Yuri Rudnev

This paper sketches the intellectual connections to the Florentine Academy (1540-1583) that the famous artist Benvenuto Cellini had during his life. I bring to light the earlier neglected passages of Cellini's Vita in which he describes his activities in the Academy. Connecting the period when the Vita was written with the development of the Academy and with the biography of another Florentine artists, Agnolo Bronzino, participated in there, I conclude that Cellini's autobiography must have been a literary attempt to be admitted again to this Florentine think tank after he had been retired from there in 1547.

This paper is based on the idea that some Renaissance artists deliberately reinforced the exclusive nature of both their creative process (ingegno) and the masterpieces they produced by using elements of Platonic philosophy in order to appropriate the representation of the Divine beauty by disegno. It is no discovery that these artists were the first who intentionally elevated their craftsmanship to a new socio-cultural level; however, an important question needs to be asked. How and through what means did artisans understand their own transformation into artists? I will demonstrate that these means were adopted from Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium. Ficino’s interpretation of amor Socraticus and the diabolic/divine frenzies had a particularly strong influence on Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) and later on became viewed as intrinsic parts of an artistic personality. Thus, Cellini designed an outstandingly long autofiction to legitimize the transcendent origins of his foremost masterpiece, Perseus, and to show off the exceptional learnedness of his maniera. Cellini’s Vita and other literary works, which have not been studied from such an angle, make it possible to substantiate the “Renaissance Neo-Platonic artist” as an ideal type. This model would explain the self-representations of many prominent Florentine artists of the 15th–16th c., namely, Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini, and others.

This study is devoted to the emotional experience of the famous Renaissance sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), as it is portrayed in his life writing, the Vita. Providing the variety of arguments on the connection between the artist and contemporary intellectuals, who attended the Florentine Academy (1540–1583) together, I demonstrate that Cellini’s literary production can be examined productively against the background of Neoplatonic thought. In particular, Marsilio Ficino’s On Love, first published in the vernacular Italian in 1544, helps to establish an explanation of what Cellini meant when he decided to play the cornet while falling in love simultaneously with a young boy and girl, or  how he justified kicking or punching his servants, or why he did not kill his adversary, the artist Baccio Bandinelli, when he had the chance. These cases of radical affectivity are inscribed into Ficino’s concept of the “melancholy genius” manifesting melancholic madness. In Cellini’s Vita, the latter can not only turn humans almost into beast, literally (for example, in a bat); but, properly tempered by the means of music and poetry, as well as of individual and collective magic, it elevates one’s soul “on high,” which corresponds to the Neoplatonic concept of divine madness.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1.  Benvenuto Cellini and the Florentine Academy
1.1 Why did the Italian academies emerge?
1.2 Academic movement before the Florentine Academy
1.3 The Florentine Academy
1.4 Benvenuto Cellini’s writings in the context of the Florentine Academy
Chapter 2.  “Essendo io per natura malinconico”: Benvenuto Cellini and the Ficinian Legacy
2.1 “Grand theories” and “grounded” early-modern artists
2.2 Marsilio Ficino’s On Love
2.3 “Melancholy genius” concept
2.4 (Neo)Platonic love
Chapter 3.  “Tu ten sei gito a contemplar su ’n Cielo l’alto Fattore”: Benvenuto Cellini Ascending on High
3.1 Esoteric knowledge and censorship
3.2 “Furor divino” and “diabolico furore”
3.3 Different kinds of furor divino in the Vita
Conclusion

The research conducted by this paper has been largely updated and elaborated in my MA-thesis "Senses and Passions of Benvenuto Cellini"; you are more than welcome to check it out. // The article aims to rethink the several stereotypes of Romantic tradition, which are still reproduced in regard to Benvenuto Cellini and his Vita. Using the approaches of intellectual history and iconographical studies, the present study pays attention to the coherent system of lay, scientific and ‘secret’ knowledge of the epoch lurking under the surface of the simplicity and even naivety of the author’s language. I argue that this autobiographical writing embodies a certain type of culture of the self deeply rooted in contemporary medical, alchemical and magical contexts. Organized around the concept of “getting pleasure,” Cellini’s practices of the self are built into the Neo-Platonic picture of the world. Analyzing the two passages of Vita, I demonstrate the author’s spiritual ascent from the corporeal suffering to union with ‘the One’ by means of individual and collective magic rituals, transforming his Life into a work of art.

Niccolò Machiavelli, as it is commonly believed, is a thinker who founded the ‘realist’ approach of the Modern political theory. The article questions that view, analyzing the several concepts of Machiavellian “Prince” which very likely alluded to the traditions of humoral medicine, astrology, sympathetic magic, and alchemy. I argue that in concern to the “fox” and “lion” the author presumes not the direct imitation of their habits, but a fairly elaborated ‘secret’ doctrine or even “technique of the self” (Michel Foucault). Very likely, the images of “lion” and “fox” were to be grasped by the reader through the interplay of the literary, profane, and even "secret" contexts of the Renaissance knowledge.
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Принято считать, что Никколо Макиавелли был одним из тех мыслителей, которые заложили основы «реалистического» подхода, свойственного политической теории Модерна. В исследовании Ю.Руднева, опирающегося на достижения современной интеллектуальной истории, представлена и обоснована альтернатива такой точке зрения. Анализируя некоторые концепты языка «Государя», отсылающие к традициям гуморальной медицины, астрологии, симпатической магии и алхимии, автор приводит аргументы в пользу того, что, говоря об уподоблении лисе и льву, Макиавелли имел в виду не просто подражание их качествам, но определенную «тайную науку» или же «технику себя», как ее понимал Мишель Фуко. По его заключению, «лев» и «лиса» – это образы, которые должны были раскрываться потенциальному читателю трактата именно за счет игры контекстов (более явных и «тайных»), к которым он был причастен как человек эпохи Возрождения.

