The Italian Renaissance. Art, Literature and Political Thought
Winter School

Employment prospects: Class attendance - held entirely in English - will allow students to gain the knowledge and skills they will be able to use internationally in various areas throughout the business world, especially related to teaching (literature, history, philosophy, art history, etc.), to museum and historical research, and to cultural communication: publishing, tourism, journalism, and information dissemination through the media (traditional and new).

Period: II Semester - February to April 2019

Programme Director: Prof. Antonio Corsaro - Associate Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Urbino.

Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of Ferrara 1993-2001. Visiting Professor at Middlebury College (Vermont, USA, 1985), at Dublin UCD (1988, 1998), at The University of Leuven (1998, 2003), at the Centre d'Etudes Supérieurs de la Renaissance, Univ. De Tours (2007). Coordinator of the project of Archiviazione informatica of the letters of Micheangelo il Giovane (Florence, Museo Buonarroti, 1991-93). Studies in the Renaissance Literature with special interests in History of Culture and of Thought. Essays and editions of texts on comical, satirical and burlesque Poetry between XV and XVII centuries (Burchiello, Ariosto, Berni, Bentivoglio), and a volume on the same subject in 1999. Publications and conferences on the relationship between literature, religious censorship and the print in the XVI century, among which the recent international conference Sixteenth-Century Italian Art and Literature and the Reformation, London, Warburg Institute, 30-31 January 2004; the International Seminar Forms of Faith. The influence of religious change on artistic, musical and literary culture in sixteenth-century Italy (Univ. of Cambridge - University of Leeds, March 2007); the International Conference Lectura y culpa en la Europa del siglo XVI, San Millan de la Cogolla (Spain), Cilengua / Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, March 2009. Studies on the culture and religious thought in the epoch of the Counterreformation, partially published in the volume: Percorsi dell'incredulità. Religione, amore e natura nel primo Tasso (Rome 2003). Member of the Scientific Board for the exhibition: Vittoria Colonna e Michelangelo (Florence, Museo Buonarroti, December 2004). Scientific supervisor of the International Conference Autorità modelli e antimodelli nella cultura artistica e letteraria fra Riforma e Controriforma (Univ. di Urbino 2006). Critical editions of the "Paradossi" of Ortensio Lando (Rome 2000; reissued for the series "Les Belles letters" in Paris, 2012); of the Literary Works of Machiavelli (Rome 2012); of the Poems and Letters of Michelangelo Buonarroti (Milan, 2016).

Scientific Committee:

• Prof. Antonio Corsaro (DISTUM)
• Prof. Giovanna Perini (DISTUM)
• Prof. Nicola Panichi (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
• Prof. Raffaella Santi (DISTUM)
• Prof. Giorgio Nonni (Former Associate Professor of Italian Literature, Urbino University)
• Dr. Marcella Peruzzi (Urbino University Library)

Courses taught

1. Italian Renaissance Art (15th-16th centuries) —  L-ART/02 - 6 Credits/CFU

Course description. This course aims to show the main artistic trends in Italy between the 15th and 16th centuries, through the study of the great masters: Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca, Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Donato Bramante, Raffaello, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Tiziano, and Federico Barocci. Artistic productions of this period will be analyzed through investigating style, iconography, technique, patronage, function, connection with classical antiquity, as well as historical, geographical, and social context. Special attention will be given to pictorial and architectural masterpieces of the Renaissance in Urbino, with a focus on the artists Piero della Francesca and Raffaello.

Course objectives. The purpose of this course is to give students, through a stylistic and iconographical reading of the art work, the basic knowledge and methodological tools required to correctly contextualize the movements, artists, and works in their specific historical, social, and geographical context.

Lecturer: Dr. Marilena Luzietti - After completing a degree in History of Medieval and Modern Art in 2009 at the University of Urbino "Carlo Bo", Marilena Luzietti received a PhD in History of Modern Art in 2013 from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" with a dissertation on the "Iconography of the True Cross during the Counter-Reformation", which has since been published online at www.padis.uniroma1.it. Her publications include a monograph on Saint Joseph's Oratory of Urbino ("Arte e devozione nella Urbino degli Albani: l'Oratorio di San Giuseppe di Urbino", Centro Studi G. Mazzini, Fermignano, 2012) in addition to essays on art in the Marche Region. She now teaches History of Art in a "Liceo Classico" (High School) in Pesaro.

2. Culture and Literature in the Italian Renaissance (15th-16th centuries) — L-FIL-LET/10 - 6 credits/CFU

Course description. The course will consist of 18 lessons of two hours each. After a preliminary introduction to the Renaissance period in Italy (15th-16th centuries), the course will focus on some main authors and literary gendres. A general pattern will be reconstructed about the principal cultural and literary events of the period in the Italian peninsula, using a thematic perspective and an interdisciplinary pausing approach (focusing on some Renaissance capital cities). A special attention will be given to the territories of Urbino and Florence, analyzing some of the foundation texts of this period ("Il libro del cortegiano", "Il Principe"). 

