Lily Filson

Conference program from "Legacy of Antiquity in Visual and Performing Arts"  Łódź 2015

This presentation sheds light on a little-known aspect of the legacy of the antique world in a novel medium that combined visual and performance art in the transitional period between the twilight of the Renaissance and the dawn of the Early Modern era. Specifically, tableaux of moving sculpture- automata- at the sixteenth-century Villa Pratolino outside of Florence were indebted to antique texts rediscovered by Renaissance humanists that revealed the operating principles of cult statues from Hellenistic Alexandria. These automata “performed” scenes taken from myth or literature, could stand alone, but more commonly were found in pairs or small groups. Although many visitors to the villa and its parks left descriptions and images of these scenes' appearances and movements, the actual automata themselves have no survived to the present day. Nevertheless, the proposed paper will recreate through words and images some of the most notable instances of this dynamic art form, as well as explore the traditions from the Greco-Egyptian world which were revived at Pratolino in order to realize these works of art. These traditions diverged into two general categories: a “magical” or metaphysical method and a mechanical one which anticipated the shift into “scientific” thought in the century to come. For the first, Neoplatonic authors from late antiquity furnished descriptions of theurgy, or the art of binding a demon or spirit to a man-made vessel, which were translated and circulated from the fifteenth century onwards. Allusions to the revived practice of theurgy are evident in the earliest description of the villa and its works, a1587 text by Francesco de' Vieri, called Verino II. Conversely, other secret methods used in Hellenistic Alexandria to bring temple statues “to life” belonged squarely to the realm of hydraulic, pneumatic, and other mechanical engineers; texts by authors like Hero of Alexandria were also reexamined in the Renaissance. Another circuitous route of transmission from antiquity through the Medieval Muslim world and to Europe via the Crusaders can also be traced, culminating in the application of these principles to the water- and air-powered automata of Pratolino. This presentation charts the transmission of both the “magical” or metaphysical philosophy and the mechanical legacy from the ancient world through its application to Pratolino's animated automata, which were themselves a unique, under-recognized facet of Mannerist art and culture that sprang from late sixteenth-century Florence.

The reconciliation of Ibn al-Kalbī's ninth-century CE text of on pre-Islamic Arabia with modern scholarship offers certain insights to religious practices in the Arabian Peninsula from prehistory through the seventh cenury CE This study integrates his early Book of Idols into existing archaeological and anthropological studies about diverse aspects of pre-Islamic religion and ritual: diverse forms of litholatry; pilgrimage rituals; and the social economy of sacrifice and rain rogation rituals. Al-Kalbī's text is recognized rightly for its essential character as a product from a distinct cultural milieu, early Islamic Kūfa, distant by time, geography, and culture from the pre-Islamic culture of Arabian antiquity of the peninsula and particularly the ancient kingdoms of Yemen in the southwest. Nevertheless, this article analyzes this contested source for several of its alignments with recent archaeological and anthropological findings.

The 10th-century work Al-Iklil of the mediaeval Yemeni historian Abu Mohammed al-Hasan al-Hamdani (AD 893-945) transmits memories of mechanical devices once present at Ghumdan Palace in Sana'a, a site which had been pillaged and destroyed before al-Hamdani's lifetime. The present study's aim is the insertion of these South Arabian pre-Islamic objects into a broader understanding of the period's technology. The Ghumdan Palace devices supplement the established chronology of transmission from Greek origins to the East and the eventual Islamic sphere in late antiquity and the early mediaeval period, and in these we witness an as-yet unremarked facet of the intersection of Hellenistic culture with the Sabaean and Himyarite civilisations of ancient Yemen.

When Henry VIII split England from the Church of Rome, a dramatic aspect of the broad campaign of reform and iconoclasm was the exposure of fraudulent religious imagery, revealing to the public that the revered, "miraculous" statues which seemed to come alive were in fact mere mechanical devices operated by an unseen priest. This paper views the exile of medieval mechanical, moving sculpture from religious spaces and their appearance at court soon after, re-tooled during the Renaissance as classically-derived hydraulic and pneumatic automata, as an as-yet unremarked upon aspect reflective of the transfer of power from Church to State in early modern England. Tudor and Stuart royals as well as a handful of sophisticated men in their orbits constructed gardens, grottoes, and theatres wherein awe-inspiring tableaux of the inanimate "brought to life" could be enjoyed by a privileged few. As the Anglican Church coalesced with the king, rather than the pope, at its head, so too did some of its mysteries and power transfer to the crown. Introduction: "Forged Miracles" for the Reformation; Garden Delights for the Renaissance When Henry VIII split England from the Church of Rome, one aspect of the broad campaign of reform and iconoclasm 1 was the exposure of fraudulent religious imagery, revealing to the public that the revered and "miraculous" moving statues were in fact mere mechanical devices operated by an unseen priest. 2 These and other "forged miracles" were theological lightning rods for the English Reformation"s religious and political thunder, 3 and their exposure broke their enchantment upon the faithful. On the heels of their exile from religious spaces, similar devices appeared at court, re-tooled during the Renaissance as classically-derived hydraulic and pneumatic automata which had proliferated in Italian, French, German, and Dutch contexts in

