Victorian And Edwardian Responses To The Italian Renaissance

The historiography of the Italian Renaissance has been much studied, but generally in the context of a few key figures. Much less appreciated is the extent of the enthusiasm for the subject in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the subject was 'discovered' by travellers and men and women of letters, historians, artists, architects and photographers, and by collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. The essays in Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance explore the breadth of the responses stimulated by the encounter between the British, the Americans and the Italians of the Renaissance. The volume approaches the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective. While recognising the abiding importance of the familiar 'great names', it seeks to draw attention to a wider cast of people, many of whom led colourful, energetic lives, knew Italy well, and wrote eloquently about the country and its Renaissance. Several essays show that 'Renaissance studies' became a field in which female historians could explore areas of relevance to the 'New Woman'. Other chapters examine the aims and politics of collecting and the place of the collector in literature and in the rediscovery of Renaissance artists. The contribution of teachers and other less formal champions of the Italian Renaissance is explored, as is the role of photographers who re-framed and re-viewed Florence - the Renaissance city - for Victorian and later eyes.

In the mid-1880s The Builder, an influential British architectural journal, published an article characterizing Renaissance architecture as a corrupt bastardization of the classical architecture of Greece and Rome. By the turn of the century, however, the same journal praised the Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi as the ?Christopher Columbus of modern architecture.? Victorian Perceptions of Renaissance Architecture, 1850-1914 examines these conflicting characterizations and reveals how the writing of architectural history was intimately tied to the rise of the professional architect and the formalization of architectural education in late nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing on a broad range of evidence, including literary texts, professional journals, university curricula, and census records, Victorian Perceptions reframes works by seminal authors such as John Ruskin, Walter Pater, John Addington Symonds, and Geoffrey Scott alongside those by architect-authors such as William J. Anderson and Reginald Blomfield within contemporary architectural debates. Relevant for architectural historians, as well as literary scholars and those in Victorian studies, Victorian Perceptions reassesses the history of Renaissance architecture within the formation of a modern, British architectural profession.

Anglo-Italian cultural connections in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been the subject of numerous studies in recent decades. Within that wider body of literature, there has been a growing emphasis on appreciation of the history and culture of Renaissance Italy, especially in nineteenth-century Britain. In 1954 J.R. Hale's England and the Italian Renaissance was a pioneering account of the subject, followed in 1992 by Hilary Fraser's monograph The Victorians and Renaissance Italy and in 2005 by Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, edited by John E. Law and Lene Østermark-Johansen. There is, however, an obvious gap in the literature concerning the pivotal figure of William Roscoe (1753-1831), the first English-language biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici and of Pope Leo X. The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici called the Magnificent proved to be so popular as to prompt the claim that Roscoe effectively invented the Italian Renaissance as it has become understood by subsequent generations of readers in the English-speaking world. This collection of ten essays redresses the balance by examining Roscoe as biographer, as a connoisseur of Italian literature and as a collector of Italian works of art.

This fourth edition of Sir John Hale’s classic history of England and the Italian Renaissance includes a detailed introduction by Edward Chaney surveying scholarly developments since the book was first published. Fourth edition of Sir John Hale’s classic history of England and the Italian Renaissance, first published in 1954. The book’s focus on fundamental issues and basis in little-read primary sources ensures that it endures as an important contribution to historical scholarship. Clear, chronological narrative, beautifully written. Provides essential understanding of the period, illuminating both British and Italian cultural history. The fourth edition includes a new introduction by Edward Chaney who is an expert on Anglo-Italian cultural relations. Chaney surveys the scholarship of the last 50 years and supplies an up-to-date bibliography.

Since the late twentieth century, there has been a strategic campaign to recover the impact of Victorian women writers in the field of English literature. However, with the increased understanding of the importance of interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century, there is a need to extend this campaign beyond literary studies in order to recognise the role of women writers across the nineteenth century, a time that was intrinsically interdisciplinary in approach to scholarly writing and public intellectual engagement.

Based on close readings of five Victorian novels, Hallum presents an original study of the interaction between popular fiction, the marriage market and the aesthetic movement. She uses the texts to trace the development of aestheticism, examining the differences between the authors, including their approach, style and gender.

The perception that the early sixteenth century saw a culmination of the Renaissance classical revival - only to degrade into mannerism shortly after Raphael's death in 1520 - has been extremely tenacious; but many scholars agree that this tidy narrative is deeply problematic. Exploring how we can reconceptualize the High Renaissance in a way that reflects how we research and teach today, this volume complicates and deepens our understanding of artistic change. Focusing on Rome, the paradigmatic centre of the High Renaissance narrative, each essay presents a case study of a particular aspect of the culture of the city in the early sixteenth century, including new analyses of Raphael's stanze, Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and the architectural designs of Bramante. The contributors question notions of periodization, reconsider the Renaissance relationship with classical antiquity, and ultimately reconfigure our understanding of 'high Renaissance style'.

Why were so many late-nineteenth-century homosexuals passionate about the Italian Renaissance? This book answers that question by showing how the Victorian coupling of criminality with self-fashioning under the sign of the Renaissance provided queer intellectuals with an enduring model of ruthlessly permissive individualism.