Italian Trecento

This essay examines and discusses a hitherto unpublished drawing reproducing a fresco in Siena, now lost but traditionally attributed to Simone Martini by sources ranging from Ghiberti to Della Valle. The drawing, from the collection of the art historian Jean-Baptiste Seroux d’Agincourt housed in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, prompts discussion regarding the painting’s iconography and style.

In my paper, I am discussing Decameron, one of the most important literary works of the 14th century, also known as The Human Comedy. The devastating pandemic of the Black Death of the Middle Ages produced the highest number of lethal cases of all time across Europe. The atmosphere of this crisis in the middle of the century pervades the frame narrative of Boccaccio’s 100 and a half short stories and the novellas themselves. True to the contemporary worldview, Boccaccio's narrative uses the theological interpretation which, starting out from the prophecies of the Book of Revelation of the Bible about the end of the world, received the pandemic as God’s rightful punishment. According to this, people’s sin is properly punished by the blows of natural catastrophes and invisible illnesses. We may go even further if we profoundly consider the intertextual relationship between the Christian prophecy of warning signals before the Last Judgment with the text of Decameron. The theological content of the apocalypse is much more than the narrative of punishment for sins or of doom. As an author familiar with scholastic theology, Boccaccio may also have known this when he created a mostly ironic, but at times merely mimetic relationship between the theological reference of the apocalypse and the historical reference of the pandemic in the motivic and linguistic allusions of his own masterpiece. Close reading not only the frame narrative, but also the grotesque representations of the motifs of the garden, death, and the triple branching of life after death (Hell, Purgatory or Heaven), I am looking for the answer to the question in what sense can we exactly consider Decameron as an apocalyptic reading of the pandemic.

The caccia Dappoi che ’l sole by Nicolò da Perugia appears to unfold the classic metaphor of fire to represent the sudden onset of courtly love. The object of passion is a lady whose name is carefully hidden in a numeric senhal: CECILIA.  But the scene of the fire and its extinction bears a strong similarity to the martyrdom described in the Passio Ceciliae, in which the saint remains unharmed by the flames of a Roman bath: thus, I argue that the piece celebrates not a woman, but a saint.
This blend of meanings – a sacred theme disguised in the secular form of the Italian caccia – raises two heuristic issues.  The first is the possibility of connecting Saint Cecilia with music much earlier than her ‘official’ patronage of the art in the sixteenth century. The second has to do with the legitimacy of viewing products of secular art through sacred lenses and vice-versa, which can significantly shape our understanding of medieval culture.

Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi “La Città Europea del Trecento. Trasformazioni, Monumenti, Ampliamenti urbani”, tenutosi a Cagliari nel dicembre 2005.

«...Tra le tante ricerche sviluppate in questi anni il convegno sul Trecento, nuova proposta
scientifica di Enrico Guidoni, ha avuto necessità di una lunga preparazione tesa
a definire tematiche nuove che avrebbero potuto aprire ulteriori filoni di studio
nel panorama della città europea e mediterranea; alla fine Guidoni ha scelto Cagliari
quale sede per il Trecento per valorizzare una fase culturale di convergenza mediterranea,
ancora più chiara nella riflessione di fasi urbanistiche comuni con città quali
Napoli, Palermo o Valencia.Ma al di là degli utili confronti tra le città europee meridionali,
per le quali si evidenziano importanti analogie nelle strategie di investimento
pubblico – particolarmente nelle aree centrali, portuali e mercantili – dai diciannove
contributi al Convegno è emersa una notevole affinità di obiettivi urbanistici e
architettonici leggibili in uno scenario geografico ben più ampio. Si rilevano opere
finalizzate a cambiare il volto delle città secondo nuovi ed ambiziosi programmi, dove
il protagonismo di sovrani e signori si esprime attraverso architetture e rinnovamenti
di porzioni urbane, sottolineati da forti significati monumentali e politici. I
progetti delle nuove architetture interpretano nell’enfasi dimensionale o nella spettacolare
centralità scenografica la volontà di cambiare, pur con azioni limitate a particolari
settori urbani, l’aspetto e l’immagine della città, legandola ad una particolare
fase politica ed adeguandola ai moderni parametri estetici...»

