| Saggi e testimonianze | |
| Cecilia Sideri, Libri e scritture tra Firenze e Rimini: una proposta per Roberto Valturio e il De re militari, con una nota sul De miseria humanae conditionis di Poggio Bracciolini | 3 |
| Abstract. – The article proposes to identify annotations – corrections and textual additions – by the Riminese humanist Roberto Valturio in a considerable number of manuscripts of his opus maius, the De re militari. This allows further considerations on the history of the manuscript tradition of Valturio’s military treatise, which appears to have developed under the close supervision of the author. Valturio’s hand is also identified in ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 76.52, an important copy of the De miseria humanae conditionis, a work by the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini, dedicated to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, ruler of Rimini. | |
| Fabio Frosini, «L’ultimo orizzonte»: Leonardo, il «termine» e il«punto» | 73 |
| Abstract. – Starting from a text by Leonardo, this paper examines its various interpretations in the first French, English and German translations of the Treatise on Painting. These translations reveal several aspects of the text, especially the relationship between horizon, point and infinity. On this basis, it is shown that for Leonardo, the image as a set of finite and commensurable elements is made possible by the real and physical existence of infinity, which guarantees and at the same time renders unstable its mathematical necessity. Consequently, in Leonardo’s late writings, a new conception emerges, based on the crisis of mathematical necessity as a paradigm of nature and the affirmation of a method attentive to the differences, nuances and dynamic aspects of reality. | |
| Gio Maria Tessarolo, Per un’interpretazione evolutiva del pensiero di Guicciardini. A partire da una nuova edizione dei Ricordi | 105 |
| Abstract. – In this review article I argue that in recent years scholarship on Guicciardini has not concentrated enough on the evolution of his thought over time, and I sketch the outlines of a research program aimed at providing a more well-rounded account of Guicciardini’s intellectual biography. I start by reviewing a recent edition of the Ricordi: I first provide a commentary on the innovative philological choices made by the editors, and then highlight their historiographic implications. In the second half of the paper, I suggest that these innovations could be the starting point for developing what I propose to call an ‘evolutionary interpretation’ of Guicciardini’s thought, i.e., one that assumes that Guicciardini’s positions changed over time and that these changes should be explained by accurately contextualizing each of his works. I conclude by providing historical and methodological reasons in favor of adopting this evolutionary approach. | |
| Filippomaria Pontani, Omero, il gesuita e il generale: l’Odissea di Antonio Possevino tra Camillo Capilupi, Fulvio Orsini e Joachim du Bellay | 129 |
| Abstract. – This paper presents a hitherto unknown copy of a 1542 Venetian edition of Homer’s Odyssey, now preserved in a private collection in Florence. The book once belonged to the Mantuan Jesuit Antonio Possevino, who filled its margins with notes written almost exclusively in Greek. Closer scrutiny reveals that the book also carries the names of the other Mantuan Camillo Capilupi and of the renowned Roman antiquarian Fulvio Orsini – this suggests a date between 1550 and 1554, a time when the three youngscholars were all studying Greek in Rome (they all appear in the 1555 edition of Lelio Capilupi’s Virgilian centos, which Possevino dedicated to Joachim du Bellay, also in Rome at the time, and who was of course also fascinated by Homer’s Odyssey). In fact, Possevino’s notes depend not only on the published Homeric scholia, but also on the copy of the Odyssey (now in the Vatican Library) heavily annotated by Fulvio Orsini on the basis of what is now ms. Vat. Gr. 1320; furthermore, Possevino added a number of (sometimes remarkable) Latin parallels for Homer’s lines. The paper embraces a study of Possevino’s notes, some elements on Vat. Gr. 1320, an excursus on Fulvio Orsini’s early years (and on his ex libris), as well as some concluding remarks on the cultural significance of this copy. | |
| Laura Carotti, Minimi e primalità. Ontologie della vita a confronto | 175 |
| Abstract. – The essay aims to highlight the polysemic nature of the Renaissance idea of vitalism, starting with the analysis of two very different metaphysical systems that share a desire to account for natural life: those of Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella. Emphasis is also placed on a comparison between Bruno’s concept of the minimum and the natural philosophy of Pietro Pomponazzi and Girolamo Fracastoro. Finally, the conclusion discusses Leibniz’ concept of entelechia prima. | |
| Testi e commenti | |
| Oreste Trabucco, Aristotelismo cinquecentesco e ‘communication savante’: Gianvincenzo Pinelli e Federico Bonaventura (con tre lettere inedite) | 203 |
| Abstract. – Federico Bonaventura was the most authoritative philosopher of the Duchy of Urbino at the time of Francesco Maria II della Rovere. His treatise Della ragion di Stato et della prudenza politica is well known, but much less so is the rest of his work and even less so his extensive intellectual relations. This article shows the cultural significance of his friendship with Gianvincenzo Pinelli and several other important intellectuals who made up the entourage of the Neapolitan savant. Three unpublished letters from Pinelli to Bonaventura are published in the appendix to this article. | |
| Note e varietà | |
| Paolo Castaldo, Poesia e filosofia. Una lettura delle Disputationes di Cristoforo Landino | 229 |
