L'Agenda des Médiévistes

In dozens of monumental examples across central and northern Italy, late-medieval artists created complex diagrammatic paintings whose content was conveyed not through proto-perspectival spaces but rather through complex circles, trees, hierarchical stemmata, and winding pathways. Trecento Pictoriality is the first comprehensive study of the practice of monumental diagrammatic painting in late-medieval Italy, moving the study of diagrams from the manuscript page to the frescoed wall and tempera panel. Often placed alongside narrative, devotional, and allegorical paintings, the diagrammatic mode was one of a number of pictorial modes available to artists, patrons, and planners, with a unique ability to present complex content to viewers. While monumental diagrams may have sparked some of the experiences usually associated with diagrams in manuscripts, acting as machines for thought, scaffolds for memory, or tools for the visualization of complex concepts, their reception was also shaped by their presence in public spaces, their scale and aura as richly decorated works of monumental visual art, and their insertion into larger pictorial programs. Closely examining the visual and communicative strategies of these paintings expands the horizon of trecento art history beyond narrative and devotional painting, and shifts our understanding of all of the arts of the trecento, calling attention to issues of scale, visual rhetoric, pictorial ingenuity, and reception.

Karl Whittington is Associate Professor of History of Art at The Ohio State University. He is the author of Body-Worlds: Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic Imagination (Pontifical Institute, 2014), and the co-editor with Bryan Keene of New Horizons in Trecento Italian Art (Brepols, 2021). His articles have appeared in Gesta, Studies in Iconography, Mediaevalia, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Different Visions, postmedieval, Dante Studies, and numerous edited volumes.

Informations pratiques :

Karl Whittington, Trecento Pictoriality: Diagrammatic Painting in Late Medieval Italy, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023 ; 1 vol., 367 p. (Renovatio Artium, 13). ISBN: 978-1-915487-04-9. prix : € 150,00.

Source : Brepols

Francesca Trivellato part sur les traces de la légende qui a accompagné l’idée de prédispositions particulières des Juifs pour le commerce et le crédit. À l’origine se trouve la fable de l’invention juive, à la fin du Moyen Âge, de l’assurance maritime et de la lettre de change, deux instruments essentiels de la finance privée européenne. Exprimée pour la première fois dans le texte d’un avocat bordelais du XVIIe siècle, cette construction imaginaire, à très longue portée et aux conséquences terribles, se trouve reprise par Montesquieu, Voltaire, Beccaria, puis dans les textes plus contemporains de Marx ou Weber.
Retraçant les différentes manifestations de cette légende et ce qu’elles révèlent des aspirations et des craintes collectives des contemporains, ce livre s’attache à décrire le fonctionnement de l’économie préindustrielle, les mécanismes du crédit à l’époque moderne et la mise en place du statut des Juifs en France et en Europe, du milieu du XVIIe siècle jusqu’à Napoléon. Magnifique ouvrage d’histoire culturelle de l’économie, Juifs et capitalisme montre que les débats sur la portée du marché ont toujours été indissociables de l’élaboration de hiérarchies juridiques et symboliques impliquant inclusions et exclusions. L’anonymat du marché est une idée récente. Elle reste une réalité insaisissable.

Professeure d’histoire moderne, spécialiste de l’histoire culturelle et économique, théoricienne de ce qu’elle a appelé la microstoria globale, Francesca Trivellato est devenue en 2018 full professorà l’Institute for Advanced Study de Princeton, une des positions les plus prisées en Amérique du Nord. Elle a publié aux éditions du Seuil Corail contre diamants. De la Méditerranée à l’océan Indien au XVIIIe siècle (« L’Univers historique », 2016).

Informations pratiques :

Francesca Trivellato, Juifs et capitalisme Aux origines d’une légende, trad. Guillaume Calafat et Jacques Dalarun, Paris, Seuil, 2923 ; 1 vol., 432 p. (L’Univers historique). ISBN : 978-2-02145-788-9. Prix : € 26,00.

