Renaissance Platonism

Epístola filosófica de Charles de Bovelles a Guillaume Budé (08/10/1511)

by Daniel González-García

Apud Carolus Bovillus. In hoc opere contenta. Commentarius in primordiales evangelium divi Ioannis. Vita Remundi eremitae. Philosophicae & historicae aliquot Epistolae. Hec de novo castigatius impressa cum nonnullis additionibus & epistolis pluribus. París: Josse Bade van Assche impr., 1º de septiembre de 1514. ff. 47 rº-51 rº.

Marsilio Ficino - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

by James G. Snyder

“From Philosophical Theory to Literary Praxis: The Question of Love in L’innamorato"

by Michael Subialka

In _L’innamorato_ by Brunoro Zampeschi. Eds. Armando Maggi, Chiara Montanari, Michael Subialka, and Sarah Christopher-Faggioli. Ravenna, Italy: Longo, 2010; pp. 221-238.

“Transforming Plato: Tommaso Campanella’s La città del sole, the Republic, and Socrates as Natural Philosopher”

by Michael Subialka

Bruniana & Campanelliana, XVII, 2 (2011); pp. 73-89.

Revisiting La città del sole in light of recent scholarship on Campanella’s naturalism and with recourse to key works... more Revisiting La città del sole in light of recent scholarship on Campanella’s naturalism and with recourse to key works of his philosophy, I examine how his utopia systematically re-writes Plato’s ideal city from the Republic by simultaneously drawing on and naturalizing a set of key Platonic figures. This transformation serves as an implicit response to criticisms of the utopian project made by Aristotle and Machiavelli; it is also a means of taking distance from the hermetic impulse at work in much of Renaissance Neoplatonism. The City of the Sun can thus be seen as replicating Kallipolis’ rigid order and its connection to absolute truth but simultaneously grounding that order in an empirical naturalism that allows the ideal society to become open.

R. Chiaradonna, Voce "Plotino" in Tommaso Campanella, Bruniana e Campanelliana, 14 (2008), pp. 521-528 (ristampa con lievi modifiche: in E. Canone, G. Ernst, a cura di, Enciclopedia bruniana e campanelliana, vol. II, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa-Roma 2010)

by Riccardo Chiaradonna

R. Chiaradonna, Voce "Plotino" in Giordano Bruno, Bruniana e Campanelliana, 17 (2011), pp. 223-232

by Riccardo Chiaradonna

Translating Friendship in the Circle of Marguerite de Navarre: Plato’s Lysis and Lucian’s Toxaris

by Marc Schachter

Draft, feedback most welcome! Essay written for Imperfect Friends, a volume on friendship in early modern France edited by Rebecca Wilkin and Lewis Seifert

This essay considers two translations of classical friendship texts that were dedicated to women in 16th century... more This essay considers two translations of classical friendship texts that were dedicated to women in 16th century France with particular attention to the theological implications of their paratextual matter. The first, by Bonaventure des Périers and dedicated to Marguerite de Navarre, is of Plato’s Lysis. The second, by one Jacques de Rozières and dedicated to Marguerite de France (Marguerite de Navarre’s niece) is of Lucian’s Toxaris.

Translation and Coded Dialogue in the Spanish Empire

by Damian Bacich

Pacific Coast Philology (2007). 156-168.

Bibliografia degli studi su Leone Hebreo (Jehudah Abravanel)

by Thomas Gilbhard

in: Accademia. Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin», VI, 2004, p. 113–134

"Creation, Trinity and prisca theologia in Julius Caesar Scaliger," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 73 (2010), 195-207.

by Kuni Sakamoto

This article studies the discussion on Creation and the Trinity by a major seventeenth-century Aristotelian Julius... more This article studies the discussion on Creation and the Trinity by a major seventeenth-century Aristotelian Julius Caesar Scaliger, thereby aiming to shed a new light on the hitherto neglected aspect of Renaissance Aristotelianism. Since the restoration of Platonism in the fifteenth century, proponents of this philosophical current often accused Aristotle of, unlike Plato, embracing ideas contradicting the Christian doctrines of Creation and the Trinity. Scaliger countered this accusation by documenting Aristotle’s remarks that he believed to support these teachings. He in this counterargument resorted to the belief of "prisca theologia," a belief widely shared by the Renaissance Platonists. According to him, since Aristotle shared the supreme wisdom with ancient sages such as Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, he could grasp, albeit partly, the truth that was to be revealed to the faithful several centuries later. Such coexistence of tension and interaction with the newly restored Platonism is what distinguishes Renaissance Aristotelianism from that of the Middle Ages.

