Special Subject: Diversifying the Italian Renaissance

The ‘Italian Renaissance’ stands as one of the most lauded moments in the history of ‘western
civilization.’ Across the world, museums reserve their principal galleries for Italian paintings
and sculptures from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. In Italy itself, visitors flock
to admire the architecture of Brunelleschi and Palladio, the sculpted masterpieces of
Michelangelo and Bernini, the magnificent frescoes of Raphael, the luminous altarpieces of
Bellini or Titian – and to revere the work of so many other stars, celebrated not only for their
brilliance but as ‘harbingers of modernity.’

The canonical status afforded to the Italian Renaissance dates back to the period itself.
Contemporaries were quick to observe that they were living in an age of exceptional creativity.
The Tuscan painter Giorgio Vasari catapulted many of his compatriots to celebrity in his three-
volume Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, published between
1550 and 1568. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century preoccupations with national identity and
the quest for triumphal narratives of progress fed these assumptions about Italian
exceptionalism. And yet we know that such claims of Italian greatness are as problematic as
they are alluring.

This Special Subject sets out to bust the myth of the Italian Renaissance by revealing its
fundamental diversity. Arriving in Venice in 1494, the French ambassador, Philippe de
Commynes, famously observed that ‘most of their people are foreigners.’ That impression of
diversity is mirrored in depictions of Black gondoliers and Turkish merchants. This course will
address what was not Italian about the Italian Renaissance. What role was played by imported
goods, borrowed technologies and migrant workers, and how did particular spaces influence
the dynamics between them? Our aim is to cast light on the mixing and mobility that defined
the period. By attending to the contributions of minority groups, and to encounters around
objects and spaces, we begin to see a very different picture of the Renaissance in Italy.

Our broader methodological challenge is to recalibrate the ‘Italian Renaissance’ in the light of
burgeoning research into minorities and mobility and to reconsider its place in a decolonized
view of the past.

Detail, Detail,
School of Miracle of
Athens, the True
Raphael Cross,
(1509-11), Carpaccio
Vatican (1496),
City Accademia,
Venice
In the first term of the Special Subject, we shall focus on people (outsider and minority groups,
including Black Africans, Jews, Muslims, Eastern Christians and Protestants) and spaces (both
meeting places, such as markets and docks, and sites of segregation, such as ghettos or
fondachi, secure compounds designed to enclose foreign merchants). Having charted the
contours of diversity in the Italian Renaissance, the second term will drill down to explore its
cultural consequences.

This interdisciplinary course will make extensive use of material and visual sources, as well as
written evidence. All texts will be in translation. Students will be expected to give
presentations throughout the year and to study primary and secondary sources in preparation
for each class. We will use the online annotation platform Perusall to encourage interaction
and group learning beyond the classroom. In thinking about the place of the Italian
Renaissance in the public imagination, we are lucky to have access to the incomparable
collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum. The Special Subject will appeal especially to those who
are keen to cross disciplinary boundaries, challenge conventional narratives, and are
interested in how we can shape historical understanding beyond the academy.

Background reading

For those of you who have never studied the Italian Renaissance, you might find it useful to
read one or more of the following introductory books: Guido Ruggiero, The Renaissance in
Italy: A Social and Cultural History of the Rinascimento (2015); Virginia Cox, A Short History
of the Italian Renaissance (2016); Evelyn Welch, Art in Renaissance Italy, 1350-1500 (2000);
Stephen Campbell and Michael Cole, A New History of Italian Renaissance Art (2012).

Fitzwilliam Museum, Dish, M.21-1950, Veneto, 1500-1550,

Diameter: 53 cm, Height: 6.4 cm
‘Gilt-brass chased with a radiating design of arabesques and panels of interlace in Islamic style’
COURSE OUTLINE

Michaelmas Term

PEOPLE:

1. The Black Gondolier and the Myth of the Italian Renaissance. Lowe, 2013; Tognetti,
in Earle and Lowe, 2005; Jardine, 1996, ch. 1; Philippe de Commynes on Venice;
images of Black Magi and here; depiction of Armenian, Turkish, Moorish and North
European dress in Vecellio.

