Instruments of Truth:
Devotional Art, Literature and Culture in Early-Modern Italy
Scientific Staff:
Prof. Dr. P.G. Bossier, Prof. Dr. B.H. Stolte, Dr. B. Treffers, Prof. Dr. H.Th. van Veen
Invited Scholar:
Prof. Dr. A. Nagel
The Groningen Summer School in Rome aims at looking into the modern notion of Rome as the city where, from 1500 to 1800, all-important norms and forms of artistic and literart creation and perception were first established and first contested.
From the birth of the disciplines of art and literary history in the nineteenth century, the city of Rome has been thought of as the place where fundamental and pervasive norms of artistic and literary creation and perception were not only first established but also first contested and then altered. This view of Rome’s role in European art and literary history can be summed up as follows. Although by the end of the 17th century Rome had lost much of its impetus, in the 18th it one more time proved itself to be fertile soil, for the culture of Neo-Classicism (Mengs, Visconti, Canova, Winckelmann) that is. As it turned out, however, the next phase in the history of European art and literature, was neither initiated nor would it be contested from within the walls of Rome. The Romantic movement sprang up elsewhere and from different roots and sentiments, thus causing Rome to be increasingly seen as a cultural fossil.
The main focus of the first edition of the Groningen Summer School will be on the central position occupied by 16th Century aesthetics. Indeed, by the early 16th century, in the wake of the rediscovery and re-evaluation of its antique heritage, Rome offered art and literature the stage to develop into respectively the High Renaissance style and the classical humanist style. Thanks to the unique setting Rome offered, these lofty styles were codified in sets of artistic c.q. literary prescriptions by which, it was hoped, these styles could be transmitted on, first in Italy and then in the whole of Europe. It was in Rome too, however, that this very notion of the ‘classical’ was first put under strain, for Rome gave room to the conspicuous deviations from the classical norm that much later came to be dubbed as ‘mannerist’. Subsequently, it was in Rome, by the Counter-Reformational Church, that, for the sake of greater dogmatic clarity, these mannerist deviations were severely criticized. By the end of the 16th century, it was again in Rome where stood the cradle of the Baroque art (the Caracci’s, Reni) and of its conceptualization in academic ideas of ‘Bellezza’ (Bellori) that would become so much importance for the rest of Europe (Poussin, Le Brun). Simultaneously, however, the same Rome gave abundant opportunity to contesting this ‘Idea della Bellezza’, through the art of Caravaggio, the caravaggisti and, later on, the bamboccianti. On the other hand, literature explores the vivacity of new genres like the pastoral play and the dramma per musica while academic discussions especially in Rome set a rigid agenda of confrontation between norm and anti-norm in both established in innovative literary aesthetics (i.e. the role of professional commedia dell’arte players, the authority of Tasso and Guarini, the search for professionalization of the arts).
In the period of 1520 till 1570 there is a renewal in theological, devotional and spiritual ideas and experiences which has led to the blossoming of religious and spiritual orders. These spiritualities would become suspect in the eyes of the redirected Church of Rome in the 16th century. In this summer course we tackle the question as to how this renewal found its expression in works of art and literature and for whom and with what impact. This still not elaborately researched period is a particularly promising theme, as in these decades the spiritual elites overlapped to a great extent with the cultural elites.
Literature: Primary and Secondary Sources
Literature (Prof. Dr. P.G Bossier)
Boillet, Élise, L’Arétin et la Bible, Paris, 2007
Borsellino, Nino, Gli anticlassici del Cinquecento, Roma-Bari (1973)
Braida, Lodovico, Libri di Lettere. Le racolte epistolari del Cinquecento tra inquietudini religiose e ‘buon volgare’, Bari-Laterza (2009)
Cantimori, Delio, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento. Ricerche storiche, Firenze, 1977
Firpo, Massimo, Artisti, gioielleri, eretici. Il mondo di Lorenzo Lotto tra Riforma e Controriforma, Bari-Roma, 2001 (2004)
Niccoli, Ottavia, Rinascimento anticlericale, Bari-Roma (2005)
Raimondi, Ezio, Rinascimento inquieto, Torino, 1965 (1994)
Larivaille, Paul, Pietro Aretino, Roma (1997)
Sixteenth-Century Italian Art and Literature and the Reformation
.
Atti del Convegno Internazionale, London, The Warburg Insitute, 30-31 gennaio 2004 (a cura di C. Damianaki, P. Procaccioli, A. Romano), Manziana (2005)
Romano Cervone, Anna Teresa, Gli eccentrici del Rinascimento, Caltanissetta (1979)
Art (Dr. B. Treffers & Prof. Dr. H.Th. van Veen)
Aikema, Bernard, ‘L'immagine della Riforma, la riforma dell'immagine : problemi di pittura religiosa nel Cinquecento fra l'Italia, la Francia e l'Europa’, In : La réforme en France et en Italie : contacts, comparaisons et contrastes / École Française de Rome. Études réunies par Philip Benedict, Silvana Seidel Menchi et Alain Tallon. – Rome, 2007, p. 223-241.
