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Renaissance Collects and Collections: The Triumph of Time and Truth, an Oratorio
Annunciation, Benvenuto Tisi (Garofalo), 1528, from the Collection of Musei Capitolini [note the flowers and return to https://wordpress.com/post/recarenascencaemcontracena.wordpress.com/1471] Edmund Spenser – Easter Most glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;And, having harrowd hell, didst bring awayCaptivity thence captive, us to win:This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy…
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Renaissance naturalia/artificialia
Wenzel Jamnitzer (attributed), Flower vase, Nuremberg, ca. 1550-1585, and later additions; cast silver, silver filigree and gilded silver The fully intended deception of the senses, alongside the feeling of awe, is in fact one of the reasons behind the creation of such wondrously realistic depictions of nature during the Renaissance, which served as true “epistemic”…
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Cabinets of Curiosities, lists and collections in Contemporary Fiction (Utz) and Renaissance Religion with Saint Teresa of Ávila
Cabinet of corals, second half of the sixteenth century. (Schloss Ambras Innsbruck) Bruce Chatwin’s Utz (1989): collections as material autobiographies — https://revistadaanpoll.emnuvens.com.br/revista/article/view/1860 Abstract: The article deals with collecting in Utz (1989), by Bruce Chatwin. I read the fascination with collectors and collecting in the novel from and across two theoretical questions: (1) can objects enfold…
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Renaissance Birth and 2024 Renewal
Gerard David, Adoration of the Magi, National Gallery, London, circa 1515 “Were we led all that way for / Birth or Death?” one of the Magi asks in T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi. The Magi, returning from a difficult winter journey on which they witnessed the miraculous newborn Christ, return to their kingdoms no longer at…
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Renaissance Christmas
Which brings us back to what should be the main focus of all Nativity Scenes: the beauty, hope, and utter humility inherent in the [re]birth of the Savior. This ideal is epitomized in Gerard van Honthorst’s Adoration of the Christ Child (1619–1621): I have endeavoured … to raise the Ghost ofan Idea, which shall not put my…
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REC Seminars/Seminários REC (Régis Augustus Bars Closel, Pedro Süssekind Viveiros de Castro, Roberto Ferreira da Rocha, Paul Stevens, James Dunnigan, Stephen Fallon)
Professor Régis Augustus Bars Closel: O passado assombra a redação de peças do período de Shakespeare. Heróis e vilões são constantemente ressuscitados e revivem suas histórias para o público contemplar, pensar e avaliar. De gêneros filosófico-literários, como o Mirror for Magistrates (1559), às alegorias situadas no continente, passando por uma variedade de acontecimentos clássicos ou recentes, o…
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Renaissance Illuminations with Benjamin: Memento Vivere, Vanitas, Homo Bulla Est
Memento Vivere, Vanitas, Homo Bulla Est … Vanitas (Latin for ‘vanity‘) is a genre of art which uses symbolism to show the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. The paintings involved still life imagery of transitory items. The genre began in the 16th century and continued into the 17th century. Vanitas art is a type…
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Links and CFPs
Ugo da Carpi after Francesco Parmigianino, Diogenes, c. 1527, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Philippa Calnan in memory of her mother Matilda Loeser Calnan, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA Open Yale Courses : Milton – https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-220 Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts – https://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-251 Dante in Translation – https://oyc.yale.edu/italian-language-and-literature/ital-310…
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The Renaissance: “Look at yourself in the mirror, not at the mirror”
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436801 Renaissance artists, particularly northern Renaissance artists, loved their mirrors and used them not only in their paintings but also as a device to perfect their technical/humanist skills. Between Knowing and Doing: Mirrors and Their Imperfections in the Renaissance. Sara J. Schechner, Vol. 10, No. 2, Optics, Instruments and Painting, 1420-1720, Reflections on the Hockney-Falco…
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REC: Publicações Recentes e Iminentes / Forthcoming and Recent Publications
Giovanni di Paolo (Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia) Italian1445. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436512 1. Quais são as grandes questões da Literatura Comparada ontem e hoje? O viés comparatista foi posto em primeiro plano e revolvido, ao longo do século XX, por vertentes teóricas, as mais diversas, as quais contribuíram para desestabilizar noções, até então homogêneas e cristalizadas. Seguiram-se veredas…
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Scene Counter Scene: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy and/or Reconstructing early-modern religious lives
Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy “Focusing on the impact of the erotic revolution that swept through 16th-century Italy, Eros Visible presents a compendious, revisionist account of High Renaissance art. Through close visual analysis of artworks and careful reading of related texts, James Grantham Turner demonstrates the surprisingly close connection between explicitly pornographic art and the canonical…
