The Villa I Tatti Series

Although the works of Pietro Lorenzetti (1280–1348) rank among the most famous of the fourteenth century, one of his panels, a small Crucifixion, has remained largely overlooked, despite its unique imagery. Combining three temporal horizons—past, present, and eschatological future—within an unparalleled allegorical presentation of the Crucifixion, this panel grants precedence to Clare of Assisi over Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order. Probably created for a nun, Lorenzetti’s painting turns abstruse allegory into a vehicle for a self-conscious meditation on the power of painting itself. In Flesh and Fabric: The Raiment of the Passion in a Crucifixion by Pietro Lorenzetti, Jeffrey F. Hamburger explores the historical context of this panel as well as the subtleties of Pietro’s painting technique and iconographic imagination, enriching not only our understanding of one of the most innovative artists of the Trecento but also of Italian painting during one of its most generative periods. In addition to an iconographical analysis and historical contextualization of the panel, this volume includes a technical analysis that reveals the subtleties of the painting’s technique and reconstructs its original format, demonstrating that, from the start, this panel was a freestanding devotional image.

In his description of Ulysses in Canto XXVI of the Inferno, Dante subjected the legendary Greek hero to a thoroughgoing revision. The Homeric Ulysses, after ten years of war and a further ten of fabulous adventures throughout the Mediterranean, returns home to Ithaca and resumes his position as son, father, husband, and king of the island. In contrast, Dante’s Ulysses—and that of Tennyson, inspired by Dante and so beloved in America—is an ingenious but profoundly restless character who, in his unceasing quest for knowledge, novelty, and happiness, finds not fulfillment but death. His tragic story embodies the dilemma that human intelligence poses for our civilization today, torn between the endless pursuit of innovation and its ever more catastrophic risks. Ulysses and the Limits of Dante’s Humanism / Ulisse o dei limiti dell’umanesimo dantesco offers a bilingual English and Italian examination of that revision.

Persian Manuscripts & Paintings from the Berenson Collection presents an in-depth analysis of the little-known Persian manuscripts and paintings collected by the world-renowned art historian, art critic, and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865–1959). It focuses on three manuscripts and four detached folios (containing over fifty paintings) from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century produced in Iran and Central Asia (with a later addition in Mughal India).

Fourteen essays are written by an international team of specialists in art history, Persian literature, statistics, conservation, and conservation science. The first two essays introduce Berenson’s collecting of these art works as an individual and as a trend among other collectors. The rest of the essays explain individual works of art. The Timurid Rasaʾil and the Safavid manuscripts Shahnama of Firdawsi and Farhad va Shirin of Vahshi are examined in groups of essays ranging from art historical to literary, statistical, and codicological analysis. The detached folios studied as single essays originate from the famous Great Mongol Shahnama; the 1436 Timurid Zafarnama of Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi; a Turkman Shahnama; and the dispersed Imperial Mughal Album also known as the Minto, Wantage, and Kevorkian albums. The appendix refers to the materials and techniques of the paintings in the volume.

The act of eating is a basic human need. Yet in all societies, quotidian choices regarding food and its consumption reveal deeply rooted shared cultural conventions. Food goes beyond issues relating to biological needs and nutrition or production and commerce; it also reveals social and cultural criteria that determine what dishes are prepared on what occasions, and it unveils the politics of the table via the rituals associated with different meals. This book approaches the history of food in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy through an interdisciplinary prism of sources ranging from correspondence, literature (both high and low), and medical and dietary treatises to cosmographic theory and iconographic evidence. Using a variety of analytical methods and theoretical approaches, it moves food studies firmly into the arena of Late Medieval and Renaissance history, providing an essential key to deciphering the material and metaphorical complexity of this period in European, and especially Italian, history.

This comprehensive, interdisciplinary collection illuminates many previously unexplored aspects of the Basilica of San Lorenzo’s history, extending from its Early Christian foundation to the modern era. Brunelleschi’s rebuilt Basilica, the center of liturgical patronage of the Medici and their grand-ducal successors until the nineteenth century, is today one of the most frequently studied churches in Florence. Modern research has tended, however, to focus on the remarkable art and architecture from ca. 1400–1600. In this wide-ranging collection, scholars investigate: the urban setting of the church and its parish; San Lorenzo’s relations with other ecclesiastical institutions; the genesis of individual major buildings of the complex and their decorations; the clergy, chapels and altars; the chapter’s administration and financial structure; lay and clerical patronage; devotional furnishings, music, illuminated liturgical manuscripts, and preaching; as well as the annual or ephemeral festal practices on the site. Each contribution offers a profound exploration of its topic, wide-ranging in its chronological scope. One encounters here fresh archival research, the publication of relevant documents, and critical assessments of the historiography. San Lorenzo is represented in this volume as a living Florentine institution, continually reshaped by complex historical forces.

.The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti surveys the 149 works assembled by the Berensons for their home in Florence from the late 1890s through the first decades of the twentieth century at the time that they were making their mark on the world as connoisseurs. The catalogue presents a privileged window on the Berensons' intellectual interests through the objects they owned. The entries, written by an international team of art historians, take full advantage of the extensive correspondence from the Berensons' friends, family, and colleagues at I Tatti as well as the couple's diaries and notations on the backs of their vast gathering of photographs. All the entries are lavishly illustrated with full scholarly and technical accountings of the objects. There are also 17 illustrated reconstructions of the original contexts of panel paintings. The catalogue includes essays on the progress of the Berensons' collecting, their love for Siena, the Sienese forger Icilio Federico Joni, the critic Roger Fry, and René Piot's murals at I Tatti, as well as a listing of 94 pictures that were once at I Tatti including donations made to museums in Europe and America.

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The Medici controlled fifteenth-century Florence. Other Italian rulers treated Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) as an equal. To his close associates he was "the boss" ("master of the workshop"). But Lorenzo liked to say he was just another Florentine citizen. Were the Medici like the kings, princes and despots of contemporary Italy?  Or were they just powerful citizens? This book takes a novel, comparative approach.  It sets Medici rule against princely states such as Milan and Ferrara. It asks how much the Medici changed Florence and contrasts their supremacy with earlier Florentine regimes. The contributors take diverse angles, focusing on politics, political thought, social history, economic policy, religion, the church, humanism, intellectual history, Italian literature, theater, festivals, music, imagery, iconography, architecture, historiography, and marriage. This book is perfect for students of  History, Renaissance Studies, Italian Literature, Art History or anyone keen to learn about one of history's most colorful, influential and puzzling families