2. Jews. Toaff, 1993, selected documents; Leon of Modena, 1637; Bonfil, 1994, chs 2, 7-
9; Terpstra, 12.7, on conversion; Mampieri, 2020: Hebrew Chronicle; Michelson, 2017.

3. Muslims. Terpstra, 12.12, Botero; Burnett and Contadini, chs 1, 4, 6; Contadini and
Norton, 2016, chs 11 and 12; Coneys Wainwright and Michelson, 2021, ch. 10; Gigante,
2023.

4. Christian Others. Coneys Wainwright and Michelson, 2021, chs 3-8 (focus on English,
Ethiopians and Eastern Christians in Rome); Caravale, 2019 on ‘Gypsies’; E. Burke, 2016,
ch. 3, Fattori, 2019, ch. 1 on Greeks in Venice and Ancona. Cohen and Cohen, ch. 6, on
Lucrezia, a Greek sex-worker in Rome. Chambers and Pullan, V.5: English Protestant’s
account of religious life in Venice (1608).

SPACES:

5. The ‘urban condom’: spaces of segregation. Sennett, 1996, ch. 7, ‘Fear of Touching:
The Jewish Ghetto in Renaissance Venice;’ Cassen, 2017, ch. 1; Chambers and Pullan,
VIII.1-3, 8, 15, documents relating to the foundation of the ghetto, German fondaco
and Turkish fondaco. Richardson et al., doc. 2.6.9 (description of German fondaco).
Constable, ch. 9, on ‘the fondaco in Mediterranean Europe.’

6. Inns and hostelries: spaces of hospitality. Salzberg, 2019 and 2021; Coneys
Wainwright and Michelson, 2021, ch. 3; Fabri on staying at a Venetian inn ‘at the sign
of the Flute,’ pp. 79-86; Montaigne’s Travel Journal, pp. 106-110 – account of his stay
in Loreto; trial record of two Jews arrested at an inn in Macerata.

7. Synagogues, mosques and national churches: spaces of worship. Montaigne and

Evelyn – accounts of circumcisions in Rome. Coneys Wainwright and Michelson, 2021,
ch. 4 on the English College in Rome; E. Burke, 2016, ch. 4 and Fattori, 2017, on Greek
churches in Venice and Ancona; Trivellato, 2009, ch. 3, on Livorno; Scuola Dalmata,
Venice.

8. Fairs, ports and markets: spaces of exchange. Welch, 2005, ch. 6, on fairs. Garzoni,
Piazza Universale, on the trade in spices. Saracini on the diversity of Ancona and Paul
III’s 1547 brief granting free access to foreigners to the port; Lavenia, 2018. Mack, intro
and ch. 10; Inì on lazzaretti.
Lent Term

RECONCEPTUALIZING THE RENAISSANCE

9. Material diversity. Handling session in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Investigation of

‘Italian Renaissance’ glass, maiolica and metalware to reveal hidden diversities.
Richardson et al., inventories 3.1.2, 3.1.3 ; Cennini, section II on colours, esp. chs 45
on ochre and 62 on lapis lazuli; Matthew, 2002; Bucklow, The Trade in Colours, in
Panayotova, 2016; Behrens-Abouseif on so-called ‘Veneto-Saracenic’ metalware.

10. Knowledge transfer. Englander et al., 146-56 Bessarion’s Act of Donation, 1468; Ajmar
and Molà, 2011; Howard, 2007; Cellini, on Turkish daggers, ch. 31; Foreign artists:
Richardson et al., docs 2.2.3, 2.2.4, 2.2.5, 2.2.6, 2.3.2 (on Netherlandish painters); 3.5.3,
3.5.7 (on Greek icon producers; see also Lymberopoulou); Chambers, doc. 112
(Venetian artist commissioned to copy painting by a German artist). Mack, 2002, chs
4, 6, 8 on carpets, glass and brass. Dürer in Venice, 1506, pp. 45-60.

11. The Jewish Renaissance. Roth, 1959, intro.; Bonfil, 1984; Herzig, 2020, 1-3, 15;
Steimann, 2017; Coneys Wainwright and Michelson, 2021, ch. 11; Corry et al., pp. 40-
45; Leon of Modena, pp. 110-129; 146-149.

