Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Italian Renaissance'

Art History
Ph.D.;
My dissertation studies the typological juxtaposition and syncretic incorporation of classical and Christian elements-subjects, motifs, and forms-in the art of the Italian Renaissance and the significant meaning of classical subjects and figures in such contexts. In this study, I analyze the interpretative modes applied to extra-Biblical and secular literature in the Italian Tre- and Quattrocento and the syncretic philosophies of the later Quattro- and early Cinquecento and reevaluate selected works of art from the Italian Renaissance in light of the period claims and beliefs that are evident from such a study. In summary, my dissertation considers the use of classical subjects, motifs, and forms in the art of the Italian Renaissance as a means to gloss or reveal aspects of Christian doctrine. In chapter 1, I respond to the paradigm proposed by Erwin Panofsky (Renaissance and Renascences) and establish a new criteria for understanding the difference between medieval and Renaissance perceptions of classical antiquity. Chapter 2 includes a study of the mythological scenes painted in the Cappella Nova of Orvieto Cathedral, which are here shown to gloss and reveal aspects of the developing Christian doctrine of Purgatory. In chapter 3, I study the Renaissance use of representational ambiguity as a means of signifying the propriety of pursuing an allegorical interpretation of a work and specifically address the typological significance of figures in Botticelli's Primavera. In chapter 4, I examine the philosophical concepts of prisci theologii and theologicae poetae and their significance in relation to the representation of classical figures in medieval and Renaissance works of art. This study provides the necessary background for a reevaluation of syncretic themes in Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura, which is the subject of the final chapter. In chapter 5, I identify classical figures in the frescoes of the Stanza della Segnatura-among them, Orpheus in the Parnassus and Plato and Aristotle in the Disputa-and offer a new interpretation of the iconographic program of the Stanza della Segnatura frescoes as a representation of the means by which participants in the Christian tradition, broadly conceived, approach God through the parallel paths of dialectic and moral philosophy.
Temple University--Theses

This study examines British Romantic responses to Italian Renaissance art and argues that Italian art was a key force in shaping Romantic-period culture and aesthetic thought. Italian Renaissance art, which was at once familiar and unknown, provided an avenue through which Romantic writers could explore a wide range of issues. Napoleon’s looting of Italy made this art central to contemporary politics, but it also provided the British with their first real chance to own Italian Old Master art. The period’s interest in biography and genius led to the development of an aesthetic vocabulary that might be applied equally to literature and visual art. Chapter One discusses the place of Italian art in Post-Waterloo Britain and how the influx of Old Master art impacted on Britain’s exhibition and print culture. While Italian art was appropriated as a symbol of British national prestige, Catholic iconography could be difficult to reconcile with Protestant taste. Furthermore, Old Master art challenged both eighteenth-century aesthetic philosophy and the Royal Academy’s standing, while simultaneously creating opportunities for new viewers and new patrons to participate in the cultural discourse. Chapter Two builds on these ideas by exploring the idea of connoisseurship in the period. As art became increasingly democratized, a cacophony of voices competed to claim aesthetic authority. While the chapter examines a range of competing discourses, it culminates in a discussion of what I have termed the ‘Poetic Connoisseur’. Through a discussion of the work of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and William Hazlitt, I argue that Romantic writers created an exclusive aristocracy of taste which demanded that the viewer be able to read the ‘poetry of painting’. Chapter Three focuses on the ways in which Romantic writers used art to produce literature rather than criticism. In this chapter, I argue that writers such as Byron, Shelley, Lady Morgan, Anna Jameson and Madame de Staël, created an imaginative vocabulary which lent itself equally to literature and visual art. Chapter Four uses Samuel Rogers’s Italy as a case study. It traces how the themes discussed in the previous chapters shaped the production of one of the nineteenth century’s most popular illustrated books, how British art began to appropriate Italian subjects and how deeply intertwined visual and literary culture were in the period. Finally, this discussion of Italy demonstrates how Romantic values were passed to a Victorian readership. Through an appreciation of how the Romantics understood Italian Renaissance art we can better understand their experience and understanding of Italy, British and European visual culture and the Imagination.

