Patronage, Gender & the Arts Published

We are happy to announce that Italica Press has just published Patronage, Gender & the Arts in Early Modern Italy: Essays in Honor of Carolyn Valone, edited by Katherine A. McIver and Cynthia Stollhans.

The articles in this volume celebrate the work and legacy of Carolyn Valone, professor of Art History,  teacher, mentor and friend to many. Valone’s publications on “matrons as patrons” and “pie donne” became influential, ground-breaking work in the 1990s. Her continuing research on women as patrons of art and architecture has pioneered a methodological approach that many scholars have followed. Contributions include:

Katherine A. McIver & Cynthia Stollhans, Introduction. Brenda Preyer, The “Wife’s Room” in Florentine Palaces of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Katherine A. McIver, Locating Power: Women in the Urban Fabric of Sixteenth-Century Rome. Kimberly L. Dennis, A Palace Built by a Princess? Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj and the Construction of Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona. Lisa Passaglia Bauman, The Rhetoric of Power: Della Rovere Palaces and Processional Routes in Late Fifteenth-Century Rome. Sheila ffolliott, Artemisia Conquers Rhodes: Problems in the Representation of Female Heroics in the Age of Catherine de’ Medici. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Elite Matrons as Founders of Religious Institutions: Ludovica Torelli and Eleonora Ramirez Montalvo. Marilyn Dunn, Nuns, Agents and Agency: Art Patronage in the Post–Tridentine Convent. Kimberlyn Montford, Musical Marketing in the Female Monasteries of Early Modern Rome. Suzanne B. Butters, A Monster’s Plea. Meghan Callahan, Preaching in a Poor Space: Savonarolan Influence at Sister Domenica’s Convent of la Crocetta in Renaissance Florence. Cynthia Stollhans, The Pious Act of an Impious Woman: The Courtesan Fiammetta as Art Patron in Renaissance Rome. Elizabeth S. Cohen, More Trials for Artemisia Gentileschi: Her Life, Love and Letters in 1620. Michael Sherberg, Mr. Cellini Goes to Rome. Craig A. Monson, “Un Monsignore troppo abbondo contro le monache”:  Alfonso Paleotti Meets His Match. Gretchen E. Meyers, Suis manibus fecerat: Queen Dido as a Producer of Ceremonial Textiles. Elissa Weaver, What to Wear in the Decameron and Why It Matters.

Includes a Bibliography of Carolyn Valone’s Works and a complete index.

The volume in the latest in our series, Italica Studies in Art & History.

Kevin Poole Interviewed on YouTube

Kevin Poole was recently interviewed by Yale University’s Marilyn Wilkes for “The MacMillan Report” on his recent English edition of The Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin. Dr. Poole reviews the story of Pseudo-Turpin, his translation and his analysis. He discusses his interest in the work for teaching and research and stresses the importance of such works in the Compostela and Roland cycles in the context of Christian-Muslim relations.

Poole notes that, while completely fictitious, the text was presented as a genuine work from the circle of Charlemagne, making broad truth claims as an eyewitness account to Crusade history. Its author surrounded his tale with the authority of Charlemagne’s life and reign, noting that the hundreds of copies produced in the Middle Ages — both in Latin and in various vernaculars — only reinforced and broadened its popularity through its local and national variations. Its appeal was thus both historical and fictitious, linking the lives and aspirations of its audience to its sacred, secular and mythical histories.

Poole and Wilkes discuss the manuscript tradition, the identification and use of the original version in Compostela’s Codex Calixtinus, and the popularity of Compostela itself and the medieval and modern pilgrimage to that sacred site. They talk about the history of the manuscript, its recent theft and recovery, access to the book, modern research methods and the text’s various transcriptions and modern translations.

Why is the story important today? Again Poole stresses the history of Crusade and Jihad, their ideological underpinnings, and modern variations on such thought systems. Historical analysis, Poole argues, can trace the origins of such beliefs and thus better understand our own contemporary actions and discourse. Poole’s book is also an important reflection on the uses and abuses of history in the past and today.

It’s a delightful twenty-minute conversation on YouTube. Take a look!

The Holy Land in the Middle Ages

In a region often caricatured by the images and rhetoric of crusade and jihad, it’s important to realize that through most of its medieval history the Holy Land was host to countless curious and devout travelers of all three faiths. They sailed to the same ports, walked and rode the same roads, lodged in the same cities and towns and visited and revered the same secular and sacred sites. The Holy Land in the Middle Ages: Six Travelers’ Accounts. Digital Edition offers important texts documenting these centuries of peaceful co-existence.

