Venetian Cartography and The Globes

Notes on Early Modern Art
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Notes on Early Modern Art is a peer reviewed journal published biannually by Zephyrus Scholarly
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Notes on Early Modern Art
Vol. 3 No. 1
Muslim Elements in the Medieval Architecture of Bitonto

CHRISTIANE L. JOOST-GAUGIER
1
Venetian Cartography and the Globes of the Tommaso Rangone Monument
in S. Giuliano, Venice
JILL CARRINGTON 11
Jacopo Tintoretto’s Female Concert: The Musical Arcadia of Venus

LIANA DE GIROLAMI CHENEY 27
Book Reviews:
Adelina Modesti, Elisabetta Sirani and the Cultural Production of Early Modern Bologna
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2015)
PATRICIA ROCCO 39
Sarah Rolfe Prodan, Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry, and

Art in Sixteenth Century Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
EMILY FENICHEL 42
Muslim Elements in the Medieval Architecture of Bitonto
Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier
Not many people know that when the European crusaders traveled through Italy on their way
to wage war against the Muslims, many of them passed through Puglia (or Apulia). In the plains and
the mountains, and along the rugged seaside of southeastern Italy, in Puglia, existed at the time
some of the most ancient civilizations we know. One of the places the crusaders passed by was also
a flourishing Muslim colony, Lucera—a Muslim island in a sea of Christianity. These Muslims had
been brought there by the Emperor himself, Frederick II, in the 1220s. We don't know if the crusaders
knew about this special place because it was off the main roads, the Appian Way and the Trajanic
Way. But they certainly knew Bitonto, south of Lucera, for it was on the Trajanic Way that led to their
point of embarkation in Brindisi.
While Lucera's architectural heritage contains many elements that come directly and
indirectly from the work of Muslim builders, stonemasons, sculptors, and decorators, this heritage is
not exclusive to Lucera. Muslim elements can be found in the buildings of many surrounding towns
and cities, including Bitonto. This is mainly due to the fact that when the Muslims of Lucera were
exterminated at the end of the thirteenth century, many of those who were able to escape fled to
surrounding areas. Other underlying reasons for the presence of Muslims in neighboring places
include the fact that Muslims were present in many areas of Puglia long before Frederick II created
the colony at Lucera. Throughout medieval times, many towns of Puglia had been invaded or
occupied by Saracens. Surely, those Saracens left descendants in various of these places. Then too,
it must be remembered that during his reign Frederick built many castles other than the one at
Lucera. It is likely that Muslims (his favorite builders) were hired to work on these projects and that
they settled in these areas, interplicating themselves into the social fabric of the towns. In addition,
since many Muslims were farmers, they and their families and descendants were no doubt spread out
over the surrounding countryside, so that they must have started settlements in towns such as
Bitonto. Above all, their abilities as brick workers, sculptors, potters, and craftsmen in general must
have rendered them invaluable to the building industries and trades of these towns and made them
extremely useful as itinerant builders and tradesmen. The presence of Muslims in nearby towns and
2 Notes on Early Modern Art Vol. 3 No. 1 (2016)
Fig. 1. Bitonto, Cathedral, general view from west (Photo: Reade Elliott).
Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, Muslim Elements 3
cities is exemplified by the name of one of the streets in the small city of Giovanazzo, not far from
Bitonto. The street, the "Vico Filippo Saraceno" is evidently named in honor of a valued citizen, a
Saracen named Filippo.
The ancient city of Bitonto provides a good example of the presence of Muslim craftsmen in
the building industry of a medieval city, a presence whose effect on the art of the city has not yet
been studied. Although we know that Bitonto was subject to Saracen invasions at several times prior
to the reign of Frederick II over Puglia there is little proof other than local tradition which holds that an
Arab presence existed in Bitonto as far back as the sixth century. In the ninth century the nearby
larger city of Bari was conquered by Saracens from Sicily; this explains why for much of this century
Bitonto was under Saracen dominion. A chronicle from 975 tells us that a certain Saracen leader of
Bitonto, Ismaele, was conquered by the Byzantine general Zaccaria. This initiated Constantinople’s
takeover of Bitonto. Another chronicle informs us that in the early eleventh century Bitonto was once
again in the hands of the Saracens until 1018 when the rule of Constantinople was reestablished, this
time for a longer period. By the twelfth century, when Bitonto was under Norman rule, the architecture
of the town must have had Roman, Byzantine, and Arab components. During the reign of Frederick II
in first half of the thirteenth century, the city was enriched by an active building program which
included several nearby castles (at Castel del Monte and Trani, for example) which must have
1
brought more Muslim builders and artisans than those already there into the area.
It was primarily during Frederick's reign that the magnificent Cathedral of Bitonto, the largest
in Puglia, was constructed over, essentially, two crypts—one which contains thirty Roman columns
with different shafts, suggesting they were spoils that were brought there from elsewhere in the city,
and the other a Paleochristian church dating from about the seventh century (Fig. 1). That this
Romanesque cathedral, originally dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta and now to St. Valentino,
1
For an excellent general history of Bitonto and surrounding areas, see Giuseppe Pasculli, La Storia di Bitonto (no place cit.,
1962); Giovanni Mongiello, Bitonto nella storia e nell'arte (Bari: Arti Grafiche Favia, 1970), Ch. 1, esp. 20-35. See also Jean-
Marie Martin, "Bitonto e la Puglia centrale fra Tardoantico e Medioevo: istituzioni, territorio, società," in Bitonto e la Puglia tra
Tardoantico e regno Normanno, ed. Custode Silvio Fioriello (Bari: Edipuglia, 1999), 193-206.
belongs to the time of Frederick II is proven by an inscription on the older of its two pulpits, which,
2
original to the building, contains a supposed signature by a certain "Nicholas" and the date 1229.
Divided into a nave and two side aisles, Bitonto’s cathedral contains many elements and
traces of Islamic influence. Perhaps the most significant of these lies in the Paleochristian crypt
whose size and scope, as well as the dimensions of its mosaic decorations, make it clear that this
church was an important one in terms of the growth and prosperity of this city. One of these
3
decorations is an extraordinary eleventh century mosaic of a griffin. That Arabic craftsmen were
involved in the creation of this mosaic is suggested not only by the exotic nature of the griffin, who, in
his curved beak, holds a flower. The legs, tail, and wings of the creature are diagrammatically
adapted to its circular frame which is articulated by a floral border and surrounded by a geometrical
patterning. This beast is not dissimilar in type to those seen in examples of Islamic pottery and
4
textiles. Interestingly enough, the remains of Islamic pottery were found nearby in the same crypt.
Thus it is significant that the decorative details of this zoomorphic mosaic, in which the sense of
geometry prevails, suggest that Arabic artists may have been involved in the decoration of Bitontan
buildings as early as the eleventh century.
Later examples suggesting that artists trained in Islamic traditions were involved in the
building of the cathedral above can be seen in the structure itself (Fig. 2). These are particularly
evident in the stonework of the sides of the building, for example in the compressed triple archivolts
2
For a chronology of the Cathedral of Bitonto, see Pina Belli d’Elia, Italia Romanica: La Puglia (Milan: Editoriale Jaca Book,
1987), 249-265. See also Pasculli, La Storia di Bitonto, 62, 93-94; Heinrich W. Schulz, Denkmäler der Kunst des Mittelalters in
Unter-Italian (Dresden: Selbstverl., 1860), I: 22; Emile Bertaux, "Les Arts de L'Orient Musulman dans l'Italie Méridionale," in
Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire 15 Iss. 15 (1895): 446-447.
3
On the archaeological background and dating of this mosaic see (generally) Raffaella Cassano, "Palinsesti musivi dalla
cattedrale di Bitonto," and esp. Pina Belli D'Elia, "Espressioni figurative protoromaniche nella Puglia centrale: il 'mosaico del
grifo' della cattedrale di Bitonto," both in Bitonto e La Puglia, ed. Fioriello, 151-169 and 171-192 respectively.
4
A similar type of design showing a beast with a long curling tail is represented in a textile mantle made by Islamic artists for
King Roger II (1134-1134), an ancestor of Frederick II. Frederick II wore it for his coronation. See "Ibn Al-Athir on Sicilian
Muslims Under Christian Rule: The Complete Treatment of History," in Medieval Italy - Texts in Translation, ed. Katherine L.
Jansen, Joanna Drell, and Frances Andrews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 123.
Fig. 2. Bitonto, Cathedral, view of south side showing galleries, walls, and cornices (Photo: Reade Elliott).
of the arched gallery and the cornices above it, which contain repetitive geometric motifs in relief such
as those known from the remains of Islamic structures in Sicily. In addition, the interlaced stonework
of the windows and, in some cases, of their borders, is based on multi-sided polygons with abstract,
repetitive nonfigural patterns. Every window is different in terms of its interior tracery and external
framing—suggesting that multiple stonemasons, most likely Muslims, were at work here.
The portals suggest Islamic influences as well,

especially in that their flat, overall decorative
designs remind of characteristic bands of floral
motifs frequently seen in Muslim architectural
decoration (Fig. 3).
The interior is not without its own traces of
Muslim decorative influence. This can be seen
especially in the original pulpit (signed and dated
1229 as mentioned above) and in the timber ceiling.
The decoration of the pulpit contains many
elements not common to Gothic visual language.
Geometric abstract designs prevail with colored
stone inserts forming an important part of the
patterning. This geometric ornamentation is
composed of intricate combinations all carefully
carved from the stone. The fact that it was inscribed
with the name “Nicholas” does not mean with
certainty that this individual was its sculptor. Indeed
a local writer named Nicholas is known to have
written, at that time, an extremely laudatory and
eloquent encomium in praise of Frederick. This
encomium, which still survives, could have been
delivered from that pulpit on the occasion of a visit
Fig. 3. Bitonto, Cathedral, view of one of the façade portals