This dissertation aims to study the reception of the Latin poet Horace in the Italian Renaissance, taking into consideration works composed in several different genres both in Latin and Italian vernacular between 1498 and 1600. This thesis follows five main pathways of investigation: 1) to study the Renaissance biographies of the poet; 2) to analyse several exegetical works both in Horace’s single texts and his whole corpus; 3) to study the Italian translations written both in prose and verse which were made during the Cinquecento; 4) to study in depth those who imitated Horace in their lyrical and satirical poems composed in Italian; and 5) to examine those Neo-Latin poetical works (mainly pertaining to the lyrical and satirical genres). This dissertation points out that the numerous and various forms of Horatian reception help to evaluate the real flourishing of sixteenth-century interest in the Latin poet, interest that reflects the fact that Horace was part of the new Renaissance canon of classical authorities. Within the sixteenth-century conflict of cultures, Horace appears as one of the main protagonists of the critical and literary scenes, as is shown by the attention that his works received from the point of view of editions, commentaries, and translations respectively, as well as by the fact that his texts were placed at the centre of several literary imitative practices, his example being able to offer the Renaissance one important basis upon which to found part of its new culture. Indeed, Horace allowed the emergence of an ethical strain to the Renaissance lyric, as well as contributing to the provision of rules for sixteenth-century literary criticism.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Art History and Archaeology. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

In the period of the Renaissance in Italy the influence of humanism was pervasive. This thesis gives a background on humanist philosophy and then looks at its influence on the Literature and Music of the 14th Century and the 16th Century. Humanism is defined as the search for eloquence, drawing inspiration from classical sources. It is shown how eloquence in the writings of Petrarca was mainly political while in texts from the 16th century in the pastoral genre it also dealt with the expression of inner feelings. This genre was influential on composers at the end of the Renaissance, such as Claudio Monteverdi, who were searching for a compositional style that would effect the emotions of listeners; a kind of musical humanism.

The Italian madrigal comedy experienced a relatively short, but exceedingly popular life during the late Renaissance. The works that may be called madrigal comedies, numbering less than two dozen in total, represent a type of musical entertainment that delighted audiences at courts and within the cultural academies of Renaissance Italy. The small subset of works within the genre, designated in this research project as "theatrical" madrigal comedies, showed an increasing focus on dramatic representation of text with music. These works, the plots of which derive from the commedia dell'arte tradition, may be seen as early forms of musical comedy and musical theater. Arguments concerning the manner in which the works were performed have centered on a debate for and against the staging of them.Because madrigal comedies have been largely neglected as concert and theatrical literature, there is little published to assist a director in finding the repertoire or to offer a guide to performance. The research project on which this document is based, along with the associated lecture-recital, resulted in the compilation of means to a successful madrigal comedy production. This was done by advocating historically informed performance decisions that are given a practical spin. In this manner, a director may put together a madrigal comedy production that is accessible to professionals and non-professionals, as well as secondary- and higher-education communities.

Vernon Lee scholars have often studied her writings on the Italian Renaissance in connection with Walter Pater’s. Whilst acknowledging the evident influence of Walter Pater, such a critical perspective risks overlooking Lee’s own contribution to the Victorian creation of the “Renaissance myth” – which, in her case, was to outlive its fin-de-siècle frenzy. Moving from the recent developments in Lee scholarship, this study investigates the presence and the function of the Italian Renaissance in Lee’s writings with specific focus on issues of gender and genre. From this perspective, Lee’s relationship with characters, places, villas, and masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance works as a catalyst for the construction of cultural memory, mediated through hybrid narrative forms. Chapter I explores the phenomenology of the Italian Renaissance as a nineteenth-century myth. In particular, it takes into consideration the works of Jules Michelet and Matthew Arnold, and it highlights the influence that Jacob Burckhardt and John Ruskin had on Victorian culture in spite of their diverging opinions. After grounding Lee’s work in the fin-de-siècle tradition of Walter Pater and John Addington Symonds, chapter II investigates Lee’s two collections of Renaissance essays – Euphorion and Renaissance Fancies and Studies – from an intertextual perspective which unveils the gender specificity of Lee’s writings, but also the construction of gender that these essays deploy at a textual level. Chapter III explores Lee’s fascination with Italian landscapes, which she portrays as spaces of culture. The plasticity of landscape and its meanings – which can be sensed in Lee’s prose, but also in Edith Wharton’s and D. H. Lawrence’s – enables Lee to bounce back and forth in time, moving from contemporary Italy to the imagined landscapes of the Renaissance. This textual strategy is made possible by Lee’s theorization of the “genius loci,” which also provides her with a starting point for endorsing cultural politics steered by democratic sympathies. Finally, chapter IV focuses on Lee’s fluid idea of literary genres. Indeed, the Renaissance is a “trans-genre” topos that Lee repeatedly explores in her essays as well as in her travelogues, supernatural tales, and a number of unpublished writings dating from the first two decades of the twentieth century, long after the end of the fin-de-siècle Renaissance frenzy.