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Eros and Magic in the Renaissance
Pupil of Giuseppe Maria Crespi (Lo Spagnuolo)? Eros in the Guise of Cupid, c. 1700. Nec Spe, Nec Metu. “I should like to mention, for example, the analysis of a little-known work by Giordano Bruno, De vinculis ingenere (“Of Enchainment in General”), that Couliano compares to Machiavelli’s The Prince. Indeed, if Ficino identified eroswith magic…
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Renaissance narratives and the Poetics of the Iconotext
“Poetics of the Iconotext makes available for the first time in English the theories of the respected French text/image specialist, Professor Liliane Louvel. A consolidation of the most significant theoretical materials of Louvel’s two acclaimed books, L’Oeil du Texte: Texte et image dans la littérature anglophone and Texte/Image: Images à lire, textes à voir, this…
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International Milton Symposium 13 and Milton in France and Milton in Strasbourg
The Thirteenth International Milton Symposium was held at the University of Toronto, Canada, 10-14 July 2023. https://crrs.ca/milton2023/ Program Draft (https://crrs.ca/milton2023/13th-international-milton-symposium-online-program/): Milton’s Global Presence: Hispanophone and Lusophone America Milton in France This volume contains a selection of essays presented at the 8th International Milton Symposium, «Milton, Rights and Liberties», which was held in Grenoble, France, 7-11…
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Milton Lecture Series in and from Brazil
A Brazilian landscape, 1650; Frans Post; Credit: This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy. The first edition of the Milton Lecture Series in Brazil was a great success in 2015, and Milton Scholars, students and readers gathered in…
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Renaissance Architec(x)ture
“Andrea Palladio; 30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580) was an Italian Renaissance architect active in the Venetian Republic. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily Vitruvius, is widely considered to be one of the most influential individuals in the history of architecture. While he designed churches and palaces, he was best known for country houses and villas. His teachings, summarized in the architectural…
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Borges on Shakespeare and Early Modern Intertextuality
Jorge Luís Borges: Borges on Shakespeare (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies #543) “Celebrated Argentine author Jorge Luís Borges found Shakespeare’s work so compelling that he not only fictively imagined the life of the playwright in two short stories, but also fashioned other stories and poems into adaptations of or meditations on Shakespeare’s plays, wrote…
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Renaissance Translation/Adaptation or Cabinets of Curiosities – book and films
… Unicorns’ horns, mermaids’ skeletons, stuffed and preserved animals and plants, precious metals, clocks, scientific instruments, celestial globes … “All knowledge, the cosmos arranged on shelves, in cupboards, or hanging from the ceiling, ‘infinite riches in a little room’ – such were the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th century. This survey, now available in…
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Machado e Milton
“De 8 a 11 de agosto de 2008, a Faculdade de Letras (FL) da UFRJ se debruçou sobre o debate de um dos maiores gênios da Literatura brasileira: Machado de Assis. No ano em que se celebra 100 anos da morte do escritor, a UFRJ, em parceria com a UFF e a UERJ, organiza o…
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“Double, double, toil and trouble”: Macbeth and the three witches
Macbeth and the three witches – Francesco Zuccarelli (1702 – 1788); Stéphane Renard Fine Art. “In the history of Western culture we find lists of saints, rosters of soldiers, catalogues of grotesque creatures or medicinal plants, and hordes of treasure. The poetics of lists can be found from Homer to Joyce, from the treasures of…
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The whereabouts of Renaissance Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Aletheia / Veritas – Goddess of Truth In early Greek philosophy, Alethiea (truth or that which is unconcealed, evident), Kallos (beauty or outer excellence, splendid as well as erotic in that it elicits desire), and Agathos (goodness or inner excellence, the most actualised from potential) are supposed to be indissociable. “To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however,…
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The Last of the Polymaths? Athanasius Kircher: A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge
“In Musurgia Universalis Kircher discusses most types of pieces current in his day and in the preceding century, thereby laying the foundation for the modern classification of music by national style, social function, and technique.” “The elaborately engraved title page is fascinating for its symbolism. The top section is dominated by a triangle symbolizing the…
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Efemérides/Past Publications and/or Renaissance and Metamorphosis with Terry Eagleton
An important interview was published in 2009 with Stanley Fish, author of Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost – https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/aletria/article/view/18226 Another important interview was published in 2018 with Stephen Greenblatt, author of Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare – https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/aletria/article/view/18815 “Whatever we create is created out of whatever we receive from history. There…
