Link: in costruzione

Partner: Alessandra Petrina, Anna Scannapieco, Luca Zuliani, Patrizio Tucci, Anna Bettoni, Franco Tomasi, Guido Baldassarri et alii

Abstract:

For a long time well-established research groups of the University of Padua have been studying - with different competences and from different points of view - Renaissance culture and the strong and complex relationship between the history of Venetian and European culture, in a period when Venice and its area become the hub and meeting point of several cultural, linguistic, artistic and philosophical currents. These had a wide circulation area - from Venice and Italy to Europe and back, the route was deeply receptive to the cultural and artistic phenomena of Europe. Renaissance Venice develops both national consciousness and cultural politics: a new historiography is founded, a literature in Italian vulgar is established in the conflict between local varieties and the tuscan language - of which venetian scholars first offered theoretical definitions and grammar studies; a modern publishing industry is created. Such a complex and peculiarly thriving context requires, in order to study exhaustively its elements of connection and interrelation, the use of several specialistic skills and of innovative methods. This has encouraged the creation of the EVeRe Project (European and Venetian Renaissance), which aims at the creation of a permanent coordination of Research on the Renaissance both within and without the University of Padua, and at the establishment of an Interdepartmental Centre of Renaissance Studies (CISR), similar to those already active in other national and international institutions. This research program consists of four different units composed of scholars of various specialties belonging to four different departments, which share both interests and methods. Here below are listed the main points of our proposal, presented according to historical, philosophical, literary-linguistic and artistic points of view. The circulation and reception of the “venetian model” in Renaissance Europe, i.e. the spread of political models and (heterodox) religious ideas allowed by the relations between Veneto, Europe and Central and Eastern Mediterranean and by the exchanges between a Christian and a Muslim environment; the main focus will be the divulgation of the “myth” of Venice and the expansion of its political model in sixteenth-century Europe, also reconstructing how the venetian environments touched by the new religious views elaborated the reformed ideas originated outside Italy. The culture of Veneto is characterized by the presence of the aristotelian tradition which, starting from Padua (“Universitas Venetorum”), influenced the whole European culture (Francis Bacon's references to Francesco Patrizi are very telling in this sense).We will analyse the extent to which the notion of metaphysics as the most abstract science might have influenced the Second European Scholastica and the Schulphilosophie in Germany. In the history of moral philosophy platonism was bettered by the practical aristotelian philosophy with its civil and political virtues; that is why it is vital to analyse latin and vulgar translations together with Renaissance commentaries on Artistotle's moral and political works: to assess if and to what extent the philological and hermeneutic effort of the humanists might have contributed to a reconsideration of the moral issue. Back in the early sixteenth century the linguistic situation in Europe was that reported by Erasmus before the relationship between Latin, the language of the European educated people, and the single national languages was altered by the religious revolution. The European linguistic revolution stemmed from Italy, in particular from Venice, and from there it influenced the continent. In this situation the Italian linguistic issue had a vital importance, because it offered a model which disputes on other languages could imitate. The role of Veneto is central for several reasons: because Venice is the capital of printing, because the city and its area contributed to the debate on the language much more than rest of the Italian regions together; because the publishing industry involved the roles of consultants, correctors and polygraphs; because of its peculiar written production in several languages, and not only in drama; there are examples of literary writing in multiple varieties such as Venetian, Paduan, Bergamask, constructed languages, macaronics and criminal jargon, Greghesco, Croatian, Friulian, Spanish and Turkish; or also, in the the history of the Opera or in “poesia per musica”, for instance, the tradition of apocopated rhymes ending in consonant sounds, dialectal trait which became popular in the fifteenth century thanks to Leonardo Giustinian's success, was long considered a literary-like feature, especially in the sixteenth century. Another important study area involves on the one hand the Venetian reception of Petrarchism, which reached such an important cultural, political and military centre as Cattaro and, on the other, the analysis of treatises on poetics and rhetoric, especially in the privileged environment of Academies. As concerns drama, Venice became a large european capital along with other cities (like Ferrara) whose superiority did not last. The contribution of dramatic writing in dialect was fundamental in the process. The connections between France and Venice. A useful tool to assess the cultural, political, social and confessional importance of the French presence in Veneto are Nunciatures with their judgments on intellectuals, diplomats, travellers and humanists suspected of being Huguenots. Reformed humanist texts were produced in Venice, printed in Geneva and then exported to Lyon and France. The relations between France and England. Good examples of this are Walter Scott, William Fowler and Thomas Nicholson, students in Padua and particularly into Italian culture (Fowler was John Florio's friend and he translated Petrarch and Machiavelli); they transmitted books and manuscripts and, being external to the great religious controversies of the time, had privileged contacts with English intellectuals. As concerns art the project will investigate the influence of German art on Venetian painting between 1480 and 1530 thanks to the presence of artists, the role of printing and the channels through which it was transmitted, the different modes of reception and the fortune of Titian and venetian art in European courts; this phenomenon has been studied only in some cases (Titian and the Habsburgs) and sometimes quite superficially (Paris Bordon in Augsburg and Fountainbleau, Veronese and Rudolph II). One of the most significant monuments of the Venetian Renaissance is Catajo Palace, where the Obizzi family put together quite a rich antiquarian collection; the fact that some epigraphs belonged to Padua or Venice collectors before the Obizzis acquired them casts new light on the trade of antics in Veneto. The development of the language of historiography and art criticism, both as concerns single artists (Titian's letters, diaries and Books of accounts...) and more specifically historical-critical observations - from Pino to Boschini.