Source : Seuil

Contemporary scholarship on Bonaventure has characterized him as the Neo-platonic foil to the Aristotelianism of his day. The present book, however, shows a Bonaventure who is highly enthusiastic about utilizing the philosophy of Aristotle and who centers much of his philosophical project around interpreting and understanding the texts of Aristotle. Two goals are central to this book. The first is to shed light on Bonaventure’s greatly understudied ontology and theory of forms, demonstrating how his philosophical system is an important and unique alternative to other medieval Aristotelian systems. The second is to establish, more broadly, how Bonaventure’s interpretation of Aristotle is a resource which should be mined for contemporary efforts in thinking about and reading Aristotle himself.

Table des matières :

Acknowledgements 

Abbreviations for Editions and Translations of Primary Texts

Introduction 

Chapter 1. Historical Background 

1. The Neoplatonic via Proclus: The One and the Many 

2. The Problem of Neoplatonism in the Christian Tradition 

3. Aristotle via Avicenna and the Early Franciscan Tradition, or What Exactly Is Aristotelianism? 

Chapter 2. The Theory of Forms in Thomas Aquinas 

1. The Structure of Creation 

2. Participation 

3. Participation in the Fourth Way? 

4. Participation in Exemplar Causes? 

5. Conclusion 

Chapter 3. The Controversy: Bonaventure and Aristotle

1. History of Scholarship on Bonaventure 

2. The “Anti-Aristotelianism” of the Collationes

Chapter 4. An Aristotelian Account of Universals 

1. Form, Esse, Actuality, Goodness 

2. Universal Forms and Seminal Reasons

3. Universals 

4. Conclusion 

Chapter 5. Forms as Caused by God

1. God Beyond Being 

2. Exemplar Causation 

3. A Multiplicity of Ideas? 

4. Conclusion 

Chapter 6. Forms in the Natural World 

1. Individuation 

2. Light and the Question of a Plurality of Substantial Forms 

3. Causation 

4. Evil 

5. Conclusion 

Conclusion 

Bibliography 

Primary Sources 

Secondary Sources 

Index 

Informations pratiques :

Franziska van Buren, Aristotle and the Ontology of St. Bonaventure, Louvain, Leuven University Press, 2023 ; 1 vol., 226 p. (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Series 1, 63). ISBN : 978-9-46270-356-8. Prix : € 49,50.

Source : Leuven University Press

Au cours de la première moitié du XVe siècle, anachorète et abbesse Colette de Corbie (1381-1447) devint la première femme à réformer un ordre monastique contemplatif en fondant vingt-quatre maisons franciscaines en France, en Bourgogne et dans les Pays-Bas. Pendant son activité, la France était en guerre tant avec l’Angleterre qu’avec elle-même ; les papes siégeaient à la fois à Rome, à Avignon et à Pise ; même l’ordre franciscain était déchiré par le conflit entre Spirituels et Conventuels. Colette navigua dans ces eaux turbulentes de l’époque pour guider sa réforme à travers la violence, l’incertitude et l’instabilité. En maintenant ses fondations sous la pauvreté évangélique stricte et l’emprise encore plus stricte de ses propres systèmes de contrôle, Colette mena ses institutions farouchement indépendantes vers un large succès. Par l’étude des documents fondateurs, de la correspondance et des hagiographies de la future sainte et de son mouvement, ces pages explorent les stratégies employées par cette femme singulière pour parvenir à ses fins.

Née en Californie, Clara Romani a obtenu sa licence à Stanford, où elle a rédigé son mémoire sur la position socio-économique des femmes dans le Languedoc cathare du XIIIe siècle. Elle a déménagé à Paris en 2020 pour poursuivre son master à l’Université CY Cergy Paris avec le soutien du programme Fulbright.

Informations pratiques :

Clara Romani, La réforme de Colette de Corbie (1381-1447). Méthodes et mécanismes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2023 ; 1 vol., 190 p. (Prix Scientifique). ISBN : 978-2-14-034018-5. Prix : € 21,00.

Source : L’Harmattan

Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City considers the various forces – royal, monastic and secular – that shaped the art, architecture and topography of Paris between c. 1100 and c. 1500, a period in which Paris became one of the foremost metropolises in the West.

