Papers by Meredith Jane Gill
Church History, Sep 1, 2015
In the year 1165 since the Incarnation of our lord Jesus Christ, fourteenth indiction, during the... more In the year 1165 since the Incarnation of our lord Jesus Christ, fourteenth indiction, during the reign of our lord the magnificent king William.
Renaissance Quarterly, 2003
and, one would have thought, fully-known image, assumes fresh visual and narrative possibility as... more and, one would have thought, fully-known image, assumes fresh visual and narrative possibility as Kuhn's capable eye rakes across its surface. This is true too of Michelangelo's Deluge (Sistine Ceiling, Vatican, Rome, 1509). Figures all but overlooked previously come to be freighted with an emotional significance that augments the already considerable might of the fresco. The brilliance of such analyses as these is diminished only by the often uneven quality of the translations. The studies of Raphael's working methods in CM lay bare one larger flaw in Kuhn's approach, one that results, possibly, from the fact that he views all in terms of the relationship between narrative and pictorial design. Raphael's development as an artist, in the sense at once of his grappling with the challenge of seeking a compositional solution to a particular narrative challenge and of his growth from one project to the next, is construed solely as a function of the desire to accommodate his art to the requirements of a given story or theme. There is no indication of the impact of encounters with the work of other artists, to note but one obvious external factor that figured in the artist's brain-storming for compositional ideas. Kuhn is to be thanked for these books, notwithstanding the aforesaid reservations. The intense study of composition bestows emphatic importance to the individual artwork. At a time when much art historical writing and theory appear to have moved toward the nullification of the object, Kuhn's work is most welcome. JONATHAN B. RIESS University of Cincinnati
Renaissance Quarterly, 2005
Francesca Fabbrioni and her followers engendered in the hierarchy of the Church and in the Roman ... more Francesca Fabbrioni and her followers engendered in the hierarchy of the Church and in the Roman Inquisition. The study of Francesca Fabbroni alone would make this book a fine contribution to scholarship. It contains many more distinctions, however. It is written in lively and clear prose and is a joy to read. The subjects presented in this study are significant, each in its own way, since they demonstrate the strictures that the Church increasingly placed upon mystical women in the Seicento. The author has demonstrated impeccable scholarship in her archival research, and it is a pleasure to read her detailed footnotes. She takes a broad view of her subject, incorporating all aspects of issues religious, political and social, all the while maintaining a precise control of the sources. This book is an important contribution to the study of women in the religious life of the Seicento and the influence that their mysticism inspired. Those accused of feigning sanctity still hold great interest for the modern reader because of the boldness of their assertions as well as the boldness of their lives. This book is a must not only for those interested in the religious life of post-Tridentine Italy, but also for anyone who has interest in women and their lives in early modern Europe. MARION LEATHERS KUNTZ Georgia State University
Renaissance Quarterly, 2020
Vittoria Colonna was the most renowned Italian female writer of her day, and she was the first wo... more Vittoria Colonna was the most renowned Italian female writer of her day, and she was the first woman in Italy to see a collection of her poetry in print. She led a peripatetic life, leaving her birthplace in the Alban Hills for Naples when her father became grand constable of the Spanish-dominated kingdom, and thence to the island of Ischia. On Ischia in 1509, she was married to Francesco Ferrante D'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, to whom, despite his long absences, she was devoted. There, too, at thirty-five, she received news from Milan of his death. Colonna traveled to Rome, seeking a vocation as a nun and the peaceful isolation of convent life. After sojourns in Ferrara, Orvieto, and Viterbo, she returned to Rome where, in 1547, she died. Hers was a household name among Europe's political circles-she had ties to Charles V, Clement VII, Paul III, and Marguerite of Navarre-and she sustained famous friendships with ambitious, mercurial figures, including Michelangelo and Reginald Pole. Colonna maintained fruitful intellectual affiliations with Baldassare Castiglione, Paolo Giovio, and Pietro Bembo. Her commitment to her faith was constant and conspicuous. Her widely circulated writings, which seem to have increased after Ferrante's death, offer an astonishing picture of the work of grief and of her resistance to the possibility of reconciling religious passion with earthly love. We