Course objectives. The aim is to introduce students to a first approach to the complex territory of Italian Renaissance Culture and Literature, with a particular stress on its main authors and characters.

Lecturer: Prof. Nicoletta Marcelli -   M.A. degree at the University of Florence -  Ph.D. at the SISMEL (Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino) and in 2012 a second Ph.D. at the University of Florence. 2007 : Frances A. Yates Fellowship at the Warburg Institute of London for a project on Guarino Veronese. 2012 : Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Harvard University Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies / Villa I Tatti in Florence. Her fields of research are focused on Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, Italian and Neolatin philology. Her main publications are devoted to eminent Florentine authors like Leonardo Bruni, Leon Battista Alberti, Luigi Pulci, and Cristoforo Landino. Since 2006 she was entrusted to collaborate with the National Edition of the Works of Niccolò Machiavelli and she published the critical edition of the Capitoli (ed. Salerno, 2012). She is also member of the editorial board of the international journals «Interpres. Rivista di studi quattrocenteschi», founded by Mario Martelli and directed by Francesco Bausi, and «Studi Petrarcheschi» directed by Giulio Firpo, Giuseppe Frasso, and Gino Belloni.

3. Italian and European Renaissance Political Thought (16th-17th centuries) — M-FIL/06 - 6 credits/CFU

Course description. The course is intended as an introduction to the political philosophy of the Renaissance as seen through an examination of some of the major texts and thinkers, especially in an Italian context, but considered under a European perspective. The course will analyze the main political ideas and topics developed in Renaissance thought, such as the relationship between ethics and politics, the theoretic foundations of "buon governo" (good government), the theories of princely and republican governments, political prudence and "reason of State", the satirical critique of power, the relationship between politics and religion, and the birth of political science.

Course objectives. The aim is to provide students with the basic knowledge of an important section of western political thought, at the dawn of the theoretic developments that would lead to modern democratic ideas. - Expected Learning outcomes: Students should be able to directly address a number of primary sources, in order to examine and critically analyze the main topics in Renaissance political thought. They should also be able to place problems and ideas in their peculiar historical context and also discuss them in a comparative perspective and in their relationship with more modern views.

Lecturer: Dr. Raffaella Santi - Lecturer in History of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities. She received her PhD in Philosophy in 2000 from the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, with a dissertation on Plato and Hegel (published as "Platone, Hegel e la dialettica", Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2000). She is a translator of Hobbes's "Leviathan" (Bompiani, Milan 2001, 2004, 2012) and a correspondent from Italy and reviewer for the Bulletin Hobbes ("Archives de Philosophie", Paris). Her recent publications include two co-authored books, and the two monographs: "Ragione geometrica e legge in Thomas Hobbes" and "Etica della lettura e scrittura filosofica in Thomas Hobbes" (Cedam, Padua 2012 and 2013). She is currently working on a research project on "Hobbes and Greek Philosophy".

Final exam: 2 credits/CFU

The student is expected to sit an oral exam for each course. The exams will take place at the end of the course. The student is expected to discuss the subjects of the classes, including the lectures held by other guest teachers, and to demonstrate the knowledge and comprehension of the matters treated according the syllabus. The marks will be decided according the following criteria: (1) Konowledge of the matter. (2) Capacity of reasoning adequately on the subjects requested. (3) Capacity of exposing the matter with an appropriate language.

Setting of the Winter School on the Italian Renaissance.

The University of Urbino - founded in 1506 - is a Renaissance-era institution; in parallel fashion Urbino itself is the quintessential context in which to learn about the Italian Renaissance - its prestigious status as ..“UNESCO
World Heritage Site’ was awarded in 1998 with the following motivation”… Urbino attracted some of the most outstanding humanist scholars and artists of the Renaissance, who created there an exceptional urban complex of remarkable homogeneity, the influence of which carried far into the rest of Europe. Urbino represents a pinnacle of Renaissance art and architecture, harmoniously adapted to its physical site and to its medieval precursor in an exceptional manner’ (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/828).

Nowadays the University of Urbino’s facilities remain at one with the beautiful town itself. Study abroad participants are offered the unique opportunity to enter directly into town as well as campus life, and to experience the collective history of these institutions in a personal way.

The university dorms just outside the old town center and multi-site cafeteria system offer U.S. students the opportunity to socialize with Italian students as well as the approximately 150 exchange students from the E.U.’s Erasmus program who are provided meals and lodging there as well. In three words the advantagious setting of the University of Urbino campus can be summed up as as ‘Small - Safe – Social’