The study of the natural sciences and botanical and zoological illustration in Tuscany under the Medicis from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUCIA TONGIORGI TOMASI
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Still Life ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Microscopic Studies ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Accademia Del Cimento

A vast body of botanical and zoological illustrations was produced in Tuscany between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. This artistic activity was made possible by the humanistic-scientific tradition which had been established in Florence during the late fifteenth century, and was further encouraged by the Medici dynasty. The contributions made by three uniquely talented and original artists are discussed. Jacopo Ligozzi produced paintings of plants and animals whose scientific accuracy and artistic quality far surpassed anything achieved by his predecessors. The miniaturist Giovanna Garzoni produced floral paintings for the Medici family. Bartolomeo Bimbi combined the genre of botanical and zoological illustration with that of the still life to create works of striking originality. The crucial role played by the new scientific institutions created during the Renaissance is also discussed. A permanent artists' studio was set up in the mid-sixteenth century at Pisa Botanic Garden. Members of Accademia del Cimento in Florence engaged in pioneering studies with the microscope, a newly invented instrument which gave scientists and artists an entirely new perspective on the natural world. The scientist Francesco Redi carried out important work with the help of the artist Filizio Pizzichi who prepared stunning microscopic studies of insects.

scholarly journals TINCTORIS AND SIGNA CONGRUENTIAE: A NEW PERSPECTIVE

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 269-303
Author(s):  
Adam Whittaker
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Great Insight ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Printed Music ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Insight Into

The notational treatises of Johannes Tinctoris are among the most important texts on late fifteenth-century musical practice. His monumental treatise on the art of counterpoint, De arte contrapuncti, affords modern scholars a great insight into the intricacies of counterpoint practice on the cusp of the era of printed music theory. In the examples for this text, Tinctoris regularly uses additional markers to specify the key passages he is discussing. These signs often closely resemble signa congruentiae, though their function in these theoretical contexts is somewhat different from the deployment of such symbols in practical music sources. This article re-examines the historical justification for the term signa congruentiae, offering a new perspective on Tinctoris’s usage of such signs to explicate the rich text–example relationship underpinning his theoretical arguments and drawing attention to some novel uses of these signs that underpin these relationships.

‘Plusieurs choses qu'il n'avoit veuës’: Antoine Du Pinet's Translation of Pliny the Elder (1562)

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan Cerys Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Pliny The Elder ◽  
Bibliographical Information ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Complete Translation

Antoine Du Pinet's was the first complete translation into French of Pliny's Natural History. Biographical and bibliographical information is first provided on this humanist-educated translator, whose many publications include reformist and natural-historical works. The article then analyses the particular take on Pliny apparent in Du Pinet's editorial matter and in the minutiae of his translation choices. The controversy over Pliny's errors of the late fifteenth century (led by Niccolò Leoniceno) had called in question the Roman author's credibility, while populist compilations had celebrated him predominantly as a storehouse of wonders and monstrous marvels. Du Pinet, by contrast, uses his vernacular translation to recast Pliny's methodology and by so doing restore his authority and promote the importance of empiricism in accounts of the natural world.

Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. II. The Struggle for Trade

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
The South ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Atlantic Economy ◽  
Experienced Difficulty

Until 1471 the Wangara had enjoyed a monopolistic position in the Akan gold trade, consigning bullion to the markets of the Western Sudan (see the first part of this paper). The Portuguese entered the trade in the late fifteenth century, but experienced difficulty in deflecting gold to the coast. The strong demand for labour in the Akan country obliged them to import slaves from other parts of West Africa in order to achieve competitiveness. In 1477 Jenne – the principal northern outlet for Akan gold – fell to the Songhay, and for a time the Wangara were induced to do at least some of their business with the Portuguese. Subsequently the Wangara found markets for their gold as far west as the Gambia river. In the mid-sixteenth century the ruler of Mali, his frontiers crumbling on all sides, made a bid to take control of the Wangara gold trade. His troops occupied Bitu or Bighu, the Wangara entrepot on the edges of the Akan forest country, and he may (just possibly) have ordered an attack on Elmina, the principal Portuguese post on the coast to the south. If there was such a move against Elmina, it certainly failed, and at least some of the troops in Bitu did not return to Mali but set up their own state locally: Gonja. The developing Atlantic economy, built around new supplies of gold and new demands for slaves, eclipsed the older Mediterranean economy of which West Africa had been a geographically peripheral but commercially central part. The decline of Mali, and with it Bitu, was irreversible.

Pittenweem Priory and the conventuality question

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Lodge
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Significant Development ◽  
New Mother ◽  
Set Up ◽  
And Control

Pittenweem Priory began life as the caput manor of a daughter-house established on May Island by Cluniac monks from Reading (c. 1140). After its sale to St Andrews (c. 1280), the priory transferred ashore. While retaining its traditional name, the ‘Priory of May (alias Pittenweem)’ was subsumed within the Augustinian priory of St Andrews. Its prior was elected from among the canons of the new mother house, but it was many decades before a resident community of canons was set up in Pittenweem. The traditional view, based principally on the ‘non-conventual’ status of the priory reiterated in fifteenth-century documents, is that there was ‘no resident community’ before the priorship of Andrew Forman (1495–1515). Archaeological evidence in Pittenweem, however, indicates that James Kennedy had embarked on significant development of the priory fifty years earlier. This suggests that, when the term ‘non-conventual’ is used in documents emanating from Kennedy's successors (Graham and Scheves), we should interpret it more as an assertion of superiority and control than as a description of realities in the priory.

Contextualizing Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-240
Author(s):  
Clare Bokulich
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Moment

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.

Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Rodrigo Jimenez De Rada ◽  
The Way

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).

Mamluk Painting in the Late Fifteenth Century

1984 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Esin Atil
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Fifteenth
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