIn the spiritual epicenter of Quattrocento1 Florence April 2, 1452 marked the completion of the Baptistery of San Giovanni’s third set of bronze doors. -
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History
Posted on November 24, 2013 | No CommentsHealthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca,... -
Construction Materials and Building Constructions in the Architecture of Medieval Rus, from the 10th to the Beginning of the 12th Centuries
Posted on November 20, 2013 | No CommentsConstruction Materials and Building Constructions in the Architecture of Medieval Rus, from the 10th to the Beginning of the 12th Centuries Bernhard Flüge Paper given at: The Masons at Work... -
The Council of Trent (1545–63) and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1541)
Posted on November 20, 2013 | No CommentsMichelangelo’s Last Judgment is one of the world’s most famous paintings, located in one of the world’s most famous rooms, the Sistine Chapel. -
The Discovery of a Roman Girl in the 15th century
Posted on November 19, 2013 | No CommentsShe looked 'so lovely, so pleasing, so attractive, that, although the girl had certainly been dead fifteen hundred years, she appeared to have been laid to rest that very day.' -
Occlusion issues in early Renaissance art
Posted on November 14, 2013 | No CommentsEarly Renaissance painters innovatively attempted to depict realistic three-dimensional scenes. A major problem was to produce the impression of overlap for surfaces that occlude one another in the scene but are adjoined in the picture plane. -
Was Theoderic a Great Builder?
Posted on November 10, 2013 | No CommentsOr was he a great recycler? -
The Italian Giant Bibles, Lay Patronage, and Professional Workmanship
Posted on October 27, 2013 | No CommentsEleventh-century Umbro-Roman Giant Bibles were commissioned by varied church and lay patrons (and not only by Roman reform- party adherents) and crafted by ad hoc assemblies of paid craftsmen using methods of carefully calibrated, synchronous copying to reduce production time for the single commission. -
Medieval Shoes
Posted on October 16, 2013 | No CommentsWho set the trends for medieval shoe styles - politics, power, economics and climate. -
Medieval mystic Angela da Foligno is named a Saint
Posted on October 15, 2013 | No CommentsPope Francis made the surprising announcement last week that Angela da Foligno, an Italian Franciscan and mystic, has been named a saint. -
Wolves in Lamb’s Clothing: Redeeming the Images of Catherine of Siena and Angela of Foligno
Posted on October 15, 2013 | No CommentsMedieval holy women were revered for their power and efforts, by both their communities and the Church. However, what are contemporary women to make of these female saints? -
You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me: The Power and Emotion in Women’s Correspondence in Fifteenth-Century Italy
Posted on October 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the lives of Alessandra Strozzi and Lucrezia de'Medici of Florence -
Leonardo da Vinci painting discovered in Swiss bank vault
Posted on October 7, 2013 | No CommentsFor centuries it was believed that Leonardo da Vinci made a pencil sketch of Isabella d’Este, but that he never completed a full portrait of the famous Renaissance noblewoman. -
Food in medieval Sicily
Posted on October 6, 2013 | No CommentsAnd in truth this food, of which they are fond and which they eat raw, ruins their senses. There is not one man among them, of whatsoever condition, who does not eat onions every day, and does not serve them morning and evening in his house. -
Power and Institutional Identity in Renaissance Venice: The Female Convents of S. M. delle Vergini and S. Zaccaria
Posted on October 3, 2013 | No CommentsEven though inmates of convents were the most regulated group in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe, canonesses and nuns at these two convents were able to generate and harness multiple sorts of power in a variety of ways. -
“In this our lightye and learned tyme”: Italian baths in the era of the Renaissance
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsThe sixteenth century saw a transformation in medicine as it came to be dominated by the ideals and methods of the Renaissance. -
Into the frontier: medieval land reclamation and the creation of new societies. Comparing Holland and the Po Valley, 800-1500
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsIn the paper it is shown that medieval land reclamation led to the emergence of two very divergent societies, characterised by a number of different configurations; (a) power and property structure, (b) modes of exploitation, (c) economic portfolios, and (d) commodity markets. -
Living like the laity? The negotiation of religious status in the cities of late medieval Italy
Posted on September 24, 2013 | No CommentsFramed by consideration of images of treasurers on the books of the treasury in thirteenth-century Siena, this article uses evidence for the employment of men of religion in city offices in central and northern Italy to show how religious status (treated as a subset of ‘clerical culture’) could become an important object of negotiation between city and churchmen, a tool in the repertoire of power relations. -
Venice – obstacle for the Crusades?
Posted on September 17, 2013 | No CommentsAt first sight, the topic’s title sounds somewhat intriguing. It certainly raises the question: is it possible for the Venetians to regard themselves as an obstacle for such a noble initiative as crusades had been?
