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Governadoras: Women Administrators, Gender, and Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese America Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Jessica O'Leary
In sixteenth-century Brazil, several European women governed the captaincies of their late or absent husbands during the first century of Portuguese colonization. A contextual and lexical analysis of the male-authored sources reveals that these women acted decisively to protect and expand familial patrimonies and, in doing so, were part of the colonizing movement. Although extensive written evidence
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Plenty of Fish in the Sea: The Satires of Juvenal in a Late Fifteenth-Century Analysis of Spanish Court Education Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Sarah L. Reeser
In 1492, Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, the future author of “De Orbe Novo,” sent a letter to Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza, the primate of Spain, describing the state of Spanish education as Martyr took up a post as court tutor. This study argues that Martyr's letter was a satire that relied upon a close intertextual relationship with Juvenal's “Satires.” This framework allowed Martyr to offer layered
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Cervantes and Don Quijote at Home and Abroad Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Rolena Adorno
Do resonances of Cervantes's frustrated attempts to be granted a royal appointment in the Spanish Indies filter into the “Quijote”? Can the author be glimpsed in the novel of which he is also a reader? What holds Don Quijote and Sancho Panza together and gives this episodic novel its coherence? Attuned to the rich conversational exchanges between the two protagonists, I argue that Don Quijote's escalating
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The Donati-Ardinghelli Wedding of 1465: A Closer Reading of Braccio Martelli's Letter of April 27 to Lorenzo de’ Medici Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Judith Bryce
This article offers an intensive—although still not exhaustive—reading of a letter written to the adolescent Lorenzo de’ Medici by Braccio Martelli, a member of his brigata. It is a document that focuses on the celebrations accompanying the wedding of Lucrezia Donati, the object of Lorenzo's affections, to Niccolò Ardinghelli, an anti-Medicean living in exile. I examine some of the letter's multiple
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Scottish History in the Eyes of Sixteenth-Century France Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Amy Blakeway
Scotland's mythical and medieval history has long been acknowledged as of critical importance in its sixteenth-century present. This article tracks these discourses across the channel, showing for the first time the limited circulation of Scottish histories in France and the dominance of English versions of the past in French texts, ranging from short, printed books to royal presentation manuscripts
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Reason of State, Stände, and Estates in German and English Exchanges over the Crisis in the Palatinate, 1618–24 Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Mark A. Hutchinson
When, in 1619, Frederick V of the Palatinate accepted the crown of Bohemia, he justified his action, which challenged the authority of Emperor Ferdinand II and precipitated the Thirty Years’ War, by the need to uphold the public order, rights, and responsibilities connected to the estates of the empire. English engagements with the German vocabulary of estates drew upon the concept of reason of state—those
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“A Sweet but Grave and Sad Melody”: Music and Emotion in Exequies in Post-Tridentine Italy Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-04-24 Antonio Chemotti
This article investigates the relation between music and emotions at exequies in Italy between ca. 1560 and ca. 1660. Mapping the lexicon used to describe music in funeral books, I highlight the coexistence of two diverging semantic domains, sadness and sweetness. Their juxtaposition corresponds to an aesthetic principle that informed the conceptualization of the entire ritual's artistic setup—as divided
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Ut Poesis Historia? A Computational-Hermeneutic Approach to the Renaissance Art of History Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Sofie Kluge, Ross Deans Kristensen-Mclachlan
This article aims to reopen discussion of the Renaissance ars historica, a genre that has garnered little attention in modern scholarship. It does so by using a set of computational tools to measure the quantitative occurrence of terms related to artistry and cognition in Johann Wolff's collection of historical-method texts entitled “Artis Historicae Penus” (1579). Like the period's historical writing
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The Limits of Philology: Antonio Agustín and Textual Criticism of Canon Law in Tridentine Europe Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Mateusz Falkowski
This article examines Antonio Agustín's (1517–86) philological and historical treatise “De Emendatione Gratiani” (1587). Canon law became a key controversial issue in Catholic-Protestant confessional arguments in the sixteenth century, but its convoluted history also posed a challenge within Catholic orthodoxy itself. This essay discusses how Agustín, working to improve the text of Gratian's “Decretum”
