«The study and reception of Plato at the school of Vittorino da Feltre as revealed from two epistles of Sassolo da Prato» (original) (raw)

Note on the Fortune of the Epistles of Marcantonio Sabellico: The Case of Matteo Bandello

2021

This essay draws attention to the specific phenomenon of borrowings among contemporaries, using as an example Marcantonio Sabellico, whose magnificent descriptions often appeared elsewhere with the role of literary frescoes. I take a close look at the case of a 1493 letter to Barbavarus (Ep. III 18), part of which was reused by Sabellico in a different context (Enneades, X, lib. VIII). After finding this epistle, Matteo Bandello revived it and inserted it in his Parentalis oratio, written on the death of Francesco II Gonzaga. An edition of the letter, which ended up becoming a descriptive model par excellence of a bucentaur is presented in the Appendix.

Cosimo de' Medici and the 'Platonic Academy

Journal of The Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1990

Maxima ab nihilo nascitur historia-Propertius, ii, 1, 16 HE MOST FAMOUS of all stories about the Platonic Academy of Florence is the story of its founding. According to the traditional account, Cosimo de' Medici, during the Council of Florence in 1439, repeatedly heard the neopagan philosopher Gemistus Pletho delivering lectures on Plato and was inspired by his contact with the Byzantine to refound the Platonic Academy in his own city of Florence, the new Athens of Italy. Recognizing, however, that the time was not yet ripe for such an undertaking, he bided his time-for almost a quarter of a century-until he recognized in the young Marsilio Ficino the instrument through which his design might be accomplished. Noticing his attraction to Platonic philosophy, Cosimo arranged for the young man to learn Greek. In due course Cosimo gave Ficino a manuscript of the complete works of Plato, a house in Florence, and a house (in some versions a villa) near his own villa at Careggi which was to be the centre of the new Platonic Academy. These gifts were bestowed in 1462, the year which is usually taken to be the precise foundation date of the Florentine Academy. Under Cosimo's patronage-continued by his descendants Piero di Cosimo, Lorenzo and Piero di Lorenzo-the 'Academia Caregiana' flourished and became the spiritual home of the Florentine Renaissance in the later Quattrocento, numbering among its membership such luminaries as Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, Cristoforo Landino, and Lorenzo il Magnifico himself. This is clearly one of those stories too good to be examined closely, and it has been repeated by nearly every scholar who has written on Florentine culture or Renaissance Platonism.' It is a remarkable circumstance, however, that what might * I should like to thank Sebastiano Gentile, Jill Kraye and Paul Oskar Kristeller for reading this paper and offering valuable suggestions for its improvement. 1 It is hardly possible or necessary to list every scholar who has accepted the story, as it is widely diffused in guidebooks, general surveys and textbooks as well as specialist literature. Most have followed A. Della Torre, Storia dellU'Accademia Platonica di Firenze, Florence 1902, repr. Turin 1968, passim, but esp. pp. 457-68, despite the scepticism expressed by V. Rossi in his review published in the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, xliv, 1904, pp. 137-66, esp. pp. 150-57 (p. 157: 'Quanto a me resto perplesso, ma assai incline a reputare il racconto una invenzione, sia pure in buona fede, piuttosto che una verita'); cf. also idem, II Quattrocento, Milan 19648, p. 311. For Gustavo Uzielli, another contemporary critic of Della Torre, the story was simply another menzogna of Ficino's (see Della Torre, as above, p. 41). But Della Torre's version has received general acceptance, for example by N. A.

Cose di Platone fatte Toscane”: two vernacular translations of Plato printed by Francesco Priscianese

2012

the article offers the first textual and contextual study of Sebastiano erizzo's Treatise on the instrument and method of the ancients printed in Venice by Plinio Pietrasanta in 1554. through examination of previously unstudied paratextual material, it argues that the work is linked to discussions on method that took place at the university of Padua, and to the programmes of vernacularisation projected or developed under the aegis of the Accademia Veneziana and the Infiammiati; it is the result of a close collaboration between erizzo, Bassiano lando, Girolamo Ruscelli and lodovico dolce.

Poggio Bracciolini and Coluccio Salutati: The Epitaph and the 1405-1406 Letters

2020

Manuscript Magliabechiano VIII.1445 of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze seems to be the only witness of an epitaph that Poggio Bracciolini wrote for Coluccio Salutati. Using this concise yet sincere homage to the late chancellor, this essay discusses Poggio’s relationship both with him and the other major members of the Florentine humanist circle that started gathering around Salutati in the late fourteenth century. In doing so, it touches on such figures as – among others – Niccolò Niccoli and Leonardo Bruni. In particular, some early texts by Bruni (e.g., the Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum and his letters to fellow humanists dating from the early fifteenth century) are seen against the backdrop of his relationship with both Poggio and Salutati.

Francesco da Sangallo: un nome per due scultori

2016

This is the first account of Francesco di Vicenzo Baccelli da Sangallo, hitherto confused with the better-known Francesco di Giuliano Giamberti da Sangallo. This gives coherent form to the latter's style and biography, ridding his oeuvre of the traditional and incorrect attributions of earlier scholarchip, which belong instead to the partly homonymous artist: three narrative scenes from the marble revetment of the Holy House of Loreto, some small putti from the same decorative project, and -in all likelihood- some elements of the interior of the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence. The article seeks to clarify Baccelli's evolution during the 1520s in Rome, Florence and the Tyrrhenian coast, in the shadow of Michelangelo, in contact with the workshop of Brtolome Ordonez in Versilia, and subsequently within the circle of Niccolo Tribolo and Raffaello da Montelupo, with whom he had collaborated profesionally in Loreto.