Nature and the Arts in Early Modern Naples

Nature and the Arts in Early Modern Naples PDF Author: Frank Fehrenbach
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110720485
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The literary, artistic, and scientific culture of early modern Naples is closely linked to the natural topography of the city, stretching from Iacopo Sannazaro’s poetic evocation of the Campania landscape to Giambattista Vico’s approach in which he anchors human civilization to the existential confrontation with natural forces. With the open sea, the rocky coastline, and the menacing presence of Vesuvius, the image of Naples, more than any other city in early modern times, is associated in the collective imagination with the forces of nature. Even the populace was interpreted as a force of nature. In this volume, art, literature, and science historians investigate the convergence of culture and nature in a unique geographic context.

Nature and the Arts in Early Modern Naples

Nature and the Arts in Early Modern Naples PDF Author: Frank Fehrenbach
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110720485
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The literary, artistic, and scientific culture of early modern Naples is closely linked to the natural topography of the city, stretching from Iacopo Sannazaro’s poetic evocation of the Campania landscape to Giambattista Vico’s approach in which he anchors human civilization to the existential confrontation with natural forces. With the open sea, the rocky coastline, and the menacing presence of Vesuvius, the image of Naples, more than any other city in early modern times, is associated in the collective imagination with the forces of nature. Even the populace was interpreted as a force of nature. In this volume, art, literature, and science historians investigate the convergence of culture and nature in a unique geographic context.

Ribera’s Repetitions

Ribera’s Repetitions PDF Author: Todd P. Olson
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271098015
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The seventeenth-century Valencian artist Jusepe de Ribera spent most of his career in Spanish Viceregal Naples, where he was known as “Lo Spagnoletto,” or “the Little Spaniard.” Working under the patronage of Spanish viceroys, Ribera held a special position bridging two worlds. In Ribera’s Repetitions, art historian Todd P. Olson sheds new light on the complexity of Ribera’s artwork and artistic methods and their connections to the Spanish imperial project. Drawing from a diverse range of sources, including poetry, literature, natural history, philosophy, and political history, Olson presents Ribera’s work in a broad context. He examines how Ribera’s techniques, including rotation, material decay (through etching), and repetition, influenced the artist’s drawings and paintings. Many of Ribera’s works featured scenes of physical suffering—from Saint Jerome’s corroded skin and the flayed bodies of Saint Bartholomew and Marsyas to the ragged beggar-philosophers and the eviscerated Tityus. But far from being the result of an individual sadistic predilection, Olson argues, Ribera’s art was inflected by the legacies of the Reconquest of Spain and Neapolitan coloniality. Ribera’s material processes and themes were not hermetically sealed in the studio; rather, they were engaged in the global Spanish Empire. Pathbreaking and deeply interdisciplinary, this copiously illustrated book offers art history students and scholars a means to see Ribera’s art anew.

Reactionary Mathematics

Reactionary Mathematics PDF Author: Massimo Mazzotti
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
A forgotten episode of mathematical resistance reveals the rise of modern mathematics and its cornerstone, mathematical purity, as political phenomena. The nineteenth century opened with a major shift in European mathematics, and in the Kingdom of Naples, this occurred earlier than elsewhere. Between 1790 and 1830 its leading scientific institutions rejected as untrustworthy the “very modern mathematics” of French analysis and in its place consolidated, legitimated, and put to work a different mathematical culture. The Neapolitan mathematical resistance was a complete reorientation of mathematical practice. Over the unrestricted manipulation and application of algebraic algorithms, Neapolitan mathematicians called for a return to Greek-style geometry and the preeminence of pure mathematics. For all their apparent backwardness, Massimo Mazzotti explains, they were arguing for what would become crucial features of modern mathematics: its voluntary restriction through a new kind of rigor and discipline, and the complete disconnection of mathematical truth from the empirical world—in other words, its purity. The Neapolitans, Mazzotti argues, were reacting to the widespread use of mathematical analysis in social and political arguments: theirs was a reactionary mathematics that aimed to technically refute the revolutionary mathematics of the Jacobins. Reactionaries targeted the modern administrative monarchy and its technocratic ambitions, and their mathematical critique questioned the legitimacy of analysis as deployed by expert groups, such as engineers and statisticians. What Mazzotti’s penetrating history shows us in vivid detail is that producing mathematical knowledge was equally about producing certain forms of social, political, and economic order.

A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy (1350–1600)

A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy (1350–1600) PDF Author: Bianca de Divitiis
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004526374
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 799

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Book Description
A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy offers readers unfamiliar with Southern Italy an introduction to different aspects of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history and culture of this vast and significant area of Europe, situated at the center of the Mediterranean. Commonly regarded as a backward, rural region untouched by the Italian Renaissance, the essays in this volume paint a rather different picture. The expert-written contributions present a general survey of the most recent research on the centers of southern Italy, as well as insight into the ground-breaking debates on wider themes, such as the definition of the city, continuity and discontinuity at the turn of the sixteenth century, and the effects of dynastic changes from the Angevin and Aragonese Kingdom to the Spanish Viceroyalty. Taken together, they form an essential resource on an important, yet all too often overlooked or misunderstood part of Renaissance Italy. Contributors: Giancarlo Abbamonte, David Abulafia, Guido Cappelli, Chiara De Caprio, Bianca de Divitiis, Fulvio Delle Donne, Teresa D’Urso, Dinko Fabris, Guido Giglioni, Antonietta Iacono, Fulvio Lenzo, Lorenzo Miletti, Francesco Montuori, Pasquale Palmieri, Eleni Sakellariou, Francesco Senatore, Francesco Storti, Pierluigi Terenzi, Carlo Vecce, Giuliana Vitale, and Andrea Zezza.