A heavily repainted wooden Crucifix in the parish church of Ussita (near Visso, Macerata) is here published and attributed to a 14th-century Umbrian sculptor, known as the Maestro della Madonna del Duomo di Spoleto (Master of the Spoleto Cathedral Madonna). The three figures painted on the wooden cross are assigned to a painter also from Spoleto, the Fossa Master.

A Prolation Canon for three voices by Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370 – 1412). this piece is a unique example of irregular prolation from the French Ars Subtilior. Utilizing a 4:3:1 proportion, this piece creates an interesting rhythmic phasing effect between the triplum and the cantus (top two voices) nearly 600  years before the 20th century composer Steve Reich popularized such musical textures. Check out the score in motion at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrOEOuwYy3M

Le pareti della Camera d'Amore, che trova posto all'ultimo piano del mastio nel castello di Sabbionara d'Avio, vennero decorate nel Trecento con un ciclo di affreschi di tema profano. In gran parte danneggiati, nel corso del Novecento diversi studiosi hanno provato ad affrontarne le problematiche, quali la datazione, l'iconografia e l'attribuzione. Questo articolo tenta, attraverso una serie di nuovi confronti, di suggerire una nuova proposta di datazione e di confermare, in maniera ormai certa, l'orizzonte culturale da cui il Maestro del ciclo sarebbe provenuto.

The walls of the Camera d'Amore, which is located in the last floor of the keep in the castle of Sabbionara d'Avio, were decorated in the XIV century with a cycle of secular frescoes. Now mostly damaged, in the XX century several studies have tried to face issues like date, iconography and attribution. According to different comparisons, this paper tries to suggest a new dating solution and to confim, now beyond any doubt, the cultural horizon from which the Master of Avio should have come from.

Performance score of Francesco Landini's madrigal, " Musica Son - Già Furon - Ciascun Vuol" transcribed from the Squarcialupi Codex (121v-122r). For a video of the score with a performance see the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNcfZSBF9ow

This is a comparative manuscript edition of Gherardello da Firenze's (c. 1350) caccia "Tosto che l'alba". Herein you can see the difference between the piece's three available sources listed below. For a performable realization of this piece taken from these three sources, see the related title under "performance edition".

Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana [I-Fl], MS Mediceo Palatino 87 “Codex Squarcialupi”, no. 40 fol 25v-26r
Bibliothèque Nationale [F-PN], MS fonds italien 568 “Pit”, no. 40 fol. 25v-26r
British Library [GB-Lbl], Add. MS 29987, no 31 fol. 25r

For a recording and video of the score see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok4VOFvLE2Y

This essay investigates reactions to the recurring disaster of bubonic plague by analysing a series of miniatures in the chronicle of Lucchese apothecary Giovanni Sercambi. Completed in 1400, the richly illustrated manuscript (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, ms. 107) records seven epidemics, from the Black Death to the century’s end. Demons or angels are shown unleashing the disease on helpless humanity. Amongst the earliest visual evocations of the experience of plague, the drawings offer key insights into early modern responses to this most fearsome of disasters, articulating contemporary understandings of plague’s supernatural causes and terrestrial effects, and the emotional regimes elicited in response. Examined individually and as unfolding sequence, set against and interacting with the surrounding text, the miniatures fulfil a range of commemorative, hortatory and cathartic functions.

This is a performance edition of Gherardello da Firenze's (c. 1350) caccia, "Tosto che l'alba." This edition is a combination of the three available sources for this piece, selecting those options which are optimal when differences arise between the manuscripts. If one desires to see the other available options in each source, please refer to the related title under "comparative manuscript edition". The complete text of the piece is provided with a translation at the end of the score.

