Female Patronage of Art and Architecture, Renaissance Italy

The story of Anna as a childless woman in the second-century Protevangelion, the outbreak of Iconoclasm and the need to support the dogma of Incarnation, the growing number of Marian homilies dating from the eighth and ninth centuries on the conception of Anna and the nativity of Mary, and hagiography facilitated the spread of St. Anna’s veneration from the ninth century onwards and also her association with problems of in sterility and protection of childbirth. This ideological association is the nucleus around which the writer/editor of the Patria constructs his female patronage stories and demonstrates the value of the study that St. Anna’s veneration can offer to Byzantium scholarship.

L’articolo si prefigge di gettare nuova luce sul profilo pubblico di Vittoria Colonna attraverso un duplice percorso di indagine. In primo luogo si procede alla ricognizione delle vicende correlate all’attività di governo sia dei feudi ereditati dal genitore Fabrizio, che degli assetti patrimoniali del consorte Francesco Ferrante d’Avalos, con particolare attenzione ai fatti che furono alla base della reggenza del ducato di Benevento. In seconda istanza, si esaminano le dinamiche connesse al ruolo di Vittoria Colonna quale mecenate, proponendo inoltre una riconsiderazione dell’ormai assodata definizione di “cenacolo” letterario in riferimento alla corte della nobildonna al Castello Aragonese d’Ischia.

Sister Domenica da Paradiso founded La Crocetta, a Dominican-affiliated convent, in Florence in 1511. The architecture reflected Girolamo Savonarola's focus on simplicity in his imagined but never built convent. The convent also provided a safe space for Sister Domenica to  engage in her unusual activity of preaching and giving sermons to her conventicle of secular followers and her nuns.

Volume Editors: Virginia Cox & Shannon McHugh
Series: Gendering the Late Medieval & Early Modern World
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

This edited collection presents fresh and original work on Vittoria Colonna, perhaps the outstanding female figure of the Italian Renaissance, a leading Petrarchist poet, and an important figure in the Italian Reform movement. Until recently best known for her close spiritual friendship with Michelangelo, she is increasingly recognized as a powerful and distinctive poetic voice, a cultural and religious icon, and an important literary model for both men and women. This volume comprises compelling new research by established and emerging scholars in the fields of literature, book history, religious history, and art history, including several studies of Colonna’s influence during the Counter-Reformation, a period long neglected by Italian cultural historiography. The Colonna who emerges from this new reading is one who challenges traditional constructions of women’s place in Italian literature: no mere imitator or follower, but an innovator and founder of schools in her own right.

For more info, visit https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463723947/vittoria-colonna

"Todo parece indicar que el diseño para la tumba de Carlos de Aragón y Navarra elaborado en el medio artístico napolitano de mediados del Quinientos para el Pilar de Zaragoza no era un simple bosquejo, sino que se trataba de una muestra con la que se ofrecía una fórmula codificada, pero susceptible de adecuarse a las exigencias de otros clientes, que se utilizaría, por ejemplo, en la ejecución del sepulcro de Federico Urriés, levantado en la iglesia de San Giacomo degli Spagnoli de Nápoles. El hecho de que la ejecución de este sepulcro se sitúe en la órbita de Annibale Caccavello permite plantear la posibilidad de que el diseño conservado en Zaragoza se realizase en ese mismo contexto artístico.

All seems to indicate that the plan for the grave of Carlos de Aragón y Navarra, which was elaborated in Neapolitan artistic circles halfway through the Quinientos for the Pilar of Zaragoza, was not only a mere sketch, but had to do with a sample with which a codified formula was offered. The latter was subject to be adapted to the demands of other clients which, for instance, would be used in the execution of Federico Urriés’s tomb, built in the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli of Naples. The fact that the building of this tomb was placed under Annibale Caccavello’s control allows us to consider the possibility that the plan conserved in Zaragoza was executed within that same artistic context."

The bicentenary of the birth of the Swiss scholar, Jacob Burckhardt (25 May 1818 - 8 August 1897), author of "The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" (1860), seems an appropriate moment at which take stock and consider whether or not the idea of an ‘Italian Renaissance’ is still a hermeneutically helpful one. This conference will task an interdisciplinary team of scholars of Renaissance studies as well as of Burckhardt himself to interrogate both the Swiss historian’s own agenda as well as the contemporary validity and helpfulness of the label ‘Italian Renaissance’. Specific reference will be made to the themes treated in his classic account: the state as a work of art; development of the individual; revival of antiquity; discovery of the world and of man; society and festivals; morality and religion.

Convenors:
Professor Simon Ditchfield, University of York
Professor Michelle O’Malley, The Warburg Institute
Dr Stefan Bauer, University of York

"Este artículo presenta un diseño localizado en el Archivo Capitular del Pilar de Zaragoza que, fechado en 1550, recoge el proyecto para la elevación del monumento funerario de Carlos de Aragón y Navarra en la capilla de San Braulio de ese mismo templo. Las inscripciones que presenta, sus características técnicas y la naturaleza de su propuesta —estrechamente relacionada con las seguidas en otras tumbas florentinas, romanas, genovesas y, sobre todo, napolitanas del periodo—, inclinan a presumirle una procedencia italiana. Por todo ello, la traza —que pudo encargarse desde Valencia—, constituye el primer testimonio conocido de la intención de importar un sepulcro para instalarlo en la Zaragoza del Quinientos.

This article presents a drawing found in the Pilar’s Chapter Archive of Zaragoza. The drawing, dated in 1550, shows the project of a funerary monument to be erected to honor the memory of Charles of Aragon in the chapel of San Braulio. Due to its inscriptions, its technical features and its similarities to some other tombs of the period in Florence, Rome, Genoa and, specially, Naples, we presume an Italian origin for this drawing. Because of that, the design, wich could have been charged from Valencia, represents the first known evidence of the purpose of importing a tomb to be erected in Zaragoza in the sixteenth century."