Counter-Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective

Counter-Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective PDF Author: Ruth Sargent Noyes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040224415
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book explores the making of saints’ cults in the early modern world from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering the entangled roles of materiality and globalization processes. It brings together work across diverse media, objects, and materials as well as communities, cultures, and geographies to reframe a more synoptic, materials-centric, and comparative history of the making and remaking of saints’ cults, with a special focus on the long Counter-Reformation. The contributions engage with dynamics of local and universal and draw attention to the vital role of textual, visual, and material hagiographies in the creation and promotion of saints’ and would-be saints’ cults. The book fosters novel conceptualizations and cross-pollination of ideas across traditions, regions, and disciplines and expands hagiography’s horizons by reconsidering canonical saintly figures and reframing lesser-known cults of saints and would-be saints. The book will be of interest to scholars of religious and early modern history as well as art history and visual and material studies.

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences PDF Author: Dana Jalobeanu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3319310690
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 2267

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Book Description
This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. Editorial Board EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Dana Jalobeanu University of Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Ghent University, Belgium ASSOCIATE EDITORS Delphine Bellis University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Zvi Biener University of Cincinnati, OH, USA Angus Gowland University College London, UK Ruth Hagengruber University of Paderborn, Germany Hiro Hirai Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Martin Lenz University of Groningen, The Netherlands Gideon Manning CalTech, Pasadena, CA, USA Silvia Manzo University of La Plata, Argentina Enrico Pasini University of Turin, Italy Cesare Pastorino TU Berlin, Germany Lucian Petrescu Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Justin E. H. Smith University de Paris Diderot, France Marius Stan Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA Koen Vermeir CNRS-SPHERE + Université de Paris, France Kirsten Walsh University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Vico and the Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe

Vico and the Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: David L. Marshall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139485857
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought.

A Companion to Early Modern Naples

A Companion to Early Modern Naples PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004251839
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
Naples was one of the largest cities in early modern Europe, and for about two centuries the largest city in the global empire ruled by the kings of Spain. Its crowded and noisy streets, the height of its buildings, the number and wealth of its churches and palaces, the celebrated natural beauty of its location, the many antiquities scattered in its environs, the fiery volcano looming over it, the drama of its people’s devotions, the size and liveliness - to put it mildly - of its plebs, all made Naples renowned and at times notorious across Europe. The new essays in this volume aim to introduce this important, fascinating, and bewildering city to readers unfamiliar with its history. Contributors are: Tommaso Astarita, John Marino, Giovanni Muto, Vladimiro Valerio, Gaetano Sabatini, Aurelio Musi, Giulio Sodano, Carlos José Hernando Sánchez, Elisa Novi Chavarria, Gabriel Guarino, Giovanni Romeo, Peter Mazur, Angelantonio Spagnoletti, J. Nicholas Napoli, Gaetana Cantone, Anthony DelDonna, Sean Cocco, Melissa Calaresu, Nancy Canepa, David Gentilcore, Diana Carrió-Invernizzi, and Anna Maria Rao. The publisher, editor, and contributors mourn the passing of Gaetana Cantone, who died in April 2013.

The Optics of Giambattista Della Porta (ca. 1535–1615): A Reassessment

The Optics of Giambattista Della Porta (ca. 1535–1615): A Reassessment PDF Author: Arianna Borrelli
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319502158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This volume contains essays that examine the optical works of Giambattista Della Porta, an Italian natural philosopher during the Scientific Revolution. Coverage also explores the science and technology of early modern optics. Della Porta's groundbreaking book, Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), includes a prototype of the camera. Yet, because of his obsession with magic, Della Porta's scientific achievements are often forgotten. As the contributors argue, his work inspired such great minds as Johanes Kepler and Francis Bacon. After reading this book, researchers, historians, and students will have a better appreciation of this influential scientist. They will also gain a greater understanding of an important period in the history of optics. Readers will learn about Della Porta's experimental method, a process governed by the protocols, aims, and theoretical assumptions of natural magic. Coverage also discusses the material properties and limitations of optical technology in the early 17th century, based on a recently discovered Dutch spyglass. It also demonstrates how diagrams were instrumental in the discovery of the sine law of refraction. In addition, the book includes an in-depth analysis of previously untranslated Latin sources. This makes the material useful to historians of optics unfamiliar with the language. More than 70 illustrations complement the text.

Disaster in the Early Modern World

Disaster in the Early Modern World PDF Author: Ovanes Akopyan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100380165X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
How did early modern societies think about disasters, such as earthquakes or floods? How did they represent disaster, and how did they intervene to mitigate its destructive effects? This collection showcases the breadth of new work on the period ca. 1300-1750. Covering topics that range from new thinking about risk and securitisation to the protection of dikes from shipworm, and with a geography that extends from Europe to Spanish America, the volume places early modern disaster studies squarely at the intersection of intellectual, cultural and socio-economic history. This period witnessed fresh speculation on nature, the diffusion of disaster narratives and imagery and unprecedented attempts to control the physical world. The book will be essential to specialists and students of environmental history and disaster, as well as general readers who seek to discover how pre-industrial societies addressed some of the same foundational issues we grapple with today.