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When Beauty Mattered: Renaissance in Film
The word renaissance comes from the French language and simply means rebirth. In 1550, the Italian word renascita, which means rebirth or renewal, was used by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. Vasari divided his book into three periods, starting with the First Age, which included 13th/14th century…
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On a Renaissance Medieval Canon Regular (rather unexceptional!) or worms, bees, fishes, snails, pelicans, dodos …
“Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380 – 25 July 1471; German: Thomas von Kempen; Dutch: Thomas van Kempen) was a German-Dutch canon regular of the late medieval period and the author of The Imitation of Christ, published anonymously in Latin in the Netherlands c. 1418–1427, one of the most popular and best known Christian devotional books. His name means “Thomas of Kempen”, Kempen being his home town.…
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Renaissance Monsters, Marvels and Masters
“Ambroise Paré, born in France around 1510, was chief surgeon to both Charles IX and Henri III. In one of the first attempts to explain birth defects, Paré produced On Monsters and Marvels, an illustrated encyclopedia of curiosities, of monstrous human and animal births, bizarre beasts, and natural phenomena. Janice Pallister’s acclaimed English translation offers a glimpse…
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Scene Counter Scene: The Renaissance
REC – A Renascença em Contracena Albrecht Dürer, The Arch of Honour of Maximilian I, 1515. Woodcut, 341 x 292 cm. The period from c.1450 to c.1700 witnesses the emergence of a series of remarkable creations in many genres (visual and textual) and in a period of unprecedented political, cultural, social, religious, scientific, national, and international…
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Vondel’s and Voltaire’s Lucifer
“It has become a matter of literary tradition, in Holland and out of it, that the choral drama of “Lucifer” is the great masterpiece of Dutch literature. In point of fact, it has been assigned by some a place relatively subordinate among the works of this “Dutch Shakespeare,” as they are fond of calling Vondel…
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Bits and Pieces of Renaissance Knowledge or Renaissance Imagination
“Donna Seger explores the diffusion and reception of prescriptive publications over the 16th and 17th centuries. Published in an age of dynamic religious and political change, these texts demonstrate the universal desire for health and wealth, a fortified body and an orderly household.” “Look a little closer or a little longer because there is always…
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Early Milton set to Music or Renaissance “Jerusalem Delivered” and Renaissance Castrati
Alexander Pope dying; from the title page to William Mason’s Musæus: a monody to the memory of Mr. Pope, in imitation of Milton’s Lycidas (1747). by Wikipedia. Licensed under Public domain On the same hand, “The sacred armies, and the godly knight,That the great sepulchre of Christ did free,I sing;” https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/392/pg392-images.html “Let me weep Let me weep…
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Engineers of the Renaissance
Raphael; Study for Adam; 1509; Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy. “Much remains to be done before we understand the processes of their thought [Renaissance artists, intellectuals, men and women], before we appreciate their hesitations and grasp the nature of their ignorance and their failures. We must underline their gradual distortions of accepted truths, their difficult departures…
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The Audacity of Renaissance Christian Art
Carlo Crivelli – The Virgin and Child with Saints Francis and Sebastian; 1491; http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ picture.library@nationalgallery.co.uk Copyright © The National Gallery, London
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Just empty time and space … or Renaissance Giordano Bruno and Hermeticism and/or Renaissance Music
Hermes Trismegistus “Giordano Bruno (/dʒɔːrˈdɑːnoʊ ˈbruːnoʊ/; Italian: [dʒorˈdaːno ˈbruːno]; Latin: Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; born Filippo Bruno, January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets, and he raised the possibility that these…
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Renaissance Observation, Imitation, and Emulation
Circle of Titian; The Resurrection of Christ; oil on canvas; Private Collection. “Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was part of the Renaissance movement back to the classical sources of knowledge. Wanting to revitalize the Church, Erasmus believed all Christians should have their lives transformed through the true ‘philosophy of Christ.’ He dedicated his life to the…
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Participantes / Members
Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá – Doutor – Líder 1 FALE/UFMG http://lattes.cnpq.br/2266258228871409 saluiz18@gmail.com Miriam Piedade Mansur Andrade – Doutora – Líder 2 FALE/UFMG http://lattes.cnpq.br/8896798343632839 miriammansur2@gmail.com Pedro Süssekind Viveiros de Castro – Doutor – IFCH-UFF http://lattes.cnpq.br/1350524299762443 Helena de Paula Beato – Doutoranda – Pós-Lit David Correia de Araújo Ericeira – Mestre – Pós-Lit Tiago Melo – Mestrando…
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Renaissance Art for Thought!