For a recording and video of the score see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok4VOFvLE2Y

This paper examines one of the most vivid passages in trecento historiography: Petrarch’s eyewitness account in Familiares V.5 of the Tyrrhenian earthquake and tsunami of 25 November 1343 that destroyed all shipping on the Bay of Naples, violently shook the city, and devastated much of Amalfi.  Petrarch’s letter draws on classical sources, such as Pliny the Younger’s description of the eruption of Vesuvius, and on Petrarch’s first-hand oral, aural, and visual experience. But Petrarch turned this disaster into a metaphor of female rule: consciously comparing the destructive breaching of all natural barriers to the reign of Queen Giovanna I.
Natural disaster had also been a backdrop for the foundering ship of state of Giotto’s Navicella, Cola di Rienzo’s appropriation of Giotto’s imagery, and in Petrarch’s critiques of trecento Rome. According to Petrarch, in Naples the works of civilization, “constructed by zealous men,” were overturned to their foundations by unleashed forces, “which that day respected no bounds and respected no work of man or nature.” The waters of the sea, recalling those of untamed Chaos before the creation, become a metaphor for the rule of the untamed, monstrous woman. Citing Julia Kristeva, Sarah Alison Miller called attention to this deeply imbedded idea of medieval writers on the female body “which ‘disturbs identity, system, order,’ that ‘does not respect boundaries, positions, rule’” and that is closely associated with waters. Petrarch thus turned observation of the natural world into personal and political metaphor that underlay the narrative arc for his experience of Naples under Giovanna I.
Deploying insights from such recent work as Disaster Narratives in Early Modern Naples and my own Writing Southern Italy before the Renaissance, this paper analyzes Familiares V.5’s narrative, rhetorical, and metaphorical strategies. But it also asks how this account squares with modern scientific findings and the record of Petrarch’s contemporaries. Did other writers — including the Anonimo Romano, Villani, Boccaccio, the Cronaca di Partenope, the Cronicon Siculum, and Domenico da Gravina — leave any historical memory of this event? How will a comparative approach to such sources reveal how disaster is transformed into narrative, metaphor, and political discourse?

For an audio-video animation of the manuscript with the modern transcription see the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO56v7qltNo

An edition of the anonymous labyrinthine ballade on three canons, "En la maison Dedalus" (In the House of Dedalus) from the Berkeley Manuscript.

This edition includes a modern transcription of the music, the original manuscript excerpted, poetic and literal translations of the text, reconstruction of the 11-tier labyrinth upon which the music is overlain, and pedagogical materials/explanations of the musical and poetic medieval Ballade forme-fixe.

Edition of Lorenzo da Firenze's caccia, "A poste messe" with english lyrical text underlay. For a video-score of this edition with a recording see the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN1dFq0jK-U

Transcribed from the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana [I-Fl], MS Mediceo Palatino 87, “Codex Squarcialupi”, fol 25v-26r and the
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence (Firenze), Italy [I-Fn], MS Panciatichiano 26, "Panciatichi", fol. 76v-77r.

The form of this piece is canonic with monophonic (?) ritornello. As indicated in the codices, the first part of the piece is clearly a canon for ether two or three voices. The second part, however, gives no sign that it should be performed canonically. Furthermore, there seems to be no reasonable way to render the second half of this piece as a canon without numerous and egregious counterpoint errors. Thus, it is generally accepted that the Ritornello is not a canon like the first part.

The second part can be performed monophonically or by many voices in octaves. However, many recordings have taken the liberty to arrange polyphonic parts to fit with the given monophonic line. Most such arrangements borrow material from the monophonic line, parts of which work contrapuntally well together when isolated and extracted arbitrarily.

Nel lavoro si analizzano le rime di corrispondenza dei trecentisti, con un focus particolare su Franceco Petrarca, Fazio degli Uberti e Francesco di Vannozzo. Dall'indagine sugli elementi fàtici e allocutivi contenuti nei testi sono emerse tendenze diametralmente opposte: mentre Petrarca esclude l'interlocutore ponendolo ai margini del testo, il Vannozzo dialoga con tutto ciò che lo circonda, esseri animati e inanimati (il liuto, l'arpa, la “veretta”). Infatti nel primo si contano ben 25 casi su 35 in cui il destinatario è marginale (relegato nell'incipit, nell'explicit o del tutto assente), nel secondo solo 19 su 72.
Se in Petrarca l'io lirico sopraffà il tu allocutivo e in Francesco di Vannozzo la dialogicità pare elemento imprescindibile dei suoi componimenti, Fazio sembra collocarsi nel mezzo; ma l'esiguità dei testi a disposizione (3 sonetti di corrispondenza) non ci permette di avanzare un'analisi soddisfacente del ruolo della corrispondenza nella produzione dell'autore.