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Dragon's Blood or the Red Delusion: Textual Tradition, Craftsmanship, and Discovery in the Early Modern Period Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Gaston Javier Basile
This article explores the plurality of referents associated with the term “dragon's blood” (“sanguis draconis”), a legendary substance that brings together Greco-Roman and Arabic medical knowledge, local vernacular traditions and artisanal practices, and new Spanish and Portuguese botanical discoveries. The study of dragon's blood reveals the interface between overlapping epistemic paradigms governing
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“The Ship Dieth at Sea”: Metaphor and Maritime Law Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Hayley Cotter
This article proposes a new methodology for engaging with early modern legal metaphor. It argues that a full account of the trope must integrate its legal-historical, cultural, literary, and philosophical dimensions. After discussing what makes early modern legal metaphor unique (and thus uniquely challenging to decipher), I consider various philosophical, legal, cognitive, and literary approaches
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Banishment's Vanishing Act: The Inconstancy of Law in Early Modern Spain Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Ruth MacKay
Banishment was probably the most frequent punishment in early modern Spanish criminal courts. It was impossible to enforce and antithetical to the interests of the state, yet it survived. This article, based on archival sources, proposes that the study of early modern law, probably in general but definitely in Spain, must account for its symbolic and rhetorical meaning beyond the language of a given
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Music and Crisis at Santa Maria Maggiore during the Turbulent 1620s Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Jason Rosenholtz-Witt
During the 1620s, when churches throughout Northern Italy were scaling back musical expenditures due to shrinking coffers, the confraternity Misericordia Maggiore continued to lavishly fund music in Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo. In a decade marred by war, austerity, death, famine, and plague, music received robust institutional support. Drawing from new archival research, a picture emerges of the
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Fiestas Fit for a King: Contested Symbolic Regimes of Power in New Spain Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Nicole T. Hughes
After Viceroy Don Luis de Velasco died in 1564, royal officials watched with trepidation as the conquistadores’ descendants adopted heraldry, hereditary titles, and royal ceremony, supposedly in jest. Scholars have argued that the royal judges used these over-the-top fiestas to frame powerful settlers for sedition. This article instead argues that the royal judges’ obsession with how wealthy settlers
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Ippolita Maria Sforza, Student and Patron of Greek in Milan Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Raf Van Rooy
When ancient Greek heritage was rehabilitated in the Renaissance, its students were first and foremost aspiring humanists, and, almost as a rule, men. An early exception was Ippolita Maria Sforza (1445–88), the eldest daughter of the Duke of Milan, Francesco I Sforza. I argue that she not only studied the Greek language but also acted as a patron of Greek studies. Sforza's double role is confirmed
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Gospel Harmonies and the Genres of Biblical Scholarship in Early Modern Europe Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Kirsten Macfarlane
Early modern Gospel harmonies have received little attention and are mostly studied as poor precursors to modern synoptic criticism. This article reassesses the harmony's significance by reconstructing its development ca. 1500–1700, reaching two conclusions. First, it argues that Gospel harmonies acted as a touchstone for critical intellectual developments such as the rise of scientific chronology
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In Support of Pontifical Power: The Papacy and the Papal States’ Baronial Nobility, 1417–49 Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Loek Luiten
This article addresses the baronial nobility's much-neglected role in supporting the reestablishment of pontifical power in the wake of the Western Schism. In doing so, this article stresses how acts of noble revolt were complemented by extensive patterns of collaboration in the Papal States’ government, armies, and relations with other principalities. The nobility proved to be a fundamental source
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Patronage Networks in Gaelic Ireland ca. 1541–ca. 1660 Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Evan Bourke, Deirdre Nic Chárthaigh
Bardic poetry in early modern Ireland was the product of highly sophisticated, transactional, and mutually beneficial relationships between poets and their aristocratic patrons. This paper combines innovative methods of network analysis with traditional textual scholarship to visualize and examine these social relationships, which played a role, at both a national and regional level, in maintaining
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Edified by the Margent: Early Modern Readings of Biblical Marginalia Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Beatrice Groves
