On Some Italian Renaissance Caskets with Pastiglia Decoration

1946 ◽  
Vol 26 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
W. L. Hildburgh

The minor arts of the Renaissance in Italy included the ornamentation of small wooden boxes with reliefs moulded in a plastic material which was applied while yielding and hardened subsequently to the firmness of a soft stone. Although persons of a romantic turn of mind like to call such boxes ‘jewel-caskets’, it would seem more probable that they were made for the use of persons of moderate means, as substitutes for the caskets of precious materials such as were used by the rich, to contain trinkets and small oddments rather than gems or jewellery. In the fourteenth century and during a great part of the fifteenth the pastiglia covered the whole, or almost the whole, of the outer surface of its wooden foundation, was in most cases modelled smoothly in gentle gradations of relief, and was painted with colours which accentuated the forms of its comparatively large figures and supplied details of the decoration. In the second half of the fifteenth century, and continuing into the sixteenth, the decoration, in both its figures and its conventionalized ornament, was on a much smaller scale and in much sharper relief, and was applied to a level surface which might itself be a kind of pastiglia, either plain or marked all over with a regular repeated pattern.

Author(s):  
Steven N. Dworkin

This short anthology contains extracts from three Castilian prose texts, one from the second half of the thirteenth century (General estoria IV of Alfonso X the Wise), one from the first half of the fourteenth century (El conde Lucanor of don Juan Manuel), and one from near the mid-point of the fifteenth century (Atalaya de las corónicas of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera). These passages illustrate in context many of the phonological, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features of medieval Hispano-Romance described in the body of this book. A linguistic commentary discussing relevant forms and constructions, as well as the meaning of lexical items no longer used or employed with different meanings in modern Spanish, with cross references to the appropriate sections in the five main chapters, accompanies each selection.


Slavic Review ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Klassen

Throughout European history the aristocracy has been involved in reform movements which undermined either ecclesiastical or monarchical power structures. Thus the nobles of southern France in the twelfth century granted protection to the Cathars, and in fourteenth-century England lords and knights offered aid to the Lollards. The support of German princes and knights for Lutheranism is well known, as is the instrumental role played by the French aristocracy in initiating the constitutional reforms which gave birth to that nation's eighteenth-century revolution. The fifteenth-century Hussite reform movement in Bohemia similarly received aid from the noble class. Here, when the Hussites were under attack in 1417 from the authorities, especially the archbishop, sympathetic lords protected Hussite priests on their domains.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara E. Scappini ◽  
David Boffa

The Fonte Gaia from Renaissance to Modern Times examines the history of Siena's famous public fountain, from its fifteenth-century origins to its eventual replacement by a copy in the nineteenth century (and the modern fate of both). The book explores how both the Risorgimento and the Symbolist movements have shaped our perceptions of the Italian Renaissance, as the Quattrocento was filtered through the lens of contemporary art and politics.


Traditio ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 257-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza

There are many still unstudied aspects of the cultural history of early Quattrocento Rome, especially if we consider the years before 1443, the date of the more or less permanent re-entry into the civitas aeterna of Pope Eugenius IV. The nexus between the still ephemeral papacy and the emerging intellectual movement of Italian Renaissance humanism is one of these aspects. It is hoped that this study will shed some light on this problem by presenting a document that has hitherto not been completely edited: the original will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini. As we shall see, this important witness to the fifteenth century provides valuable information on many fronts, even on the structure of the old basilica of Saint Peter. The short introduction is in three parts. The first has a discussion of the cardinal's cultural milieu with a focus on the only contemporary treatise specifically about curial culture, Lapo da Castiglionchio's De curiae commodis. The second part addresses the textual history of the will as well as some misconceptions which have surrounded it. The third part contains a discussion of the will itself, along with some preliminary observations about what can be learned from the critical edition of the text here presented for the first time.


2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057-1097 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily O'Brien

AbstractIn their title, theCommentariesof Pope Pius II recall the works of Julius Caesar by the same name. The connections between these ancient and humanist histories, however, run much deeper. This article explores this relationship in detail and in the broader historical and historiographical contexts of fifteenth-century Italy. It argues that in both Caesar's histories and in his career more generally, Pius found much that resonated with his own experiences, challenges, and goals. More importantly, he found in these ancientCommentariesvaluable apologetic strategies for constructing his own textual self-portrait as both pope and prince. In choosing Caesar's histories as his models, Pius was following a recent historiographical precedent. Several Italian Renaissance humanists had also turned to Caesar's works as guides for writing histories about leaders of contemporary temporal politics. This article argues that by adopting the same models when shaping his own image, Pius was effectively politicizing his self-portrait in hisCommentaries.


1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 770-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen S. Ettlinger

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.


Author(s):  
Sherry D. Fowler

Two wooden sculpture sets of Six Kannon, the thirteenth-century set from Daihōonji in Kyoto attributed to the artist Higō Jōkei and the fourteenth-century set from Tōmyōji in the Minami Yamashiro district of Kyoto, are well-documented sets that show the history, modifications, and movement of the cult. Copious inscriptions inside images in the respective sets reveal diverse sponsorship, from an elite female patron in the former to a huge group of patrons from a variety of backgrounds in the latter. Extant thirteenth- to fifteenth-century written records on ritual procedures, such as Roku Kannon gōgyōki, which focused on Six Kannon, contribute to the knowledge of how the rituals related to Six Kannon were performed as well as how the Six Kannon functioned in response to different needs, such as assisting with the six paths, protecting the dharma, or bolstering sectarian heritage, throughout their changing circumstances and movement over time.


Author(s):  
Marta Celati

The present work represents the first full-length investigation of Italian Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracy. This literary output consists of texts belonging to different genres that enjoyed widespread diffusion in the second half of the fifteenth century, when the development of these literary writings proves to be closely connected with the affirmation of a centralized political thought and princely ideology in Italian states. The centrality of the issue of conspiracies in the political and cultural context of the Italian Renaissance emerges clearly also in the sixteenth century in Machiavelli’s work, where the topic is closely interlaced with the problems of building political consensus and the management of power. This monograph focuses on the most significant Quattrocento texts examined as case studies (representative of different states, literary genres, and of both prominent authors—Alberti, Poliziano, Pontano—and minor but important literati) and on Machiavelli’s works where this political theme is particularly pivotal, marking a continuity, but also a turning point, with respect to the preceding authors. Through an interdisciplinary analysis across literature, history, philology and political philosophy, this study traces the evolution of literature on plots in early Renaissance Italy, pointing out the key function of the classical tradition in it, and the recurring narrative approaches, historiographical techniques, and ideological angles that characterize the literary transfiguration of the topic. This investigation also offers a reconsideration and re-definition of the complex facets of fifteenth-century political literature, which played a crucial role in the development of a new theory of statecraft.


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