Si è deciso poi di cambiare punto di vista e di analizzare quanto la metaforicità dei testi sia rilevante nella corrispondenza. Questa ulteriore indagine non ha fatto altro che confermare i risultati emersi dalla prima analisi: Petrarca propone nei sonetti di corrispondenza metafore appartenenti all'impianto narrativo del Canzoniere (lauro, laura, l'aurora...), usando la corrispondenza come escamotage per poter parlare di se stesso con se stesso; Francesco di Vannozzo basa il suo impianto metaforico proprio sulla dialogicità, ha bisogno di un interlocutore immaginario o fittizio per dar voce al suo io: le metafore  più  riuscite sono, infatti, quelle in cui il poeta dialoga con i suoi strumenti, con il giardino, con il sonetto. La confidenzialità acquisita con le formule della corrispondenza permette al Vannozzo di giocare con esse, attaccando il suo interlocutore (“retorica del disprezzo”) attraverso un processo di metaletterarietà con cui mette in discussione non solo le formule usate dal corrispondente, ma un'intera tradizione retorica (come avviene nei sonetti scambiati con Nicolò del Bene, Gidino da Sommacampagna, Bartolomeo di Castel della Pieve e Piero Montanaro).
Ciò che conta non è più solo la variatio contenutistica e formale di un tema proposto dal corrispondente, ma la capacità di distaccarsi dalla tradizione abbandonando le formule della poesia 'oggettiva', in funzione di una poesia 'soggettiva': la lirica moderna.

Nella prima metà del Trecento Siena raggiunse il culmine della potenza economica e del suo sviluppo demografico. S’iniziavano solo a intravedere alcune avvisaglie della crisi che l’avrebbe colpita a metà secolo e nei decenni successivi. In quel momento la città decise di dotarsi di una nuova cattedrale, ampliando grandiosamente quella esistente, ricostruita nel secolo precedente: ciò avrebbe fatto del duomo di Siena una delle chiese più grandi dell’intera cristianità. S’iniziò con un ampliamento della parte posteriore, costruendo nella piana di Vallepiatta un nuovo battistero e prevedendo di far sviluppare sopra di esso due campate di estensione del ‘vecchio’ duomo. Ma nel 1339, dopo accese discussioni e a maggioranza non amplissima, il Consiglio generale cittadino deliberò di ricostruire interamente la chiesa. Vi si lavorò per più di quindici anni, ma una serie di calamità (la peste nera, la sfavorevole congiuntura economica, i problemi statici che si manifestarono nelle aree già costruite) condussero al fallimento del progetto. La nuova cattedrale rimase una grandiosa opera incompiuta, le cui parti superstiti si stagliano ancora oggi contro il cielo di Siena.
Il libro è dedicato all’insieme di questa sfortunata vicenda. E, più in dettaglio, all’analisi del procedere della fabbrica e allo studio del rivestimento lapideo e del corredo di sculture del duomo nuovo. Così facendo, si schiudono di fronte ai nostri occhi pratiche di cantiere innovative, lo speciale status che assunse il capomaestro in quest’impresa, i diversi ruoli dei maestri di pietra.

Testo di un reading musicale a più voci, tenutosi Libreria Amore e Psiche il 14 febbraio 2006,con la mia conduzione, che intende delineare, attraverso una selezione di passi dalla cornice del Decameron e di novelle significative a tale scopo, la poetica profondamente laica di Boccaccio, tracciando un percorso di lettura dell'opera.