Без знания и цитирования Мишеля Фуко трудно представить себе современную гуманитарную науку. Доминирующая в ней англоязычная традиция исследований даже породила особую междисциплинарную область Foucault Studies, представители которой используют теорию Фуко при анализе широкого круга актуальных социокультурных и политических феноменов. Настоящая статья рассматривает процесс становления и характерные черты Foucault Studies, уделяя особое внимание механизмам, с помощью которых фукольдианцы как корпорация последователей Фуко перешли от толкования его текстов к их выборочному прочтению и инструментализации основных концептов мыслителя.
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Michel Foucault inspired by Ernst Kantorowicz once said we have to “cut off the head of the king” in political analysis. By that metaphor he meant approaching political power not as a figure of sovereign, but as a set of technologies smoothly and anonymously enveloping an individual. Could he imagine that Kantorowicz's motto would be even over-realized? Influenced by Foucault’s later works, it changed the views of power not only in the political analysis, but it also echoed in the distant regions of Humanities. Among them, the studies of Foucault’s oeuvre in itself dislodged his real biographical figure that was replaced by the ‘life of a saint’ bestowing his followers with the scholarly commandments.

This process could be traced in works adjusting Foucault’s theory for the needs of the contemporary globalized Anglosphere and to its demand for the critical analysis of (neo)liberalism. Starting from Colin Gordon’s "Power/knowledge" reader (1980), we notice the tendency to read Foucault selectively. “An aleatory, open-ended collage,” in Gordon’s words, became the most cited book (viz. Google Scholar stats) presenting both Foucault works and his new image reflecting the “1968 Mai” events. Another image of Foucault as a “quintessential embodiment of hyper intelligence and frustratingly difficult ‘French thought’” (Clare O’Farrell) thus was marginalized in literary and historical studies.

The dominating Anglophone foucauldians present themselves as a solid community; it has formulated a peculiar approach to Foucault’s theory rhetorically justified by the aim to detect the "Foucault effect" (1991). This collective work in governmentality by today has become the most cited work inspired by Foucault (viz. Google Scholar stats), and its main ideology was formulated as a social-political criticism strengthened with foucauldian idea to develop and expand his theory in the unexplored subject matters.

Such kind of studies grew exponentially during the last 20 years, and even the journal "Foucault Studies" appeared in 2004. Initiated by the Anglophone community of foucauldians, it encourages “scholars to depart from conventional disciplinary strictures while still performing their own rigorous research. Foucault's name serves here as an invitation, not the name on the door of a closed club” (Focus and Scope). Thus Foucault’s thought has become here not a self-sufficient framework or a core subject of study, but rather a ‘tool’ to analyze the present social-politic problems of European societies.

Руднев Ю. В. Рецепция "Истории безумия" Мишеля Фуко представителями Школы "Анналов" // Диалог со временем. 2016. № 57. С. 138-153.
Часть исследователей, дискутирующих о научном статусе «историй» Мишеля Фуко, выдвигает гипотезу об их близости работам представителей школы «Анналов». Настоящая статья приводит ряд аргументов в пользу этой позиции, анализируя рецепцию «Истории безумия» одновременно на уровне истории идей и в контексте межличностных и институциональных отношений, складывавшихся между автором и «анналистами» до и после появления книги в печати. Как показывает такой комплексный взгляд, «анналисты» не только сыграли решающую роль в публикации книги и практиковали схожие стратегии академического развития, но и создали историографический миф о том, что Фуко – «истинный последователь Люсьена Февра».
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The debate on the scientific status of Michel Foucault’s “Histories” is one of the fiercest in Humanities. Scholars occasionally presume his works as closely connected to those of the Annales historians. In the article, I contribute to such view analyzing the reception of “The History of Madness” simultaneously in the contexts of the history of ideas, and both institutional and personal relations between the author and Annalistes before and after the publication. As I demonstrate, Fernand Braudel and Robert Mandrou not only promoted the book’s publication, but also introduced the historiographical myth of Foucault being “a true disciple of Lucien Febvre.”

The study of medieval affectivity has only recently departed from the works of its founding fathers, yet it has been progressing at a remarkable pace. Today, the multiple emotional universes of fascinating complexity and diversity are being revealed. This new landscape is confirmed once again in a remarkable study by Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio devoted to the emotions of Christianity. I would like to draw attention to this book also because of the recent English translation of Medieval Sensibilities: A History of Emotions in the Middle Ages (2018) by Damien Bouquet and Piroska Nagy, which originally appeared in French in 2015. It makes a perfect companion to the as-yet untranslated Passioni dell’anima, or Passions of the Soul, as both studies point out the bloom of the “fertile land, albeit unexplored in many regions,” in the words of Casagrande and Vecchio.
URL: http://voxmediiaevi.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/VMA-2019-1-132-142-rudnev.pdf

The main aim of this paper is to explain the institutional and theoretical relationships, developing between Michel Foucault and the representatives of “Nouvelle histoire” in France during the period of his formation as an independent scholar and intellectual (the so-called “archaeological” period). I am going to define more precisely the place of Foucault’s historical studies in the context of historical science and to reshape and expand the denotation of the “Nouvelle histoire” concept.