Mantegna

Pubblicazione realizzata nel quadro del progetto PRIN 2003100558_004 Nessuna parte di que sto libro può essere riprodotta o trasmessa in qualsiasi forma o con qualsiasi mezzo elettronico, meccanico o altro senza l'autorizzazione scritta dei proprietari dei diritti e dell'editore. L'Editore resta a disposizione degli aventi diritto per le fonti iconografiche non individuate.

Hercules was an exemplar of moral and civic virtue when represented in Italian Renaissance art.  How he embodied masculinity, however, has not been explored.  A popular but complicated figure, he visualized the burdens and tensions of idealized masculinity.  By examining his battle against desire, as represented in his struggle with Antaeus, this article points to multivalence and varying receptions, from moralizing allegory to erotic fantasy.  It concentrates on imagery from the ‘Florentine Picture Chronicle’, Pollaiuolo, Mantegna and his circle, and Michelangelo.

The earliest image of an Australasian parrot by a European artist predates the arrival of Vasco de Gama’s fleet at Calicut on the Malabar Coast in 1498. This article focuses on that image - a small but significant detail in Andrea Mantegna’s Madonna della Vittoria, completed in Mantua in 1496. Although Mantegna’s altarpiece has been the subject of attention in modern scholarship, the significance of the cockatoo has not been explored. In this article, I consider why Mantegna would have included a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo in his altarpiece and the symbolic significance of its position in the composition. I also explore the intriguing issue of how a creature native to regions considered to have been beyond Europe’s trading reach in 1496 could have appeared in a Renaissance artwork. The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo in the Madonna della Vittoria provides a unique opportunity to place fifteenth century Italy in its global context. Its presence not only confirms the interests and purchasing power of Mantegna and his patrons, the Gonzagas, it reveals the complexity and range of Southeast Asian trading networks prior to direct European contact.

Copyright © 2014 Rosanna Rion. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attri-bution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In accordance of the Creative Commons Attribution License all Copyrights © 2014 are reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual property Rosanna Rion. All Copyright © 2014 are guarded by law and by SCIRP as a guardian. Poems which have been inspired by paintings or mention a pictorial work can be analysed following a long tradition of studies between painting and poetry. Three of Eliot’s early poems: The Love Song of Saint Sebastian, Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service and On a Portrait are examples of this kind of ek-phrastic exercise. There are different kinds of connections between painting and poetry and Eliot uses the iconological elements for different aims. The painters who interested the poet shared in common the fact that t...

[1. English > 2. Italiano]

1.
They examine the facts buildings to build or expand by Bishop Prince
Trento Johannes Hinderbach (in office 1466-1486). He is asked, castles in the Trentino countryside and princely premises in Trento - the castle
Buonconsiglio - and in Bolzano - vescovile- palace.
Hinderbach friend and collaborator of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the future Pope
Pius II, and collaborator of the emperor Frederick III, was a fine humanist. Interested in the arts and architecture promoted the transformation of Buonconsiglio castle into a Renaissance residence with new bodies Factory characteristics by reference to both the Gothic language that the then  most current reference to Roman antiquity.
Careful reader of the De Pictura Leona Battista Alberti and Vitruvius was
probably relationships with important figures of the Venetian culture of the time as the brilliant "Antiquarian" Felice Feliciano friend of Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna.

2.
Si prendono in esame gli edifici fatti costruire o ampliare dal principe vescovo
di Trento Johannes Hinderbach (in carica dal 1466 al 1486). Si tratta di chiese,
castelli nel contado trentino e sedi principesche a Trento - al castello del
Buonconsiglio - e a Bolzano - palazzo vescovile-.
Hinderbach amico e collaboratore di Enea Silvio Piccolomini, il futuro papa Pio
II, e collaboratore dell'imperatore Federico III d'Asburgo, fu un raffinato
umanista. Interessato alle arti e all'architettura promosse la trasformazione del
castello del Buonconsiglio in una residenza rinascimentale con nuovi corpi di
fabbrica connotati dal riferimento sia al liguaggio gotico che all'allora più
attuale riferimento all'antichità romana.
Lettore del De Pictura di Leona Battista Alberti e probabilmente di Vitruvio ebbe
rapporti con figure importanti della cultura veneta del tempo come il geniale
"antiquario" Felice Feliciano amico di Giovanni Bellini e Andrea Mantegna.

Padova fino alla metà del 400 è un centro ricco di cultura, dove si recano moltissimi artisti per imparare a dipingere con il linguaggio nuovo. In questo conteso ebbe moltissima importanza la Bottega di Francesco Squarcione, che accoglieva e formava artisti provenienti da ogni dove (talvolta anche sfruttandoli, o per tornaconto personale).

Christian fortitude and civic heroism blend in the Renaissance figure of a muscular, idealized, nude Hercules overcoming his foes and performing mythic labours or resting in glorious victory (see plate 1). 1 By the time Cesare Ripa's iconographic guide was first published in 1593, Hercules canonically embodied Virtù Heroica, able to moderate anger, temper avarice and subordinate pleasure under the rule of reason. 2 Writers like the late fourteenth-century Chancellor of Florence Coluccio Salutati, or the early sixteenth-century Dutch priest Desiderius Erasmus held Hercules up as an exemplar of tireless effort and moral strength. Allegorically, he was regarded as the vanquisher of passion and vice, politically, as the potent foe of rebellion or tyranny. Hercules's visual and textual representations have been naturalized as a selfevident case of classical revival and celebration of virtuous citizenry or exemplary rulership. Instead, this study takes neither classically informed political values nor the spectacle of masculinity for granted, and it considers personal as well as public resonances of the popular imagery. The Renaissance Hercules is an insistent, assertive statement of particular kinds of masculine identity, ones, furthermore, laden with the burdens of masculine ideals beyond attainment. Yvonne Tasker has observed of Hollywood action movies that 'The body of the male hero. .. provides the space in which a tension between restraint and excess is articulated.' 3 The same can be said of Hercules, for the strain of forging masculinity is worked out in very physical, laboured ways. Furthermore, the kind of masculinity on display was often sensual and sometimes conveyed homoerotic appeal.