Version 1.0 of this completely revised and updated digital edition is now available. It presents texts written by medieval Christian, Muslim and Jewish travelers to the Holy Land, including: St. Jerome, The Pilgrimage of Holy Paula, c.382 CE * Paula & Eustochium, Letter to Marcella on the Holy Places, 386 * Mukaddasi of Jerusalem, Description of Palestine, 985 * Nâsir-i-Khusrau, Diary of a Journey through Syria and Palestine, 1047 * Theoderich of Würzburg, Guide to the Holy Land, c.1172 * Benjamin of Tudela, Description of the Holy Land, from his Itinerary, c.1173.

The Holy Land in the Middle Ages is fully searchable and can be navigated page-by-page like a traditional print book, accessed via the interactive table of contents of texts or images, or through the page-search feature. Hyperlinked references access the appropriate notes to the text and introductions, and a Bibliographical Guide completes the edition. Loaded onto a laptop computer, tablet or smart phone, this e-book provides the perfect companion to the student, the jet-seat or arm-chair traveler.

Reviews of New Titles

We’ve received two excellent reviews for recent titles. Renaissance Quarterly has called William Tronzo’s Petrarch’s Two Gardens: Landscape and the Image of Movement “absorbing and transformative,” while The Medieval Review notes that in their edition of Aiol: A Chanson de Geste, Sandra C. Malicote and A. Richard Hartman “have provided a valuable resource for scholars and an inviting tale for devotees of medieval heroic literature.”

Please take a moment or two to read the full text of these reviews at the links above. 

New Fall Titles: the West and Islam

We’re happy to announce two new titles and one new Kindle edition for the Fall of 2014. All three titles offer interesting variations on the Western perceptions of Islam and the role of the Mediterranean as a bridge among the various cultures of the region. All three titles are available in hardcover, paperback and a variety of digital formats, including searchable PDF downloads and Kindle editions.

The first is Kiril Petkov’s edition and translation of The Deeds of Commander Pietro Mocenigo by Coriolano Cippico. From 1470 to 1474 Cippico served as galley captain in a Venetian naval expedition in the eastern Mediterranean under the command of the future doge of Venice, Pietro Mocenigo. He wrote The Deeds in 1474/75. In its three books he describes the exploits of the campaign as Mocenigo’s fleet engaged in a systematic depredation of the western Anatolian shoreline, helped suppress a political coup in Cyprus and seal the Venetian hold of the island, supported the Venetian diplomatic outreach to the lords of Karaman, the chief Ottoman adversaries in Anatolia, and provided crucial relief to the Venetian-held Albanian stronghold of Skodra (Scutari) besieged by Ottoman troops.

Composed in an elegant humanist Latin, The Deeds details a sophisticated eyewitness account of the Christian–Ottoman confrontation in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The brutality of war, the constant traffic in slaves and booty and the almost casual destruction of the ancient remains of Asia Minor form the backdrop to the expert diplomacy, crusade rhetoric, humanist discourse and the cultural claims of the Venetian Republic.

The present edition is the first translation of The Deeds into English and brings back to light one of the finest pieces of Renaissance history writing, often and widely reprinted and much appreciated in its time, but undeservedly forgotten until recently.

The second is Kevin R. Poole’s edition and translation of the Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin, Book IV of the Liber Sancti Jacobi (Codex Calixtinus). This key manuscript also contains the Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela, the Miracles of St. James and the Veneranda dies sermon (all previously published by Italica Press), a collection of liturgical texts and other sermons associated with the cathedral and its saint, and a series of letters surrounding the fate of the body of St. James and its burial in Spain.

The twelfth-century Chronicle, also known as the History of Charlemagne and Roland, offers an “eye-witness” account of events during the late eighth century. Charlemagne’s compatriot, Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, describes the miraculous appearance of Saint James to Charlemagne and the battles against the Muslims that he and Roland fought in Iberia as a result of this vision. The chronicle is one of the fundamental texts in the literary legend surrounding Charlemagne, Roland, Compostela and St. James. It served as source material for a large number of other chronicles as well as for French chansons de geste and other forms of heroic literature, including the Song of Roland (also in a new edition from Italica Press).

In this first modern English translation of the chronicle, Kevin Poole investigates the issues of fiction, legend and authorship and the relationship between the false chronicle and its wider literary tradition. 

The third new offering is the Kindle edition of Aiol: A Chanson de Geste. Like many other crusading and romance epics, Aiol artfully recreates both the Christian culture of the West and the Islamic culture of the Levant. Poets writing in medieval French created richly textured literary metaphors or fictions about both the Christian and Muslim worlds, and they were themselves well aware that even though they were treating historically-based materials, they were also fabricating fictions and fictive truths, tropes and figures as literary art. 

As with their Italica Press edition of Elye of Saint Gilles, Sandra C. Malicote and A. Richard Hartman have chosen simplicity and directness of approach. The translation remains faithful to the spirit and meaning of the Old French poem, creating a lively, interesting and engaging text that allows the reader to savor the rich intellectual and artistic context of the original.