A look at the alterity between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age. The perception of the other in some medieval and modern texts (1200-1600)
Marica COSTIGLIOLO
Original title: Uno sguardo sull’alterità tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna. La percezione dell’altro in alcuni testi medievali e moderni (1200-1600)
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Alterity, Colonialism, Diversity, Islam, Middle Ages, New World, Renaissance.
The concept of otherness is complex and layered. To understand how the Western world has received, rejected, or dominated the Other is crucial for the understanding of the construction of the Western cultural identity and for trying to find the motivations that have brought Europe to a politics of colonialism that has characterized social, economic, and political relations up to modern times. In this short essay I analyse some medieval and modern works to trace the textual strategies that testify the passage from the perception of difference as a possible source of threat, of danger, to its delegitimization to existence and consequently to the “justified” dominion over the other.
Figure and meaning of Venus in the artwork of Botticelli
Laura CASADO BALLESTEROS
Original title: Figura y significado de Venus en la obra de Botticelli
Published in
Keywords: Botticelli, Mythology, Médici, Neoplatonism, Renaissance, Venus, Virgin.
The representation of Venus in Botticelli’s painting has always been present, not only to reflect the goddess as another image, but as a representation in which the painter goes beyond the mythological theme that the goddess occupies, reflecting a whole series of elements that are part of the world of the symbol. As well as the importance of the philosophical lessons of Neoplatonic character in the subject that occupies to us, that already were object of debate in this epoch and will be us of great utility to establish a correct and coherent interpretation of the hidden message of these mythological works.
Life and death of the enjoyment of Beauty in the breasts of the Renaissance (c.1300-1600)
Alexandre Emerick NEVES
Original title: Vida e morte do gozo da Beleza nos seios da Renascença (c.1300-1600)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Beauty, Erotic gaze, Pudency, Renaissance, Western Christianity.
By considering the breast as a significant fragment of the beauty of the female body, recurrently figured in the arts, I analyse how the convergence between the aesthetic and moral dimensions is associated with the intentions of the gazes and the impetus of the hands, from the approach of bodies to the possession of the breast. The sum of biblical lessons with Greco-Roman thought demonstrates how pudency promotes the enjoyment of beauty, culminating in significant artistic representations, from Late Gothic to Baroque, as a consolidation of the values of Western Christianity.
L’Ateneu Científic, Literari i Artístic de València and the Renaicense (1870-1876)
Víctor PASTOR BANYULS
Original title: L’Ateneu Científic, Literari i Artístic de València i la Renaixença (1870-1876)
Published in
Keywords: Ateneu, Literature Seccion, Renaissance, València, XIX Century.
In this research we have done a study about the Valencian Renaicence cultural movemment throught the analysis of the activity to Ateneu Científic, Literari i Artístic de València from 1870 to 1876, when the Boletín-Revista del Ateneo de Valencia was published. By the way, we have done the dump about this publication to view the cultural contribution of the valencian writers, so we study the literary and linguistic contribution of the Secció de Literatura.
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) and the Aesthetics of his Age
Antonia Javiera CABRERA MUÑOZ
Original title: Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) y la Estética de su Tiempo
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Aesthetics, Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes, Renaissance.
Contrary to other writers in the Spanish Golden Age, such as Luis de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo and Calderón de la Barca, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) is considered as being an autodidact by experts. From the publication of La Galatea (1585) on, Cervantes begins to devote himself fully to Literature. His journey through several genres and subgenres makes him both pertaining and alien to his own time, since he starts to deal in his works with a variety of aesthetic topics (authorship, reading, literary creation, etc.) that put in question particularly the previous age, the Renaissacence. The aim of this study is to survey some of those aesthetic topics in Don Quixote (1605 and 1615), in order to establish Cervantes’s worldview as the author of the most ingenious work in Spanish Literature.
The Woman and the Androgyne in Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) pictorical work
María del Carmen BREA REINA
Original title: La Mujer y lo andrógino en la obra pictórica de Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Androgyne, Cinquecento, Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna, Quattrocento, Renaissance, Virgin.
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the main exponents of Italian Renaissance painting. In his work the female characters or Madonnas stand out, in many cases with a leading role of great symbolism. Leonardo makes this concept evolve into the figure of the androgynous person, mixing feminine and masculine features to bring a new perspective to his production.
The choir stalls of the St. Nicholas´ parish of Úbeda
Pablo Jesús LORITE CRUZ
Original title: La sillería del coro de la parroquia de San Nicolás de Bari de Úbeda
Published in
Keywords: Baroque, Choir stalls, Ghotic, Renaissance, St. Nicholas of Bari parish, Úbeda.
This little article talks about St. Nicholas of Bari medieval parish in the Úbeda town (South of Spain) and her choir stalls. We explain a photography that Georg Weise made before 1936.
The musical esoterism of Francesco Zorzi (1466-1540) in the work De harmonia mundi totius (1525)
André GABY
Original title: O esoterismo musical de Francesco Zorzi (1466-1540) na obra De harmonia mundi totius (1525)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Christian Kabbalah, Esoterism, Philosophy of music, Pythagoreanism, Renaissance.
The humanism and the musical renaissance derived from it are both the result of Italian thinkers contact with the Neoplatonic and Hermes Trimegistus works – coming from Byzantium thanks to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 – and with Kabbalistic works brought by Jews definitively expelled from Spain. in 1492. Among so many names in Italian humanist thought, stands out in Venice the Franciscan friar Francesco Zorzi (Giorgi). He learned the Hebrew language and the teachings of Kabbalah, dedicating his intellectual efforts to the continuation of the synthesis work of ideas on spiritual elevation (Platonic, Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Jewish, or Christian) initiated by Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Zorzi believed that Kabbalah could prove the truths of the faith of Christianity present in the Bible, that is, the numbers generated by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet would be related to the Pythagorean “Harmony of the Spheres” conception, and the truths of the cosmos reality would be described in the scriptures enterlines of Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Our work consists of presenting to the Portuguese language community the esoteric-kabbalist musical conception present in the work Harmonia mundi totius by Francesco Zorzi, together with some extract’s translation into Portuguese.