Water supply systems in the Renaissance both recovered classical models (often through the lens of Arabic and Byzantine engineering treatises) and applied this set of principles to expanded uses which came to characterize the period: hydraulic gardens and games; fountains public and private, miniature and monumental ; and interior plumbing systems which revolutionized standards of hygiene and created a clean break from medieval culture for privileged social classes. This entry reviews the transmission and reception of classically derived water supply systems from the Medieval Islamic East, their integration into larger-scale, inventive adaptations created in France and Italy, early fountains and their statuary which anticipated arrangements which became commonplace later in the Renaissance, and the adoption of a system to deliver hot and cold water on tap to the interiors of princely palaces and villas, facilitating new habits of bathing and cleanliness.

In the realization of moving automata for Francesco I de' Medici's sixteenth-century Villa Pratolino outside of Florence, the memory of antiquity informed both the practical and theoretical operations of these " living statues. " The 1587 description of the villa and its wonders, Delle Maravigliose Opere di Pratolino, & d'Amore by Francesco de' Vieri, associates magical traditions of statue animation with Renaissance automata in a passage that cites Aristotle's description, rooted in atomism and sympathetic magic, of the physical process by which Daedalus animated his legendary wooden Venus. From the fifteenth century onwards, the rediscovery and popularity of Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophical texts in the Renaissance perpetuated Greco-Egyptian methods of investing man-made vessels, typically cult statues, with some kind of " life " from received celestial influences, thus manufacturing the " living gods " of antiquity. Simultaneously , mechanical texts which preserved mechanical devices and principles from ancient Alexandria were being assimilated to the engineering repertoire of Western Europe, and air and water were harnessed to impart movement to the early modern automata which graced Italian Renaissance hydraulic villas and gardens. For the court of Francesco I de' Medici, the division between our modern scientific concept of air and a metaphysical " spirit " was not yet drawn, and manipulating this occult " influence " was invested with a mastery of a far broader, unseen sphere. For the court philosopher De' Vieri, Neoplatonic and Hermetic writings furnished alternative and not necessarily contradictory understandings of various hidden forces which could cause statues to move. In the late sixteenth century, a much broader conception of " nature " allowed for the confirmation of invisible or " occult " phenomena which did not preclude the magical philosophy of antiquity from being related to the empirical discoveries being made via the production of new mechanical devices. De' Vieri's 1587 panegyric to Pratolino demonstrates that the mastery of mechanical as well as esoteric magical philosophy came to feature in the propaganda of the newly-invested Medici Grand Duke.

" Wonder " can describe both an object as well as the emotion it elicits, and the Renaissance reaction to these stimuli demonstrates marked departure in the intellectual history of previous ages. This age was defined by an embrace and indeed appetite for the production and collection of such objects, grounded in psychological , sociological, and political constructs of the day. Wonder became less of a transgression in a realm of knowledge from which one was believed to be excluded by divine fiat (as with the essentially medieval attitude towards the mysteries of nature and man's inclination to curiosity) and more a pursuit of learned European culture from the fourteenth and fif-teenth centuries onwards. Objects which elicited this wonder, whether they were naturally formed (or deformed in many cases) or man-made displays of technology and virtuos-ity, enjoyed a new prestige and position at the court and dedicated collections, the celebrated wunderkammern and similar encyclopedic arrangements throughout the continent.

This paper posits that the grotto constructed by Rudolph II in late sixteenth-century Prague may be a variant of a type of grotto found among the many examples constructed for Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici at the Villa Pratolino roughly a decade prior. The Bohemian grotto and its Florentine corollary, called the Grotto of Cupid, are both roughly circular and housed under a domed vault with a central aperture for light; both have been compared to tholos-style mounds and share other formal similarities. Although many examples of Habsburg architecture in Prague display obvious Italian influence, this paper builds upon the theory put forward by Guido Carrai that the influence of Francesco I's court architect Bernardo Buontalenti, who built grottoes on an unprecedented scale at Pratolino as well as at the Pitti Palace, extended as far as Prague by proxy of the Florentine architect Giovanni Gargiolli, who is credited with the realization of Rudolph II's grotto. A third and final consideration is the placement of Rudolph II's grotto adjacent to a renovated mill site which received stone-cutting and polishing machines at the same time that documents attest to a transfer of such machines from the Medici court, enabling for the first time in Bohemia the production of pietre dure works and virtuosic handlings of hard-stone. Although documentary evidence does not anywhere make the connection between Rudolph II's grotto and Buontalenti's Grotto of Cupid at Pratolino, the alignment of formal similarities, evidence for other Buontalentian influence in Prague, and the debt of the adjacent mill to Medici technology supports a certain relationship between the two Renaissance grottoes.