L’arretramento cronologico del ciclo di dipinti murali nella cappella annessa alla chiesa rotonda di San Galgano sul Monte Siepi (che oggi sappiamo eseguiti da Ambrogio Lorenzetti intorno al 1334-35) e il recupero dell’identità del donatore (l’oblato cistercense Ristoro d’Orlando da Selvatella) permettono di considerare in modo nuovo la natura stessa del ciclo di Montesiepi. A differenza di quanto si è a lungo supposto, esso non è da interpretarsi alla luce delle volontà testamentarie di un laico preoccupato del destino della propria anima, bensì entro la cornice della committenza (e della spiritualità) dei monaci cistercensi. Assieme allo sperimentalismo iconografico e stilistico del pittore, emerge con chiarezza dalla rinnovata analisi del ciclo che esso si fonda sull’integrazione di alcuni segmenti topici dell’agiografia di San Galgano entro il quadro – che è dominante – dell’esaltazione della Vergine Maria come co-redentrice e regina coeli, in linea con la riflessione del maggiore pensatore cistercense, San Bernardo di Chiaravalle, e dei suoi seguaci. Nella genesi dei dipinti di Montesiepi furono determinanti anche altre spinte – come le laudi mariane nate nell’ambito delle confraternite laicali – e alcune inedite formulazioni iconografiche – è noto da tempo – furono rifiutate dalla committenza, che a breve distanza dal compimento dei dipinti li fece modificare a un altro pittore. Si trattò d’interventi che, secondo quanto si argomenta nel saggio, ebbero proprio la funzione di rendere maggiormente esplicito il significato sotteso al ciclo.//
The moving back of the date of the cycle of mural paintings in the chapel adjoining the round church of San Galgano on Monte Siepi (which we now know were executed by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1334-1336) and confirmation of the identity of the chapel’s donor (the Cistercian oblate Ristoro d’Orlando da Selvatella) allow us to reconsider the very nature of the Montesiepi cycle in a new light. Contrary to what has long been assumed, it should not be interpreted in the light of the last will and testament of a layman concerned about his own spiritual destiny, but rather in the context of the patronage (and spirituality) of the Cistercian monks. In addition to the painter’s iconographic and stylistic experimentation, what emerges clearly from this new analysis of the cycle is that it is based on the integration of some important parts of the hagiography of Saint Galgano within the framework – which remains dominant – of the exaltation of the Virgin Mary as co-redeemer and Regina Coeli, therefore in line with the thinking of the leading Cistercian scholar, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and his followers. In the creation of the paintings of Montesiepi other influences were also decisive, such as the Marian laude, or sacred songs, that had been adopted within lay confraternities. Certain unprecedented iconographic expressions – it has been known for some time – were rejected by the Cistercian community, which a short time after the completion of the paintings had them modified by another painter. These were interventions – it is argued in the present essay – which had the precise function of making the meaning behind the cycle even more explicit.

The present article focuses on the analysis of two manuscripts that seem to be symptomatic of the subtle and variegated reception of the Ovidian Metamorphoses in fourteenth-century Italy: on the one hand, the luxurious copy of the of Ovidius Moralizatus (Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, MS Membr. I 98) made ca. 1350-1360 for the Milanese aristocrat Bruzio Visconti and intended to be illustrated by 284 miniatures; on the other hand, the humble manuscript preserving the translati~n in volgare of the Ovidian work by the FlorentiDe notary Arrigo Simintendi (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS Panciatichi 63), whose marginal drawings (added ca. 1360-1370) can be attributed to a group of "interactive readers" who tried to intensify their reading experience by giving visible form to their partiewar interpretations of the text. Despite their differences, both works betray an unprecedented attention to the representation of nature and witness to the existence of an ongoing debate-pervading both the courtly and urban realms-over the value of antique myths and the effects of the human passions so memorably described by the classical poet. This partiewar reception of the Ovidian work may have paved the way to another, new experience of subjectivity and, therefore, to an intensive intellectual engagement with emotions that would have marked a significant step in the history ofthe "Nachleben der Antike".