This thesis analyses selected paintings and aspects of life of the Italian Renaissance in terms of the aesthetic properties of sadistic and masochistic symptomatologies and creative production, as these have been explored by philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Marcel Henaff, and Gilles Deleuze. One question which arises from this analysis, and is considered in this thesis, is of the relation between sexual perversion and history, and in particular between experiences of violence, (dis)pleasure and desire, and historically specific forms of discourse and power, such as legislation on rape; myths and practices concerning marriage alliance; the depiction of such myths and practices in art; religion; and family structures. A second question which this thesis explores is the manners in which sadistic and masochistic artistic production function politically, to bolster pre-existing gender ideologies or to subvert them. Finally, this thesis considers the relation between sadism and masochism and visuality, both by bringing literary models of perversion to an interpretation of paintings, and by exploring the amenability of different genres of visual art to sadism and masochism respectively.

The title page of Schein's Opella nova I (1618) advertises `Geistliche Concerten.a. uff jetzo gebreuchliche italiänische Invention'. A mixture of Latin, Gothic and Italic script styles gives an immediate visual impression of mingling styles. From this starting point, the genre and purpose of the two publications of the Opella nova (1618,1626) are discussed. Examination of the collections published in between these volumes reveals that Schein deliberately published sacred and secular music alternately, positively advertising and applying the same Italian genres and styles in each category. The reception of the `new Italian style' by Schein's contemporaries, Michael Praetorius, Johann Staden, Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Schütz is explored. Schein's Opella nova concertos are examined thoroughly, and the question of how he adapted and adopted the Italian style into music for the Lutheran liturgy is considered. This reveals that Schein possessed a deep knowledge of Italian music, and although no definitive claims about whether he imitated particular composers are made, points of similarity with the work of Viadana, Giovanni Gabrieli, Monteverdi and Alessandro Grandi are found. Finally the reasons why the Italian style was received so positively by Lutheranism in Schein's time, in spite of hostility towards the Catholic faith, are considered. The influence of Renaissanceh umanism in Luther's thought is outlined, and the author takes the view that the Italian style in Lutheran music of Schein's time was the result of the continuing influence and development of this intellectual movement. Music is compared to poetry and rhetoric in its function. The question of how the Italian style fitted in to Schein's local context of the Lutheran free city of Leipzig is briefly discussed, and a conclusion reached that it was due principally to the cosmopolitan nature of the university and international trade in the city that Schein was able to pursue his interest in the `italiänische Invention

Abstract The purpose of this article is to interpret a selection of El Greco’s Italian paintings (1560-1576) based on Bible texts in which ideas current during the Catholic Counter- Reformation are symbolised. At the age of nineteen El Greco, who was born in Crete in 1541 and was initially an icon painter in the Byzantine tradition, went to Venice. Through study and experiment, and by following the examples of other artists who had achieved artistic mastery and was of proven Catholic orthodoxy, he educated himself as an artist in the Western manner. Even during his years as an apprentice El Greco’s art is proof that he aspired to the highest humanly accessible values exemplified by Renaissance artistic theory, humanism and Christian spirituality — all of which later came to fruition in an unprecedented original combination in Toledo, Spain, where he settled permanently in 1577.

This book reviewed rejects recent scholarship that has minimized the significance of the Italian Renaissance. Instead, it argues that the cities of Florence, Venice, and Milan enjoyed a distinct period of precocity over the rest of Europe between roughly 130--1500.