(Photo: Reade Elliott).
Fig. 4. Bitonto, Cathedral, timber ceiling viewed from below (Photo: Reade Elliott).
by Frederick, who was in the area in 1228-1229, thus perhaps commemorating the dedication of the
5
cathedral. Amongst the sculptured figures of the staircase to the pulpit is an emperor who, it is
6
generally believed, is Frederick II. Assuming, then, that Nicholas was not its sculptor we can
speculate that whoever made this pulpit was, if not a sculptor trained in the Muslim tradition, someone
personally influenced by local traditions of Islamic design; or it could mean that whoever designed this
magnificent pulpit was assisted by Islamic carvers.
Perhaps the most surprising Moorish characteristics to be found in the cathedral of Bitonto,
however, are in the timber ceiling (Fig. 4). Each of its cross beams is articulated with a different
design. Yet all the beams have one thing in common, that is, their incorporation into a whole whose
composition is made up of individually differentiated geometric patterns. Complicated and brightly
colored, the intricate schemes of this system of two-dimensional shapes filled in with flat colors speak
a language that (even taking into account the fact that they have been restored) can only be regarded
as Islamic in inspiration and technique. Each beam is composed of patterns made up of different
geometrical shapes and arrangements. Together, they form a stunning and highly unusual ceiling for
this magnificent Romanesque church.
That the Cathedral of Bitonto is not the only exemplar of Islamic influence in this city is
7
suggested by another church, that dedicated to San Francesco d’Assisi. The possibility that this
basilica, built in the 14th century to replace an earlier Romanesque church which in turn appears to
have been built on the ruins of a Roman temple, was constructed over a pre-existing Muslim structure
which had intervened is suggested by the strict rectangularity of its plan. Given the apparent
continuous presence of Muslims in the city, it is not unlikely that they converted the early
Romanesque structure into a building that suited their needs, perhaps a large rectangular madrassa.
5
See Pasculli, La Storia di Bitonto, 62, 93-94; Nicola Pice, "Il Dictamen di Nicolaus, uno Scritto encomiastico dell'età
Federiciana," in Cultura e società in Puglia in età Sveva e Angioina, ed. Felice Moretti (Bitonto: Centro Ricerche di Storia e Arte
Bitontina, 1989), 283-310. The treatise survives in the university library of Erlangen (cod. 642, fols. 233-235).
6
See, for example, Pasculli, La Storia di Bitonto, 93-94.
7
Little has been written about the church of San Francesco d'Assisi. Perhaps the best general source is Mongiello, Bitonto
nella storia e nell'arte, 171-176. Also useful (concerning the construction of the church) is Antonio Castellano, "Protomastri
Ciprioti in Puglia in età Sveva e protoangioina," in Cultura e società in Puglia, ed. Moretti, esp. 273-278.
The curious presence of a small, square, domed building (a chapel dedicated to the Madonna of the
Angels) adjacent to it is not unlike the relation of Lucera’s large rectangular San Domenico and its
adjacent chapel of the Rosary. Though the chapel in Bitonto was constructed in the sixteenth century,
its plan and shape, not to mention its close attachment to the church, suggest that perhaps a Muslim
mausoleum existed there previously. That this church may have been built on the recycled walls of a
Muslim madrassa with a mausoleum closely connected to it is worthy of consideration. This possibility
8
is underlined when one considers that this enormous stone edifice was built in only three years.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this history lies in the fact that the Pugliese in general,
and the people of Bitonto in particular, are proud of their ‘Saracen’ heritage. Although scholars have
studied the history of this complex heritage, its effects on art and architecture have not yet been
studied. A better knowledge of this art historical background will enable us to understand better how
the art history of Bitonto developed in later centuries. The above paragraphs therefore constitute only
an introduction to this subject. Much more work needs to be done on Muslim influences in the
architecture of Bitonto. This will further enrich the already rich background of the history of
architecture in this ancient Pugliese city.

8
Permission to build a church on this site was granted to the Franciscans in 1283 by Charles I. The church was constructed
and consecrated in 1286. See Pascullii, La Storia di Bitonto, 159.
Vanishing Boundaries: Scientific
Knowledge and Art Production in the
Early Modern Era
Edited by A. Victor Coonin
and Lilian H. Zirpolo
published by the WAPACC Organization
ISBN 978-0-9785461-9-9
287 pp., 93 b/w ills., $80.00
Contents
Art and Science in the Early Modern Period: An Introduction to

Vanishing Boundaries
A. Victor Coonin
Commo vera scientia: Piero della Francesca and the Problematic
Science of Perspective
Barnaby Nygren
Artifice and Interiority: The Image of Grief in the Age of Reform
Heather Graham
Hebrew Manuscripts and Jewish Physicians in Early Modern
Europe (1400-c. 1700)
Lisa A. Festa
Inserts of Anatomy: The Merger of Medicine and Art in Charles
Estienne's De dissectione
Jed Rivera Foland
Depicting Sexual Deformity in Early Modern Art: Scientific, Medical,
and Socio-Cultural Considerations, Part I—Excess and Absence
Lilian H. Zirpolo
Artemisia Gentileschi’s Aurora: Astronomy, Myth, and Mourning in
Galileo’s Florence
Susan Wegner
Depicting Sexual Deformity in Early Modern Art: Scientific, To order, please visit http://wapacc.org and click on
Medical, and Socio-Cultural Considerations, Part II—Female “Our Publications” or email us at
Hirsutism [email protected].
Lilian H. Zirpolo
Science, Art, and the Sacred Heart in Eighteenth-Century New Spain
Lauren G. Kilroy-Ewbank
Venetian Cartography and the Globes of the Tommaso Rangone
Monument in S. Giuliano, Venice*
Jill Carrington
Highly specific stone reliefs of a terrestrial and a celestial globe flank the bronze statue of
physician and university professor Tommaso Rangone (1493-1577) in his funerary monument on the
1
façade of S. Giuliano in Venice (Istrian stone and bronze; 1554-1557; installed c. 1558) (Fig. 1). The
present essay is the first to examine the strikingly specific imagery of these globes; it compares them
to actual maps and globes, argues that the features of the globes were inspired by contemporary
world maps likely owned by Rangone himself, relates the globes to the emergence of globe pairs at
the time and situates them within the thriving production of maps, atlases, and treatises in mid-
sixteenth century Venice and in the very neighborhood where these cartographic works were
produced and sold.
Globes are associated with three main types of users frequently portrayed in art. First, they
are among the instruments of measurement and study that are often included in portraits of scholars
and symbolize learning and teaching. Second, they are representative of professions such as
geography, astronomy, astrology, cosmography, navigation, and medicine. Third, when the globe is
held, it symbolizes the worldly power of its bearer, so leaders of all types are often shown holding a
* This essay is dedicated with immense love and admiration to Gary M. Radke—teacher, mentor, scholar, and fellow parent.
1
Figure 1 does not show the lower parts of the Rangone monument flanking the west portal of San Giuliano. The most
comprehensive treatment of Rangone’s biography and patronage is Erasmo Weddigen, “Thomas Philologus Ravennas,
Gelehrter, Wohltäter und Mäzen,” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte 9 (1974): 7-76. Rangone acknowledged receipt of the
bronze portrait statue on 8 February 1558 (1557 more veneto). He lived until 29 August 1577. For documents related to the
commission, see Rodolfo Gallo, “Contributi su Jacopo Sansovino” Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte 1 (1957): 81-105, with
additions and corrections by Bruce Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1991), 1: 213-217, docs. 179-190. For recent literature that treats the monument in the context of the rebuilding of the church,
see Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi, Alessandro Vittoria, Architettura, scultura e decorazione nella Venezia del tardo Rinascimento
(Fonti e Testi, Raccolta di Archeologia e Storia dell’arte) (Udine: Forum, 1998), 99-102; Manuela Morresi, Jacopo Sansovino
(Milan: Electa, 2000): 297-305, cat. no. 34 with bibliography.
12 Notes on Early Modern Art, Vol. 3 No. 1 (2016)
Fig. 1. Alessandro Vittoria, Tommaso Rangone Monument, S. Giuliano, Venice, completed 1557, installed c. 1558 (Photo:
Public Domain).
Jill Carrington, Venetian Cartography 13
Fig. 2. Giacomo Gastaldi, Cosmographia Universalis world map, seventeenth-century reprint