This article traces the evidence left by early modern readers who marked their Bibles’ annotations—both by taking attentive notice of them and by leaving their own inky traces on them. Among the burgeoning critical interest in both printed and manuscript marginalia there has been little interrogation of the intersection between the two. This article traces the evidence of what the readerly marginalia
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Tournaments and the Integration of the Nobility in the Habsburg Composite State Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Mario Damen
This article examines the chivalric encounters organized on the occasion of the Joyous Entry of Prince Philip in the Low Countries in 1549–50. It poses the question as to how they functioned as a performative tool to enhance cohesion among the nobles of the Habsburg composite state. The tournaments served as a regulated outlet for noble violence, controlled by the prince and his closest collaborators
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Materializing the Global: Textiles, Color, and Race in a Genoese Portrait by Anthony van Dyck Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Ana Howie
The global dimensions of Anthony van Dyck's portrait of Genoese noblewoman Elena Grimaldi Cattaneo have been largely overlooked by art historians. Seventeenth-century Genoa was immersed in the global movement of goods, knowledge, and peoples; these encounters and exchanges shaped Genoa's fashion system. This article situates the portrait within networks of international exchange to explore the meaningful
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Letters to the Editor: Friendship and Self-Fashioning in a Fifteenth-Century Humanist Epistolary Collection Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Elizabeth M. McCahill
This article explores Poggio Bracciolini's letters to Niccolò Niccoli from a variety of perspectives: it looks at what imitation meant for Poggio, examines the letters’ commentary on the manuscript culture of the early Quattrocento, discusses Poggio's efforts to craft a personal voice, and traces the interplay of optimism and pessimism in the letters, an interplay common to humanist texts of this period
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Ciriaco d'Ancona and the Origins of Epigraphy Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Lillian Datchev
This article investigates how and why scholars began to systematically examine and record ancient inscriptions in fifteenth-century Italy. Finding evidence in the revolutionary work of Ciriaco d'Ancona, it shows that this change emerged from the synthesis of several cultural traditions. Ciriaco learned to observe antiquities from the Italian elite living in the Greek colonies and to record inscriptions
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The 2022 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Mexica Space and Habsburg Time Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Barbara E. Mundy
The Aztec (Mexica) city of Tenochtitlan was transformed after the Spanish invasion of 1519–21 into a staging ground for Habsburg colonial experiments. Indigenous response is glimpsed in this essay through the lens of annals, written in Nahuatl, that document urban festivals celebrating Spanish Habsburg monarchs. I argue that the redeployment of particular spaces—long charged with meaning by Indigenous
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Portraits of a Lady: The Self-Presentation of Esther Inglis, Protestant Limner Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-07-25 Georgianna Ziegler
Esther Inglis (ca. 1570–1624), a Franco-Scottish writer, is known for her manuscript books, written in many handwriting styles and decorated with pen or brushwork in black-and-white or color. About twenty-five of her sixty or so surviving manuscripts contain self-portraits, which until now have not been examined in detail. This essay surveys the developing author portrait in manuscript and print for
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A Common Humanity? From Poetry to Philosophy in Hugo Grotius Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Sharon Achinstein
This essay shows how Hugo Grotius (1583–1646) made use of classical poetry and drama, especially that of Lucan, Euripides, and Seneca, in developing his thought on the treatment of captives, prisoners of war, and slaves, and argues that his method was humanist and philological. From his early publishing projects to “The Rights of War and Peace” (De Iure Belli ac Pacis, 1625), Grotius developed an account
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Katherine Parr's Giftbooks, Henry VIII's Marginalia, and the Display of Royal Power and Piety Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Micheline White
This essay examines deluxe copies of Katherine Parr's “Psalms or Prayers” (1544) distributed as gifts as part of Henry VIII's wartime campaign. The book promoted supplication for the king, and Parr used hand illumination to amplify its aesthetic and sacred character and to elicit political loyalty. I discuss two copies annotated by Henry, one previously unknown. I argue that the volumes shed new light
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Purchasing Dunkirk: Commerce, Diplomacy, and Absolutist Empire in England and France Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Brendan Gillis
This article considers Louis XIV's purchase of Dunkirk from Charles II in 1662 as a case study in the interwoven histories of monarchy and empire. In France and England, proponents of absolutism sought to broaden definitions of conquest to encompass both diplomacy and commerce. It proved nearly impossible to bring the concept of buying or selling a town into congruence with grand dynastic designs.