The individual contributions, written by an international group of scholars, cover the subject from many different angles. They encompass wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, manuscript illumination and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion and social life. Topics include the early medieval churches that preceded the current cathedral church of Notre-Dame and cultural production in the Paris area in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as well as Paris’s chapels and bridges. There is new evidence for the source of the c. 1240 design for a celebrated window in the Sainte-Chapelle, an evaluation of the liturgical arrangements in the new shrine-choir of Saint-Denis, built 1140–44, and a valuable assessment of the properties held by the Cistercian Order in Paris in the Middle Ages. Also, the book investigates the relationships between manuscript illuminators in the 14th century and representations of Paris in manuscripts and other media up to the late 15th century.

Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City updates and enlarges our knowledge of this key city in the Middle Ages.

Table des matières :

List of Contributors

Preface

1. Notre-Dame in Paris before the Gothic Period
2. Abbot Suger’s Paris
3. The Power of the Saints: Architecture and Liturgy in Abbot Suger’s Shrine-Choir at Saint-Denis in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
4. The King’s City: The Disciplinary ‘Sense-scape’ of Paris in the Thirteenth Century
5. The Great Thirteenth-Century Chapels of Paris
6. City of light: Picturing the translation of the Crownof Thorns to Paris in the Gothic glass of the Sainte-Chapelle
7. Jean Pucelle, Mahiet, and the Fauvel Master: Relationships between Manuscript Illuminators in Fourteenth-Century Paris
8. Building Paris on its Bridges
9. Not so vast a Solitude: Cistercians in Medieval Paris
10. Images of Paris in the late Middle Ages: The Great Monuments

RAPHAËLE SKUPIEN

Index

Informations pratiques :

Paris. The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City, éd. Alexandra Gajewski, John McNeill, Londres, Routledge, 2023 ; 1 vol., 260 p. (The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions). ISBN : 978-1-03252-086-5. Prix : GBP 28,79.

Source : Routledge

Projected color saturates our world of images and screens, leading to a dissociation of color from material realities through its cultural attachment to light and the efflorescence of optics. Under these conditions, it is difficult to imagine a past where color was an eminently material, cultural, and social object. This book argues that color is and was a central « cultural object » within art history, a fact first elucidated through an examination of the debates and difficulties of color in language, theology, science, and philosophy. Following this overview of medieval aesthetical debates, the author pursues two pivotal case studies which span the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the Basilica of Saint-Denis and the Cathedral of Lincoln, respectively connected to the figures of the abbot Suger and the bishop Robert Grosseteste. Prominent thinkers and concepteurs of sacred spaces and images, they both confronted existing theories of color and optics, and the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The case studies both center the art of stained glass, a revolutionary medium that blurs the boundaries between color, materiality, and light. Emerging strongly throughout this beautifully illustrated volume are traces of a central Middle Ages in which color played a fundamental yet groundbreaking role at the crossroads of aesthetic, intellectual, and theological issues.

Alberto Virdis is a researcher in Medieval Art at the Masaryk University, Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Brno. He is currently leading a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation on the origins of stainedglass art in the Early Middle Ages. His main research interests span from the history of colors in medieval art and their relation with the art of stained glass, to artistic and cultural interactions in the Mediterranean space in the High Middle Ages, with a special focus on mural paintings and studies on Medieval landscape.

Table des matières : ici

Informations pratiques :

Alberto Virdis, Colors in Medieval Art Theories, Matter, and Light from Suger to Grosseteste (1100–1250), Rome, Viella, 2023 ; 1 vol., 400 p. (Convivia, 3). ISBN : 979-1-25469-362-9. Prix : € 75,00.

Source : Viella

Bernardo Tasso (Bergamo, 11 novembre 1493 – Ostiglia, 5 settembre 1569) fu autore di libri di lettere, di poemi cavallereschi, di una vasta produzione lirica in stile ‘antico’ e ‘moderno’; ma fu anche segretario e ambasciatore d’orizzonti europei: dalla Francia a Venezia, da Napoli alle Fiandre. Di quest’opera multiforme e della molteplicità di ruoli che Tasso rivestì – di servitore e consigliere, di padre e sposo, di amante letterario, di uomo di fede – danno conto i diciotto contributi riuniti in questo volume. Si precisa così una biografia contraddistinta da molte zone d’ombra, si analizzano testi, dibattiti e generi letterari, indagando la cultura di questo gentiluomo ed intellettuale laico, formatosi alla scuola dell’estremo umanesimo quattrocentesco e vissuto fra le guerre d’Italia e il concilio di Trento. Lungamente trascurata dalla critica, la figura di Bernardo Tasso, emblematica della crisi del Rinascimento, viene per la prima volta rimessa al centro del suo mondo e del suo tempo.

