Incontri. Rivista europea di studi italiani

The Grand (Ducal) Finale

Sointu Cantell — 2024-03-29

The San Lorenzo Basilica in Florence is renowned for its Medici-infused Renaissance program, but there is a lesser-known phase of the Medici family's history in the basilica that unfolded in the 18th century. Between 1738 and 1743, Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, the last surviving member of the Medici line, oversaw extensive architectural and decorative interventions within the San Lorenzo complex. Her efforts to maintain the cultural heritage of her ancestors were heavily shaped by the imminent end of the Medici bloodline and the difficult transition of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine.

This article explores Anna Maria's motivations for her elaborate renovation projects in the basilica, with a particular focus on two of her most notable commissions: Vincenzo Meucci's cupola fresco in the nave of the basilica and the new bell tower designed by architect Ferdinando Ruggieri. These two projects, the only ones completed by Anna Maria before her death, demonstrate her ambitions within the San Lorenzo and help to uncover several underlying premises for their conceptions.

L’arte del processo nella narrativa di Anna Banti

Sonia Rivetti — 2024-04-12

The art of the trial in Anna Banti’s narrative

Starting from a series of works by the Italian writer Anna Banti, the aim of this essay is to carry out a thematic analysis around the theme of the narrative ego in the different declinations that it takes − real but also fictional or merely psychological − specifically within the trial form. Starting from the novel Artemisia (1947), subsequently connecting to the theatrical gestation that Anna Banti herself wanted to attribute to the theme of the debate in Corte Savella (1959), and then going back to the other two works, respectively Il bastardo (1953) and Insufficienza di prove ( 1975), the study aims to give evidence and concreteness to the drama and intrinsic psychological tension of the different characters represented, but with an explicit reference, ultimately, to the figure of the narrator herself. Conclusively, through the story La signorina (1975), this time in a form not directly connected to the trial theme, we intend to show how the trial of the various characters is oriented towards a trial of one’s own ego.

‘Italiani brava gente’. L’identità nazionale italiana

Ellen Patat — 2024-03-29

Recensione di: Beatrice Falcucci, Emanuele Giusti & Davide Trentacoste (a cura di), Rereading Travellers to the East. Shaping Identities and Building the Nation in Post-unification Italy, Firenze, Firenze University Press, 2022, 229 p., ISBN: 978-88-5518-578-3, € 16,90.

A Poisonous Legacy

Neil Tarrant — 2024-03-29

Review of Alisha Rankin, The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2021), pp.329.

The The Comic Dynamic in Italian Renaissance Literature

Laurie Shepard — 2024-03-29

Review of Massimo Scalabrini, Commedia e civiltà. Dinamiche anticonflittuali nella letteratura italiana del Cinquecento. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2022.

Sogno d’un mattino di primavera

Emanuele Delfiore — 2024-03-29

Recensione di: Cecilia Gibellini (a cura di), Gabriele d’Annunzio, Sogno d’un mattino di primavera, Gardone Riviera, Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, 2023, CLXIII, 102 p., ISBN: 9788889320105

Tracing Receptions of Etruscan culture in Italian and European Modernism (c. 1890-1950)

Louis Verreth — 2024-03-29

Review of: Chiara Zampieri, Martina Piperno & Bart Van den Bossche (eds.), Modern Etruscans. Close Encounters with a Distant Past, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2023, 187 p., ISBN: 9789462703797, € 30,00 (also available in Open Access).

Forcellino, 'Sofonisba Anguissola: Portrettist van de Renaissance'; Jansen, 'The New Renaissance: Regenerating the nation, and d’Annunzio'

Maria Forcellino — 2024-03-29