This paper posits that the grotto constructed by Rudolph II in late sixteenth-century Prague may be a variant of a type of grotto found among the many examples constructed for Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici at the Villa Pratolino roughly a decade prior. The Bohemian grotto and its Florentine corollary, called the Grotto of Cupid, are both roughly circular and housed under a domed vault with a central aperture for light; both have been compared to tholos-style mounds and share other formal similarities. Although many examples of Habsburg architecture in Prague display obvious Italian influence, this paper builds upon the theory put forward by Guido Carrai that the influence of Francesco I's court architect Bernardo Buontalenti, who built grottoes on an unprecedented scale at Pratolino as well as at the Pitti Palace, extended as far as Prague by proxy of the Florentine architect Giovanni Gargiolli, who is credited with the realization of Rudolph II's grotto. A third and final consideration is the placement of Rudolph II's grotto adjacent to a renovated mill site which received stone-cutting and polishing machines at the same time that documents attest to a transfer of such machines from the Medici court, enabling for the first time in Bohemia the production of pietre dure works and virtuosic handlings of hard-stone. Although documentary evidence does not anywhere make the connection between Rudolph II's grotto and Buontalenti's Grotto of Cupid at Pratolino, the alignment of formal similarities, evidence for other Buontalentian influence in Prague, and the debt of the adjacent mill to Medici technology supports a certain relationship between the two Renaissance grottoes.

Renaissance advancements in light theory were grounded in innovative approaches to optics and ray theory by both scientists of the Arabic-speaking world as well as the great Scholastic philosophers who incorporated their discoveries into the edifice of Western proto-science. Heavenly lights – stars, planets, the sun, and virtually any body which transited the sky – were slowly evolving from religious phenomena to objects of natural philosophy. An arc can be followed from Classical and Neoplatonic philosophy to that of Medieval Arabic and Scholastic philosophy that increasingly views light (and other forms of radiation, whether or not they were visible), in newly material and predictable terms. These advancements in knowledge about the properties of light led to the development of new ways which humanity manipulated and interacted with light in the Renaissance.

Michelangelo's Crested Head drawing is one of the Renaissance master's smallest and most obscure folios in the Casa Buonarotti collection in Florence. Based upon a new identification of its iconography, this paper classifies the Crested Head as a rare document in which Leonardo da Vinci's influence upon the young artist can be seen and which offers a fragmentary glimpse into what would have been the Florentine republic's last great political fresco cycle intended for the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Class Report: Undergraduate Students of Art Survey I were given the opportunity to provide further analysis and context for the Emergency Red List of Cultural Objects at Risk - Yemen released by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), February 1 2018. What follows are excerpts of their original research and writing about this heritage at risk.

This paper posits that the grotto constructed by Rudolph II in late sixteenth-century Prague may be a variant of a type of grotto found among the many examples constructed for Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici at the Villa Pratolino roughly a decade prior. The Bohemian grotto and its Florentine corollary, called the Grotto of Cupid, are both roughly circular and housed under a domed vault with a central aperture for light; both have been compared to tholos-style mounds and share other formal similarities. Although many examples of Habsburg architecture in Prague display obvious Italian influence, this paper builds upon the theory put forward by Guido Carrai that the influence of Francesco I's court architect Bernardo Buontalenti, who built grottoes on an unprecedented scale at Pratolino as well as at the Pitti Palace, extended as far as Prague by proxy of the Florentine architect Giovanni Gargiolli, who is credited with the realization of Rudolph II's grotto. A third and final consideration is the placement of Rudolph II's grotto adjacent to a renovated mill site which received stone-cutting and polishing machines at the same time that documents attest to a transfer of such machines from the Medici court, enabling for the first time in Bohemia the production of pietre dure works and virtuosic handlings of hard-stone. Although documentary evidence does not anywhere make the connection between Rudolph II's grotto and Buontalenti's Grotto of Cupid at Pratolino, the alignment of formal similarities, evidence for other Buontalentian influence in Prague, and the debt of the adjacent mill to Medici technology supports a certain relationship between the two Renaissance grottoes.