The Sleeping Nymph

A 2021 Sue Grafton Memorial Award Nominee In the highly anticipated follow-up to Flowers Over the Inferno, Superintendent Teresa Battaglia, expert criminal profiler with four decades of experience on the Italian police force, returns for a chilling cold case. A decades-old murder investigation has landed on Superintendent Teresa Battaglia's desk. DNA analysis has revealed that a painting from the final days of World War II contains matter from a human heart. Teresa is able to trace the evidence to Val Resia, one of Italy’s most isolated, untouched regions. When Teresa’s investigation hits too close to the truth, a fresh human heart is hung at the valley’s entrance, a warning not to cross its threshold. As she hunts a ruthless killer, Teresa must face down her own rapidly deteriorating physical and cognitive abilities, as well as someone she hoped never to see again—a man who has just become her supervisor.

Throughout the early modern period, the nymph remained a powerful figure that inspired and informed the cultural imagination in many different ways. Far from being merely a symbol of the classical legacy, the nymph was invested with a surprisingly broad range of meanings. Working on the basis of these assumptions, and thus challenging Aby Warburg’s famous reflections on the nympha that both portrayed her as cultural archetype and reduced her to a marginal figure, the contributions in this volume seek to uncover the multifarious roles played by nymphs in literature, drama, music, the visual arts, garden architecture, and indeed intellectual culture tout court, and thereby explore the true significance of this well-known figure for the early modern age. Contributors: Barbara Baert, Mira Becker-Sawatzky, Agata Anna Chrzanowska, Karl Enenkel, Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Michaela Kaufmann, Andreas Keller, Eva-Bettina Krems, Damaris Leimgruber, Tobias Leuker, Christian Peters, Christoph Pieper, Bernd Roling, and Anita Traninger.

The Renaissance studiolo was a space devoted in theory to private reading. The most famous studiolo of all was that of Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua. This work explores the function of the mythological image within a Renaissance culture of collectors.

Refiguring Woman reassesses the significance of gender in what has been considered the bastion of gender-neutral humanist thought, the Italian Renaissance. It brings together eleven new essays that investigate key topics concerning the hermeneutics and political economy of gender and the relationship between gender and the Renaissance canon. Taken together, they call into question a host of assumptions about the period, revealing the implicit and explicit misogyny underlying many Renaissance social and discursive practices.

In his late 15th century chronicle (ca 1477-1484), Michael Fabricius Ferrarinus (died between 1488-1493), prior of the Carmelite cloister in Reggio Emilia, introduced the rumour that an ancient fountain had been found super ripam Danuvii (on the banks of the Danube) with the sculpted figure of a sleeping nymph. According to Ferrarinus, the fountain bore a peculiar epigram: HVIVS NYMPHA LOCI, SACRI CVSTODIA FONTIS, DORMIO, DVM BLANDAE SENTIO MVRMVR AQVAE. PARCE MEVM, QVISQVIS TANGIS CAVA MARMORA, SOMNVM RVMPERE. SIVE BIBAS SIVE LAVERE TACE. Many scholars have discussed the impact of the rumour as creating a prototype for Renaissance sculptures of the sleeping nymph in Rome and for the development of the well-known genre of the sleeping Venus in painting. Building upon the previous studies, this essay contextualizes the phenomenon of the sleeping nymph and its textual and artistic Nachleben from the point of view of the locus amoenus as silence. This study combines iconological, aesthetical-philosophical and anthropological approaches, and contributes to a better understanding of sleep, voyeurism, water and silence within the context of the nymph's particular genius loci.

Reread this classic Atlantis tale, now with all-new scenes! Females young and old, beautiful and plain crave Valerian's touch. None can resist his blatant sensuality and potent allure…until he steals Shaye Holling from a Florida beach and holds her prisoner in his underwater kingdom. The cynical Shaye wants nothing to do with the mighty warlord, but she's inexplicably drawn to him. For underneath the warrior's arrogant beauty lies a complex and powerful man. A man whose caress is like fire… Now Valerian must fight for the privilege of claiming her as his own. Because there's one thing Shaye doesn't know…. Look for the rest of Gena Showalter's Atlantis series: The Amazon's Curse, Heart of the Dragon, Jewel of Atlantis and The Vampire's Bride, available now. Originally published in 2007, revised in 2017

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