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Magnificence, Dignity, and the Sociopolitical Function of Architectural Ornament: Cortesi's Discussion of the Cardinal's Architectural Patronage Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Nele de Raedt
By concentrating on Paolo Cortesi's discussion of the cardinal's architectural patronage in “De Cardinalatu Libri Tres” (1510), this article shows how Cortesi considered the construction of a sumptuous residence not as a sign of “magnificence” (“magnificentia”) but as a necessary operation to establish “dignity” (“dignitas”). Cortesi thus distinguished between the ethical and political-aesthetic dimension
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Tolerance, Society, and Sovereignty: The Retreat from Pluralism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Francesco Quatrini
The Polish Brethren were fervent advocates of religious tolerance. Johann Crell's “Vindiciae pro Religionis Libertate” (1637) is prominent among their works, because of its far-reaching and progressive arguments for freedom of religion. This article outlines the historical and intellectual context of this pamphlet, and its reception in seventeenth-century Europe. Despite being familiar with a historical
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Penned by Encounter: Visibility and Invisibility of the Cross-Cultural in Images from Early Modern Franciscan Missions in Central Africa and Central Mexico Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Cécile Fromont
This article considers a corpus of images created between 1650 and 1750 within Italian Capuchin missions to Kongo and Angola. It demonstrates how these visual creations, though European in form, craftsmanship, and intended audience, were in fact penned by encounter and the products of cross-cultural interactions. Contrasting the Central African images with two well-known and oft-studied Franciscan
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Locating Race in Mughal India Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Supriya Gandhi
This article uses writings of the French traveler François Bernier (d. 1688) on race as an inroad into the question of locating race in Mughal India. I explore Mughal discourses of alterity through an examination of Persian writings from various genres composed during the long seventeenth century. In contrast to Bernier, these writings do not offer concepts equivalent to that of race. However, by invoking
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The 2021 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: On Protean Acting: Race and Virtuosity Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Ayanna Thompson
In November 2020, Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott, the New York Times film critics, published an article entitled “The Century's Greatest Actors,” in which they proclaimed, “We are in a golden age of acting—make that platinum.” Celebrating the fact that their list of the top twenty-five actors from the last twenty years “looked beyond Hollywood,” Dargis and Scott declared that while there are Oscar
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Black Roma: Afro-Romani Connections in Early Modern Drama (and Beyond) Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Noémie Ndiaye
This essay brings to light a hitherto unnoticed network of Afro-Romani connections in later seventeenth-century French and English drama, and it construes that network as conceptual and ethical genealogy for the bonds that exist today between Black studies and the fledgling field of critical Romani studies. By close reading Molière's “Les fourberies de Scapin” (1671) and its 1677 adaptation by Edward
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Slavery and White Womanhood in Early Modern England Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2023-01-09 Urvashi Chakravarty
This article argues that early modern literary and visual texts from Shakespeare's “Comedy of Errors” to Spenser's “Faerie Queene” repeatedly represent and render womanhood as a specifically and singularly white construction; in so doing, they establish the co-constitution of gender and race and their conscription by the contingencies of class. As this formation of white womanhood is in turn mobilized
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Jerusalem Reformed: Rethinking Early Modern Pilgrimage Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Sundar Henny, Zur Shalev
Recent scholarship has challenged the still-powerful claim that long-distance pilgrimage and the journey to Jerusalem dramatically declined in number and significance in the sixteenth century. This article seeks to explore the different ways in which pilgrimage was embedded in the culture of the period. We interpret pilgrimage as a field of shared cross-confessional practices, representational conventions
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Rubens's Skepticism Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 James Pilgrim
Peter Paul Rubens's Rockox Triptych is generally thought to represent the incredulity of Saint Thomas, even though the side wound that presented Christ's famously distrustful disciple with proof of the resurrection is nowhere to be seen. This article explores the significance of the missing side wound. Drawing attention to the circulation of skeptical philosophy within the artist's milieu, it argues
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Luisa de Carvajal in Anglo-Spanish Contexts, 1605–14 Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Kathryn Marshalek