This thesis explores the imagery of the young John the Baptist in Renaissance art. The phenomenon of John’s juvenescence has been noted but insufficiently explored by previous scholarship. The present study reassesses the figure of the youthful Baptist by means of rigorous theological exegesis of biblical, apocryphal and late medieval textual sources and a thorough investigation of the visual corpus. Beginning with the mosaics of the Florentine Baptistery, a handful of narrative cycles locate the onset of John’s prophetic career in the desert at an ever-earlier point in his life. However, it was not until the mid-fifteenth century that the boy John was released from the confines of his own narrative to become an independent figure in devotional imagery. Innovative altarpieces by Filippo Lippi commissioned by the Medici family in the late 1450s and 60s are shown to be crucial in promoting and disseminating this new vision of Florence’s beloved patron saint. The thesis demonstrates the enormous popularity of the youthful Baptist in the following decades, first in Florence and subsequently elsewhere in Italy, and interrogates the significance of his presence as infant, boy and adolescent across a wide range of pictorial and sculptural representations. One of the most famous examples of the child John, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks”, is recontextualised within this existing pictorial current, to show that this masterpiece is at once more traditional and more innovative in its treatment of subject matter than has hitherto been recognised. Key narrative moments, such as a meeting between Christ and John, and new ways of visualising the intimate bond between the two children formulated towards the end of the fifteenth century, including physical embraces and shared exposure of vulnerable infant flesh, are also investigated. Through such investigations, the thesis aims to advance understanding of the multiple and intersecting roles played by the boy Baptist in Renaissance art and devotion.

This dissertation offers a comparative study of two key figures of the Italian Renaissance, the ambassador and the courtesan, and the place of their bodies in relation to the Renaissance body politic. In studying myriad textual spaces of the body natural within writings by and about these two seemingly opposite figures, I find that these spaces range from the material to the metaphorical. In the Renaissance material spaces were increasingly allocated to both figures, urban confinement for the prostitute, and the establishment of the embassy for the ambassador. Metaphorically, the prostitute becomes the "body" of the state, while the ambassador personifies its "mind". My dissertation proves that by allocating such material and metaphorical spaces to these figures, the early modern state effectively denies them the possibility of ownership over their own bodies. This ownership, however, is rhetorically reclaimed, I argue, through the bodies of their own texts.
Romance Languages and Literatures

The dissertation looks at architectural theory in early modern Italy through a history of its drawings. It examines a group of early-sixteenth-century drawing books, made in and around Rome, that comprised reproductive drawings based on circulating drawing exemplars from the late fifteenth century. The drawing books are identified as study tools made by artisans who aspired to the practice of architecture. The study illuminates the broader shift toward drawing as the primary means of architectural design. The first chapter contends that the distinctive drawing practices of architecture arose from the merging of the representational traditions of figural and mechanical drawing, identifying this progression in architectural texts by Cennino Cennini, Leon Battista Alberti, Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Leonardo, and Raphael. The next chapter reconsiders the “treatise-books” of the 1510s-1530s as copybooks for architectural draftsmen, analogous to the commonplace books created by humanist scholars, using the Codex Coner (Soane’s Museum, London) as a case study. Chapter 3 looks at the widespread phenomenon of drawing and copying architectural details and tracks its development from detail drawing series made in the fifteenth century to the precisely measured images of the early sixteenth century. The case study is the Codex Fogg (Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge). Chapter 4 traces the empirical development of orthographic section drawing as an established component of the drawing palette of the architectural draftsman, taking the Codex Mellon (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) as an example. Chapter 5 investigates the circumstances that influenced the end of the architectural copybook phenomenon in the late 1530s-40s. Two examples demonstrate the transition, the Codex Lille by Raffaello da Montelupo (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille) and the Codex Campori App. 1755 of Giovanni Antonio Dosio (Biblioteca Estense, Modena).
History of Art and Architecture

A Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375–1650 Lisa Kaborycha, A Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375–1650, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2016; 320 pp.; 9780199342433, £19.99 (pbk)

