ITER Immagini e testi per l’Europa del Rinascimento | 2025 | N. 2

In the early 16th century, tragedy takes shape as a drama of catastrophe or misfortune according to a dead-end concatenation of external events, but later it gradually tends to transfer the tragic conflict into the troubled and opaque space of consciousness. The essay examines the motif of the ‘disquieting dream’ as an architectural element of 16th-century tragedy that modifies and enriches its dramaturgical function from a premonitory dream of external events to a representation of the character’s shaken and anguished interiority, thus making dreams the «faithful interpreters of our inclinations» (Montaigne, “Essais”, III, 13). From Trissino’s “Sofonisba” to Giraldi Cinzio’s “Orbecche”, from Daniele Barbaro’s tragedy on the Turkish conquest of Buda to Tasso’s “Torrismondo”, the module of the ‘disquieting dream’ becomes the highly sensitive seismograph of cultural and anthropological transformations that prelude our modernity.

The article presents a dialogue between Jean-Louis Fournel and Andrea Salvo Rossi on the latest research concerning the Republic of Florence. The discussion draws on Jean-Louis Fournel’s more than thirty years of experience in the study of Italian Renaissance political thought – a career centred on extensive translation work (of authors such as Guicciardini, Savonarola, and Machiavelli) carried out collaboratively with Jean-Claude Zancarini. Building on this hands-on engagement with language, the conversation explores key methodological issues in the semantic study of political texts: the relationship between translation theory and practice, the attention to continuity and discontinuity in discursive traditions, and, consequently, the stability or fluidity of political language. From this emerges a complex, layered understanding of the Renaissance, one that can engage with major historiographical traditions – from Anglo-Saxon studies of neo-republicanism to approaches emphasizing the long-term elements of Ancien Régime Classicism – while highlighting the centrality of the “short duration” of human action. In this perspective, what matters less is documenting the enduring stability of codified vocabularies used to think and speak about war and the state; what matters more are the efforts to reclaim and reinterpret these vocabularies, giving them new meanings that change from one context to another.

The article critically revisits the notion of para-classicism as discussed in the “Companion to Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento” through Angela Oster’s reading of Benvenuto Cellini. It expands her analysis along three lines: the anachronistic features of Cellini’s engagement with classical models and their modern reception; the marginal yet meaningful position of his autobiographical writings within the Renaissance literary field; and the classical and humanistic roots of his agonistic claims of surpassing ancient and modern masters. The article ultimately argues for a more differentiated mapping of sixteenth-century anti-classicisms, attentive to continuities and overlaps between classicist and anti-classicist practices.

The essay offers a critical assessment of the section on “Implicit Anti-Classicism” in a recent ‘Companion’ devoted to anti-classicism, focusing on the contributions by Marc Föcking and Daniel Fliege. After praising the overall ambition and innovative structure of the volume – organised into explicit, implicit, alternative, and para-classicism – the author reflects on its methodological heterogeneity and on the challenges posed to non-specialist readers. Particular attention is paid to the decision to frame anti-classicism primarily through the relationship with classical rhetoric and Petrarchism, while largely excluding earlier humanistic and Neo-Latin anti-classical traditions.

The article discusses the third chapter of “A Companion to Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento”, which interprets Dante’s sixteenth-century reception as a form of «alternative classicism». Rather than a simple opposition to normative models, Dantean anticlassicism is shown as a reworking of classical criteria used to defend stylistic plurality and heterogeneity. The chapter analyses debates on language and style, practices of “imitatio Dantis”, and late-century revaluations of poetic fantasy and “asprezza”, highlighting the plurality and flexibility of classicist and anticlassicist positions.

This survey outlines the main critical trends that emerged from the literature panels at the 71st Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America (Boston, March 20–22, 2025), demonstrating the vitality and methodological diversity characterizing contemporary Renaissance studies. While the conference embraced a broad interdisciplinary scope, this overview focuses specifically on panels devoted to European literatures, with particular emphasis on Italian studies, identifying recurring themes and methodological approaches: strategies of self-representation and the study of egodocuments; gender perspectives; thematic criticism centered on anthropological and affective categories; investigations of corporeality, sensory experience, and the boundaries between truth and fiction. Particular attention is given to recent scholarship on Ariosto and Tasso, as well as to innovative directions opened by digital humanities and intermedial approaches.

Starting from the volume “A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy (1350-1600)”, edited by Bianca de Divitiis, this short article reflects on recent research addressing the specific topic of the Renaissance in Southern Italy. It examines the historiographical issues raised by the category of the «Rinascimento meridionale» and the question of its chronological boundaries, in order to highlight research perspectives that contribute to a redefinition of Southern civilization’s role in the Italian Renaissance.

This review discusses Marco Faini’s “Storia del dubbio” (Cambridge, Legenda, 2023), a study of the emergence of a distinctive culture of doubt in the Italian Renaissance, situated between intellectual history and the history of emotions. Faini argues that Renaissance doubt was not a philosophical method in the modern sense but a social, emotional, and embodied experience shaped by political instability, religious crisis, the expansion of information, and global encounters. Drawing on a wide range of sources, the book traces the role of doubt in religious life, political decision-making, and missionary practices, ultimately presenting it as a formative element of early modern Italian and Catholic culture.

The short essay offers some reflections on the use of dilemmatic exposition in certain works by the Milanese polygraph Ortensio Lando. This rhetorical strategy enables the author to present theses that are, at times, religiously transgressive, followed by a response to the quaestio that realigns his position with the official stance of the Church. Particular attention is given to the “Disquisizioni su passi scelti della Santa Scrittura”, transmitted through a manuscript held at the Municipal Library of Trento and now available in a refined critical edition by Silvana Seidel Menchi.

Starting from a discussion of a book by Roger Chartier, recently translated, one may reflect on the use of cartographic images within the typographic production of early modern Europe. Such production can encourage considerations on the link between the representation of space and verisimilitude, on the temporality of images, and on the re-signification that may be activated when a map is placed alongside a text.

This essay explores the story of Casa Buonarroti that is today a museum in Florence dedicated to Michelangelo. Yet its history reveals that it is a memorial and familial construction developed after the artist’s death. It is notably the result of the work of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (1568-1646), the artist’s great-nephew and a leading figure of Florentine culture in the seventeenth century. At the heart of this project lies an ambitious iconographic program deployed across several rooms on the first floor of the residence, particularly the Galleria and the Studio. These spaces stage not only Michelangelo’s artistic greatness but also his integration into the political, intellectual, and religious history of Florence and of Italy. The Galleria presents ten large-scale scenes illustrating significant episodes from the artist’s public life. Michelangelo is portrayed as the equal of the powerful, far removed from the image of the solitary or tormented artist. He’s never shown at work in his studio, reflecting a clear intention to transform Michelangelo into a model of social and moral virtus. The Studio celebrates the intellectual greatness of Florence and Tuscany through an assembly of illustrious men among whom appear Dante, Galileo, and Machiavelli. This choice reveals an original conception of the artist’s house: rather than glorifying art through mythological allegories, Michelangelo the Younger privileges real historical figures who embody intellectual and civic nobility. After the seventeenth century, Casa Buonarroti experienced periods of decline before being restored in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It gradually became a cultural institution and later a foundation, affirming its museum and scholarly vocation. Today, Casa Buonarroti appears as a work of posterity: not the house of Michelangelo himself, but a familial and symbolic monument intended to secure his memory over time and to transmit an exemplary model to future generations.