In the treatise called La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne co’ diffetti et mancamenti de gli uomini Lucrezia Marinella claims that women are superior to men. She argues that men are excessively hot, and that heat in a high degree is detrimental to the intellectual and moral capacities of a person. The aim of this paper is to set out Marinella’s views on temperature differences in the bodies of men and women and the effects of bodily constitution on the capacities (...) necessary for political deliberation and rule. I situate Marinella’s argument in the context of an ongoing debate about physiological differences between the sexes, begun in antiquity and extending into the Renaissance. That debate is important for several reasons: as part of a broader discussion of the nature and worth of women, as determining influential interpretations of ancient authorities on matters of physiology, and as anticipating later discussions of the relation between the sexed body and political roles. This paper considers Marinella in dialogue with a number of interlocutors, elements of whose work can be found in her own: Aristotle, Mario Equicola, Galeazzo Flavio Capra, Ludovico Domenichi and Torquato Tasso. (shrink)

El mito de Ifigenia ha sido reinterpretado con extraordinaria vitalidad en multitud de obras literarias y artísticas a lo largo de la historia. Este artículo pretende examinar la particular repercusión de Ifigenia en el debate de la _Querelle des femmes_ a partir de la recuperación del manuscrito de la tragedia de Eurípides a finales del s. XV, en autores como Galeazzo Flavio Capra, Ludovico Dolce o Lilio Gregorio Giraldi. La recepción de la tragedia griega desde Italia, al verterse en (...) dramas y tratados, irradió en la cultura moderna europea nuevos emblemas sobre la condición femenina, hacia un modelo de virtud cuya moral supera la crueldad de los dioses y los hombres, pues lucha por su propia libertad y dignidad. (shrink)

This article studies an illuminated manuscript of St. Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos: Vat. lat. 451 (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). The manuscript was commissioned by the bishop Giovanni Capogallo, when he was in Lombardy in close contact with the court of the duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The article examines the cultural milieu of Pavia in the early 15th century, highlighting the role of the Order of the Hermits of Saint Augustine in the monastery of San Pietro in Ciel (...) d’Oro. The two incipit pages ff. 1r and 239r, illuminated by Michelino da Besozzo, are an example of the International Gothic style and this article analyses not only their stylistic aspect, but also their allegorical meaning, as an interesting case of decoration of a patristic text. (shrink)

_Historiae encomium_ es el título con el que, desde 1530, se conoce la Epístola a Galeazzo Visconti que el jurista Andrea Alciato escribió como prefacio a sus_ Annotationes in Cornelium Tacitum _(Milán, 1517). En este texto no solo hace un entusiasta elogio de la historia, que considera superior a otras disciplinas, sino una vehemente defensa de Tácito, al que concede la primacía sobre Tito Livio. Sin embargo, no existe aún una edición moderna ni una traducción de dicha Epóstola. De (...) ahí mi intención de hacer la primera edición crítica del texto latino y la primera traducción completa y anotada, a fin de facilitar la comprensión de un opúsculo con el que Alciato marcó un hito en la pervivencia de Tácito y en la corriente tacitista. (shrink)

Vico's earliest extant scholarly works, the six first statement of ideas that Vico would continue to refine throughout his life. Delivered between 1699 and 1707 to usher in the new academic year at the University of Naples, the orations are brought together here for the first time in English in an authoritative translation based on Gian Galeazzo Visconti's 1982 Latin/Italian edition. In the lectures,Vico draws liberally on the classical philosophical and legal traditions as he explores the relationship between the (...) Greek dictum "Know thyself' and liberal education. As he sets forth the values and goals of a humanist curriculum, Vico reveals the beginnings of the anti-Cartesian position he will pursue in On the Study Methods of Our Time. Also found in the orations are glimpses ofVico's later views on the theory of interpretation and on the nature of language, imagination, and human creativity, along with many themes that were to be fully developed in his magnum opus, The New Science. On Humanistic Education will be welcomed by Vichians and their students, intellectual historians, and others in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, history and methods of education, classics, and rhetoric. (shrink)