| Abstract. – Concordia between poetry, philosophy, and theology on one hand, and the relationship between vita activa and vita contemplativa on the other, are classic topics of the Renaissance age. They are at the core of Landino’s Disputationes Camaldulenses. In this paper I argue that in the Disputationes, the relationship and hierarchy between poetry, philosophy, and theology ultimately depend on the kind of knowledge underlying them, and accordingly, on the nature of the mind’s faculties. In other words, I show that epistemological and psychological elements are introduced by Landino in order to decide who, between the poet, the philosopher, and the theologian, is entitled to the primacy of perfect knowledge. | |
| María José Bertomeu Masià, El cuidado del hijo ilegítimo de Alessandro de’ Medici en la correspondencia de Margarita de Austria | 243 |
| Abstract. – The Archivo General de Simancas (AGS) preserves a group of handwritten and unpublished letters by Margaret of Austria, daughter of Emperor Charles V, and other correspondents regarding her responsibility for the care of the illegitimate children of her late husband, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence. From the philological edition of the documents, this article reconstructs the historical facts through the voice of their protagonists. It also presents the possibility of studying these texts from a cultural and linguistic point of view. | |
| Veronica Andreani, Girolamo Ruscelli, Gaspara Stampa e il contesto di pubblicazione delle Rime della poetessa | 259 |
| Abstract. – This study examines the editorial context of the publication of Gaspara Stampa’s Rime in 1554. It argues that Girolamo Ruscelli was a key figure in assembling Stampa’s collection, since he was the owner and editorial manager of the Pietrasanta printing house that issued the Rime. It also argues that by doing so, Ruscelli aimed at enriching his book catalogue with poetry by women, in order to ride the wave of the very popular new trend of women’s writing, which from the publication of Vittoria Colonna’s Rime onwards was flourishing and gaining traction in the publishing market. Lastly, the paper analyzes Ruscelli’s position in the Venetian literary context of the mid-16th century as it emerges from an important though little-studied work, the Diporti by Girolamo Parabosco. In fact, this book clearly shows how Ruscelli was perceived by his contemporaries as an editor with a great interest in promoting women and their intellectual achievements. | |
| Andrea Schiavon, «Exempla rerum in mente divina»: los Hieroglyphica de Valeriano como espejo de la interpretación neoplatónica de la realidad | 281 |
| Abstract. – Following the last few decades of research, Pierio Valeriano Bolzanio’s Hieroglyphica treatise has emerged as one of the most widely used symbolic sources in the creation of plastic and literary works of art, becoming particularly popular in Spanish culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. The aim of this work is to investigate the author’s real intention in the ideation and composition of the text, aiming to resolve the doubts that arose around hismethodology and purpose. Did the humanist want to create an accurate hieroglyphic repertoire based on the information collected by himself, or did he succumb to the lack of reliable information, deviating towards the creation of a mere iconographic catalogue? Thanks to the translation and analysis of some valuable passages of the text, I aim to dispel any doubts about the author’s actual philosophical and Neoplatonic nature, finding common ground with the Renaissance interpretation of hieroglyphs. | |
| Salvatore Carannante, Writing against the Gnostics. World Soul, Universal Animation and Natural Production in Giordano Bruno’s Reading of Plotinus (De la causa II) | 313 |
| Abstract. – Plotinus’ importance in Giordano Bruno’s thought has generally been acknowledged by scholars – reflected in the classical studies of Tocco and Guzzo, and in more recent times, of Spruit and Catana. Less attention has been devoted to Plotinus’ influence on Bruno with regard to specific aspects of his philosophy and in particular, concerning Bruno’s conception of the world soul. This paper aims to analyze the passages of the second dialogue of De la causa, principio et uno in which Bruno – referring to what «Plotinus writes against the Gnostics» – almost literally quotes treatises III 8 and II 9 (but also III 2 and V 8) of Enneades, read in Ficino’s translation and commentaries, and uses them as a starting point for his definition of the «universal intellect» and of his own theory of universal animation and natural production, conceived as the effects of the world soul’s spontaneous activity in nature. |
|
| Matteo Pirazzoli, «Sapiens est anima mundi». L’uomo come anima del mondo in Charles de Bovelles e Giordano Bruno | 327 |
| Abstract. – In Bovillus’ philosophy the autonomous production of the propriae rationes of worldly substances links intellectual activity to material reality itself, giving it being; this is how the wise become the soul of the world. A wise man as oculus mundi elevates worldly substance to the intellectual level. For Giordano Bruno the intellect of individuals is also part of the world soul. The acting intellect, ever present in individuals, appropriates them, and their intellectual activity becomes part of the highest faculty of the anima mundi, which for Bruno – closer to Ficino’s neoplatonism – also has the task of overseeing the life of worldly things. Bruno and Bovillus on one hand move away from Cusano’s idea of intellectual activity as a conjectura, a fictio; on the other, they think of scientific activity as a source of the happiness of the wise, via a markedly Averroist reading. This is a strong sign of Bovillus’ influence on Bruno’s thought. | |
| Variazioni | |
| Giuseppe Cambiano, I ‘quadernucci’ e la logica di Machiavelli | 351 |
| Michele Ciliberto, Un testo in movimento | 355 |
| Archivio | |
| Michele Ciliberto, Garin e Manzoni: un incontro dimenticato | 365 |
| Eugenio Garin, Alessandro Manzoni e le discussioni filosofiche del suo tempo | 373 |
| Marta Herling, Un medaglione di Herling: fra Caravaggio e Giordano Bruno | 393 |
| Gustaw Herling, Caravaggio: luce e ombra | 399 |
| Indice dei manoscritti | 409 |
| Indice dei nomi | 413 |
Rivista dell'Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento – Firenze