The Scarith Of Scornello

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The Scarith of Scornello

Author : Ingrid D. Rowland
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226730370
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis The Scarith of Scornello by : Ingrid D. Rowland

Download or read book The Scarith of Scornello written by Ingrid D. Rowland and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A precocious teenager, bored with life at his family's Tuscan villa Scornello, Curzio Inghirami staged perhaps the most outlandish prank of the seventeenth century. Born in the age of Galileo to an illustrious family with ties to the Medici, and thus an educated and privileged young man, Curzio concocted a wild scheme that would in the end catch the attention of the Vatican and scandalize all of Rome. As recounted here with relish by Ingrid D. Rowland, Curzio preyed on the Italian fixation with ancestry to forge an array of ancient Latin and Etruscan documents. For authenticity's sake, he stashed the counterfeit treasure in scarith (capsules made of hair and mud) near Scornello. To the seventeenth-century Tuscans who were so eager to establish proof of their heritage and history, the scarith symbolized a link to the prestigious culture of their past. But because none of these proud Italians could actually read the ancient Etruscan language, they couldn't know for certain that the documents were frauds. The Scarith of Scornello traces the career of this young scam artist whose "discoveries" reached the Vatican shortly after Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition, inspiring participants on both sides of the affair to clash again—this time over Etruscan history. An expert on the Italian Renaissance and one of only a few people in the world to work with the Etruscan language, Rowland writes a tale so enchanting it seems it could only be fiction. In her investigation of this seventeenth-century caper, Rowland will captivate readers with her sense of humor and obvious delight in Curzio's far-reaching prank. And even long after the inauthenticity of Curzio's creation had been established, this practical joke endured: the scarith were stolen in the 1980s by a thief who mistook them for the real thing.

The Scarith of Scornello

Author : Ingrid D. Rowland
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226730363
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis The Scarith of Scornello by : Ingrid D. Rowland

Download or read book The Scarith of Scornello written by Ingrid D. Rowland and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-12-31 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As recounted here by Ingrid D. Rowland, Curzio preyed on the Italian fixation with ancestry to forge an array of ancient Latin and Etruscan documents. For authenticity's sake, he stashed the counterfeit treasure in scarith (capsules made of hair and mud) near Scornello. To the seventeenth-century Tuscans who were so eager to establish proof of their heritage and history, the scarith symbolized a link to the prestigious culture of their past. But because none of these proud Italians could actually read the ancient Etruscan language, they couldn't know for certain that the documents were frauds. The Scarith of Scornello traces the career of this young scam artist whose "discoveries" reached the Vatican shortly after Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition, inspiring participants on both sides of the affair to clash again - this time over Etruscan history."--BOOK JACKET.

Giordano Bruno

Author : Ingrid D. Rowland
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466895845
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis Giordano Bruno by : Ingrid D. Rowland

Download or read book Giordano Bruno written by Ingrid D. Rowland and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giordano Bruno is one of the great figures of early modern Europe, and one of the least understood. Ingrid D. Rowland's pathbreaking life of Bruno establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo, a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours. By the time Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600 on Rome's Campo dei Fiori, he had taught in Naples, Rome, Venice, Geneva, France, England, Germany, and the "magic Prague" of Emperor Rudolph II. His powers of memory and his provocative ideas about the infinity of the universe had attracted the attention of the pope, Queen Elizabeth—and the Inquisition, which condemned him to death in Rome as part of a yearlong jubilee. Writing with great verve and sympathy for her protagonist, Rowland traces Bruno's wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy had been called into question and shows him valiantly defending his ideas (and his right to maintain them) to the very end. An incisive, independent thinker just when natural philosophy was transformed into modern science, he was also a writer of sublime talent. His eloquence and his courage inspired thinkers across Europe, finding expression in the work of Shakespeare and Galileo. Giordano Bruno allows us to encounter a legendary European figure as if for the first time.

From Heaven to Arcadia

Author : Ingrid Drake Rowland
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 9781590171233
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (712 download)

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Book Synopsis From Heaven to Arcadia by : Ingrid Drake Rowland

Download or read book From Heaven to Arcadia written by Ingrid Drake Rowland and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polymathic Renaissance scholars such as Girolamo Cardano, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Athanasius Kircher.