Bernardo Tasso (Bergame, 11 novembre 1493 – Ostiglia, 5 septembre 1569) fut l’auteur de livres de lettres, de poèmes chevaleresques, d’une vaste production lyrique de style « ancien » et « moderne » ; mais il fut également un secrétaire et un ambassadeur d’envergure européenne, en France, à Venise, à Naples et dans les Flandres. Les dix-huit contributions réunies dans ce volume rendent compte de cette œuvre aux multiples facettes et de la variété de rôles que Bernardo Tasso recouvrit, à la fois de serviteur et de conseiller, de père et d’époux, d’amant littéraire, d’homme de foi. Une biographie caractérisée par des nombreuses zones d’ombre est ainsi éclaircie : nous retrouvons dans ce recueil l’analyse de textes, de débats et de genres littéraires, ainsi qu’un approfondissement sur la culture de ce gentilhomme et intellectuel laïc, qui a vécu entre les guerres d’Italie et le Concile de Trente et a été formé à l’école du dernier Humanisme. Longtemps délaissée par la critique, la figure de Bernardo Tasso, emblématique de la crise de la Renaissance, est pour la première fois placée au centre de son univers et de son temps. 

Table des matières :

INDICE

Introduzione

Prima parte LA BIOGRAFIA E LE LETTERE

Marcello SIMONETTA Le Lettere di Bernardo Tasso e il secolo dei segretari

Massimo CASTELLOZZI Le Lettere di Bernardo Tasso tra manoscritti e stampe. Appunti per un’edizione critica

Franco TOMASI Le Lettere di Bernardo Tasso tra progetto e allestimento tipografico

Valentina LEONE Geografie epistolari e stratigrafie temporali nel Primo Libro delle Lettere di Bernardo Tasso (1525-1527)

Mauro RAMAZZOTTI Note sugli anni parigini e ferraresi di Bernardo Tasso (1527-1532)

Paolo PROCACCIOLI Dalle lettere al cartello. Bernardo Tasso e l’Aretino

Stefano VERDINO « La mia continua guerra » : sulle tarde lettere (1552-1569) di Bernardo Tasso

Sergio BOZZOLA Bernardo Tasso epistolografo leggiadro

Seconda parte L’AMADIGI

Riccardo BRUSCAGLI Bernardo Tasso e Sperone Speroni : note da una polemica

Valeria DI IASIO « In questa maniera di volgari poemi in gran parte nuove » : ottava e narrazione nell’Amadigi

Giovanni VEDOVOTTO Presenze ovidiane nell’Amadigi

Terza parte LA LIRICA

Giorgio FORNI Figure e stagioni della lirica di Bernardo Tasso

Giacomo COMIATI Architetture compositive e fonti classiche nelle Odi di Bernardo Tasso

Ester PIETROBON Il classicismo polifonico dei Salmi tassiani

Giovanna ZOCCARATO I componimenti in metro sperimentale negli Amori di Bernardo Tasso

Quarta parte I LIBRI E LO SCRITTOIO

Maria Teresa GIRARDI Nota sui libri e sui postillati di Bernardo Tasso

Silvia D’AMICO Bernardo Tasso lettore di Omero : il postillato della traduzione dell’Iliade di Lorenzo Valla

Rosanna MORACE Bernardo Tasso e Vittoria Colonna tra le carte del Libro secondo degli Amori e l’autografo oliveriano

Indice dei nomi

Informations pratiques :

Bernardo Tasso gentiluomo del Rinascimento, éd. Franco Tomasi, Giovanni Ferroni, Massimo Castellozzi, Genève, Droz, 2023 ; 1 vol., 544 p. (Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 193). ISBN : 978-2-600-06479-8. Prix : CHF 49,00.

Source : Droz