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Woman, that you were a Sun among women ": on the youthful poetic attempts by Paolo Paruta (mid 16th century)
60-73Views:147During the mid-1560s, Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), future Ambassador of the Republic of Venice in Rome (1591-1595) and author of the three books of Perfettione della Vita Politica (Venice, 1579) wrote some poems: the canzone Donna, che fosti tra le donne un Sole, and three somnets. The former was then published in Dionigi Atanagi’s Rime di diversi nobilissimi et eccellentissimi autori, in morte della Signora Irene delle Signore di Spilimbergo (Venice, 1561), the latters were insert in Diomede Borghesi’s anthology for Cinzia Braccioduro Garzadori (then published in Padua, 1567, without Paruta’s somnets).
Writing those juvenile poems and making them circulate among the Venetian literary circles (such as Domenico Venier’s), Paruta was looking not only for artistic approval, but also for social visibility: the canzone and the somnets were part of his wider strategy for social climbing inside Venetian patrician ruling class.
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Marano: a disputed fortress: The crisis of political-diplomatic relations between the main European powers following the coup d'état on Marano in 1542
46-59Views:173Venice’s reconquest of Marano in 1542 was a key moment in the history of the Republic. The fortress of Marano was in fact at the top of its glory between the XV and XVI century, when it was contested between Austria and Venice. When it fell in the hands of Austria in 1513, Venice tried to reconquest it with every possible means. After years of unsuccessful attempts, the feat was carried out by Beltrame Sacchia, an ambitious and adventurous merchant from Udine, who occupied the fortress in 1542 in name of the King of France. This article analyses the repercussions of Marano’s reconquest on European political equilibrium. What happened on the morning of January 2, 1542, as well as making a turning point in the boundary dynamics between Venice and the Austrian, deeply damaged the diplomatic relations between the main powers of Europe: the Venetian Republic, France, the Empire and the Ottomans.
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Italiano: Italiano
Views:136In the essay Note sulla tradizione spirituale e religiosa Quondam denounced the prejudice which for a long time excluded from the field of “literature” the experiences of religious poetry of the pre-baroque era. The issue is greater in the field of figurative arts, where sacred poetry and those who dealt with it still find it hard to establish themselves as sources for the knowledge of works and artistic languages. This is the case of the Venetian Maurizio Moro, a canon and scholar who lived between the 16th and 17th centuries, known above all as the author of the commentary verses on Dürer’s Little Passion (Venice, 1612). The essay discusses the author’s composition on the «Imagine del Salvatore, dal Pordenon pittor famoso dipinta». The text, published in 1609 within the Amorosi stimoli dell’anima penitente and still unknown to those who have treated the Friulan painter, bears witness to a work not otherwise known, re-evaluating Moro as a precious source for art history and criticism.
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Italy's role in carrying out the Danube Confederation project of 1862
146-161Views:271In the autumn of 1861, a French-Italian-Greek plan was prepared to make Balkan peoples rebel. The leaders of the Hungarian emigration, expecting an upcoming war, consulted on establishing an offensive and defensive alliance between Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Romania. Their aim was, as opposed to in 1848-49, to make the peoples of the Danube region fight against Vienna instead of Pest, thus helping Torino acquire Venice. Ignác Helfy published the essential elements of the emigration discussions in the Alleanza newspaper, edited by himself, titled “Il programma ungherese”, which became a success in the Italian press. The Tribuno newspaper, led by Marco Antonio Canini, besides disputing Alleanza, asked the paper to reveal everything they knew. Shortly thereafter, Canini visited György Klapka and they prepared the plan of the Danubian Confederation - which Victor Emmanuel II approved as well. Canini, preparing for his diplomatic tour in the Balkan region, visited Lajos Kossuth, who thought establishing a defence alliance would be more realistic in that political situation - but Canini convinced him that a confederation had to be created between the nations involved. Kossuth’s comments on Klapka and Canini’s plan were put on paper. However, Helfy indiscreetly published them in his paper, making it impossible for Canini to conduct successful diplomatic negotiations between the countries. Finally, Victor Emmanuel II, who originally wanted one of his relatives to be the ruler of the Greek Kingdom and the leader of the Confederation, withdrew from the plans for the rebellion, due to lack of French support.
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Success and Translation of Italian Literature in Hungary
20-35Views:276Literary criticism, both in Hungary and in Italy, has paid great attention to the fortune and irradiation of Italian literature in Hungary, just think of the thirteen volumes, the result of the scientific collaboration of the Giorgi Cini Foundation of Venice and of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The article aims to offer a broad overview of the success of the Italian literature in Hungary, especially through translations. The article reviews the various historical periods and literary movements that characterized the literary contacts between the two countries. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, the irradiation of Italian literature was first of all manifested in the use of literary models and poetic formulas in the works of the major authors of Hungarian literature. The 19th century saw instead the season of translation of the great classics of the first Italian literature (Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio) translated again in the twentieth century, thanks also to the commitment of the Magyar Italianists. Finally, the article focuses on the present situation, describing the translations of contemporary authors
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Anna Banti's femmine sapute. From Artemisia to Il bastardo
38-61Views:82Between 1980 and 1981 on the third page of the «Corriere della Sera» Anna Banti published eleven portraits of women painters. The column opens with an article on Sofonisba Anguissola, the author of Autoritratto al cavalletto, a symbol of the reclamation of female identity which calls into question the role assigned to women in the 16th century. It is the culmination of a reflection that began in 1947 with the novel Artemisia. Famous in the news of the time for having been at the center of a rape trial, Artemisia Gentileschi is read as the figure responsible for a talent, the painting, defended at the cost of a loneliness that accompanies her until death. Le donne muoiono is the title of a collection of four stories published in 1951. In the last one, Lavinia fuggita, the theme of vocation returns. In 18th century Venice where composing music was considered a male profession, Lavinia cannot give up the natural inclination to manipulate the scores with jokes of her own invention. The latest female character who refuses to take the traditional way of marriage is Cecilia De Gregorio, protagonist of Il bastardo, the novel published in 1953. Through an austere path but not without doubts, it tells the story of a woman who finds fulfillment in her studies and becomes an engineer head of a company