L'odierna riflessione estetica sulle cornici architettoniche dipinte da Giotto deve confrontarsi con la storiografia e con la filosofia della storia. Le sue motivazioni duecentesche possono essere considerate in antitesi alle conseguenze che la tecnica giottesca produrrà nel secolo successivo; le osservazioni di Boccaccio sull’illusionismo di Giotto, alle quali è allineato il pensiero longhiano, sono considerate in contrasto allo sguardo che si posa sugli stessi oggetti pittorici in epoca postmoderna.

Pietro Lorenzetti signed no fewer than nine paintings during his career, more than any other European artist until Jan van Eyck a century later. He also left an unprecedented “double signature” on one work, with the first inscription prominently visible to the public and the second hidden and known only to the painter. Written along the lower edge of altarpieces and panels, Lorenzetti’s signatures are usually simple and concise, following formulas previously adopted by medieval Italian artists. But two of his earliest inscriptions, on the Cortona Madonna (ca. 1315) and Arezzo Polyptych (1320-1324), differ by including the word “dextra”: “Petrus Laurentii hanc pinxit dextra senensis.” These signatures can be translated as “Pietro di Lorenzo of Siena painted this [work] with his right hand.”

Like his unparalleled proclivity for signing paintings, Lorenzetti’s use of “dextra” in these inscriptions can inform us about his specific works, pictorial language and artistic personality. By stating that the Arezzo Polyptych was painted “with his right hand,” Lorenzetti naturally drew attention to his manual dexterity and the glorious product of his extensive handiwork. Simultaneously it put Lorenzetti’s paintings in relation to the work of esteemed artists such as Giunta Pisano who had already referred to their own expert hands in their signatures. If we look at the Arezzo Polyptych’s content, Lorenzetti’s “dextra” encourages viewers to consider the formal connections between the artist’s hand and the hands of figures he painted, including the dextra Dei depicted in the Annunciation and the pointing hand of John the Baptist indicating the Christ Child, both of which are vertically aligned with Pietro’s signature. Such visual resonances between text and image suggest that Lorenzetti was self-consciously linking his creative act with the divine work of God and the saints.

What inspired Lorenzetti to sign so many of his paintings, and, on occasion, to do so in such a self-aggrandizing way? The painter was surrounded by several significant artists who created prominent works with signatures. They include Giunta Pisano, Margaritone d’Arezzo, Giovanni Pisano, and Duccio, and if Lorenzetti did not collaborate directly with them, he surely would have seen their paintings and sculptures in Arezzo, Assisi, Siena, and elsewhere. Moreover, having secured at a young age several highly important commissions in Tuscany and Umbria, including the fresco cycle in the left transept of the Lower Church at Assisi, Lorenzetti would have had more than enough self-confidence to inscribe himself—and his right hand—into the Arezzo Polyptych.

El presente artículo (que complementa otros dos trabajos previos de nuestra autoría)  propone interpretar el ramo de lirios en las imágenes medievales de La Anunciación según dos significados dogmáticos, cristológico y mariológico, esencialmente interrelacionados. Contradiciendo las “explicaciones” convencionales de dicha flor en esa escena mariana, fundamos nuestra propuesta en múltiples y concordantes testimonios de prestigiosos Padres de la Iglesia y teólogos medievales, al glosar la bíblica frase Ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium. Tan lírica expresión es vista por esos autores como una clara metáfora que identifica a Cristo, Hijo de Dios encarnado, y que, por tal motivo, alude de rebote también a María, en cuyo seno virginal se verifica la encarnación de Dios Hijo. Así, basándonos en la sólida tradición patrística y teológica sobre la referida frase bíblica, nos atrevemos a interpretar el ramo de lirios en las imágenes de La Anunciación –ilustradas aquí por nueve pinturas del Trecento italiano— como una doble metáfora, que significa al mismo tiempo la sobrenatural encarnación humana de Dios Hijo y la virginal maternidad divina de María.