of the original published in 1561, London, British Library (Photo: Public Domain).
2
globe. Rangone mainly used globes in the first two ways; the globes, along with the books, portray
him as a scholar and teacher, and specifically proficient in astrology and medicine.
Previous scholars have only briefly mentioned the globes and their possible significance to
Rangone. Erasmus Weddigen posits that the terrestrial and celestial globes symbolize the microcosm
3
and macrocosm, respectively, due to the fact that they appear suspended and without stands.
Bruce Boucher finds the globes indicative of Rangone’s interest in geography and astrology, notes
the vital role of astrology in the training of physicians, and emphasizes the evocation of a scholar’s
4
study filled with books and globes. Martin Gaier compares the terrestrial and celestial globes to the
5
active and contemplative life, respectively, that Rangone held out as an ideal. While these meanings
are credible, the globes still have not been fully investigated in relation to contemporary
developments in cartography and in the context of the flourishing production of maps and globes in
Venice itself.
The terrestrial globe to the viewer’s left displays Europe, Africa, and the Americas as broad
landmasses that incorporate the ever-increasing cartographic knowledge gained from voyages of
discovery and overland exploration. Stretching across the southern part of the globe is the fictive
Terra Australis. The shapes of the landmasses suggest awareness of recent cartographic
discoveries. Rangone himself owned numerous cartographic treatises, atlases, maps, and globes
inventoried in his testament. Among them can be tentatively identified Giacomo Gastaldi’s short
treatise, La universale descrittione del mondo (1561), produced to accompany his 1561 nine-sheet
Cosmographia Universalis world map (woodcut; Fig. 2) intended to replace his first Universale world
6
map first published in 1546 that incorporated more recent discoveries. Rangone’s pivotal role in
2
Elly Dekker, “Globes in Renaissance Europe,” in The History of Cartography, vol. 3, part 1, Cartography in the European
Renaissance, ed. David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007): 148-149, with extended discussion and
images of these subject categories, including globes, on 149-159.
3
Weddigen, “Thomas Philologus,” 66.
4
Boucher, The Sculpture of Jacopo Sansovino, 1: 118.
5
Martin Gaier, Facciate sacre a scopo profano: Venezia e la politica dei monumenti dal Quattrocento al Settecento, trans.
Benedetta Heinemann Campana (Studi di arte veneta; 3) (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 2002), 223.
determining the imagery of the celestial globe is strongly suggested by the statement in his final
testament of 28 August 1577 that the celestial globe is oriented toward the sign of Leo, thereby
7
highlighting his birth date, 18 August 1493.
The globes show highly specific physical features like those found on functional maps and
globes. These features have hitherto gone unremarked and, moreover, are quite unusual for globes
in an artistic context. The celestial globe depicts six of the twelve zodiacal constellations along the
ecliptic and twenty-two star constellations. Unlike actual globes, however, both globes float, and are
thus shown without the usual supporting stands or handles attached to functional globes.
Likewise the wind faces, also known as wind cherubs, which surround each globe are
characteristic of functional maps and globes. They depict the number and direction of the winds.
Seven wind cherubs with puffed cheeks surround the terrestrial globe and fifteen encircle the celestial
globe; the eighth and sixteenth heads that would normally be depicted at the top of the respective
globe are omitted. The distinct number of wind heads surrounding each globe reflect the development
of two different wind systems: a twelve-wind system developed in antiquity was based on the location
of the sun along the horizon; a second geometric system based on compass directions resulted in 4,
8
8, 16, 32, or 64 winds and directions. On terrestrial maps wind faces are related to compass roses
________________________
6
The only known impression of Gastaldi’s 1561 Cosmographia Universalis world map (Fig. 2) is housed in the British Library.
Denis E. Cosgrove, “Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice” Imago Mundi 46 (1992): 74
states that the 1561 map is probably related to text in Gastaldi’s booklet. In Rangone’s testament (see n. 7) the item “Alter ab
eode novus Maximus cum introductorio Jaci Castaldi” may refer to Gastaldi’s booklet that accompanied the 1561 world map.
7
Gallo, “Contributi,” 15; Weddigen, “Thomas Philologus,” 65; Gaier, “Facciate sacre,” 224. In the testament Rangone states
that he wanted the latitude of 44 degrees, 30 minutes visible on the celestial globe. Weddigen, “Thomas Philologus,” 28 states
that five copies of the testament are known. This copy is housed in the Archivio di Stato, Venezia, Testamenti, busta 421, no.
1172, folios 1-25. Folios 18r – 20v list Rangone’s globes, maps, geographical instruments, and books.
8
J. B. Harley and David Woodward, The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval
Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 144-153. Elly Dekker, e-
mail communication, 9 July 2015, provides a useful summary of the latter system: “the 8, 16, 32, or 64 compass directions
serve to orientate the globes such that they correspond with the real world around us.” They allow the user to solve “a number
of practical problems… such as the rising and setting of the Sun, the stars, etc.”
9
that indicate direction on both maps and portolan charts. By contrast, celestial maps rarely include
wind heads since winds physically connect with the horizon, whereas constellations in celestial maps
are shown as if seen from the Earth and projected on one or two hemispheres. However, both
terrestrial and celestial globes usually indicate wind directions, either by wind heads or wind names
engraved on the horizon ring—one of the original fittings of the globe that is often missing—or
10
compass roses printed on the globe’s paper covering.
The Rangone globes reflect the production and use of globe pairs emerging at the time. Our
modern view of globes as maps of the surface of the earth or the surrounding sky is quite unlike the
way globes were used in previous centuries. As Denis Cosgrove observes, terrestrial and celestial
globes in Rangone’s time were “considered… [mechanical] representations that facilitated a spatial
11
understanding of concepts, conditions, processes or events that mattered to mankind.” This view
helps one understand why geographers in the sixteenth century were primarily concerned with how to
best express the relationship between the terrestrial and celestial spheres, why a well-accepted
solution for this dilemma beginning in the 1530s was a pair of terrestrial and celestial globes
accompanied by a book of instructions, and why globes thus remained the main instruments of
12
geographical teaching for 300 years.
The creation in the 1550s of the two globes of the Rangone monument coincides with an era
in which the first pair of printed terrestrial and celestial globes was produced for practical
cosmographical calculations. The Rangone globes themselves, however, do not reference such globe
pairs because of their slightly different diameters. Before printing was applied to globe production,
9
Compass roses printed on some terrestrial globes indicate compass directions, as in Mercator’s 1541 terrestrial/cosmo-
graphical globe, cosmographical being hybrid of the earthly and celestial globes. I thank Elly Dekker for pointing out the
Mercator globe in an email on 11 July 2015.
10
Other examples of wind indicators on the horizon rings of celestial globes are in Elly Dekker, Illustrating the Phaenomena.
Celestial Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), figs. 5.28, 5.47, respectively,
for the names of the twelve winds engraved on the horizon ring of the globe made by Hans Dorn in 1480 and the twelve wind
faces marking compass directions on the outermost ring of the horizon ring of Johann Stöffler’s globe of 1492.
11
Cosgrove, “Mapping New Worlds,” 65 and n. 1.
12
Dekker, “Globes in Renaissance Europe,” 136.
what are termed manuscript globes had to be made one at a time. The development of printing in the
fifteenth century opened up globe production as it did so many forms of communication. Globes made
by pasting prefabricated printed scales of paper, called gores, onto a wooden sphere debuted at the
13
beginning of the sixteenth century. The first printed gores for a terrestrial globe were made in 1507.
Printed terrestrial and celestial globes were first sold as a pair in 1537, when the terrestrial and
celestial globes that Gemma Frisius, a cosmographer and physician in Louvain, first produced
separately in 1530 and 1537, respectively, were sold together as a pair. Frisius had not envisioned a
matched pair of globes when he produced the terrestrial globe, so he included on it a depiction of the
sphere of fixed stars that would normally be shown on a celestial globe. This dual-purpose hybrid of
the earthly and heavenly globe, termed a cosmographic globe, was developed and popularized
during the first decades of the sixteenth century and marks a step in the progression to the matched
14
pair of globes. In 1551, Gerard Mercator imitated his master Frisius by producing a celestial globe to
15
accompany the cosmographic globe that he had created ten years earlier in 1541. Then in 1586
Jacob Floris van Langren and his son Arnold published the first terrestrial and celestial globes that
16
were produced as a matching pair in Amsterdam.
The intersecting circles on the Rangone celestial globe depict the equator and the ecliptic,
the latter representing the path of the sun along which the signs of the zodiac lay. The ecliptic rather
13
Woodcut globe gores attributed to Martin Waldseemüller, James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Libraries,
Minneapolis, Minnesota: https://www.lib.umn.edu/apps/bell/map/WALD/MAPS/GLOBE/globlg.jpg.
14
Elly Dekker, “The Doctrine of the Sphere: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Globes” in The Stewart Museum Globe
Symposium, ed. Edward H. Dahl, Jean-Francois Gauvin, and Eileen Meillon, special issue of Globe Studies. The Journal of the
International Coronelli Society 49/50 (2001/2002): 25-44 for the development of the cosmographic globe and progression to
matching pairs of globes, and 34-39 for Frisius’ globe production. A second version of Frisius’ cosmographic globe was
produced in 1536.
15
Dekker, “The Doctrine of the Sphere,” 39-40 on Mercator’s globes.
16
Only one pair of the second edition of 1589 of the van Langren globe pairs survives. Dekker, “Doctrine of the Sphere,” 40.
These globes are housed in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. See Elly Dekker, Silke Ackermann, and Kristen
Lippencott, Globes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Globes and Armillary Spheres in the National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich (Oxford: Oxford University Press and the National Maritime Museum, 1999), 396-401, n. 3.
Fig. 3. Zodiac and star constellations on the celestial globe, detail of the Tommaso Rangone Monument, S.
Giuliano, Venice, statue completed 1557, installed c. 1558 (Photo: Public Domain with diagram by Jeffrey
Brewer).
than the equator is oriented with the North Pole, following the precedent set by the venerable second-
century cosmographer Claudius Ptolemy. The six of the twelve zodiacal constellations visible along
the ecliptic and twenty-two of the forty-eight Ptolemaic constellations depicted above and below the
ecliptic (Fig. 3) have never previously been identified. The zodiacal and star constellations are
generally placed in their correct relative positions, and their images are readily recognizable, although
the forms are more simplified than many of their two-dimensional counterparts printed or drawn on
actual globes and maps. The bird shown clutching Lyra the Lyre (14) is meant to be an eagle or
vulture, since the constellation was often referred to as Aquila Cadens or Vultur Cadens (literally
17
falling eagle or falling vulture). A few images present visual anomalies: Perseus’ (8) raised sword
points towards Cassiopeia rather than Andromeda; what looks like a torso with a bent leg between
18
Lyra (14) and Hercules’ legs (17) is unidentifiable.
Turning to the terrestrial globe, the striking specificity of its landmasses has led to the search
for their potential cartographic sources. Rangone states in his testament that he himself provided the
models for the globes, and, according to Weddigen, mentions ten three-dimensional models and
19
more than ten planar models that he constructed. Unfortunately the models have not survived and
the descriptions in the testament do not allow them to be identified with any known globes or globe
gores. Like the procedure for creating actual maps and globes, it is likely that the forms of the
17
The information about Lyra can be found in any standard guide to the constellations.
18
The Rangone globe also omits a constellation discovered in the late fifteenth-century, Berenice’s Hair, which was first
depicted on a globe in 1536. The other new constellation, Antinous, next to Aquila, would not be visible on the Rangone globe.
Dekker, “Innovations in the Making of Celestial Globes,” 70.
19
See n. 7 on Rangone’s testament. In the section of Eramsus Weddigen’s website devoted to Tommaso Rangone, http://
erasmusweddigen.jimdo.com/works_in_progress.php (accessed 23 July 2015) entitled “Tommaso Rangones astronomisches
Besitzum unkammentiert,” he identifies a total of nine globes listed in the testament: three celestial; one terrestrial; and five
unspecified. This is one less globe than the ten listed in his earlier publication, Weddigen, “Thomas Philologus,” 66. He is the
only scholar to have identified a contemporary model for the Rangone terrestrial globe. He observes the realistic image of
America recalls the printed globe of Johannes Schoener produced in 1523 in Nuremberg, until recently believed to have been
the model for the terrestrial globe in Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors (1533), London, National Gallery. The model for the
terrestrial globe in The Ambassadors has not yet been identified. Dekker, “Globes in Renaissance Europe,” (2007), 135 and n.
6.
landmasses on the Rangone globe borrowed and adapted individual features from a number of
available maps, rather than following a single model.
Although the coastlines of the Rangone earthly globe seem to be based on those of actual
maps, the geographic features resemble contemporary maps comparatively little. The contours of the
landmasses are noticeably more generalized and the overall geography highly simplified. Interior
markings and rivers are lacking and even the Italian peninsula is missing, as are any modern island
nations, including the British Isles and Caribbean islands, which appeared on other maps and globes
of the time. These features may have been omitted due to considerations of space and legibility of the
Rangone globes from the street below.
Maps were particularly significant in Venice for a number of eminently practical reasons,
including maritime trade, environmental planning and military defense of its territories. The central
importance of mapping in Venice combined with the city’s thriving printing industry made the city one
20
of the leaders of map production in Europe precisely when the Rangone globes were made. Print
culture involved a complex matrix of collaboration among mapmakers, woodcutters and engravers,
adapters of existing printed matter, publishers and dealers, with individual participants often working
in more than one role. Most of the cartographic specialists involved in the production and sale of the
world maps which may have served as models for the Rangone earthly globe either spent their entire
career or most fruitful years working in Venice, except Gerard Mercator. These include mapmaker
Giacomo Gastaldi, engravers Battista Agnese and Paolo Forlani, adapters such as Matteo Pagano,
and publishers including Donato Bertelli and Giacomo Franco, among many others, about whom
21
more will be said shortly.
While cartographic production often incorporated recent discoveries from voyages and land
surveys, most European terrestrial maps and atlases of the period continued to be based on the
cartographic descriptions and map sequence provided by Claudius Ptolemy in his second-century
Geografia, which bore the weight of authority from the time it was revived in Europe in the early
20
Most recently, Scruzzi, Eine Stadt, 152. Italy began to lose its leadership in European cartographic production to the Low
Countries in the 1560s; the work that marked the Netherlands’ supremacy came in 1570 with publication in Antwerp of the first
true atlas, Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the most important atlas since Mercator’s Ptolemaic version of 1548.
21
See n. 29.
1400s well into the seventeenth century. At the same time, many of the dozens of editions of
Ptolemy’s work that were published included woodcut or copper-engraved maps that bore corrections
to Ptolemy’s maps based on new geographical knowledge. New maps were also added to the
22
Ptolemaic corpus.
Given the caveat about the simplified landmasses of the Rangone terrestrial globe, its
correspondence to the most up-to-date geographical features of contemporary maps, globes, and
globe gores produced by the leading cartographers in Venice is nevertheless notable. The Rangone
globe is quite progressive in depicting North America’s westward bulk, albeit in an unbroken mass
that omits Hudson Bay, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Great Lakes, and other major landmarks. It
likewise seems modern because it either omits the fictive Northern Passage, which was included on
earlier and contemporary maps, or the angle of the globe cuts off this feature; this Passage was a
longitudinal waterway that many hoped extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean to facilitate
travel from Europe to Asia. The globe also reflects modern knowledge that the Isthmus of Panama
joins with South America below the northern bulge of modern Columbia and Venezuela, unlike its
connection north of the bulge incorrectly depicted in the two of the leading world maps, Gastaldi’s
Universale oval world map, first published in 1546, and Agnese’s oval world map that appeared in
23
seventy-one surviving manuscript atlases dated between 1536 and 1564 signed or attributed to him.
The overall shape of South America most closely resembles Agnese’s map. The western
coast of South America closely resembles that of Mercator’s 1538 double cordiform world map, which
22
Summary of the discussion by Denis Cosgrove, “Images of Renaissance Cosmography, 1450-1650,” in The History of
Cartography, vol. 3, part 1, Cartography in the European Renaissance, 55-81, 98.
23
See n. 6 for Gastaldi’s 1546 world map. One example of Agnese’s “Oval Map of the World with Wind Heads” is housed at
the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA: folios 13v-14 in the portolan atlas of 14 folios, signed and dated 1533, Call No. HM
27; http://dpg.lib.berkeley.edu/webdb/dsheh/heh_brf?Description=&CallNumber=HM+27 and click on image no. 386, Oval map
of the World. For a comprehensive list of the manuscript atlases made by or attributed to Agnese that include versions of the
oval world map, see Henry R. Wagner, “The manuscript atlases of Battista Agnese” The Papers of the Bibliographic Society of
America 35 no. 1 (1931) (reprinted in book form by Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931); idem, “Additions to the
manuscript atlases of Battista Agnese,” Imago Mundi 4 (1947), 28-30.
24
is his first independent wall map, although the bulge in the map’s northeastern Brazilian coast is
absent in the relief. However, the shape of South America differs from Ptolemaic maps such as
Gastaldi’s 1547 version of the Universale oval map first published the previous year with its flattened
contour on the west coast of modern Peru. Many later maps continue to depict Chile with a non-
existent bulge, including the celebrated, modern Typus Orbis Terrarum world map first published in
1570 by Abraham Ortelius.
The Rangone globe also incorporates several inaccurate features found on the same
contemporary maps. For example, a non-existent bulge on the east coast of the Florida peninsula is
found on many maps of the mid- and later-sixteenth centuries, including Mercator’s 1541 globe,
although the shape of the Florida peninsula and the contour of the Eastern Seaboard differ
significantly from these same maps.
Joined to the tip of South America is the anachronistic Terra Australis, a theoretical continent
that the Renaissance inherited both from the Christian Middle Ages and the revival of Ptolemy. Based
on the supposition that the lands of the northern hemisphere should be balanced by lands in the
south, it was believed that a land mass continued longitudinally around the earth. The voyages of
discovery gradually pushed this region southward, although cartographers continued to gather
evidence for this putative southern continent on maps until the voyages of Captain James Cook
25
between 1768 and 1779.
The sole globe with the most potential relevance to the Rangone globe is the one made
26
in Venice around 1574 by Livio Sanuto (woodcut on paper gores over wood sphere; Fig. 4).
24
The full title of Mercator’s map is “World Map on Double Cordiform Projection.” The two surviving copies are housed at the
New York Public Library and the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin Library, Madison, WI,
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.wdl/wmuw.6766.
25
R. A. Skelton, Explorers' Maps: Chapters in the Cartographic Record of Geographical Discovery (New York: Praeger, 1958),
14.
26
This is the only example of a globe mounted with the Sanuto globe gores. Marica Milanesi and Rodolf Schmidt, Sfere del
cielo, sfere della terra: Globi celesti e terrestri dal XVI al XX secolo (exh. cat., 28 September 2007-29 February 2008, Museo
del Correr, Venice) (Milan: Electa, 2007), 49-51. For the previously-known globe gores, see Roberto Almagià, “Il globo di
Measuring 68.5 cm in diameter, it represents