12. Appropriation, Possession, Extraction. Images of enslaved people in Spicer; on the

Italian slave trade, see Origo, Zhang and Lowe, 2024, chs 1, 3, 5; Markey, 2016, chs 2,
4, 5; Bronzino, La dovizia; Allori, Pearlfishers, on extraction. Howard, 2003 on shopping
abroad.

13. Rethinking the Renaissance galleries. Visit to Galleries 6 & 7 of the Fitzwilliam
Museum. Exercise in imagining redisplay and relabelling of art works currently
described as ‘Italian Renaissance.’ Rewrite the labels of a painting and an item of
material culture.

14. Renaissance Orientalisms. Said, 1979, intro., sections 1 and 2; Howard, 2000; Jardine
and Brotton, 2000, ch. 1; Biedermann et al., 2018, chs 1 and 2; Brennan, 2023.
Piccolomini on the Turks.

15. The racist Renaissance. Bethencourt, 2013, ch. 5; Zimmerman, 2013, Ferrini and
Miracoli – racist miracle stories; Boccadamo, 2021, baptismal records for ‘Black Moors’
in Naples; Herzig, 2023, on Livorno and its legacies of enslavement; Herzig, 2022,
documents relating to the gang rape of enslaved Jewish women in Livorno, 1610.

16. New Worlds, Diverse Renaissances. Markey, 2016, chs 3 and 6; Jardine and Brotton,
2000, ch. 1; McManus, 2022.

17-18. REVISION
PRIMARY SOURCES:

Archivio diocesano, Macerata. Contra hebreos M. Jacobum et Isaacham, 27 December 1589.

Arrest of two Jews in an inn in Macerata, trans. MRL

Boccadamo, Giuliana, ed., ‘”Black Moors” in Naples, 16th to 17th Centuries: Documentary
Appendix,’ in Gianfranco Salvatore (ed.), Il chiaro e lo scuro: gli Africani nell’Europa del
Rinascimento tra realtà e rappresentazione (Lecce: ARGO, 2021), pp. 424-56 (a set of
baptismal records of enslaved Africans in Naples, trans. MRL).

Cellini, Benvenuto. Autobiography (New York, 1910) online

Cennini, Cennino, trans. Daniel V. Thompson, The Craftsman’s Handbook (New York: Dover
Publications, 1960).

Chambers, David. Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1970)

Chambers, David and Brian Pullan (eds). Venice: A Documentary History, 1450-1630 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992)

Commynes, Philippe de, The historie of Philip de Commines Knight, Lord of Argenton, trans.
Thomas Danett (London: John Brill, 1614) online

Cohen, Thomas and Elizabeth Cohen, Words and Deeds: Trials before the Papal Magistrates
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); ch. 6, the trial of ‘Lucrezia the Greek,’ 1559.

Corry, Maya, Deborah Howard and Mary Laven (eds), Madonnas & Miracles: The Holy Home
in Renaissance Italy (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2017).

Dürer, Albrecht. Letters to Willibald Pirckheimer, Venice, September- October, 1506 online

Evelyn, John. Diary. Account of a Jewish circumcision in Rome, 1645 online

Fabri, Felix. Felix Fabri (circa 1480-1483 A.D.), ed. and trans. Aubrey Stewart (London:
Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, 1892). Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society (Ser.); V.7-10.

Ferrini, Luca. Coróna di sessanta tre Miracoli della nunziata di Firenze scritti à honore e
reverenza di sessanta tre Anni, che visse la Beata Vergine in questo Mondo (Florence: Giorgio
Marescotti, 1593); Miracle 53: ‘A lady gave birth to a black baby boy and being condemned
to be poisoned to death by her husband, the black boy became miraculously white,’ trans.
MRL.

Garzoni, Tomaso. La Piazza Universale Di Tutte Le Professioni Del Mondo, 2 vols, ed. by
Giovanni Battista Bronzini et al., (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1996); volume 2, pp. 1059-60, on the
trade in spices, trans. MRL.
Herzig, Tamar. ‘Slavery and Interethnic Sexual Violence,’ The American Historical Review 127
(2022): 194-222 (pp. 205, 207, 212 and 214); documents relating to the gang rape of Jewish
enslaved women in Livorno, 1610.

Leon of Modena. The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-century Venetian Rabbi : Leon

Modena's Life of Judah, translated and edited by Mark R. Cohen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
UP, 1988), pp. 75-180.

