Tag Archive for Italian History

Lecture | Pat Simons ‘The Crone, the Witch and the Library in Renaissance Italy’

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The Crone, the Witch and the Library in Renaissance Italy Professor Pat Simons, University of Michigan This paper examines ways in which renewed attention to antiquity during the Renaissance re-invigorated misogynist stereotypes of old women as well as bringing new evidence to the emerging discourse about witches, hence shaping for the hag a vivid pictorial presence. Proof for the threatening female figure was drawn from the humanist’s library of classical authors, many cited in Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s Stryx (1523), which stated that witches were ‘ancient in essence and new…

Lecture | Charting Cultural Transformation through Renaissance Preaching - Peter Howard

St Dominic and St Francis  by Angelo Lion  Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice

Charting Cultural Transformation through Renaissance Preaching Associate Professor Peter Howard from Monash University   How did the artists of the Sistine Chapel wall frescoes develop and execute a complex programme in an amazingly short period of time? How do we explain the configuration of public space in early Renaissance Italy? Who authorised the magnificent display that characterises Renaissance Florence? These are just some of the questions on which light is shed if an expansive role is assigned to preaching in late medieval and early Renaissance Italy. This argument is a…