La bibliographie sur la polyphonie profane italienne des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, qui décrit aussi le répertoire des éditions de plusieurs auteurs (par rapport à des livres d'un seul compositeur) est restée jusqu'à aujourd'hui la moins connue, la moins cataloguée et la moins mise à jour malgré les efforts des nombreux chercheurs talentueux. Reléguée à une section secondaire du «Vecchio Vogel» (1892) et révisé avec autorité par Alfred Einstein (1962), sa complexité variée a été éludée par la musicologie systématique, avec quelques exceptions rares, mais partielles (Lincoln, Lewis Bernstein.) Le Nuovo Vogel (1977), qui avait prudemment évité ce vaste répertoire 'collectif', non sans certaines inclusions incorrectes (Balbi, Barré, Doni etc.), n’a toujours pas été mis à jour, plus de 35 ans après sa sortie. Même le grand effort de catalogage RISM (B/I) ne donne aucune garantie d'exhaustivité ni d’utilité suffisante, car il n’affronte pas de manière systématique, par exemple, les problèmes de l'anonymat de plus de mille pièces, ou ce ‘Di incerto autore’ dispersé dans l'histoire de la musique vocale imprimée au Renaissance. Cela signifie qu'à ce jour, le savant qui veut examiner consciemment la genèse, le mouvement et la documentation historique de première main sur une pièce donnée, ou sur les madrigaux d'un livre collectif (que par souci de concision, nous avons défini UBI) doit feuilleter un répertoire de plus de huit mille textes de madrigaux. (UBI et uesi sont des néologismes pour décrire le répertoire que nous étudions). De nombreuses études, bien que limitées à certains livres, ont documenté la richesse musicale, littéraire, linguistique, géographique et professionnelle de ce grand répertoire de pièces de musique, ressentant le besoin d'un ordre plus important, sans que rien de tel n'ait été fait. À ce besoin urgent a répondu un travail du présent auteur consacré à l'indexation complète des livres, des textes, des dédicaces, des notes internes et des documents originaux que ce répertoire présente: ce nouvel outil bibliographique est appelé RIM (musique de la Renaissance italienne). La transcription intégrale de plus de 98% des textes mis en musique dans ce répertoire avec le nécessaire soutien informatisé et numérisé permet à tous ceux qui s'occupent de l'historiographie musicale italienne de la Renaissance non seulement d’identifier d'un grand nombre de pièces jusqu'aujourd'hui anonymes, mais constitue aussi un progrès dans de nombreux domaines du madrigal italien. Ce n’est qu’une fois que le RIM a été disponible qu’il a été possible de mener une enquête systématique sur l'organisation interne des UBI. Cette thèse est donc une recherche systématique sur l'organisation interne des anthologies (que l’on définit ici comme un choix de chansons déjà connues) et des edizioni collettive (à la différence des anthologies, les éditions collectives contiennent un choix de chansons originales), disposées de manière appropriée afin d'identifier et d'offrir des programmes structurés selon les intentions des coordinateurs-compilateurs, ou de celui qui signe la dédicace, ou encore des artistes qui les ont compilées dans le but d'honorer et d'illustrer leur propre communauté. Environ 150 livres étudiés nous permettent d'identifier une richesse jusque-là inconnue de propositions collectives et d'ingénieuses organisations texte-musique, qui conduisent à la fin de la période à la création du livret d'opéra ante litteram avant l'avènement même du mélodrame
The bibliography on the Italian secular polyphony of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which describes the repertoire in the editions of various authors (compared to that of the books of a single composer) has remained until today the least known, the least up-to-date, despite the efforts of several talented scholars. Relegated to a secondary section from the first Vogel (1892) and authoritatively revised by Alfred Einstein (1962), it was systematically 'baffled' by the musicology due to its varied complexity, with only some rare but partial exception (Lincoln, Lewis, Bernstein). Neither the New Vogel (1977), which had prudently evaded this gigantic repertoire – apart from some strange inclusions (Balbi, Barré, Doni etc.) –, has been updated in the last 35 years. Also the huge effort of the RISM (B/I) catalogue gives no assurance of completeness or noteworthy usefulness until, for example, the problem of the over one thousand anonymous or 'Of uncertain author' songs that disseminate the history of printed vocal music of the '500 /' 600 is fully addressed. This means that to date the scholar who wants to consciously examine the genesis, the movement and the historical first-hand records on a given song, or on the songs of a collective book (which we have defined UBI for brevity) has to go through the not-indexed list of more than eight thousand songs-texts. Many studies, although limited to individual books, have documented the wealth of musical, literary, linguistic, geographical, professional proposals of this section, feeling the need of a larger organization without doing nothing to overcome this situation. The study and research of a single Italian scholar has finally remedied this binding necessity with a complete indexing of books, texts, dedications, internal notes in the books and the original documents provided by that repertory: this new bibliographical tool is called RIM (Italian Renaissance music). The full