the largest printed globe of the sixteenth
century and the sole printed globe of the
period whose large size approaches that of
the Rangone globe, though it appeared some
seventeen or eighteen years later. According
to a comprehensive list of globes assembled
by Elly Dekker, thirty-three terrestrial or
cosmographic globes and globe gores date
between Mercator’s 1541 terrestrial globes
27
and the Sanuto globe of c. 1574. However,
none of them are likely to have influenced the
Rangone globe due to their small size or, in
the case of the manuscript globes among
them, their lack of a Venetian or northern
Italian provenance. The Mercator globe itself
represents the second largest commercially-
marketed terrestrial/cosmographical globe
produced during the sixteenth century until the
Sanuto globe surpassed it, yet it measures
Fig. 4. Livio Sanuto (attr.), Globe, c. 1574 (nineteenth
century cradle), Museo Correr, Venice (Photo: Public
Domain).
____________________________________
Livio Sanuto,” La Bibliofilia 48 (1946): 26-27; R. A. Skelton, A Venetian Terrestrial Globe, Represented by the Largest
Surviving Printed Gores of the 16th Century (Bologna: Garisenda Antiquariato, 1965); Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the
World: Early Printed World Maps 1472-1700 (London: Holland Press, 1983; reprint 1987), 151-155; Scruzzi, Eine Stadt, 151.
27
Elly Dekker, ‘Appendix 6.1 List of Globes and Globe Gores made in Europe from 1300 until 1600,” in “Globes in Renaissance
Europe,” 160-171 provides a comprehensive list of globes and globe gores made in Europe from 1300 to 1600.
only 42 cm in diameter, only sixty-one percent the size of the Sanuto globe. According to David
Woodward, the Sanuto globe’s North American coastlines, interior detail and place names are very
similar to Gastaldi’s 1561 Cosmographia Universalis world map (Fig. 2), a new version of his earlier,
28
smaller Universale that incorporated new discoveries. However, the Sanuto globe is arguably less
accurate than the Rangone globe in depicting a bulbous Florida peninsula and the angle of the
southern coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. For its part the Rangone globe completely lacks the
decorative embellishments of the Sanuto globe, which include a bold, undulating wave pattern for the
Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, which are populated with numerous sailing ships and several mermaids
and sea monsters.
The Sanuto globe is representative of terrestrial globes in general since they tend to exhibit a
lesser degree of geographical accuracy than maps, in part due to their more decorative function. The
cartographic accuracy of the contours of the Americas in the Rangone terrestrial globe is more
closely related to maps, as the preceding discussion has shown. Moreover, the presence of wind
heads, which are more often found on maps, and the lack of stands and mountings used in actual
globes further suggest that maps rather than globes and globe gores were the primary models.
The Rangone monument is located precisely in the printmakers’ neighborhood where maps,
atlases, globe gores, and treatises were produced. In fact, the monument faces the Merzaria
(Merceria) street that extends from Piazza San Marco toward the Rialto, where shops of engravers
and publishers were located. As Woodward has shown, the book and print sellers based on the
Merceria during the late 1550s and 1560s included Forlani, who engraved Gastaldi’s Cosmographia
Universalis world map, and Bertelli, a publisher of books and maps, while on the Frezzaria, a street
parallel to the Merceria, worked the woodcutter and publisher Pagano, and the map engraver and
29
publisher Franco.
28
Livio Sanuto, Giulio Sanuto, Arthur Holzheimer, and David Woodward, Holzheimer Venetian Globe Gores (Madison: Juniper
Press, 1987). The sole surviving copy of this map is found in British Library. The American continent is difficult to see in the
sole available photo of the entire Sanuto globe, partly because the nineteenth-century wooden stand obscures it.
29
Woodward, “The Italian Map Trade,” 779-781 with figure 31.5, p. 780 titled “Area of Printmaking Activity in Sixteenth-Century
Venice.” For the four men whose shops were located there, see Ashley Boyton-Williams, “Paolo Forlani,” Mapforum.com
(Antique Map Magazine) 11 (December 2000), www.mapform.com/11/11issue.htm; Fabia Borroni,“Donato Bertelli,” Dizionario
Biografico degli Italiani online 9 (1967): http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/donato-bertelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/; Massimo
The Rangone globes have been understood as traditional symbols of scholarly pursuits,
specifically geography and astrology as well as referencing other paired qualities of microcosm and
macrocosm and the active and contemplative lives. This essay has demonstrated that they signify
much more. The terrestrial and celestial globe reliefs accompany the emergence of functional globe
pairs in the sixteenth century. The unprecedented specificity of form of both Rangone globes attests
to Rangone’s engagement with actual maps produced in Venice as well as the maps and globes he
himself owned. Their location facing the Merceria, a hotbed of map production that reached its peak
at the time the reliefs were carved and newly visible in the 1550s and 1560s surely gratified those in
the trade and their clientele as they looked up at them. The globes celebrate the heyday of Italian
30
mapmaking when Venice was its capital.
_________________________
Donattini, “Matteo Pagano,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani online 80 (2014): http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/matteo-
pagano_(Dizionario-Biografico)/; Chiara Stefani, “Giacomo Franco,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani online 50 (1998):
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giacomo-franco_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Franco is best known in Venetian circles for having
engraved the scenes of civic ceremonies in Habiti d’huomeni et donne venetiane (160[?]), which he himself published.
30
Robert Karrow, “Centers of Map Publication in Europe, 1472-1600,” History of Cartography, vol 3, part 1, Cartography in the
European Renaissance, 619 for Venice’s leadership in all of Europe in the 1560s.
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Jacopo Tintoretto’s Female Concert: The Musical Arcadia of Venus
Liana De Girolami Cheney
“E vera cosa che la musica ha la sua propria sede in questa città”

