Italian Renaissance Art

International conference, Moscow, Lomonosov State University, Museums of the Moscow Kremlin Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art,. 27-31 October 2015 The paper explores proto-political connotations of Pavel Muratov’s critical works — one of the most vivid examples of utopian thinking in Russian art historiography. The author makes an attempt to reconstruct a political context of Pavel Muratov’s Images of Italy, probably the most famous text on the reception of Renaissance art in the history of Russia. Special attention has been paid to the philosophical foundations of Muratov’s views such as vitalism, “philosophy of life”, theories of regeneration, and the ideas of a “conservative revolution” in Germany. Muratov’s aestheticism has a relation to Walter Benjamin’s conception of aesthetic politics and contemporary theories of totalitarianism. The paper traces the transformation of Muratov’s aestheticism into the classist and nationalistic theory, in different ways connected with fascist ideology. Renaissance art was appropriated by Muratov as a utopian alternative to modernity, democratic art of the “people”, special form of life, spontaneous, joyful, energetic, and alien to bourgeoisie and the upper classes of the society. The author examines the work of populist, anti-intellectualistic discourses in Muratov’s art criticism and draws the conclusion that his oeuvre was especially close to conservative Modernism and the radical political thinking of the conservative revolution. For the first time Muratov’s art criticism is analyzed in the context of his political writings of the 1920s and 1930s. Muratov’s conception of Renaissance art has been interpreted as one of the versions of romantic anti-capitalism.

The paper focuses on the category of “violent” or “extreme” laughter as represented in certain sixteenth-century paintings called pitture ridicole, or “ridiculous paintings.” The the perception of pitture ridicole and their effects on the viewer have been overlooked, probably because the adjective “ridiculous” (used at the time of the works’ production) seems to describe a laugh of superiority caused by the sight of ugliness or of behaviors that are presumed to have provoked the spectator’s amusement. I would instead like to underscore that these paintings were able to both amuse and trouble the viewer by exploiting the aggressive, threatening, desacralizing, and deceitful power of excessive laughter.

This essay seeks to show that early modern women paid serious attention to the artistic category of erotic myths. Be they queens or prostitutes, engravers or poets, Mennonites or English Catholics, women often took command of the use and display of such imagery. Some did so through suppression, consciously avoiding spaces where these images were kept and insisting that their nude parts be covered. Others did so through positive reinforcement, whether by commissioning and collecting them, or by using the paintbrush to create their own depictions of erotic myths.

Il paper presenta i risultati dell'analisi dello spazio dipinto in prospettiva da Filippo Lippi per ospitare la sua interpretazione del Convito di Erode nel Duomo di Prato. Una volta individuato il riferimento prospettico, attraverso il procedimento inverso della prospettiva conica lineare sono state restituite le proiezioni ortogonali della pianta e delle sezioni dell'architettura rappresentata, a partire dalle quali si è potuto ricostruire il modello tridimensionale dell'apparato scenico in cui si svolgono, in un'unità spazio-temporale, i tre momenti della narrazione. Nonostante la sostanziale regolarità dell'impalcato prospettico, le operazioni di restituzione hanno evidenziato una serie di deroghe operate dall'artista a favore della valenza estetica e dell'armonia dell'immagine finale per l'osservatore ideale del quadro. La ricostruzione tridimensionale ottenuta, infine, è finalizzata alla realizzazione di un modello tattil-mente esplorabile per la fruizione dello spazio dipinto da parte di utenti non vedenti. Parole chiave restituzione prospettica, Filippo Lippi, Convito di Erode, modellazione 3D, spazi dipinti.

O histórico de transmissão de Magnum haereditatis mysterium a partir de fontes primárias do cantochão é traçado em direção às publicações de época dos motetos homônimos arranjados por Willaert. A análise do cantochão mostra que suas fontes podem seguir duas correntes, uma com o modo hipodórico transposto e outra sem a transposição. Estas fontes foram comparadas, paralelamente ao Liber usualis, aos correspondentes canti firmi de edições dos motetos de Willaert a quatro ou a cinco vozes, visando uma compreensão maior do padrão de variação entre fragmentos correspondentes dos motetos. Para este propósito, foi realizada a análise melódica e silábica do texto, de acordo com as regras de colocação silábica de Lanfranco e Stocker. Finalmente, a comparação de um manuscrito deste moteto, anterior às suas publicações, é realizada, junto a uma discussão sobre cultura de impressão que sugere o envolvimento de intérpretes, compositores, editores e teóricos neste processo. 

