Bulletin, Volume 4 - Issue 1 | I Tatti | The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies

February 25, 2015


Berenson Lectures on the Italian Renaissance	Celebrating the New I Tatti / RCAC Joint Fellowship

Paolo Galluzzi, historian of science and Director of the Museo Galileo in Florence, gave three lectures on "The Idea and Images of Machines in the Renaissance." Held in October, November, and December, the talks focused on Mariano di Jacopo (Il Taccola), Leonardo da Vinci, and Galileo Galilei - three of the most significant examples of "universal" technicians who united increasingly effective means of visual representation of machines with texts describing their structure and function. Begun in 2006, the Bernard Berenson Lectures consist of three lectures on any aspect of the Italian Renaissance, presented by a distinguished scholar, then published by Harvard University Press.	In January we welcomed our first I Tatti - RCAC Fellow. The Fellowship, offered by I Tatti and the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) of Koç University in Istanbul, is open to scholars with a project that represents advanced research in any aspect of the interaction between Italy and the Byzantine or the Ottoman Empire. I Tatti- RCAC Fellows spend one semester at each institution. In late 2014, a Berenson Library exhibition on the "Treasures of Byzantine and Ottoman Studies from the Biblioteca Berenson" and an Early Music at I Tatti concert on the Musical Traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean were dedicated to this new Fellowship.

Ottobre a I Tatti 2014 - from Florence to Siena	A Warm Welcome to our new Short-Term Fellows and Visiting Professors

The Director of I Tatti welcomed some of our most faithful and generous supporters back to Florence for the third event of its kind - Ottobre a I Tatti. The 2014 events program included a visit to the restoration laboratory of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, an evening dinner with the I Tatti Fellows on a terrace overlooking Florence, and a day in Siena on the trail of Domenico Beccafumi. Read more	The 2014/2015 I Tatti community gained several new members in January. Joining us are are I Tatti-RCAC Fellow Renate Burri, Graduate Fellows Denva Jackson and Jennifer De La Guardia, and Mellon Fellows Tayra Lanuza-Navarro and Levent Yilmaz. Our Visiting Professors are Jane Tylus from New York University and Mary Vaccaro from the University of Texas at Arlington.

I Tatti's Fettunta: A Fall Celebration	Upcoming Events
In Tuscany, fettunta refers to a slice of bread that has been toasted over an open fire and drizzled in the season's new olive oil. I Tatti produces oil at its Corbignano farm on the I Tatti estate, and late every November members of the I Tatti community take a break from their academic and professional lives to enjoy the new oil and crisp autumn weather at an al fresco lunch beside the farmhouse. At this year's Fettunta we were joined by a group of Japanese scholars who were using the I Tatti archives to examine epistolary exchanges between Bernard Berenson and Yukio Yashiro. After working with Berenson in the 1920s, Yashiro adapted Berenson's method for the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (Tokyo). Their letters will be at the center of an online exhibition, opening in time for Berenson's 150th birthday on June 26.	20 March: Study Day at I Tatti: The Berensons and Spain 26 - 28 March: The Sixty-First Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America 14 April: Study Day at I Tatti: Food Cultures in a Trans-Atlantic Perspective (15th - 16th Centuries) 22-24 April: "El Renacimiento Italiano desde América Latina" I Tatti conference in Oaxaca, Mexico 4 - 5 June: Conference at I Tatti: Renaissance Religions: Modes and Meanings in History