(“It is true that music has its own official seat in this city [Venice]”)
1
Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima (Venice, 1581).
In 1566, the Florentine Giorgio Vasari met the Venetian painter and musician Jacopo Comin
Robusti, known as Tintoretto (1518–1594), in Venice. In his Vite of 1568, Vasari praised Tintoretto’s
musical and artistic talents as follows:
Tintoretto, who has delighted in all the arts, and particularly in playing various musical
instruments, besides being agreeable in his every action, but in the matter of painting
swift, resolute, fantastic, and extravagant, and the most extraordinary brain that the
art of painting has ever produced, as may be seen from all his works and from the
fantastic compositions of his scenes, executed by him in a fashion of his own and
contrary to the use of other painters. Indeed, he has surpassed even the limits of
*Versions of this essay were presented at the session titled Music and Art, sponsored by the Association for Textual
Scholarship in Art History at the College Art Association in Chicago, on 14 February 2014 and Save Venice in Boston on 25
January 2015. I am grateful for the useful comments made by Katherine Powers (Fullerton University), Les Brothers (The
University of Missouri in Saint Louis), and Sarah Lippert (University of Michigan-Flint).
1
See Francesco Sansovino, Venetia città nobilissima (Venice: Iacomo Sansovino, 1581), 380, one of the first printed guides of
Venice. See also Viviana Comensoli, “Music, The Book of the Courtier, and Othello’s Soldiership”, in The Italian World of
English Renaissance Drama: Cultural Exchange and Intertextuality, ed. Michele Marapodi (Cranbury: Associated University
Presses, 1998), 89–105, for a discussion on music theory in the Italian Renaissance and Neoplatonic theory on the superiority
of the senses, in particular, the sense of hearing.
Fig. 1. Jacopo Tintoretto, Female Concert, 1576, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie (Photo: NY/Art
Resource).
extravagance with the new and fanciful inventions and the strange vagaries of his
2
intellect, working at haphazard and without design, as if to prove that art is but a jest.
2
Giorgio Vasari, “Vita di Jacopo Tintoretto,” in Giorgio Vasari Vite de’ più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori e Architettori nelle redazioni
del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1963–1989), 468. See also David
Liana De Girolami Cheney, Jacopo Tintoretto’s Female Concert 29
This study aims to conceptualize Vasari’s statement by discussing Tintoretto’s Female

