Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy: Art and the Verdant Earth (Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700)

"The green mantle of the earth! This metaphor is a poetic image that borrows from the vocabulary of weaving and epitomizes the Renaissance interest in "fashioning green worlds" in art and poetry. Here it serves as a motto for a cultural poetics that made representing living nature increasingly popular across Italy in the Early Modern period. The explosion of landscape art in this era is often associated with the rise of interest in the literary pastoral, narrowly defined, but this volume expands that understanding to show Green's broad appeal as it intrigued audiences ranging from the ecclesiastic to the medical and scientific to the humanistic and courtly. The essays gathered here explore the expanding technologies and varied cultural dimensions of verzure and verdancy in the Italian Renaissance, and thus the role of visual art in shaping the poetics and expression of greenery in the arts of the 16th-century and beyond."-- Publisher's website Half title page......Page 2 Series information......Page 3 Title page......Page 4 Copyright information......Page 5 Table of Contents......Page 6 List of Plates and Figures......Page 8 Introduction: A Fresh Vision of the Natural World in Renaissance Italy......Page 18 Earlier Green Voices......Page 20 Part One: Devotional Viridescence......Page 23 Part Two: Green Building......Page 25 Part Three: Sylvan Exchange......Page 26 Conclusions......Page 28 Part I. Devotional Viridescence......Page 30 Introduction......Page 32 Sensorial Medicine......Page 34 Verdant Materials......Page 36 Fra Filippo Lippi’s Technique......Page 42 Sandro Botticelli’s Technique......Page 45 Conclusion......Page 48 About the author......Page 49 2. Anthropomorphic Trees and Animated Nature in Lorenzo Lotto’s 1509 St. Jerome......Page 50 About the author......Page 67 3. ‘Honesta voluptas’: the Renaissance Justification for Enjoyment of the Natural World......Page 70 About the author......Page 87 Part II. Building Green......Page 88 4. “The Sala delle Asse as Locus amoenus: Revisiting Leonardo da Vinci’s Arboreal Imagery in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco”......Page 90 The Sala delle Asse and the Poetics of Vegetation at the Sforza Court......Page 93 Recent Technical Findings and the Sala delle Asse as Locus Amoenus......Page 96 The Sala delle Asse and the Gardens of the Castello Sforzesco......Page 105 About the author......Page 109 Ephemeral Courtly Verzure......Page 110 Vasari’s use of Verzure in the Lives of the Artists......Page 112 Verzure Masters: Giulio Romano and Rosso Fiorentino......Page 115 The Northern Roots of Verzure......Page 119 Giovanni da Udine: in alcune cose [...] riuscire eccellentissimo......Page 123 Conclusion......Page 130 About the author......Page 131 6. Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition......Page 132 Verdant Architecture......Page 136 Tripartite Chorography......Page 139 Conclusion......Page 152 About the author......Page 153 Part III. The Sylvan Exchange......Page 154 A Corner of the Woods......Page 156 Woodblock Prints and Woodland Imagery......Page 161 Sylvan Poetics......Page 195 ‘[U]ne belle étude d’arbres’......Page 198 Silva......Page 199 Bacchanals......Page 200 Ecopoesis......Page 204 About the author......Page 207 8. From Venice to Tivoli: Girolamo Muziano and the ‘Invention’ of the Tiburtine Landscape......Page 208 About the author......Page 228 9. Of Oak and Elder, Cloud-like Angels, and a Bird’s Nest: The Graphic Interpretations of Titian’s The Death of St. Peter Martyr by Martino Rota, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Valentin Lefebre, John Baptist Jackson, and their Successors......Page 230 About the author......Page 249 10. The Verdant as Violence: The Storm Landscapes of Herman van Swanevelt and Gaspard Dughet......Page 250 The artists......Page 251 The debut of landscapes with stormy weather......Page 253 Precedents and origins of the land-storm in seventeenth-century landscape painting......Page 260 Landscape as metaphor......Page 261 Bad weather and climate change......Page 262 The literary traditions......Page 264 ‘We must sing of storms and flashing lightnings...’......Page 266 Synchronicity between Swanevelt and Dughet......Page 270 Implications for the future......Page 272 About the author......Page 273 Afterword: A Brief Journey through the Green World of Renaissance Italy......Page 274 About the author......Page 286 Works Cited......Page 288 Secondary Sources......Page 291 Index......Page 310 The green mantle of the earth! This metaphor borrows from the vocabulary of weaving and epitomizes the Renaissance interest in "fashioning green worlds" in art and poetry. Here it serves as a motto for a cultural poetics that made representing living nature increasingly popular across Italy in the Early Modern Period. The explosion of landscape art in the Renaissance is often associated with the rise of interest in the literary pastoral, narrowly defined, but Green Worlds expands this understanding, investigating green's broad appeal with audiences ranging from the ecclesiastic, to the medical and scientific, to the humanistic and courtly. The essays gathered here explore the expanding technologies and varied cultural dimensions of verzure and verdancy in the Italian Renaissance, demonstrating the role of visual art in shaping the poetics and expression of greenery in the arts of the 16th-century and beyond The green mantle of the earth! This metaphor conceives of the vegetation of the earth as a green cloth that drapes the barren earth. Long popular in patristic literature Il mantello verde della terra is a poetical image that ponders the providential greening of the earth on the third day of the Creation. Borrowing from the vocabulary of weaving it epitomizes the Renaissance interest in "fashioning green worlds" in art and poetry. Rachel Carson invoked the phrase to draw attention to environmental damage done to earth's "brilliant robe." Here it serves as a motto for a cultural poetics that made "living nature" an object of renewed interest. The essays gathered in this volume explore the expanding technologies and cultural dimensions of verzure and verdancy in the Italian Renaissance, and the role of painting in shaping the poetics and expression of greenery in the visual arts of the 16th-century and after This book explores the cultural dimensions, the expressive potential, and the changing technologies of greenery in the art of the Italian Renaissance and after.