The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Italian art circa 1500: Mantegna, Antico, and Correggio (original) (raw)
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Routledge , 2023
The Allegory of Love in the Early Renaissance This monograph is the first full-length study to critically engage with the narrative of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and with Poliphilo as a character within this narrative in relation to the antiquarian, architectural, numerosophical, botanical and iconographical symbolism that frames each scene. The Hypnerotomachia is a Renaissance allegorical dream narrative published anonymously by the Aldine press in 1499 and attributed posthumously to Francesco Colonna (1433-1527) a Venetian Dominican priest (though which Francesco Colonna is still a matter of some debate). The narrative follows Poliphilo through a series of highly symbolic and allegorical scenes from the selva oscura (dark forest) of Brunetto Latini and Dante, through landscapes littered with classical ruins, through extraordinary gardens, architecture and topography, before a magical wedding ritual and eventual union with Polia, for whom he is searching for on his dream-love-journey. This book examines the love-journey of Poliphilo, and the series of symbolic, allegorical, and metaphorical experiences narrated by him that are indicative of his metamorphosing interiority within this mystagogic love journey. This is conducted through a narratological analysis of the relationship between Poliphilo and his external surroundings in sequences of the narrative pertaining to thresholds; the symbolic architectural, topographical, and garden forms and spaces; and Poliphilo’s transforming interior passions pertaining to his love of antiquarianism, language and rhetoric, and of Polia, the latter of which leads to his elegiac description of lovesickness. This is framed in relation to the broader European literary context from which this extraordinary narrative draws its inspiration from and which encompasses a great breadth of Medieval scholasticism and Renaissance humanism. This study examines the relationship between the narrative, which functions both realistically and symbolically to portray the protagonist’s transforming self into its final state at the climax of the narrative, and the symbolic function of the architecture and objects of art within the narrative. The monograph engages with the source material for the narrative that is drawn from classical, medieval, and Renaissance literature in the areas of philosophy, poetry, natural history, travel diaries and architectural treatises. It demonstrates, through analysis of the broad literary source material of the Hypnerotomachia, how antiquarian objects, buildings, gardens, and topography are used as expressive narrative devices by the author, drawing on medieval and humanist concepts, to demonstrate Poliphilo’s transforming interiority, symbolically, metaphorically or allegorically, and established through the character’s encounters during the narrative.
The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili : image and text in a Renaissance romance
Acknowledgments I am indebted to numerous friends and colleagues who have guided and enriched my journey at every turn. My advisors Paul Barolsky and David Summers first encouraged me to pursue my studies of the Polifilo; their unflagging support sustained me throughout, and their example continues to inspire me to follow in Poliphilo's path. My other readers, Francesca Fiorani and David Van Der Muelen provided valuable suggestions and advice on patronage, dedications, and incunabula. I also wish to express my gratitude to Anne Schutte,
Hidden in the vegetal ornament of one of the pilasters of the Camera Picta, Mantegna placed his self-portrait in the form of a leafy mask. In so doing, he introduced the sign of his authorship at the heart of a germinative process. This essay reconsiders the insertion of the self-portrait as an image of the generative power of the artist. Together with the room’s dedicatory inscription (in particular the term absoluvit), the date 1465 inscribed in the marble, as well as several pictorial inventions signalling the porosity between art and nature, the secret, changing and subtle poietical programme in the Camera Picta can be revealed.
This conference aims to discuss a forthcoming book : Déborah Blocker, Le Principe de plaisir: esthétique, savoirs et politique dans la Florence des Médicis (XVIe-XVIIe) (forthcoming with Les Belles Lettres in Paris, in it collection "Essais" : https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/collections/15-les-belles-lettres-essais). The book's central claims, its methods, its archival findings and the historiographical reframings it is advocating for will therefore be at the center of our debates. But we will also discuss the academic and civic culture of early modern Italy and the history of aesthetics more generally. For the manuscript purports to shed light on long-term transformations in the realm of aesthetics by closely examining the practices, discourses and ideas of a late 16th century Florentine academy, and of its aristocratic membership. The book principally focuses on understanding the Alterati’s conception of art as the source of a “praise-worthy pleasure” (lodevole diletto), analyzing in detail how this representation fits in with the social and political conceptions of the Florentine patricians who belonged to this academy, most of which stemmed from families which had fought to uphold the late Florentine Republic during the rise of the Medici. The study shows how their understandings of art, which centered on pleasure, freedom, parity and leisure, were initially at odds with conceptions of art developed under direct Medici patronage. It also studies the various ways in which, over the life of the academy, the Alterati’s hedonistic conceptions of art were progressively integrated into the culture of the Medici court. Finally, the book places the pleasure principle on which the Alterati based their aesthetic conceptions into comparative perspective, by drawing connections with 17th century France and 19th century Berlin. The central hypothesis of this study is that the pragmatic tension between courtship and defiance, which manifested itself in the affirmation of aesthetic of pleasure, amid and around an patrician academy such as that of the Alterati of Florence, was a major cultural phenomenon among the aristocracies of early modern Europe, as they adapted to the rise of authoritarian régimes — and one that has shaped understandings of art, literature and aesthetics to this day. This book is a thoroughly interdisciplinary investigation that attempts to delimit a new research field, which could be defined as the social and political history of early modern aesthetics. Aesthetic theories developed in and around German Idealism largely rejected the aesthetic discourses produced in early modern Italy and France as amateurish, irrational or lacking in historical perspective. Yet, many of the aesthetical concepts articulated throughout early modern Europe, such as that of pleasure, remain centrally important today, in our own aesthetical discourses or practices. The book attempts to understand the social and political circumstances in which these conceptions became important, in order to recover some of the early modern foundations of current understandings of art. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the project, ten speakers from a wide variety of disciplines and fields — such as social, political and/or intellectual historians of Florence (15th-18th centuries), scholars working in comparative literature and aesthetics across the early modern period, and scholars of early modern Italian literature, music and culture — have been brought together. Two of the speakers are UC Berkeley colleagues or graduate students (one of each), four are attached to other major American universities, two are from Italy (both will will be participating via Skype) and one will be coming from France. The manuscript is in French but discussions will be held in English and Italian. If you would like to receive a PDF of the manuscript prior to the conference, please email Déborah Blocker at dblocker@berkeley.edu. With the distinguished participation of Albert Ascoli (Terrill Distinguished Professor in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Déborah Blocker (Associate Professor of French and affiliated faculty in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Tim Carter (David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Louise George Clubb (Professor Emerita of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Arthur Field (Associate Professor Emeritus of Renaissance History, University of Indiana, Bloomington), Jean-Louis Fournel (Professor of Italian Studies, University of Paris-VIII and École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), Wendy Heller (Professor of Music and Director of the Program in Italian Studies, Princeton University), Jennifer MacKenzie (PhD in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Francesco Martelli (curator of Medicean collections at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze and scientific coordinator of its Scuola di archivistica, paleografia e diplomatica), Diego Pirillo (Associate Professor in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Maria-Pia Paoli (ricercatore in early modern Italian History at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) and Jane Tylus (Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, New York University).