Biferali, Fabrizio; Massimo Firpo, Battista Franco "pittore viniziano" nella cultura artistica e nella vita religiosa del Cinquecento, Pisa : Edizioni della Normale, 2007.
Cortesi Bosco, Francesca, Gli affreschi dell'Oratorio Suardi : Lorenzo Lotto nella crisi della Riforma, Bergamo : Bolis, 1980
Cortesi Bosco, Francesca, ‘Riforma, religiosità, arte, alchimia negli affreschi di Lorenzo Lotto dell'Oratorio Suardi di Trescore’. In: Lorenzo Lotto nel suo e nel nostro tempo.A cura di Pietro Zampetti. – Urbino : Istituto di Storia dell'Arte, 1980, p. 28-38.
Damianaki, Chrysa, ‘La porta della sagrestia di San Marco di Sansovino : implicazioni ideologiche e culturali’. In: Il Rinascimento italiano di fronte alla riforma: letteratura e arte : atti del colloquio internazionale, London, the Warburg Institute, 30 - 31 gennaio 2004 / a cura di Chrysa Damianaki, Paolo Procaccioli, Angelo Romano. Rome : Vecchiarelli, 2005, p. 209-229.
Davies, David, ‘L'elevazione della mente a Dio : l'iconografia religiosa del Greco e la riforma spirituale in Spagna’, In : El Greco : identità e trasformazione / Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza.
A cura di José Álvarez Lopera. – Ginevra [u.a.] : Skira, 1999, p. 201-229
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Feuillet, Michel, ‘L'Annonciation de Recanati par Lorenzo Lotto : la crise du mystère’. In : Les années trente du XVIe siècle italien. Actes du colloque (Paris, 3 - 5 juin 2004) / Centre de Recherche Culture et Société en Italie aux XVe, XVIe et XVIIe Siécles. Réunis et présentés par Danielle Boillet et Michel Plaisance. – Paris : Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Renaissance Italienne (CIRRI), 2007, p. 183-190
Fioravanti Baraldi, Anna Maria, ‘Vita artistica e dibattito religioso a Ferrara nella prima metà del Cinquecento’. In: Un romanzo polifonico tra Riforma e Controriforma, Milano 1995.[La pittura in Emilia e in Romagna, 2.
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Firpo, Massimo, ‘Lorenzo Lotto and the Reformation in Venice’.In: Heresy, culture and religion in early modern Italy: contexts and
contestations. Ed. by Ronald K. Delph, Michelle M. Fontaine and John Jeffries Martin. – Kirksville, Mo. : Truman State University Press, 2006. p. 21-36.
Firpo, Massimo, ‘Storia religiosa e storia dell'arte : i casi di Iacopo Pontormo e Lorenzo Lotto’. In : Storia per parole e per immagini. Università degli Studi di Udine. A cura di Ugo Rozzo e Mino Gabriele.Udine : Forum, 2006, p. 213-234.
Mâle, Emile, L’art réligieux de la fin du XVIe siècle Du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1951
McGinness, Frederick J., Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome, Princeton 1995
Nagel, Alexander, ‘Christ in ecstasy : the passion according to Michelangelo and Rosso’. In: Coming about.. a Festschrift for John
Shearman / ed.s-in chief Lars R. Jones ; Louisa C. Matthew. – Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Art Museums, 2001, p. 243-250
Nagel, Alexander, ‘Liberal art and religious reform in the Renaissance’. In: Negotiating the gift: pre-modern figurations of exchange. Ed. by Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen. – Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003, p. 319-360
Nagel,Alexander; Christopher S. Wood, ‘Toward a new model of Renaissance anachronism’, The art bulletin, 87.2005,3, p. 403-415
Nagel, Alexander,. ‘Experiments in art and reform in Italy in the early sixteenth century’, In: The pontificate of Clement VII: history, politics, culture. Ed. by Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss. – Aldershot [u.a.] : Ashgate, 2005, p. 385-409
Nagel, Alexander, ‘Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna’. In: Sixteenth-century Italian art. Ed. by Michael W. Cole. – Oxford : Blackwell, 2006,p. 324-367
Olson Padgett Jacqueline, ‘Ekphrasis, Lorenzo Lotto's "Annunciation", and the hermeneutics of suspicion’, Religion and the arts, 10(2006.2), p. 191-218.
O’Malley, John W., The first Jesuits, Harvard 1993
Pacciani, Riccardo, ‘Orientamenti iconografici e committenza collegata all'Evangelismo in due opere di Giulio Romano’. In : Te, 1.1985,2, p. 18-27
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Simoncelli, Paolo, ‘Pontormo e la cultura fiorentina’, Archivio storico italiano, 153.1995 No. 565,3, p. 487-527
Treffers, Bert, ‘Arti e mestieri della santità. Nuovi ordini, nuovi santi, nuove pale d’altare’, in: Il genio di Roma 1592-1623(also in English in the exh.cat. The Genius of Rome, London (Royal Academy of Arts) 2001)
Treffers, Bert, ‘Gettarsi nel Niente:Immagini ed esperienza mistica’, in: exh.cat. Visioni ed Estasi. Capolavori dell’arte europea tra Seicento e Settecento, a cura di Giovanni Morello, Vaticano (Braccio di Carlo Magno), 2004