This article reexamines the life of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, a Spanish noblewoman who traveled to London in 1605 hoping to be martyred in service of the Catholic faith. By placing her at the intersection of a series of international, intra- and interconfessional tensions created by the sustained religious division of post-Reformation England, Carvajal emerges as a sophisticated political actor
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Clerical Exorcists and the Struggle for Professional Status in Early Modern Venice: Learning, Licensing, and Practice Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Jonathan Seitz
Clerical exorcists occupied an unstable place among healers in early modern Italy. Although recognized by their patients for their skills and knowledge, they were also a potentially disruptive group, given their interactions with malevolent powers and work that transgressed the normal boundaries of clerical activities. Consequently, clerical exorcists had to defend the legitimacy of their activities
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The Life of the Last Visconti: A Study in Tyranny? Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Gary Ianziti
This article questions the traditional reading of Pier Candido Decembrio's “Life of Filippo Maria Visconti” (1447) as a tyrant narrative, a reading first proposed by Jacob Burckhardt and highly influential ever since. An examination of the Milanese context and relevant collateral documentation establishes the unlikelihood that Decembrio wished to denounce his former master as a tyrant. Rather, his
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Tycho Brahe and the Measure of the Heavens. John Robert Christianson. Renaissance Lives. London: Reaktion Books, 2020. 288 pp. £15.95. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Patrick J. Boner
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Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy: Art and the Verdant Earth. Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger, and Leopoldine Prosperetti, eds. Visual and Material Culture, 1300–1700 11. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. 286 pp. €109. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Katherine M. Bentz
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The Theology of Heinrich Bullinger. William Peter Stephens. Ed. Jim West and Joe Mock. Reformed Historical Theology 59. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2019. 484 pp. €120. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Spencer J. Weinreich
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Buchbesitz und Buchbewegungen im Mainz der Frühen Neuzeit: Eine exemplarische Studie zu Akademikerbibliotheken aus den Jahrzehnten um 1600. Christina Schmitz. Buchwissenschaftliche Beiträg 100. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020. x + 452 pp. $100.80. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Gerhild Scholz Williams
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A Companion to the Hussites. Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, eds. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition 90. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xii + 454 pp. €199. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Marcela Perett
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Sidney's “Arcadia” and the Conflicts of Virtue. Richard James Wood. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. xiv + 210 pp. £80. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Cynthia Bowers
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Hobbes's “On the Citizen”: A Critical Guide. Robin Douglass and Johan Olsthoorn, eds. Cambridge Critical Guides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xii + 252 pp. $99.99. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Feisal G. Mohamed
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Contesting Europe: Comparative Perspectives on Early Modern Discourses on Europe, 1400–1800. Nicholas Detering, Clementina Marisco, and Isabella Wasler-Bürgler, eds. Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture 67. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xviii + 386 pp. €115. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Tom Conley
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The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Amy R. Bloch and Daniel M. Zolli, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xiv + 444 pp. $99.99. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 David G. Wilkins
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Piero di Cosimo: Painter of Faith and Fable. Dennis Geronimus and Michael W. Kwakkelstein, eds. Niki Studies in Netherlandish-Italian Art History 12. Leiden: Brill, 2019. xxvi + 320 pp. €127. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Gretchen A. Hirschauer
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Princely Power in Late Medieval France: Jeanne de Penthièvre and the War for Brittany. Erika Graham-Goering. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series 117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xiv + 288 pp. $99.99. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Joanna Milstein
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Maria in den Konfessionen und Medien der Frühen Neuzeit. Bernhard Jahn and Claudia Schindler, eds. Frühe Neuzeit: Studien und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur und Kultur im europäischen Kontext 234. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. viii + 427 pp. $149.99. Renaissance Quarterly (IF 1.2) Pub Date : 2022-01-01 Markus Christopher Müller