Concert of 1576-1586, now at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (Fig. 1). The work will be
examined from two angles: as a fanciful invention of musica and as Venetian allegory of earthly and
spiritual beauty. In this painting, Tintoretto created a paragone, an artistic comparison between music
3
and beauty, the first referring to the invention of musica, which is associated with the muses, and the
4
second to his ability to depict the nude form as an image of beauty (venustas). To employ Vasari’s
5
words, Tintoretto created una bella figura and with it he captured the Mannerist notion of bellezza
6
or venustas. His conceit of beauty reveals two aspects: the physical, which is related to human
7
proportions, and the metaphysical, which captures the essence of the visual form. The female body
reveals not only its physical beauty, but also the intellectual or spiritual feminine beauty that creates
music.
The Painting. Tintoretto staged the Female Concert in a pastoral landscape that includes a
sunrise in Spring under the governance of Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. Aurora’s light shifts from
red to yellow-green, as it does during an aurora borealis event. It seems that Tintoretto purposely
_________________________
Rosand, Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986; reprint 1997),
159-164.
3
See Liana De Girolami Cheney, “Giorgio Vasari's Pictorial Musing on the Muses: The Chamber of Apollo of the Casa Vasari,"
Studies in Iconography 15 (Spring 1994):135-177.
4
Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 274-275;
Anthony Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968),15-18; André Chastel, Marsile Ficin
et L’Art (Geneva: Droz, 1975), 107-114, on Alberti’s concept of beauty as related to music and Neoplatonism.
5
Liana De Girolami Cheney, “Giorgio Vasari’s Theory of Feminine Beauty,” in Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art (London:
Scolar Press, 1997), 180–190.
6
This concept of beauty originated from Vitruvius’ theory of art. See Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti, 274-275, for a discussion of
Vitruvius’ venustas applied to Renaissance art.
7
Chastel, Marsile Ficin, 81-85, for the concept of beauty related to Neoplatonism.
chose a palette of predominantly red and green colors to refer specifically to this natural
8
phenomenon. Also in the background, to the left, is a thick forest, while in the foreground, six
9
women, five of whom are muses, form a semicircle. Though they feature similar physiognomies, their
elaborate coifs adorned with pearls and flowers, they are differentiated from each other by their
10
draperies (one female is completely nude) and their musical instruments. Four of the instruments
are stringed: (from left to right) a bowed viola da gamba, a lira da braccio, a plucked psaltery, and a
cithara. The other two are wind instruments: a cornet and a regal. While the viola da gamba, cornet,
and cithara are held by the women and two play the regal, the lira da braccio and psaltery rest on the
ground. Four musical scores are also displayed: one on the ground, another resting on the lap of one
of the regal players, a third on the regal itself, and the last held by one of the women to the far right.
11
Some of these musical scores have been identified as love songs that were then popular.
The Embodiment of Venus. The discussion between the two women on the far right is
intriguing. The muse holding the musical score is indicating to her companion her placement as she
accompanies the other women with her cithara. The cithara player stands out from the others in that
she is the only completely nude figure and her back is to the viewer. In rendering this female figure,
Tintoretto incorporated several classical references that associate her to Venus and the theme of
12
love. She sits on an opened scalloped shell, Venus’ attribute, and her pose ultimately stems from a
8
This astral occurrence was already known in ancient times and it was referred to as blazing sky or flaming sky by Hesiod in
his Theogony. The Greek text was available in the Renaissance through the version printed by Aldus Manutius in 1495 in
Venice. See Hesiod’s Theogony, trans. and ed. C. A. Elton (London: A. J. Valpy, 1832), 378ff, on Boreas and Eos (Dawn or
Aurora); 630ff, on the “brazen sky;” and 1080-1085, on the four winds.
9
They are here defined as muses because they are engaged in the act of creating.
10
See Erasmus Weddigen, “Jacopo Tintoretto und die Music’, Artibus et Historiae 5 no. 10 (1984): 67-119; H. Colin Slim, “A
Painting about Music at Dresden by Jacopo Tintoretto,” Exploration in Renaissance Culture 13 (1987): 1-18; H. Colin Slim,
“Tintoretto’s Music-Making Women at Dresden”, Imago Musicae 4 (1988): 45-76. Weddigen and Slim were the first to identify
the musical instruments in Tintoretto’s painting.
11
Weddigen, “Jacopo Tintoretto,”67-119; Slim, “A Painting about Music, 1-18; Slim, “Tintoretto’s Music-Making,” 45-76.
12
See Agostino Carracci engraving of Venus dating to 1590 in the British Museum, London (Inv. U.2.16), as another example
of a Cinquecento Venus seated on a shell.
Hellenistic relief of Amor and Psyche known only through a sixteenth century copy of the ancient
13
Roman relief depicting the Bed of Polycleitus. Tintoretto, who admired classical art and poetry, was
familiar with a bronze copy owned by Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), the Venetian poet and literary
14
theorist who inspired Tintoretto’s paintings. Tintoretto’s mentor and teacher Titian appropriated the
ancient imagery of the Bed of Polycleitus for his painting depicting Venus and Adonis (1553; Madrid,
15
Prado Museum).
The nude woman wears gold bracelets encrusted with emeralds, pearls, and rubies. Since
antiquity, bracelets worn on both upper arms have been associated with Venus, as in the example
16
dating to the first century BCE of the Crouching Venus, now in the Vatican Museum. Pearls in
particular are one of Venus’ attributes. Because they are formed in the soft tissue of living mollusks,
some of which are marine, they, along with the seashell on which the female sits, are associated with
17
Venus’ birth from the foam produced when Uranus’ testicles were tossed into the sea. The rarity of
naturally-formed pearls and their iridescence made them the symbol of unblemished perfection and
_______________________________
13
Cardinal Antoine Perrenut de Granville (1517–1586), an avid collector of art who was employed as minister by the Spanish
Habsburg and connected with the court of Rudolf II in Prague, owned a copy of this relief. See Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth
Rubenstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 127. In the early
Cinquecento, Raphael and Giulio Romano also appropriated the classical image in their Cupid and Psyche in the Loggia
Farnesina, Rome, and Palazzo del Té, Mantua.
14
Bober and Rubenstein, Renaissance Artists, 127. See also a recent exhibition in Padua, Pietro Bembo and the Invention of
the Renaissance at the Palazzo Monte di Pieta, Fall 2013, which reunited works from Bembo’s collection of ancient art that
was dismantled after his death.
15
David Rosand, “Titian and the Bed of Polyclitus,” Burlington Magazine 117 no. 865 (April 1975): 242-245.
16
In La Fornarina of 1518 in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome, Raphael appropriated this conceit. The woman’s arm
is adorned with a bracelet that includes the artist’s signature to acknowledge his love for her.
17
See Hesiod, Theogony, trans. and ed. M. L. West (Oxford: Oxford University, 1988), 176–188; Guy de Tervarent, Attributs et
Symboles dans L’Art Profane (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 145, on the symbolism of the shell, pearls, and Venus.
18
beauty (venustas). In antiquity, pearls were also a symbol of wealth and power, and men gifted their
19
lovers with pearls, thus their association to love and desire.
The symbols, the appropriation of classical forms, and the references to antiquity suggest
that Tintoretto’s nude muse is the painting’s clavis interpretandi.
Musical Arcadia. Tintoretto’s Female Concert, then, depicts an allegory of music with Venus
presiding over the muses. This gathering of muses is unlike those described by Ovid in his
Metamorphoses (Book V) since here there are only five women and not the usual nine. Further, the
women do not reside in Helicon or Parnassus alongside Apollo or Minerva (Fig. 2), but rather in a
picturesque landscape. They do not represent the Liberal Arts and instead they are engaged in the
art of music making. Instead of including Apollo or Minerva as presiders of the event, the artist
selected Venus to indicate that the idyllic setting is the realm of love and music. Indeed the goddess
of love and her companions perform love songs. And as William Shakespeare noted in the opening of
Twelfth Night—“If music be the food of love, play on”!—music was then related to love.
Paragone. The associations between love and music, love songs and poetry, and music and
poetry are long standing topics in the history of art. In music, for example, the paragone was between
secular and profane compositions. To take Horace’s motto, ut pictura poesis or “as is poetry so is
20
painting”, we could say of Tintoretto’s painting that “ut pictura musica” or “as is music so is painting,”
a theme particularly valued in Venice where music performances and masques were often intertwined
18
Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 743–744, 1065; Hans Biedermann,
Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and The Meanings Behind Them (New York: Meridian Books, 1994), 259.
19
Hesiod, Theogony, 743.
20
The phrase originates from Horace’s Ars poetica (361), first century BCE, and was borrowed by Plutarch in his poem De
gloria Atheniensium, 3.347a: “Poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens” (“Poetry is a speaking painting, painting is silent
[mute] poetry”). Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498) popularized Horace’s phrase in his edition of Horatius cum quattuor
commentariis, (Venice: J. Alvisius, 1498). See L. Mendelsohn, Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi Due Lezzioni and Cinquecento Art
Theory (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 109-142; R. Spencer, “Ut Rhetorica Pictura: A Study in Quattrocento Theory
of Painting”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20 (1957): 26-44; Dolce’s Dialogo della Pittura (Venice: Gabriele
Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1557), trans. M. Roskill (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 97, 239. See also Gian Paolo
Fig. 2. Hans Rottenhammer, Minerva and the Muses, 1603 Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nümberg (Photo: Public
Domain).
______________________________
Lomazzo, Trattato dell’ arte della pittura, scultura et architettura (Milan: Pietro Gottardo Pontio, 1584), which summarizes
Leonardo’s and Dolce’s notions on the relationship between poetry and painting.
21
with the visual arts. However, Tintoretto went beyond the traditional type of artistic paragoni, and in
particular the paragone of music associated with the myth of Apollo and Marsyas, where Apollo
22
demonstrated the superiority of the lyre, a stringed instrument, over the aulos, a wind instrument. In
the Female Concert, the artist also provided an inventive comparison between music and nature, and
between the female body and the pastoral landscape. Other contrasts include the bodies of Venus
and her muses either being revealed or concealed by diaphanous draperies, the painting’s reds and
greens (which are opposite each other on the color wheel), and the references to vocal and
instrumental music. Further, Tintoretto juxtaposed the aural aspect of music making against the visual
action of reading the musical scores; the nude muses hold or play the instruments, also referencing
the sense of touch, while the clothed muses read or point at the musical notes. That some of the
instruments and score rest on the ground invites viewers to participate in the concert.
The Theme of Love. The clothed muse on the far right points to the score to a Neapolitan
23
song titled Dolc’amorose e leggiadrette ninfe (“Sweet, loving and spirit wandering nymphs”). Since
the muse’s musical score is being played by Venus with her cithara, perhaps Tintoretto wished to
allude to the then recently published book by Paolo Virchi (1555-1610) from Brescia on how to
24
interpret Neapolitan love songs and saltarelli with a cithara. The score at Venus’ feet is a madrigal
with a first line that reads: “Quanto lieta ver noi sorge l’Aurora” (“How delightful is to see the rising of
21
See Liana De Girolami Cheney, Giorgio Vasari’s Artistic and Emblematic Manifestations (Washington, DC: New Academia
Publishing, 2011), 51-98, on Vasari’s Venetian commission for the apparato of Aretino’s La Talanta.
22
See Ovid The Love Poems, ed. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 244, citing Ovid, Fasti vi. 649-710,
“Minerva invented the aulos but threw it away on seeing her face reflected while playing it.” See also Carla Zecher, Sounding
Objects: Musical Instruments, Poetry, and the Art in Renaissance France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), Chapter
2, Musical Rivalries, n. 8, for a recount of the legend about Minerva inventing the aulos to perform at the feasts of the gods. At
one of these celebrations, Juno and Venus began to laugh at Minerva because whenever she played the aulos her cheeks
puffed, distorting her beautiful face. Subsequently, Minerva discarded the instrument for providing a mundane expression,
hence the wind instrument became associated with mortals.
23
See Slim, “Tintoretto’s Music-Making,” 51. He notes that the Neapolitan song was published in Giovan Leonardo Primavera’s
Il primo libro de canzone napoletane a tre voci in Venice by Girolamo Scotto in the 1565, 1566 and 1570 editions.
24
Paolo Virchi, Il primo libro di tabolatura di cithara di ricercati madrigali (Venice: Girolamo Scotto, 1574).
Aurora”). Not by coincidence, in the painting is a sunrise that takes place in a Spring-like setting,
25
26
Spring being Venus’ season.
Divine Influences. In Venice, the theorist and composer Franchinus Gaffurius (1451-1522)
emphasized the astral connection to music, which he illustrated in a woodcut executed in 1496 and
27
published in his Practica musicae in Venice in 1505. In his writings, the Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino
(1433–1499) connected music with the divine: “the soul receives the sweetest harmonies and
numbers through the ears, and by these echoes is reminded and aroused to the divine music that
28
may be heard by the more subtle and penetrating sense of mind.” And the Milanese physician,
mathematician, and music theorist Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576) followed Ficino’s notion, stating
that “Music celebrates moral virtues… since emotions and music consist of gentle virtues…
29
corresponding to [human] actions, and of divine virtues relating to the intellect.” Another individual to
adopt Ficino’s Neoplatonic views on music was Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590). In his Istitutioni
Harmoniche (Venice 1573), he, like Cardano, saw two musical realms: musica mundana, which
unites the principles of harmony in the macrocosm or celestial sphere, and musica humana, which
connects harmony to the microcosm or earthly sphere, thus creating a cosmos where the natura
spirituale (soul) and the natura corporeale (body) form a concordia harmonica (harmony of the
25
See Slim, “Tintoretto’s Music-Making,” 53. Slim states that the opened music score at Venus’ feet is a madrigal by Andrea
Gabrieli (1533-1585) published in Venice in Il primo libro di madrigal a cinque voci by Antonio Gardano in 1566 and 1572.
26
The association of music with the realm of Venus and her season is also noted in astrological, alchemical, and philosophical
books from the Quattrocento and Cinquecento, such as Gabriele Giolito Ferrari’s Venus and Her Children, from Planetary
Gods, published in Venice 1533, and Marsilio Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda (“How Life Should Be Arranged According
to the Heavens”) on Venus.
27
Franchinus Gaffurius, Practica Musicae by Franchinus Gaffurius, ed. Clement A. Miller (Dallas: American Institute of
Musicology, 1968).
28
See D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (University Park: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2000), 3-29, for a discussion on Ficino and music. The quote is on 9.
29
Hieronymus Cardanus, Writings on Music, trans. and ed. Clement A. Miller (New York: American Institute of Musicology,
1937), 105, 213; Viviana Comensoli, “Music, The Book of the Courtier,” 100, 102 no. 12.
30
spheres). This musical utopia is also revealed in the mythographic iconography of Vincenzo
Cartari’s celestial cosmos in his Imagini delli Dei degli’ Antichi, published in Venice in 1557.
The association of music with the sphere of Venus and her season is also noted in
31
astrological, alchemical, and philosophical books of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento. In astrology,
32
those born under Venus are referred to as the “Children of Venus” and they partake in her celestial
and earthly realms. They experience harmonious bliss in her celestial realm of beauty and love and,
in the earthy realm, a cultivated garden, an élan de vivre by pursuing the pleasures of dancing and
love and music making. This is illustrated in Baccio Baldini’s Venus and Her Children of 1464, an
engraving from The Seven Planets in the British Museum, London; Cristoforo de Predis’ Venus and
Her Children in De Sphaera of 1466-1475 (Fig. 3), an illuminated manuscript in the Biblioteca
Estense in Modena; and Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari’s Venus and Her Children, an engraving from the
Seven Planets, published in Venice 1533 (Fig. 4).
33
In the Female Concert, Tintoretto depicted Zarlino’s harmony of the spheres—the celestial
(natura spirituale) and terrestrial (natural corporeale) realms of Venus, where her planetary influence
30
See Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella, 28.
31
See Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life, trans. and ed. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Tempe: Medieval and
Renaissance texts and Studies, 1998), 20–22, 33–36; Peter J. Forshaw, “Marsilio Ficino and the Chemical Art,” in Laus
Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forsaw, and Varely Rees (Leiden: Brill,
2008), 251–271; Thomas Moore, The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne
Press, 1990), 137–147.
32
See also Gwendolyn Trottein, Les enfants de Venus: Art et Astrologie a la Renaissance (Paris: Lagune, 1993), 90-113, 173-
176; Paolo Galluzzi, ed., Galileo: Images of the Universe from Antiquity to the Telescope (Florence: Giunti, 2009), 185–188, on
Venus and the “Children of Venus.”
33
The Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II of Prague, commissioned this painting perhaps to display in his cabinet of curiosities
(kunstkammer). See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, “Remarks on the Collections of Rudolf II: The Kunstkammer as a Form of
Representation,” Art Journal 38 no.1 (Autumn 1978): 22–28.
Fig. 3. Cristoforo de Predis, Venus and Her Children, in Fig. 4. Gabriele Giolito Ferrari, Venus and Her
De Sphaera, 1466-1475, fol. 9v, Modena, Biblioteca Children, from the Seven Planets Woodcut
Estense (Photo: Public Domain). Series published in Venice in 1533 (Photo: Public
Domain).
34
leads Aurora’s morning star and her physical beauty guides the muses to arouse love with their
music making. In Venus’ domain, the muses compose music to endow the goddess’ “children” and
those born under her sign with physical beauty and spiritual love. In Venus’ sphere, the celestial and
earthly realms created by the symphony of sounds and experienced by the senses are in perfect
harmony (concordia harmonica): “this metaphor of love is the noblest in keeping with Neoplatonic
35
ideals.” Thus, Tintoretto’s Female Concert is a musical arcadia where Venus and her muses
compose, play, and sing love songs. The painting is therefore a conceit of love and music.
34
Aurora, like Venus, was considered a morning star because of her physical radiance. See Tamra Andrews, A Dictionary of
Nature Myths: Legends of Earth, Sea and Sky (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998), 19, 131.
35
Alberto Ausoni, Music in Art (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2005), 30.
Book Reviews 39
Book Reviews
Adelina Modesti, Elisabetta Sirani and the Cultural Production of Early Modern
Bologna (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 449 pp.; 180 b/w ills; 32 color ills. €150.00.
Review by Patricia Rocco
Adelina Modesti’s monograph on Elisabetta Sirani is the most in-depth and up-to-date work
on an Early Modern female artist to be published in English since Mary Garrard’s seminal book on
1
Artemisia Gentileschi and Carolyn Murphy’s on Lavinia Fontana. This is an updated version and
English translation of Modesti’s earlier volume in Italian published by Brepols, the first to deal with
Sirani and her oeuvre. Although the basic organization is the same, there are added illustrations and
documentary evidence, as well as the most current attributions. The book is divided into two parts,
each featuring three chapters. Part I, titled “Elisabetta Sirani and Her World: Matronage, Gendered
Knowledge, and Female Literacy in Early Modern Bologna,” examines the milieu in which Sirani was
raised and worked, the school of painting for women she established, and her patrons—mainly the
noblewomen of Bologna. Part II discusses the theory and practice of painting as it applied to female
artists, Sirani’s artistic training in her father’s workshop, and the tropes of the donna virile and
pennello virile as were applied to the artist. The Epilogue relates the fate of Sirani’s memory in the
nineteenth century.
In the first chapter, “The Illustrious Women of Bologna: Elisabetta Sirani Exemplum,” Modesti
singles out the uniqueness of the school Sirani established; it was the first to provide artistic
education to women. As the author explains, Sirani is often labeled by art historians as a
“conservative artist lacking in fantasy” (5). For this reason, she has received less attention than
1
Caroline Murphy, Lavinia Fontana: A Painter and her Patrons in Sixteenth-Century Bologna (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2003) and the second source is Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque
Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the great female heroes of feminist art historians. Yet, although Sirani
died at the young age of 27 and only painted for 10 years, she had a highly successful and prolific
career that merits thorough examination. Sirani trained with her father, Giovanni Andrea Sirani, Guido
Reni’s assistant, becoming what Modesti terms a “nubile professionista,” an unmarried career woman.
She was part of a circle of educated Bolognese women who perpetuated the Renaissance humanist
tradition. For this reason, her biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, called her the stella d’Europa and
gemma d’Italia. In this chapter Modesti includes a discussion on the impact of the Counter-
Reformation on Bolognese visual culture, Bologna then being part of the Papal States and the home
of Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, its archbishop and author of the Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e
profane (1582), which became the catalyst for the Bolognese art reform.
Chapter 2, “Public Life, Women’s Patronage, and Female Education in Post-Tridentine
Bologna,” deals with female patronage in Bologna of public and private artwork and noblewomen’s
promotion of Christian female education. Public festivals in which these women participated to assert
their socio-political power were common in the city. Charity was part of these theatrical affairs, and
illustrious visitors were expected to offer donations to help women in need. There were in fact bonds
between artists, patrons, and the confraternities of Bologna and their charitable activities, as Modesti
asserts.
In Chapter 3, “Elisabetta Sirani ‘Maestra perfetta’: Education, Cultural Formation, and
Teaching,” Modesti presents a treasure trove of new archival evidence relating to female students
and colleagues in Sirani’s school. Previously, only a few disparate details based on Marcello Oretti’s
list of close to 43 of Sirani’s students were known. This archival documentation allowed Modesti to
reconstruct their history in greater detail, revealing that there were many more successful female
artists in Early Modern Bologna than previously known.
In Chapter 4, “In her Father’s Workshop: Elisabetta Sirani’s Artistic Formation and Training,”
Modesti delineates Sirani’s artistic training in detail. Not only did Sirani learn the art of painting from
her father, but also engraving. Though Sirani never left her home city of Bologna, she had access to
the works of artists from other parts of Italy that were in her father’s collection, which impacted her
style.
Chapter 5, “The Virile Woman: Female Power and Wisdom in Elisabetta Sirani’s
Representations of Heroic Women,” covers the donne virile and femmes fortes themes in Sirani’s
oeuvre—such as Judith, Portia (Fig. 1), and Timoclea. Like Artemisia Gentileschi, Sirani offered
Book Reviews 41
Fig. 1. Elisabetta Sirani, Portia Wounding Her Thigh, 1664, Fondazione della Cassa di Risparmio,
Bologna (Photo: Public Domain).
unprecedented characterizations of these women. Her Timoclea, for example, is shown in the
process of throwing Alexander’s general, Thracian, into a well for having violated her (1659; Naples,
Museo di Capodimonte). Male artists instead typically showed Timoclea before Alexander awaiting
her punishment.
Chapter 6, “The Phallic Paintbrush: Gender and Genius in the Art of Elisabetta Sirani,”
discusses the historiography and reputation of the artist in light of gender theory and the previously
dominant male paradigm of art historical criticism. Modesti observes that due to the artist’s nubile
status, her life story was likened to that of a saint, thus becoming more hagiography than
historiography. The Renaissance notion of the artist as genius applied to males. For a woman artist to
be considered a genius, she required virtu virile, which marked her as an oddity, a meraviglia.
Malvasia wrote that Sirani “ebbe del virile e del grande,” one of the first instances, Modesti writes, in
which masculine language was used to describe a woman’s talent.
In short, Modesti’s detailed and thoroughly researched volume contributes significantly to our
understanding of Sirani’s life, career, and artistic output and is therefore highly recommended for
scholars and students of Early Modern art, and particularly those interested in feminist scholarship.