“Concepts of Seeds and Nature in the Work of Marsilio Ficino,” in Michael J. B. Allen & Valery Rees (eds.), Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 257-284.

by Hiro Hirai

The volume is available at http://amzn.to/rdtpJS

1. Introduction
2. The Commentary on Plato's Symposium
3. The Commentary on Plato's Timaeus
4. The... more 1. Introduction
2. The Commentary on Plato's Symposium
3. The Commentary on Plato's Timaeus
4. The Platonic Theology
5. The De vita coelitus comparanda
6. The Commentary on the Enneades of Plotinus
7. The Sources for his Concept of Seeds

“Ficin, Fernel et Fracastor autour du concept de semence : aspects platoniciens de seminaria,” in Alessandro Pastore & Enrico Peruzzi (eds), Girolamo Fracastoro fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della natura (Florence: Olschki, 2006), pp. 245-260.

by Hiro Hirai

The volume is available at http://bit.ly/pVbofK

Girolamo Fracastoro (ca. 1478-1553) of Verona is known mainly by his contagion theory. His idea of the “seeds”... more Girolamo Fracastoro (ca. 1478-1553) of Verona is known mainly by his contagion theory. His idea of the “seeds” (semina) of diseases, already seen in his verse "Syphilis sive morbus gallicus" (Verona, 1530), was transformed into the concept of “seedbed of contagions” (seminaria contagionum) in his treatise "De contagione" (Venice, 1546). Since the influential article of the Singers (1917), it has been widely believed that Fracastoro’s theory was based on Lecretius’ idea of the “seeds of things” (semina rerum). However, there were several authors of his time (1520-1550) who developed the concept of seeds independently from Fracastoro. Jean Fernel (1497-1558) and Paracelsus (ca. 1493-1541) are good examples. Recent studies have shown that the ideas derived from seeds were amply discussed at that time not only in medicine but also in general natural philosophy. The origin of these Renaissance concepts of seeds can be found in the metaphysical cosmology of the Florentine Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). This study focuses on the Ficinian connection in the genesis of Fracastoro’s notion of "seminaria".

1. Introduction
2. Marsile Ficin et son concept de semence
3. Jean Fernel et sa réception des seminaria ficiniens
4. Les notions des seminaria et du "spiritus" chez Fracastor

“Circularity, the Soul-Vehicle, and the Renaissance Rebirth of Reincarnation: Marsilio Ficino and Isaac Abarbanel on the Possibility of Transmigration,” Accademia: Revue de la Societe Marsile Ficin, vol. VI (2004), pp. 63-94.

by Brian Ogren

"The Forty-Nine Gates of Wisdom as Forty-Nine Ways to Christ: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Heptaplus and Nahmanidean Kabbalah," Rinascimento: Journal of the National Institute for Renaissance Studies, vol. xlix (2009), pp. 27-43.

by Brian Ogren

Central Orbits and Corporeal Realities: Drawing and the Renaissance Workshop

by Paul Cureton

Co-authored, The Artist at Work in Early Modern Italy (c. 1450-1700): Methods, Materials, Models, Mimesis, Association of Art Historians, 15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow.

As testimony to the Renaissance’s emerging fascination with art’s mimetic capabilities, the interpretive force, if not... more As testimony to the Renaissance’s emerging fascination with art’s mimetic capabilities, the interpretive force, if not the connotative effect of Manetti’s anecdote recounting how Brunelleschi tendentiously inveigled a Florentine woodworker is at least partly given through the fat that he is labelled ‘the fat one.’ Such a conflation of cognisance with body-image can be taken as being more broadly symptomatic of the Renaissance’s deep-rooted fascination with the corporeal and how it could inhabit specific dimensional realities. Moreover, what the tale points towards is the fact that a certain bifurcation had become enacted within particular conceptions of the corporeal to the extent that, as Ian Harvie has noted, the Renaissance proffered a body-image that functioned as ‘an intact and liberated star-man harmonically attuned to, and master of cosmological forces.’ Whilst Harvie himself attributes this partly to the resurgence in Platonism, as an understanding it inflected, if not directly informed the very basis of an apprentice’s training. This fundamental claim will be explored within the context of both the theorisation and practice of drawing within the Renaissance workshop. To this end the over-arching aim of the paper is to examine the extent at which such discussion of ‘swollen feet,’ ‘distended bodies’ and ‘abnormal faces’ within particular treatises on drawing is more broadly indicative of the desire, on the part of the Renaissance artist, to proffer an account of the world and its inhabitants as being proportionate, harmonious and ultimately untrammelled.

La libertà del genio. Francisco de Hollanda e la teoria della creazione artistica

by Elisabetta Di Stefano

published in "Il concetto di libertà nel Rinascimento", (Atti del XVIII Convegno Internazionale Chianciano Terme- Pienza, 17-20 luglio 2006) a cura di Luisa Secchi Tarugi, Firenze, Franco Cesati, 2008, pp. 501-513 (ISBN 978-88-7667-351-1)

Il concetto di genio si forma nella temperie romantica, ma in realtà nella pratica artistica si annoverano figure... more Il concetto di genio si forma nella temperie romantica, ma in realtà nella pratica artistica si annoverano figure geniali anche prima del Settecento. Un caso esemplare è Michelangelo. Il divino, però, oltre le lettere e le Rime, non ha lasciato altra testimonianza scritta per cui questa nozione tarda a farsi strada nella storia delle idee. Però l’architetto e miniaturista portoghese Francisco de Hollanda, che aveva conosciuto Michelangelo durante un breve soggiorno romano (1538-42), rielaborò le idee del Maestro nel suo trattato Da pintura antiga, tracciando per la prima volta la figura del genio. Il Da Pintura Antiga, pertanto, si può considerare il solo trattato d’arte neoplatonico del Rinascimento. La teoria estetica di Francisco de Hollanda, incentrata sulla nozione di Idea infusa da Dio, reinterpretando la nozione classica di ingenium alla luce della melanconia cinquecentesca, delinea per la prima volta in un trattato di pittura il ritratto dell’artista creatore.