Abstract: This paper (which complements two previous works of our authorship) proposes to interpret the bouquet of lilies in medieval images of The Annunciation in two essentially intertwined dogmatic meanings, related to Christology and Mariology. Contradicting conventional "explanations" of such flower in this Marian scene, we found our proposal in many and consistent testimony of some prestigious Church Fathers and medieval theologians, glossing the biblical sentence Ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium. Such lyrical expression is seen by those authors as a clear metaphor that identifies Christ, the incarnate Son of God, and that, as such, also refers to Mary, in whose virginal womb the Son of God's incarnation is produced. Thus, based on the solid patristic and theological tradition on this biblical sentence, we dare to interpret the bouquet of lilies in paintings of the Annunciation (illustrated here by nine paintings of the Italian Trecento) as a double metaphor, which means both the supernatural human incarnation of God the Son and the virginal divine motherhood of Mary.

In the decades after 1300  you find in Italy an intensive re-reading of ancient texts and especial of  Ovid, which is connected with the intellectual cultures of the cities. One example is of course Dante with his specific amalgam of ancient myths with the christian story of salvation. Important are also the lectures of Giovanni del Vergilo in Bologna, which retells the metamorphoses in a clear and simple language. An very interesting case is Paolo da Perugia, who in Naples works out complexe diagramms to explain the correlations of all the different mythological figures. His interests are mainly historical and cosmological. The young Petrarca however uses selected metamorphoses as metaphors of his emotional feelings as a loving poet. Petrus Berchorius writes in Avignon an extensive allegorical explanation of the metamorphoses. Beside theological interpretations he is discussing ethical questions, which are connected with the experiences of his readers. The text of Berchorius was soon connected with an extensive illustration. In a splendid version for Bruzio Visconti the miniatures offers an own, sensitive reading of the Ovidian narratives including the emotional tensions of the stories. A manuscript  from Bergamo, which has only very simple drawings, can proof the existence of a model, where a detailed iconography of all the pagan gods was developed soon after 1350. Florentine drawings done by readers of the italian translation by Arrigo Simintendi focus again on the emotional aspects of the Ovidian stories.
The individual readings differs widly in their interests, but all are in their own way a form of actualization and connect Ovid with the reality of the 14th century. They all together establish the ancient myth as a new system of reference.

[«Il latino e i volgari italiani negli scritti di architettura dal Medioevo al Rinascimento»]

In the Italian Renaissance there was a great variety of the architectural texts and besides the treatises of the architects (for exemple, Leon Battista Alberti e Francesco di Giorgio) there were the translations of latin treatises and “books on antiquities” full of information about Roman monuments either ancient or medieval. Moreover, thanks to the contracts made with artists, and the bills of payment prepared by the commissioners of works (from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance), specific details can be gleaned about arts and techniques, and about materials and tools used in building works — these papers present a wide use of a terminology, which charaterize the regional speakings, sign of the informal register of language the architectures and their handworkers used. All these texts are precious materials to carry out historical and linguistic research, which allow on the one hand to evaluate the architectural terminology formed during the course of the XVth and XVIth century, thanks to translations and examination of “De architectura” by Vitruvio and the “De re aedificatoria” by Leon Battista Alberti, on the other, to prepare a technique-scientific text amenable to popularisation. The article focuses on the analysis of the texts written or translated (“volgarizzati”) by italian artists and writers of XVth and XVIth century (Leon Battista Alberti, Sebastiano Serlio, Cesare Cesariano, Cosimo Bartoli, Daniele Barbaro, Giorgio Vasari, Bernardino Baldi) with the aim of describing the textual and lexical aspects of the papers in latin and vernacular, where both languages are in strong interaction.