Sarah Rolfe Prodan, Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry,
and Art in Sixteenth Century Italy (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014). 279 pp.; 16 color ills., $99.99.
Reviewed by Emily Fenichel
Art historians have often treated Michelangelo’s poetry as a kind of personal and
confessional diary, rarely studying it as carefully as the artist’s better-known sculptures and paintings.
Prodan’s book, however, amply demonstrates that Michelangelo’s poetic work has much in common
with his visual arts. The author reveals that, like his paintings or sculptures, Michelangelo’s poetry
was a considered practice, deeply engaged in both the religious and literary trends of the artist’s
lifetime. Dividing her book into two interconnected essays and using primarily biographical and socio-
historical approaches, Prodan explains, “the portrait of Michelangelo that emerges from the present
Book Reviews 43
study is... a devotional poet inspired by Augustine and contemporary lay religious culture”(10). This
portrait, particularly as it is presented in Prodan’s book, should be useful for those interested in
Michelangelo’s poetry and aesthetics.
In the first section of the book, “Michelangelo and Renaissance Augustinianism,” Prodan
traces Michelangelo’s Augustinian and Dantean “spiritual odyssey” through poetic imagery,
symbolism, and composition (24). Taking the imagery of the sea, the mountain, and the fire with the
sword as both recurring themes and chapter headings, Prodan demonstrates that their inclusion
refers to Augustinian mystic pilgrimage, Dante, and Landino’s commentary on the Commedia.
Although long recognized as a great Dantista, rarely has a study argued so convincingly for
Michelangelo’s self-conscious “linguistic and conceptual echoes of the Commedia” (23).
In this first section, Prodan hardly considers Michelangelo’s graphic arts in relationship to his
poetry. She does refer to how other scholars have used the poetry to interpret Michelangelo’s
painting or sculpture. Outside of a few brief paragraphs relating Michelangelo’s Dantean imagery to
the Sistine Ceiling, however, Prodan rarely ventures into visual analysis herself. Such a decision
implicitly contends that the poetry be taken on its own merits and Prodan’s arguments are particularly
useful for art historians. That Prodan establishes Michelangelo’s profound engagement with
contemporary theology and literature through his poetry can only deepen art historical understanding
of the man and his graphic works. Moreover, the nuance that her analysis brings to Michelangelo’s
poems demand that, in the future, art historians employ a deft and subtle hand when attempting to
use the artist’s poems to interpret his visual works.
Prodan’s second section, “Michelangelo and Viterban Spirituality” likewise explores the
artist’s sustained literary engagement with poets and theologians, this time those belonging to the so-
called Viterbo circle or spirituali. Led by Cardinal Reginald Pole and Vittoria Colonna, the spirituali
have enjoyed increased scholarly interest in recent years. Eschewing the typical focus on the concept
of sola fide, Prodan instead explores “the role of the Holy Spirit as the efficacious grace that flows
forth from Christ” in Michelangelo’s late life and poetry (85). She also convincingly demonstrates that
Michelangelo’s poetry echoes Viterban texts, such as the Beneficio di Cristo and the writings of
Vittoria Colonna. Her final chapter, “Aesthetics, Reform, and Viterban Sociability” is the only one
to specifically link Michelangelo’s poetic