Love and Death in Renaissance Italy

Author : Thomas V. Cohen
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226112608
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Love and Death in Renaissance Italy by : Thomas V. Cohen

Download or read book Love and Death in Renaissance Italy written by Thomas V. Cohen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gratuitous sex. Graphic violence. Lies, revenge, and murder. Before there was digital cable or reality television, there was Renaissance Italy and the courts in which Italian magistrates meted out justice to the vicious and the villainous, the scabrous and the scandalous. Love and Death in Renaissance Italy retells six piquant episodes from the Italian court just after 1550, as the Renaissance gave way to an era of Catholic reformation. Each of the chapters in this history chronicles a domestic drama around which the lives of ordinary Romans are suddenly and violently altered. You might read the gruesome murder that opens the book—when an Italian noble takes revenge on his wife and her bastard lover as he catches them in delicto flagrante—as straight from the pages of Boccaccio. But this tale, like the other stories Cohen recalls here, is true, and its recounting in this scintillating work is based on assiduous research in court proceedings kept in the state archives in Rome. Love and Death in Renaissance Italy contains stories of a forbidden love for an orphan nun, of brothers who cruelly exact a will from their dying teenage sister, and of a malicious papal prosecutor who not only rapes a band of sisters, but turns their shambling father into a pimp! Cohen retells each cruel episode with a blend of sly wit and warm sympathy and then wraps his tales in ruminations on their lessons, both for the history of their own time and for historians writing today. What results is a book at once poignant and painfully human as well as deliciously entertaining.

Apocalypse in Rome

Author : Ronald G. Musto
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520928725
Total Pages : 477 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Apocalypse in Rome by : Ronald G. Musto

Download or read book Apocalypse in Rome written by Ronald G. Musto and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-05-29 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 20, 1347, Cola di Rienzo overthrew without violence the turbulent rule of Rome’s barons and the absentee popes. A young visionary and the best political speaker of his time, Cola promised Rome a return to its former greatness. Ronald G. Musto’s vivid biography of this charismatic leader—whose exploits have enlivened the work of poets, composers, and dramatists, as well as historians—peels away centuries of interpretation to reveal the realities of fourteenth-century Italy and to offer a comprehensive account of Cola’s rise and fall. A man of modest origins, Cola gained a reputation as a talented professional with an unparalleled knowledge of Rome’s classical remains. After earning the respect and friendship of Petrarch and the sponsorship of Pope Clement VI, Cola won the affections and loyalties of all classes of Romans. His buono stato established the reputation of Rome as the heralded New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse and quickly made the city a potent diplomatic and religious center that challenged the authority—and power—of both pope and emperor. At the height of Cola’s rule, a conspiracy of pope and barons forced him to flee the city and live for years as a fugitive until he was betrayed and taken to Avignon to stand trial as a heretic. Musto relates the dramatic story of Cola’s subsequent exoneration and return to central Italy as an agent of the new pope. But only weeks after he reestablished his government, he was slain by the Romans atop the Capitoline hill. In his exploration, Musto examines every known document pertaining to Cola’s life, including papal, private, and diplomatic correspondence rarely used by earlier historians. With his intimate knowledge of historical Rome—its streets and ruins, its churches and palaces, from the busy Tiber riverfront to the lost splendor of the Capitoline—he brings a cinematic flair to this fascinating historical narrative.

From Pompeii

Author : Ingrid D. Rowland
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674416538
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (744 download)

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Book Synopsis From Pompeii by : Ingrid D. Rowland