Artist Leonardo da Vinci Year 1483–1486 Type Oil on panel (transferred to canvas) Dimensions 199 cm × 122 cm (78.3 in × 48.0 in) Location Louvre, Paris “A Romanesque crucifix was not regarded by its contemporaries as a work of sculpture; nor Cimabue’s Madonna as a picture. Even Pheidias’ Pallas Athene was not, primarily, a statue.” “The prelude to a work of fiction is…
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The Renaissance Orpheus
Titian, Orpheus and Eurydice, c.1508, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy. The Renaissance Orpheus A classical writer who held sway over the imagination of many Renaissance artists was Ovid. Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman poet writing during the reign of Augustus. Although best known for Metamorphoses, he also wrote The Art of Love and Fasti, works…
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REC – Renaissance Dialectics
Arachne or Dialectics painted in 1520 by Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese. Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Collegio. “In classical philosophy, dialectic (διαλεκτική) is a form of reasoning based upon dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses). The outcome of such a dialectic might be the refutation of a relevant proposition, or of a synthesis, or a combination of the opposing…
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Much needed “empty” time and space or Renaissance Light or Renaissance Triptychs against the dying of the Light
Netherlandish artist Rogier van der Weyden traveled to Cologne, Germany, to complete this triptych, known as the Columba Altarpiece. Image courtesy of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, Germany. There are countless other such Triptychs! https://recarenascencaemcontracena.wordpress.com/2023/04/20/the-dodo-lives-on-or-recs-bees-at-work/
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Renaissance Humanism
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111718/adam Erin Giffin, “Pietro Paolo Drei’s Flower Mosaics Revealed in Print,” Print Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2021), pp. 17-29. “Uninterpreted inscriptions incised across a pair of etchings by the Flemish artist Pieter de Bailliu reveal an ephemeral, decorative tradition once practiced in the heart of Rome. These prints, together with a third by de Bailliu,…
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Cabinet of Curiosities: Time and Reception
Chronos and his child by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, National Museum in Warsaw, is a 17th-century depiction of Titan Cronus as “Father Time” wielding the harvesting scythe. Time does not necessarily produce monsters, time is rather an artist and, therefore, produces artists! Samuel Johnson, “Life of Milton” (1779) “The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said to have contrived…
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Renaissance Measure and Mathematics
“There is a frivolous objection raised by philosophers of a superficial type, to the effect that such economy of thought is an attempt to substitute unthinking mechanism for living thought. This contention fails of its purpose through the simple fact that this economy is only used in certain circumstances.” On the same hand, “But that…
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The Dodo lives on or REC’s bees at work (and Tobias’ fish as well)
Roelant Savery (1576–1639); Presented to the British Museum by George Edwards in 1759, having previously been in the collection of Sir Hans Sloane. (please, look him up! When there is still time) https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/the-dodos-redemption/486086/ “When I was young I didn’t know the meaning of life but after many years of hard study I am no longer young”…
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Renaissance Michael as Narrator or Renaissance Hope and Love against a Lightless Wall in a Yard!
Artist Raphael Year c. 1504–1505 Medium Oil on wood Dimensions 30 cm × 26 cm (12 in × 10 in) Location Louvre, Paris “Th’ Archangel stood, and from the other HillTo thir fixt Station, all in bright arrayThe Cherubim descended; on the groundGliding meteorous, as Ev’ning Mist like a meteorRis’n from a River o’re the marish glides, marshAnd gathers ground fast at…
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Renaissance Error: Mannerism and Early Modern Poetry
Pietà, Cesare Magni, c 1511 – 1534. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4143694 To Err Is Poetic! Everybody makes mistakes; only some of them become canonical. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/11/to-err-is-poetic/ “But catalogs of howlers can be fun, too, so here goes: Shakespeare sets the action of The Winter’s Tale partially on the coast of Bohemia, a landlocked country … John Milton, in ‘Lycidas,’…
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On the Renaissance Creature
What can we learn from unexceptional texts, people, and artifacts (the history of the worms/bees, if you will; report to the bottom of the page following the link below) then and now? How can we critically assess the metrics by which we evaluate quality? REC hopes to explore organic connections between politics and art/literature within…
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A Renaissant Philosophy of Optimism
Artist Michelangelo Year 1536–1541 Type Fresco Dimensions 13.7 m × 12 m (539.3 in × 472.4 in) Location Sistine Chapel, Vatican City “Ever since 1759, when Voltaire wrote ‘Candide’ in ridicule of the notion that this is the best of all possible worlds, this world has been a gayer place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or six…