know from her poetry not only that she contemplated suicide after her husband's death, but also that writing became the means by which she came to a détente with loss, moving forward to embrace a personal and prescient activism on behalf of the project of Catholic reform. Ramie Targoff tells Colonna's story with empathy and imagination, gracefully circumventing academic conceits and disciplinary boundaries. This is the kind of book that many of us dream of writing, a book without footnotes that wears its learning lightly. She does provide a fine, annotated bibliography for each of her thirteen chapters at the end. With winning transparency, she tells us how she came to her subject after encountering the extraordinary sonnets written after Ferrante's death. Describing a hot afternoon in the Colonna archives in Subiaco, she then takes her reader on a vicarious pilgrimage. Her study is loosely chronological, beginning with the poignant chapter, "The View from the Cliff," in which a messenger from Milan arrives on Ischia and makes his way to the unsuspecting young widow. In the final chapter, "Last Rites," Targoff describes the circumstances of Colonna's approaching death and her late meditations on paradigms of female piety, Catherine of Alexandria, and Mary Magdalene, whom she commissioned Titian and Michelangelo to paint. These meditations were quickly rushed into print. In a fascinating epilogue, Targoff narrates the history of the discovery of Colonna's name among the Roman records of the Inquisition in the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Renaissance and Reformation, Jan 24, 2009
Renaissance et Réforme / 83 But this may be another example of the typical scholarly division of ... more Renaissance et Réforme / 83 But this may be another example of the typical scholarly division of labour between the Reformation on the continent and that in England. Clearly researchers of one area need to become more informed of developments on the other side of the Channel. Furthermore, Martin's attempt to explain the appeal of Familism to sixteenth-century Englishmen surely could have been assisted by Alastair Hamilton's 1981 study, The Family of Love, which quite successfully examined Niclaes' appeal for Dutchmen. Although Hamilton's study appeared too late to be included in the original article version of the chapter, some comparison could have been made for this present volume. These reservations aside, Martin's work is a welcome addition to the debate on the nature of popular religion and artisanal reform. It is a clearly written account of radical reform in England which also provides a useful introduction to the subject for undergraduate students. It definitely ought to be on the shelves of all university libraries which collect in the field of Reformation studies. GARYK. WAITE, University of New Brunswick Marcia B. Hall. Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. 131 pis. + xiv + 274. The sixteenth-century Venetian author and commentator on Titian, Paolo Pino, wrote that colour composition is the "true alchemy of painting," an observation that aptly introduces the combined themes of science and magic, of natural materials and their erudite artistic manipulations which a history of colour in painting would seem to touch upon. In the Preface to her informative study, Marcia Hall explains the inversion of her title (from theory and practice) and her aim to treat picturemaking primarily in the physical sense. This distinguishes the direction of her work from Martin Kemp's recent The science of Art, for example (and from which I take Pino's observation) in which, under the title "The Colour of Light," he demonstrated how theoretical colour science had, in some ways, only a limited reflection in the practices of Renaissance artists, especially before Leonardo, who were working out of the practical tradition recorded by Cennini in c. 1390. The inversion of the title also implies a conscious, but not exclusive, focus on painterly methods as bearers of meaning, rather than on intellectual meditations on colour. Hall naturally weaves into her account, however, the illuminating opinions of Vasari, and, in relation to the "modes" of colouring, emerging aesthetic notions, inspired by ancient writings on rhetoric and musicand hinted at by Baldassare Castiglionesuggesting that the requirements of an artistic genre occasioned an appropriate formal mode. spécialiste ou non, est donc tout disposé à accueillir favorablement le petit livre de Colette Quesnel. Son plan est fort simple. Le premier de ses quatre chapitres, "Mourir de rire," présente les deux thèmes de l'ouvrage: le lien entre le rire et la mort (par exemple, les gladiateurs percés au diaphragme, qui, disait-on, riaient en mourant), et le rire en tant que signe de la joie spirituelle (Philon d'Alexandrie). Ensuite, dans "Rire ou ne pas rire," l'auteur esquisse une histoire, tirée du livre de John Moreall, des théories du risible à partir d'Aristote, et discute brièvement quelques ouvrages modernes sur Rabelais.
