Mendicants, Humanists and the Aesthetics of the civitas. Debates and Political Culture in the 14th and 15th Centuries and their Impact on Art, Architecture and Urban Space

The conference aims to shed light on the often-marginalised role of the mendicants within the studia humanitatis. The contribution of religious orders to humanism has been noted in the historical sciences for decades, but in art history it awaits further research and some clarification with regard to the reciprocal relationship between orders and urban elites – in other words, the intertwining of convents and the city.
In the context of the history of ideas and moral philosophy of the 14th and 15th centuries, one disputed the best form of state and negotiated cultural values. In their debates, civic cultural identity and construction of history were at stake. It might be assumed that the mendicants helped to shape a political culture that was still being negotiated in the Quattrocento and that they were actively involved in the evocation of a certain image of the city or a community. The ideas, above all from philosophical and theological contexts, developed in the studia of the convents in the context of disputations between religious scholars and humanist laymen. Such ideas were able to influence the ‘aesthetics of the city’. In addition to such places of knowledge exchange, sermons should be considered, by means of which ideas generated in the studia were passed on to a broad urban public.
On the one hand the participation of the mendicant orders in humanist discourses in the context of the valori civici should be highlighted. We thus ask how individual members of the orders acted as opinion makers, communicated and passed on ideas, and in this way shaped—directly or indirectly—the materially conceived and built body of the city. On the other hand, the focus will be on the appropriation of an ‘aesthetics of civitas’ on the part of the orders.
What role did the arts play in this reciprocal relationship between religious scholars and lay people? How did the use of certain materials, iconographic features, the conscious reception of antiquity versus local tradition, and even the construction and design of space relate to humanist discourses? And in what way did the same material aesthetics and semantic formulas in turn find their way into the ‘language’ of the Mendicants?
The hypothesis of the conference is the assumption that the mendicants played a significant role in the formation of an iconography of the civitas.

Please find details on participation (on site/via zoom) via https://www.biblhertz.it/3157688/mendicants-humanists-and-the-aesthetics-of-the-civitas-debates-and-political-culture-in-the-14th-and-15th-centuries-and-their-impact-on-art-architecture-and-urban-space

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PROGRAM

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

14.00 - Saluti istituzionali
Tanja Michalsky, Tristan Weddigen, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

14.05 - Introduction
Katharine Stahlbuhk, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome
Claudia Jentzsch, Universität der Künste Berlin

Chair: Lilla Matyòk Engel, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

14.30 - Una reggia nel convento: gli appartamenti papali di Santa Maria Novella nel cuore del Quattrocento
Gaia Ravalli, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa / Museo Civico, Pistoia

15.10 - Retorica umanistica e estetica delle città nella predicazione in capitolo degli ordini mendicanti (Italia, fine XIV-XV secolo)
Cécile Caby, Sorbonne Université, Paris)

15.50 - coffee break

Chair: Laura Valterio, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

16.10 - ‘Ex omni civitate Florentiae elegit’. Fra Mariano Salvini dei Servi di Maria e il rinnovamento artistico della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze
Marco Massoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Emmanuele Carletti, Università degli Studi Roma Tre

16.50 - Humanismus light? Karmeliterpredigten des späten Mittelalters und ihr Einfluss auf die civitas
Ralf Lützelschwab, Freie Universität Berlin

17.30 - coffee break

Chair: Elisabetta Scirocco, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

18.00 - I frati e la città medievale: un network internazionale di studiosi, di idee e di progetti di ricerca
Silvia Beltramo, Politecnico di Torino
Gianmario Guidarelli, Università degli Studi di Padova

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Chair: Giosué Fabiano, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

9.00 - ‘How the grandeur of the city lures’: Verbal Reciprocity in Shaping and Perceiving Renaissance Florence
Peter Howard, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

9.40 - Giovanni Caroli and the New Humanist Aesthetics
Amos Edelheit, Maynmooth University of Ireland

10.20 - ‘L’Aquila, magnifica citade’: Fashioning an Observant Franciscan Centre in the Kingdom of Naples
Pavla Langer, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

11.00 - coffee break

Chair: Sietske Fransen, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

11.10 - Zur Bedeutung der wissenschaftlichen Bemühungen des Dominikanerordens für die Überlieferung des Aristotelestextes: Albert der Große, Wilhelm von Moerbeke und die Schrift De motu animalium
Peter Isépy, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München / Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Venice

11.50 - Giannozzo Manetti‘s Bible Translation: A Case Study of Humanist Greek Scholarship and Translation from Florence to Naples
Annet den Haan, Universiteit Utrecht

12.30 - lunch

Chair: Adrian Bremenkamp, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

13.30 - Contra Averroistas. Dominican Images against the Islamic Heritage of the European Philosophy.
Luis Rueda Galàn, Universidad de Jaén / École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris

14.10 - Francescani e nación catalana in Sardegna. Cantieri spirituali del gotico e comunità di repobladors nella ridefinizione dell’identità politica dell’Isola
Maria Vittoria Spissu, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II / Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna

14.50 - Final Discussion