themes with his aesthetic experiments of
the same period. In this chapter, Prodan
examines the drawings Michelangelo
created for Vittoria Colonna in order to
determine their “devotional value or
significance” rather than their “subject
or… style,” which has dominated recent
art historical discourse (143).
One such drawing is the subject
of Prodan’s only sustained visual analysis
in the book: Michelangelo’s Christ and the
Samaritan Woman. Now known only
through engraved reproductions by the
printmaker Nicolas Béatrizet, the image is
rarely considered by art historians (Fig.
1). Prodan argues that the work
“allegorizes the spiritual relationship of
Michelangelo and Vittoria,” particularly
through the hand gestures of Christ and
the woman at the well (152). There are
certainly potential problems with
analyzing a work known only through
prints. For example, Prodan’s analysis
requires a great deal of faith in Béatrizet’s
Fig. 1. Nicolas Béatrizet, Christ and the
Samaritan Woman (after Michelangelo), 1540-
1566, British Museum, London, Inv. No.
AN54986001001 (Photo: British Museum).
Book Reviews 45
accurate interpretation of details, such as the positioning of individual fingers. Nevertheless, the
chapter provides a powerful indication of how Prodan’s literary analysis might fuel new interpretations
of Michelangelo’s visual art in light of contemporary theology and literature.
Unfortunately, the quality of the image reproductions is at times poor. The photos of the
Cappella Paolina and the Last Judgment, for example, show the works before their restoration.
Similar criticism cannot be leveled at Prodan’s quotations of Michelangelo’s poetry. Helpfully, these
are included both in Italian (from Girardi) and English (from Saslow), allowing the reader to
1
understand both the nuance of the artist’s language and Prodan’s significant analysis. On the whole,
the book provides important insights about Michelangelo’s poetry and should prove thought-provoking
for anyone interested in the artist’s theological and poetic thought in both the written and visual arts.
1
Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rime, ed. Enzo Noè Girardi (Bari: Laterza, 1960); Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Poetry of
Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation, ed. and trans. James M. Saslow (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
Table of Contents:
th
The History of Quilting: From Ancient Egypt to 18 Introduction
Century Provence
Chapter 1. The Origins of the Quilting Technique:
Trade and the Spread of Quilting Techniques to
Asia; Mongolia: China; Tibet; Siberia; Japan
Chapter 2. Quilting in Europe: Domestic Quilts;

Documentary Evidence; Opus Consutum;
Patchwork; Patchwork as Vindication
Chapter 3. The Tristan Quilts: Visual Aspects;

Provenance; The Narrative; A Gift for the Bride and
Groom; Function; Display
Chapter 4. The Anjou Cloth:

Methods of Assembly; Anjou Heraldry;
Patronage and Authorship; Silk from Naples
Chapter 5. Imports from Asia:

The Art of Cotton Dyeing and Printing; A Brief
History of Dyes: Indigo Blue and Turkey Red;
Quilting in Provence ; The Port City of Marseilles
Conclusion
Bibliography
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Notes on Early Modern Art

Published by Zephyrus Scholarly Publications LLC

Muslim Elements in the Medieval Architecture of Bitonto

Jacopo Tintoretto’s Female Concert: The Musical Arcadia of Venus

Sarah Rolfe Prodan, Michelangelo’s Christian Mysticism: Spirituality, Poetry, and

The portals suggest Islamic influences as well,

Fig. 3. Bitonto, Cathedral, view of one of the façade portals

Art and Science in the Early Modern Period: An Introduction to

Fig. 2. Giacomo Gastaldi, Cosmographia Universalis world map, seventeenth-century reprint

Measuring 68.5 cm in diameter, it represents

Introduction, Lilian H. Zirpolo

Una vista amirabile: Remarks on the Illusionary Interplay

Anamorphosis as a Tool for Presenting Erotic Subjects:

Consonant and Dissonant Perspectives: Carel Fabritius' A

Mirror Art: Early Modern Catoptric Devices in Books,

Perspective, Illusion, and Devotion: The Chapel of S.

Trompe L'Oeil as Ironic Art, Mateusz Salwa

Agency and Illusion: Free Will and the Perspectival

Illusions in Portuguese Baroque Azulejos, Maria do Rosario

“E vera cosa che la musica ha la sua propria sede in questa città”

This study aims to conceptualize Vasari’s statement by discussing Tintoretto’s Female

Review by Patricia Rocco

to specifically link Michelangelo’s poetic

Chapter 2. Quilting in Europe: Domestic Quilts;

Chapter 3. The Tristan Quilts: Visual Aspects;

Chapter 4. The Anjou Cloth:

Chapter 5. Imports from Asia:

Lilian H. Zirpolo (ISBN 978-0-9972446-0-1); US$55.00; 124 pp.; 6

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