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I «segreti» dell’«ars aedificatoria», come tutti i modi di operare dei rappresentanti di varie arti, costituivano un patrimonio gelosamente custodito dalle corporazioni e dalle botteghe artigiane fin dall’epoca dei Comuni, e le istruzioni delle pratiche artistiche si tramandavano a voce fra gli addetti ai lavori, maestri e apprendisti. Per questo hanno un notevole interesse i contratti stipulati con gli artisti e le note di spesa redatte per conto dei committenti, dai quali si ricavano non soltanto le notizie su tecniche, materiali e strumenti impiegati nei lavori edilizi, ma anche una precisa terminologia settoriale. Nel saggio si presentano i risultati dell’indagine condotta sui testi sia latini sia volgari, redatti nei secoli XIV-XV in Toscana e nell’Italia settentrionale, ponendo in evidenza i linguaggi tecnici circoscritti agli usi locali di architetti e delle loro maestranze, come muratori, tagliapietre, carpentieri, scalpellini e altri. I documenti presi in esame, tratti dagli archivi e pubblicati negli ultimi due secoli, sono gli atti notarili, per lo più i capitolati di lavori, e i registri delle «fabriche» pubbliche e private corredati da resoconti finanziari ("Annali della fabbrica del Duomo di Milano", i documenti dell’Opera del Duomo di Firenze, le testimonianze archivistiche sugli artisti a Ferrara), che illustrano dettagliatamente i progetti di opere edilizie, dalle costruzioni di chiese, ospedali, palazzi alle ristrutturazioni di case e alle rifiniture scultoree, testimoniando una significativa varietà geolinguistica del lessico architettonico. La nomenclatura tecnica delle scritture approntate nei singoli volgari si mantiene ben salda e nelle loro redazioni latine e nei documenti latini differenti, ricchi di termini settoriali che, non di rado, costituiscono le prime testimonianze d’uso dei vocaboli, le cui attestazioni note in volgare sono posteriori. Questa polisemia del vocabolario degli architetti provenienti da varie regioni si riflette nella letteratura artistica rinascimentale, che, dopo il "De re aedificatoria", composto da Leon Battista Alberti nel latino umanistico intessuto di neologismi tecnici trasposti in latino, non di rado, dai volgari settentrionali, esplode nella prima metà del secolo XVI sia con le edizioni e i volgarizzamenti commentati del "De architectura" di Vitruvio sia con i primi trattati (a partire dalle "Regole generali di architettura" di Sebastiano Serlio del 1537) e con i libri delle antichità. La loro veste linguistica documenta la tensione fra l’esigenza avvertita di una nuova terminologia tecnica comune e il sostrato della lingua d’uso degli scriventi. Per esempio, oltre al ricorso ai lombardismi o venetismi nei testi di Cesariano, Daniele Barbaro e altri, si rileva che, nelle parti sull’architettura aggiunte nella seconda edizione delle "Vite" (1568), l’aretino Vasari accoglie i tecnicismi attestati nei documenti medievali milanesi e ferraresi qui esaminati.

Nicolò del Preposto’s works are a significant example of the remarkable combination of poetry and music in fourteenth-century Italy. This new critical edition of the literary texts and musical settings, intended for scholars and performers, is complemented by an in-depth commentary. The full introduction comprehends an account of the musical and literary manuscript tradition, including an analysis of the notation, as well as the contextualization of the compositions as part of the Trecento system of poetic-musical genres.

This essay examines the iconography of Mary sewing or doing other needlework in a domestic interior, a theme developed in the Lorenzetti circle and in other 14th-century Italian art such as small paintings by Niccolò di Buonaccorso, Benedetto di Bindo, Vitale da Bologna, and Tomaso da Modena, which were perhaps intended for private devotions, particularly for women. Sometimes found with a Holy Family or Madonna of Humility scene, such innovative Marian imagery created a theme of sewing, knitting or spinning with strong theological metaphors and similitudes found also in mendicant sermon literature and ‘Mariale’, which paralleled Joseph’s carpentry work. Sources include Bartholomaeus de Anglicus’s "De proprietatibus rerum," Sienese Dominican Giovanni da San Gimignano’s "Liber de exempla et similitudinibus," the apocryphal "Protoevangelium of James," Jacopo da Voragine’s sermons, the "Meditations on the Life of Christ," and the "Vita Christi" by Sienese Augustinian hermit Michele Beccucci da Massa, among others. Broader contexts include the mechanical arts, professional and household occupations for women, and comparable textile-working activities. Interior scene details from an Anatolian animal carpet and plaid bed cover in a Lorenzetti "Holy Family" at the Abegg-Stiftung, Riggisberg, to furniture and bobbins of thread that transform sacred scenes into pioneering realistic domestic settings.