Leon of Modena. Historia de gli riti hebraici. Dove si ha’ breve, e total relatione di tutta la
vita, costumi, riti, et osservanze, de gl’Hebrei di questi tempi di Leon Modena Rabi Hebreo di
Venetia (Paris, 1637); extracts translated by MRL.
For a full translation of the text from 1650, see here.

Martina Mampieri (ed.), Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV by
Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16th century). (Leiden: Brill,
2020).

Miracoli della gloriosa vergine Maria historiati: Novamente corretti in Lingua tosca ridutti.
Con diecesette Miracoli aggionti, li quali non sonno nelli altri (Venice: Agustino Bindoni,
1551); Chapter 30: ‘Of a woman much devoted to the Virgin Mary who gave birth to a very
black baby boy,’ trans. MRL.

Montaigne's Travel Journal, 1580-81 ed. and trans. Donald M. Frame (San Francisco: North
Point, 1983).

Ozment, Steven (ed). Three Behaim boys : growing up in early modern Germany : a chronicle
of their lives (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1990); Friedrich’s letters from Venice and
Padua, 1581-82, pp. 155-59

Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius (Pope Pius II), Europe (c. 1400–1458), trans. R. Brown, ed. Nancy
Bisaha (Washington, DC, 2013), Sect. 4, ‘Origin and History of the Turks’ (introduction and
pp. 72–78) [e-book – primary source]

Piccolpasso, Cipriano. The Three Books of the Potter's Art. I Tre Libri Dell'arte Del Vasaio : A
Facsimile of the Manuscript in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, trans. and
Introduced by Ronald Lightbown and Alan Caiger-Smith (London: Scolar, 1980) – see also
entry on the V&A website

Richardson, Carol M., Kim Woods and Michael Franklin. Renaissance Art Reconsidered : An
Anthology of Primary Sources (Malden, MA: Open University, 2007).

Saracini, Giuliano, Notitie Historiche d’Ancona (Rome: Nicolò Angelo Tinassi, 1675), pp. 361-
62, 431-35, trans. MRL.

Terpstra, Nicholas. Lives Uncovered: A Sourcebook of Early Modern Europe (2019).

Toaff, Ariel. The Jews in Umbria (Leiden: Brill, 1993); documents trans. MRL.
Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Conaway
Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Vecellio, Cesare, Margaret F. Rosenthal, and Ann Rosalind Jones, The Clothing of the
Renaissance World : Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas: Cesare Vecellio's Habiti Antichi Et
Moderni (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008). See also selection of images on the Met
website

Material and Visual Sources:

Fitzwilliam Museum: objects to include coins and medals, tin-glazed earthenware, glass,
metalwork, armour, paintings, sculptures.

The Met: Jews and the Decorative Arts in Early Modern Italy

The Met: Vecellio, 1590, De gli habiti antichi et moderni di diversi parti del mondo

The Met: Exploring Representations of the Black Magus in European Art

Getty Museum: Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art

Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, Miracle of True Cross cycle, and here, 1500, Accademia,
Venice.

Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Preaching of St Mark in Alexandria, 1504-1507, Brera, Milan.

Gentile Bellini workshop?, The Reception of the Ambassadors in Damascus, 1511, Louvre,
Paris.

Vittore Carpaccio, St Ursula cycle, 1490s, Accademia, Venice.

Vittore Carpaccio, St George cycle, c. 1501-1512, Scuola Dalmata, Venice.

Vittore Carpaccio, Two Standing Women, One in Mamluk Dress, 1501-1508, Princeton
University Art Museum.

Agnolo Bronzino, La dovizia, 1545, Museo degli argenti, Florence, Italy. For image and
details, see Markey, Lia, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (University Park, PA:
Penn State University Press, 2016), ch. 2 ‘A Turkey in a Medici Tapestry,’ pp. 17-27.

Alessandro Allori, Pearlfishers, 1570-72, oil on slate, 116 x 86 cm, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
See Markey, Lia, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (University Park, PA: Penn State
University Press, 2016), ch. 5, ‘The Stanzino and the Representation of the New World,’ pp.
63-77.
Joaneath Spicer (ed.), Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe (Baltimore:
Walters Art Gallery, 2013) – online catalogue
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