Renaissance Quarterly, 2003
and Roberto Senatore's essay on the De bello Neapolitano by Giovanni Pontano are both well-re... more and Roberto Senatore's essay on the De bello Neapolitano by Giovanni Pontano are both well-researched and argued. Claudio Marazzini's contribution is perhaps the weakest, his being a statistical analysis of Renaissance military literature based primarily on the bibliography of M.J.D. Cockle, first published in 1900. Certain articles in this book will be of interest to specialists in Renaissance warfare and diplomacy. Nearly all of the essays (Shaw's excluded) are in Italian, and extensive citations in Latin are left untranslated, making most of the selections unsuitable for undergraduate readings. NICCOL5 CAPPONI The Medici Archive Project, Florence.
Religious Studies Review, Dec 1, 2009
Renaissance Quarterly, 2008
... Reviewed work(s): Louise Bourduaand Anne Dunlop, eds. ... In the realms of Augustine&... more ... Reviewed work(s): Louise Bourduaand Anne Dunlop, eds. ... In the realms of Augustine's broader iconography and literary reception, the magisterial legacy of Jeanne and Pierre Courcelle and the discoveries of Brian Stock and Carol E. Quillen have been of fundamental ...
There could be some typos (or mistakes) below (html to pdf converter made them): augustine in the... more There could be some typos (or mistakes) below (html to pdf converter made them): augustine in the italian renaissance art and philosophy from petrarch to michelangelo All Images Videos Maps News Shop | My saves 464,000 Results Any time
The Catholic Historical Review, 2008
This is an important book.The Order of Hermits of St. Augustine (OESA) has been overshadowed by t... more This is an important book.The Order of Hermits of St. Augustine (OESA) has been overshadowed by the Franciscan and Dominican Orders in the scholarship devoted to the religious, intellectual, and cultural history of the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation, with the exception of the relationship between the Augustinian friars and Martin Luther. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to address this gap, and Bourdua and Dunlop have made a significant contribution.As Dunlop notes in her introductory chapter, the OESA “has received little attention from art historians, and yet it has a unique import for any rethinking of art and religious institutions in the premodern period” (p. 2). Following in the wake of Joseph C. Schnaubelt and Frederick Van Fleteren’s edited volume, Augustine in Iconography: History and Legend (New York, 1999), and Meredith Gill’s Augustine in the Italian Renaissance: Art and Philosophy from Petrarch to Michelangelo (Cambridge, 2005), Bourdua and Dunlop’s work proposes to focus on the OESA “to examine the ‘mendicant thesis’” (p. 2), which argues that the mendicant orders effected “the first artistic shifts of the Renaissance”(p.2). Simply by posing the question, the editors have given new prominence to the OESA, which the historical evidence so amply documents only to have been ignored in the historiography.
Augustinian Studies, 2006
Choice Reviews Online, 2006
Wherein lies the significance of St. Peter's in the Vatican?-in its role as first church of Roman... more Wherein lies the significance of St. Peter's in the Vatican?-in its role as first church of Roman Catholicism? as preeminent symbol of an ancient city? as major monument of Western civilization? This book posits an answer to the question (while recognizing that it is only one among many): the significance of the edifice lies in its extraordinary and extraordinarily tormented history. Founded in the fourth century to honor the tomb of Saint Peter, the church gained enormous prestige in the Middle Ages as a repository of holy relics and objects, and as the site of epoch-making events. But with the return of the papacy from Avignon and the shift in papal residence from the Lateran to the Vatican, the building needed to be renovated. Beginning in the fifteenth century and over the course of the next three hundred years, Old St. Peter's was gradually torn down, and in its midst arose the new structure now in place. The transmutation was far from easy. It involved many changes in design and concept, and interwove the careers of some of the most brilliant-and contentiousarchitects and artists of the day, including Bramante, Michelangelo, and Bernini. This volume, focusing on selected and key moments in the history of the church from the late antique period to the twentieth century, offers an expertly researched and thoughtful overview of St. Peter's, full of new insights and appreciation.
Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
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Papers by Meredith Jane Gill