The aim of these sessions is to explore the place and role of gardens in early modern academies and, conversely, the place of what might be called “academic culture” in early modern gardens. Although research on academies has developed considerably in recent decades, little has been written about the places where they met, including gardens, with the possible exception of the Bosco Parrasio in Rome. How did an academy choose its setting and why? How have literary and scientific activities and debates influenced the architectural, artistic and/or horticultural qualities of the place chosen? In other words, can the iconography of gardens be linked to academic activities? These questions demand that the garden be considered as a place of performance and require a multidisciplinary and intermedial approach.

L'analisi delle voci dell'inventario post mortem della collezione del principe di Conca ha messo in rilievo il suo grande interesse per la pittura veneta e padana del Cinquecento e ha permesso di ipotizzare il transito nella sua pinacoteca della perduta "Pala di Santa Marta" di Camillo Boccaccino, di cui restano molte testimonianze grafiche e documentarie, ma si sono perdute le tracce.

The book examines Federico Zuccari's trial and explusion from the Papal State following the exhibiton of the cartoon titled "Porta Virtutis" on the facade of the church of the church of St Luke.  The satyre mocked Paolo Ghiselli, who was part of pope Gregory XIII's inner circle, for having rejected an altarpiece by Zuccari for his family chapel in Bologna.
It represented him as the ass-eared Midas, punished by Apollo for his poor judgement. Contrary to Zuccari's statement the cartton was not a generic statement not to criticize too severely painters' works, but it was a very precise attack. The pope's fury against the painter could only be assuaged by the intervention of the duke of Urbino.

Tratto dall'intervento dell'autrice a The Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America - Berlin 2015, il saggio offre un'ampia riflessione sulla collezione del colto gentiluomo ferrarese Roberto Canonici, creatore nel primo Seicento di una celeberrima raccolta ricordata dalle fonti, ricca di dipinti attribuiti a pittori veneti e ferraresi del secolo precedente. Sulla base del testamento e del dettagliato inventario di Canonici, entrambi olografi, nel saggio si discutono le scelte critiche del collezionista, ampliando il numero delle opere identificate della raccolta.

This essay focuses on the perception of Arabic writing in Italian art between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, mostly through an analysis of the peculiar phenomenon known as pseudoscript. This pseudoscript seems to imitate and evoke the Arabic alphabet in terms of formal
features, but it is often unintelligible in terms of content. I will discuss five case studies of illegible script in specific association with their text field: on thresholds, on hems and borders of luxurious garments, around sacred figures, in marginal areas, and on frames. I will demonstrate that, far
from being simply “all Arabic,” script could retain very different nuances of meaning and function, depending on whether it was considered in terms of its shape, its constituting material, or where it appeared. Even the notion of illegibility was consciously manipulated to suggest different levels of secrecy of the message: obscure as magical writing, secretive as the power of the monarch, intimate as a prayer in one’s heart, marginal as an artist’s mark, and mysterious as a riddle.

The world of Bindino da Travale (1356–1418) seethed with conflict: citizen fought citizen, city-state fought city-state, popes fought emperors, and claimants to sees and thrones fought one another – as eventually did rival popes. To understand the complex world of fifteenth-century Italy, we must dive into the many long-lived enmities and shifting loyalties that shaped the lives of its inhabitants.

From this swirling mass of conflict, betrayal, and differences settled in the highest Church councils and in the streets, an otherwise obscure Tuscan artist, Bindino da Travale, crafted an amazingly colourful and exciting account of thirty crucial years in northern Italian history. His chronicle, for the most part dictated to his older son Giovanni, gathers Bindino’s extensive knowledge of contemporary politics, diplomacy, and battles, and combines it with his self-reflective comments and vivid imagination to produce a highly idiosyncratic and lively account of his times.