Download or read book From Pompeii written by Ingrid D. Rowland and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the force of the explosion blew the top right off the mountain, burying nearby Pompeii in a shower of volcanic ash. Ironically, the calamity that proved so lethal for Pompeii's inhabitants preserved the city for centuries, leaving behind a snapshot of Roman daily life that has captured the imagination of generations. The experience of Pompeii always reflects a particular time and sensibility, says Ingrid Rowland. From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town explores the fascinating variety of these different experiences, as described by the artists, writers, actors, and others who have toured the excavated site. The city's houses, temples, gardens--and traces of Vesuvius's human victims--have elicited responses ranging from awe to embarrassment, with shifting cultural tastes playing an important role. The erotic frescoes that appalled eighteenth-century viewers inspired Renoir to change the way he painted. For Freud, visiting Pompeii was as therapeutic as a session of psychoanalysis. Crown Prince Hirohito, arriving in the Bay of Naples by battleship, found Pompeii interesting, but Vesuvius, to his eyes, was just an ugly version of Mount Fuji. Rowland treats readers to the distinctive, often quirky responses of visitors ranging from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain to Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman. Interwoven throughout a narrative lush with detail and insight is the thread of Rowland's own impressions of Pompeii, where she has returned many times since first visiting in 1962.

European Contexts for English Republicanism

Author : Gaby Mahlberg
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317139747
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis European Contexts for English Republicanism by : Gaby Mahlberg

Download or read book European Contexts for English Republicanism written by Gaby Mahlberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: European Contexts for English Republicanism offers new perspectives on early modern English republicanism through its focus on the Continental reception of and engagement with seventeenth-century English thinkers and political events. Looking both at political ideas and at the people that shaped them, the collection examines English republican thought in its wider European context during the later seventeenth and eighteenth century. In a number of case studies, the contributors assess the different ways in which English republican ideas were not only shaped by the thought of the ancients, but also by contemporary authors from all over Europe, such as Hugo Grotius or Christoph Besold. They demonstrate that English republican thinkers did not only act in dialogue with Continental authors and scholars, their ideas in turn also left a long-lasting legacy in Europe as they were received, transformed and put to new uses by thinkers in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. Far from being an exclusively transatlantic affair, as much of the established scholarship suggests, English republican thought also left its legacy on the European Continent, finding its way into wider debates about the rights and wrongs of the English Civil War and the nature of government, while later translations of English republican works also influenced the key thinkers of the French Revolution and the liberals of the nineteenth century. Bringing together a range of fresh and original essays by British and European scholars in the field of early modern intellectual history and English studies, this collection of essays revises a one-sided approach to English republicanism and widens the scope of study beyond linguistic and national boundaries by looking at English republicans and their continental networks and legacy.

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium

Author : Levi Roach
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691217866
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium by : Levi Roach

Download or read book Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium written by Levi Roach and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As Levi Roach illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in society and political culture, shifts which would lay the foundations for the European ancien régime. Spanning documentary traditions across France, England, Germany and northern Italy, Roach examines five sets of falsified texts to demonstrate how forged records produced in this period gave voice to new collective identities within and beyond the Church. Above all, he indicates how this fad for falsification points to new attitudes toward past and present—a developing fascination with the signs of antiquity. These conclusions revise traditional master narratives about the development of antiquarianism in the modern era, showing that medieval forgers were every bit as sophisticated as their Renaissance successors. Medieval forgers were simply interested in different subjects—the history of the Church and their local realms, rather than the literary world of classical antiquity. A comparative history of falsified records at a crucial turning point in the Middle Ages, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium offers valuable insights into how institutions and individuals rewrote and reimagined the past.

Mercenaries of Knowledge

Author : Fabien Montcher
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009340476
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Mercenaries of Knowledge by : Fabien Montcher

Download or read book Mercenaries of Knowledge written by Fabien Montcher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Lisbon to Rome via the Gulf of Guinea and the sugar mills of northern Brazil, this book explores the strategies and practices that displaced scholars cultivated to navigate the murky waters of late Renaissance politics. By tracing the life of the Portuguese jurist-scholar Vicente Nogueira (1586–1654) across diverse social, cultural, and pol-itical spaces, Fabien Montcher reveals a world of religious conflicts and imperial rivalries. Here, European agents developed the practice of 'bibliopolitics'– using local and international systems for buying and selling books and manuscripts to foster political communication and debate, and ultimately to negotiate their survival. Bibliopolitics fostered the advent of a generation of 'mercenaries of knowledge' whose stories constitute a key part of seventeenth-century social and cultural history. This book also demonstrates their crucial role in creating an inter-national and dynamic Republic of Letters with others who helped shape early modern intellectual and political worlds.

