Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance Italy
View publication
Book Series
Renovatio Artium, vol. 16
- Pages: 340 p.
- Size:220 x 280 mm
- Illustrations:1 b/w, 84 col.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2026
- € 160,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-1-915487-50-6
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Sep/26)
*How to pre-order?
This book reveals an original investigation of Renaissance literature and portraiture.
BIO
Lina Bolzoni is Professor Emerita of Italian literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University, New York. She is a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the British Academy, and the American Philosophical Society. Among her books, translated into many languages, there are La stanza della memoria: Modelli letterari e iconografici nell’età della stampa (Turin, 1995); La rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini a Bernardino da Siena (Turin, 2002); and Una meravigliosa solitudine: L’arte di leggere nell’Europa moderna (Turin, 2019).
Summary
In his Canzoniere, Petrarch evokes the image of the “crystal heart” as a metaphor for a correspondence between the inner self and external appearance. Expanding on the classical theme of the soul’s open window, the metaphor of the crystal heart embodies the utopia of amorous transparency, conveying the desire to cast aside the barriers between interior and exterior, between emotion and expression, rendering love perfectly visible from the outside. Using this image as a heuristic tool, Lina Bolzoni takes us into an original investigation of Renaissance literature and portraiture. Focusing on and taking as a departure point Pietro Bembo’s famous dialogue on love, the Asolani (first published in 1505), Bolzoni guides us into a meaningful exploration of love poetry and prose, letters, paintings, mirrors, and medals. Barriers fixed by the critical tradition fall along the way, for words, images, and objects, far from being relegated to their own spheres, refer constantly back and forth to one another, their interconnections woven together into refined and secret rituals that disclose the centrality of love in Italian Renaissance culture and society. Bolzoni’s magistral book reveals not only the pivotal role played by a reflection on love in the creation of a new court society, and of the early-modern courtier, but also love’s inextricable bond with friendship and the pleasures of interpretation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Translator’s Preface
Introduction
Part One
The Asolani: Themes, Games of Perspective, Life Choices
Chapter One. THE THREE MAIDENS: THE OPENING SCENE AND ITS DIFFRACTION
The Song of the Three Maidens
Changes in Staging
Mirroring Effects
Chapter Two. THE COURT AND ITS PORTRAITS
The Dedicatory Letter to Lucrezia Borgia: The Fascination of Absence
The Court of Caterina Cornaro and its Various Portraits
Chapter Three. LITERATURE AND ITS AUDIENCE
The Mirror of the Text and the Framework of the Proems
The Guide for the Traveler: Knowledge and Therapy of the Soul
The Cracked Mirror: The Seduction of the Word
Staging the Instruments of Dialogue
The Poet as a Juggler and the Response of Readers
Chapter Four. PICTURES FRAMED BY LITERATURE
The “Amorous Painting,” or, Why Love is a God
Miracles of the Mind
The Encounter with Narcissus
“Where Flock the People of Dreams”
Chapter Five. PLACES
The Garden of the Queen
The Hermit’s Wood
Chapter Six. BETWEEN THE HERMITAGE AND THE REALM OF VENUS
The Company of Friends: A Fragile Utopia
The Draw of the Hermitage
Bembo as Ambassador of the Realm of Venus
Part Two
The Portrait between Words and Images
Chapter Seven. THE TEXT BEFORE THE “EYE OF THE BEHOLDER”
Proposal for an Experiment
The Face of Words
The Crystal Heart: The Myth of Amorous Transparency
Imitation and Portrait
The Double Portrait, or The Overturned Silenus
Chapter Eight. THE SELF-PORTRAIT
The Dialogues of the Asolani as a Self-Portrait
“Every Painter Paints Himself”: Leonardo da Vinci
“Poi ch’i’ t’ebbi nel cor piú di me vaglio”: Michelangelo and the Self-Portrait of the Artist in Love
Chapter Nine. POETRY AND PORTRAIT: THE NEGOTIATION OF BORDERS
“Ma certo il mio Simon fu in paradiso”: Petrarch and the Portrait of Laura
“Ben veggo io, Tiziano, in forme nove l’idolo mio”: The Face and the Heart
“Agiongendo la voce alla figura”: Dialogue with the Image
“Ché ingannata sería corsa la Morte”: The Victory over Time
“Fategli solamente doppio il cuore”: The Miracles of Love
“Tu m’hai vivo in catena e pinto in cassa”: The Matter of the Portrait
“Sono queste, Amor, le vaghe trecce bionde”: The Canon of Beauties
Part Three
The Double Portrait
Chapter Ten. DOUBLE PORTRAITS IN POETRY: ARIOSTO AND CASTIGLIONE
A Portrait with Emblems: Ariosto’s Canzone for Alessandra Benucci
The Double Portrait of the Sorceress Alcina
“I Am Sending You This Book as a Painted Portrait of the Urbino Court”: Perspective Games and the Cortegiano
The Mystery of the S, or The Impresa of Elisabetta Gonzaga
Castiglione’s “Sonnets of the mirror”
Among Mirrors, Medals, Portraits
Chapter Eleven. PORTRAITS WITH COVER OR WITH REVERSE, OR A PORTRAIT IN TWO INSTALLMENTS
Images Grow with the Reader
Piero della Francesca, the Dukes of Urbino and Their Triumphs
Ginevra de’ Benci: A Double Portrait between Leonardo and Bernardo Bembo
The Face of Time
The Couple Portrait: Jacometto and Raphael
Lotto, the Bishop, the Sister
The Mask and Pygmalion
Titian: Three Faces for a Self-Portrait?
Chapter Twelve. THE SPACE OF THE HEART
The Book of the Heart
The Portrait Painted in the Heart
Part Four
The Community of Friends
Chapter Thirteen. BERNARDO BEMBO FROM THE COURT OF CHARLES THE BOLD TO THE FLORENCE OF LORENZO DE’ MEDICI
Chapter Fourteen. BERNARDO, GINEVRA DE’ BENCI, AND THE CIRCLE OF FRIENDS: THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MYTH, THE PLEASURE OF INTERPRETATION
Chapter Fifteen. VIRTUS ET HONOR: THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE IMPRESA BETWEEN CELEBRATION AND MEMORY
Chapter Sixteen. THE SENSUAL PLEASURE OF MEDALS, OR A MEDAL IN DISPUTE
Chapter Seventeen. DOUBLE PORTRAITS FOR THE ASOLANI
List of Illustrations
Bibliography
Index
Media
