Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City

Considers the reception of the early modern culture of Florence, Rome, and Venice.

Stephen J. Campbell (Edited by), Stephen J. Milner (Edited by)

9780521826884, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 September 2004

386 pages, 88 b/w illus.
24 x 18.3 x 2.2 cm, 0.88 kg

'… a book with ambitions. … The editors are to be congratulated for bringing together essays that are in the main of an extremely high standard. The collection manages to focus on many intriguing objects that have tended to be neglected in traditional art history. … this is a valuable book. … it is to [the editors] credit that they have put together a thought-provoking group of essays which displays a zest for the exploration of methodologies, of previously little-studies centres, objects and artists and which act as a kind of manifesto for the current vivacity and ambition of Renaissance art history.' The Burlington Magazine

This book considers the reception of the early modern culture of Florence, Rome, and Venice in other centers of the Italic peninsula, such as Ferrara, Bologna, Ancona, San Gimignano, and Pistoia, which had flourishing local cultures of their own. Offering a perspective that focuses on dialogue and exchange between different urban centers and cultural groups, it also involves a reexamination of the Renaissance itself as a form of translation of a past culture, one that attempted to assimilate the lost or fragmentary world of the Roman emperors, the Greek Platonists, and the ancient Egyptians. Collectively the essays examine how the processes of cultural self-definition varied between the Italian urban centers in the early modern period, well before the formation of a distinct Italian national identity. Exploring how artistic forms made the transition from one Italian city to another, attention is also focused on the subtle modification of practice required by local conditions and priorities.

Introduction: art, identity and cultural translation in Renaissance Italy Stephen J. Campbell and Stephen J. Milner
Part I. How to Translate: 1. Subject matters: contracts, designs and the exchange of ideas between painters and clients in Renaissance Italy Michelle O'Malley
2. Copying practices and marketing strategies in a late fifteenth-century painter's workshop Megan Holmes
3. Mino da Fiesole's Forteguerri Tomb: a 'Florentine' monument in Rome Shelley Zuraw
4. Bertoldo di Giovanni, republican court artist Luke Syson
Part II. Regional Identities and the Encounter with Florence: 5. 'Our eagles always held fast to your lilies': the Este, the Medici, and the negotiation of cultural identity Stephen J. Campbell
6. Giovanni Il Bentovoglio and the uses of chivalry: creating a republican court in late fifteenth-century Bologna Georgia Clarke
7. 'Acqua viva e corrent': private display and public distribution of fresh water at the Neapolitan villa of Poggioreale as a hydraulic model for sixteenth-century Medici gardens Bruce L. Edelstein
8. The politics of patronage: Verrocchio, Pollaiuolo and the Forteguerri monument Stephen Milner
9. Between legend, history and power politics: the Santa Fina Chapel in San Gimignano Deborah Krohn
Part III. Negotiating the Cultural Other: 10. From center to periphery in the Florentine intellectual field: orthodoxy reconsidered Christopher Celenza
11. The Sphinx in the piazza: Egyptian monuments and urban spaces in Renaissance Italy Brian A. Curran
12. Immigrants and church patronage in sixteenth-century Ancona Morten Steen Hansen.

Subject Areas: History of art / art & design styles [AC]