Galileo

Author : David Wootton
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300170068
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Galileo by : David Wootton

Download or read book Galileo written by David Wootton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Demonstrates an awesome command of the vast Galileo literature . . . [Wootton] excels in boldly speculating about Galileo’s motives” (The New York Times Book Review). Tackling Galileo as astronomer, engineer, and author, David Wootton places him at the center of Renaissance culture. He traces Galileo through his early rebellious years; the beginnings of his scientific career constructing a “new physics”; his move to Florence seeking money, status, and greater freedom to attack intellectual orthodoxies; his trial for heresy and narrow escape from torture; and his house arrest and physical (though not intellectual) decline. Wootton also reveals much that is new—from Galileo’s premature Copernicanism to a previously unrecognized illegitimate daughter—and, controversially, rejects the long-established belief that Galileo was a good Catholic. Absolutely central to Galileo’s significance—and to science more broadly—is the telescope, the potential of which Galileo was the first to grasp. Wootton makes clear that it totally revolutionized and galvanized scientific endeavor to discover new and previously unimagined facts. Drawing extensively on Galileo’s voluminous letters, many of which were self-censored and sly, this is an original, arresting, and highly readable biography of a difficult, remarkable Renaissance genius. Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title in the Astronautics and Astronomy Category “Fascinating reading . . . With this highly adventurous portrayal of Galileo’s inner world, Wootton assures himself a high rank among the most radical recent Galileo interpreters . . . Undoubtedly Wootton makes an important contribution to Galileo scholarship.” —America magazine “Wootton’s biography . . . is engagingly written and offers fresh insights into Galileo’s intellectual development.” —Standpoint magazine

The First Scottish Enlightenment

Author : Kelsey Jackson Williams
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019253758X
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis The First Scottish Enlightenment by : Kelsey Jackson Williams

Download or read book The First Scottish Enlightenment written by Kelsey Jackson Williams and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional accounts of the Scottish Enlightenment present the half-century or so before 1750 as, at best, a not-yet fully realised precursor to the era of Hume and Smith, at worst, a period of superstition and religious bigotry. This is the first book-length study to systematically challenge that notion. Instead, it argues that the era between approximately 1680 and 1745 was a 'First' Scottish Enlightenment, part of the continent-wide phenomenon of early Enlightenment and led by the Jacobites, Episcopalians, and Catholics of north-eastern Scotland. It makes this argument through an intensive study of the dramatic changes in historiographical practice which took place in Scotland during this era, showing how the documentary scholarship of Jean Mabillon and the Maurists was eagerly received and rapidly developed in Scottish historical circles, resulting in the wholesale demolition of the older, Humanist myths of Scottish origins and their replacement with the foundations of our modern understanding of early Scottish history. This volume accordingly challenges many of the truisms surrounding seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish history, pushing back against notions of pre-Enlightenment Scotland as backward, insular, and intellectually impoverished and mapping a richly polymathic, erudite, and transnational web of scholars, readers, and polemicists. It highlights the enduring cultural links with France and argues for the central importance of Scotland's two principal religious minorities—Episcopalians and Catholics—in the growth of Enlightenment thinking. As such, it makes a major intervention in the intellectual and cultural histories of Scotland, early modern Europe, and the Enlightenment itself.

The Invention of Discovery, 1500-1700

Author : James Dougal Fleming
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN 13 : 9780754668411
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (684 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of Discovery, 1500-1700 by : James Dougal Fleming

Download or read book The Invention of Discovery, 1500-1700 written by James Dougal Fleming and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Bacon to Galileo, from stagecraft to maths, from martyrology to romance, contributors to this interdisciplinary collection examine the early-modern generation of discovery as an absolute and ostensibly neutral standard of knowledge-production. They further investigate the hermeneutic implications for the epistemological authority that tends, in modernity, still to be based on that standard.

Heinrich Glarean's Books

Author : Iain Fenlon
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110702269X
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Heinrich Glarean's Books by : Iain Fenlon

Download or read book Heinrich Glarean's Books written by Iain Fenlon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays offers a wide range of new interdisciplinary perspectives on Heinrich Glarean's contribution to intellectual life.

Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800

Author : Walter Stevens
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421426889
Total Pages : 437 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800 by : Walter Stevens

Download or read book Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1800 written by Walter Stevens and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The essays gathered in this volume demonstrate that studying early modern European literary forgeries is a fascinating cultural adventure” (Lina Bolzoni author of The Gallery of Memory). This comprehensive study of literary and historiographical forgery goes well beyond questions of authorship. It spotlights the imaginative vitality of forgery and its sinister impact on genuine scholarship. This volume demonstrates that early modern forgery was a literary tradition in its own right, with distinctive connections to politics, Greek and Roman classics, religion, philosophy, and modern literature. The early modern explosion in forgery of all kinds—particularly in the fields of literary and archaeological falsification—demonstrates a dramatic shift in attitudes toward historical evidence and in the relation of texts to contemporary society. The authors capture the impact of this evolution within many cultural transformations, including the rise of print, changing tastes and fortunes of the literary marketplace, and the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. The thirteen essays draw on Johns Hopkins University’s Bibliotheca Fictiva, the world’s premier research collection dedicated exclusively to the subject of literary forgery. It consists of several thousand rare books and unique manuscript materials from the early modern period and beyond. Contributors: Frederic Clark, James Coleman, Richard Cooper, Arthur Freeman, Anthony Grafton, A. Katie Harris, Earle A. Havens, Jack Lynch, Shana D. O’Connell, Ingrid Rowland, Walter Stephens, Elly Truitt, Kate Tunstall

Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity

Author : Marisa Bass
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691169993
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity by : Marisa Bass

Download or read book Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity written by Marisa Bass and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first in-depth historical study of Jan Gossart (ca. 1478–1532), one of the most important painters of the Renaissance in northern Europe. Providing a richly illustrated narrative of the Netherlandish artist's life and art, Marisa Anne Bass shows how Gossart’s paintings were part of a larger cultural effort in the Netherlands to assert the region’s ancient heritage as distinct from the antiquity and presumed cultural hegemony of Rome. Focusing on Gossart’s vibrant, monumental mythological nudes, the book challenges previous interpretations by arguing that Gossart and his patrons did not slavishly imitate Italian Renaissance models but instead sought to contest the idea that the Roman past gave the Italians a monopoly on antiquity. Drawing on many previously unused primary sources in Latin, Dutch, and French, Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity offers a fascinating new understanding of both the painter and the history of northern European art at large.

Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood

Author : Tara Nummedal
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812295935
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood by : Tara Nummedal

Download or read book Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood written by Tara Nummedal and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-02-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1573, the alchemist Anna Zieglerin gave her patron, the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, the recipe for an extraordinary substance she called the lion's blood. She claimed that this golden oil could stimulate the growth of plants, create gemstones, transform lead into the coveted philosophers' stone—and would serve a critical role in preparing for the Last Days. Boldly envisioning herself as a Protestant Virgin Mary, Anna proposed that the lion's blood, paired with her own body, could even generate life, repopulating and redeeming the corrupt world in its final moments. In Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood, Tara Nummedal reconstructs the extraordinary career and historical afterlife of alchemist, courtier, and prophet Anna Zieglerin. She situates Anna's story within the wider frameworks of Reformation Germany's religious, political, and military battles; the rising influence of alchemy; the role of apocalyptic eschatology; and the position of women within these contexts. Together with her husband, the jester Heinrich Schombach, and their companion and fellow alchemist Philipp Sommering, Anna promised her patrons at the court of Wolfenbüttel spiritual salvation and material profit. But her compelling vision brought with it another, darker possibility: rather than granting her patrons wealth or redemption, Anna's alchemical gifts might instead lead to war, disgrace, and destruction. By 1575, three years after Anna's arrival at court, her enemies had succeeded in turning her from holy alchemist into poisoner and sorceress, culminating in Anna's arrest, torture, and public execution. In her own life, Anna was a master of self-fashioning; in the centuries since her death, her story has been continually refashioned, making her a fitting emblem for each new age. Interweaving the history of science, gender, religion, and politics, Nummedal recounts how one resourceful woman's alchemical schemes touched some of the most consequential matters in Reformation Germany.