transcript of more than the 98% of the texts set to music in this repertoire, with the necessary computerized and digitized supports, allows the entire historiography on the Renaissance to progress its studies and research, not only in the identification of several hundreds of songs so far anonymous, but in many fields of the entire historiography of music in the age of the Italian madrigal. Carrying out a systematic investigation on the compilatory organization of the UBI has been possible only thanks to the availability of the RIM. This thesis therefore represents the systematic investigation on anthologies (choices of already known songs) and on edizioni collettive (collective editions are books of original songs) appropriately arranged in order to form programs and courses coherent in sense with the intentions of the coordinators, compilers-dedicators, artists who have compiled them to honour and illustrate their own community with music and poetry. About 150 books examined allow us to identify a previously unknown wealth of collective proposals and ingenious text-music organization to be seen as 'Libretto' ante litteram before the advent of melodrama
La bibliografia relativa alla polifonia profana italiana cinque/secentesca che descrive anche il repertorio contenuto nelle edizioni di vari autori (rispetto a quello dei libri di un solo compositore) è rimasta fino ad oggi la meno nota, la meno aggiornata e la meno catalogata nonostante gli sforzi di valenti studiosi. Relegata in una sezione secondaria fin dal primo Vogel (1892) e rivista autorevolmente da Alfred Einstein(1962), nella sua complessità variegata è stata ‘elusa’ sistematicamente dalla musicologia, con qualche rara ma, in ogni caso, parziale eccezione (Lincoln, Lewis, Bernstein.) Nemmeno il Nuovo Vogel (NV,1977), il quale aveva prudenzialmente eluso deliberatamente questo vasto repertorio, non senza qualche strana inclusione (Balbi, Barré, Doni ecc.), alla distanza d'un tempo pari ad un ‘mezzo cammin di nostra vita’, non è stato più aggiornato. Per analoghe ragioni l'ingente sforzo catalografico del RISM B/I non si rivela di soverchia utilità, né dà certezza di completezza, finché, per esempio, non si affronti in modo sistematico il problema degli oltre mille brani adespoti o ‘Di incerto autore’ che disseminano la storia della musica vocale profana stampata fino al 1700. Ciò significa che a tutt’oggi lo studioso che voglia esaminare coscientemente la genesi, la circolazione e la documentazione storica di prima mano su un determinato brano, (o sui brani di un libro collettivo, che per brevità abbiamo definito UBI) deve passare in rassegna l'intero repertorio non indicizzato di oltre ottomila brani/testi. (UBI e uesi sono neologismi da noi ideati, che sono discussi nel primo capitolo della tesi, funzionali a descrivere il repertorio indagato). Molti studi, ancorché limitati a singoli libri collettivi, hanno documentato la ricchezza di proposte musicali, letterarie, linguistiche, geografiche e professionali di questa sezione di repertorio vocale, segnalando la necessità di un più ampio ordinamento, senza che nulla di tutto ciò sia stato fatto. Lo studio e la ricerca di uno singolo studioso italiano ha finalmente dato una risposta - creando una base di dati, cioè uno strumento informatico - che ha, almeno in parte, sanato questa esigenza davvero inderogabile, con un’indicizzazione completa dei frontespizi, dei testi poetici, delle dediche, delle documentazioni originali e delle note interne dei libri collettivi che tale repertorio presenta: questo nuovo strumento bibliografico si chiama RIM (Rinascimento Musicale Italiano). La trascrizione integrale, con i necessari supporti informatici digitalizzati, di oltre il 98% dei testi messi in musica di questo repertorio consente all’intera storiografia musicale un sicuro progresso non solo nella migliore identificazione dei brani già noti (e soprattutto di un buon numero di anonimi), ma anche di cogliere e fornire una visione complessiva del fenomeno in numerosi campi della storiografia musicale del ’5/'600. Con il RIM è stato possibile procedere all'indagine sistematica sull'organizzazione compilativa delle singole UBI. Questa tesi è quindi l'indagine sistematica sulle anthologie (scelte di brani già noti) e sulle edizioni collettive cioè libri di brani originali, disposti in modo idoneo a costituire programmi e percorsi di senso strutturati secondo le intenzioni dei coordinatori-dedicatori, artisti che le hanno compilate con lo scopo precipuo di onorare ed illustrare la propria comunità tramite la musica e la poesia. I circa 150 libri esaminati in maniera completa ci permettono di segnalare un'ideale ricchezza di proposte collettive e di geniale organizzazione testo-musica finora sconosciuta. È un'organizzazone che si configura come 'Libretto' ante litteram di opere musicali ben prima dell'avvento stesso del melodramma

Review of Selene Scarsi . Translating Women in Early Modern England: Gender in the Elizabethan Versions of Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso. Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies Series. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010. x + 207 pp. index. bibl. $99.95. ISBN: 978–0–7546–6620–2.

The book reviewed depicts husband and wife, Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella d'Este, who worked together to direct the domestic and diplomatic affairs of Mantua far more than the scholarship on Isabella has usually assumed.