Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-27gpq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T09:51:44.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Paul Barolsky*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia

Abstract

This essay is a prolegomenon to the general study of Ovid's relations to Renaissance art and art theory. As is well known, the Metamorphoses determined the subjects of numerous works of art during the Renaissance. What is not sufficiently appreciated, however, is the extent to which the ancient poet's sense of "metamorphosis" as a figure of poesis, making or "poetry," helped shape Renaissance notions of poetic transformation in the visual arts. The emergent taste for the non finito in the Renaissance, most notably in the work of Michelangelo, had important roots in Ovidean aesthetics.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Trans. C. Grayson. Harmondsworth, 1991.Google Scholar
Barkan, Leonard. The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphoses and the Pursuit of Paganism. New Haven, 1986.Google Scholar
Barolsky, Paxil. Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art. Columbia, MO, 1978.Google Scholar
Barolsky, Paxil. The Faun in the Garden: Michelangelo and the Poetic Origins of Italian Renaissance Art. University Park, PA, 1994.Google Scholar
Castiglione, Baldassare. Libro del Cortegiano. Milan, 1987.Google Scholar
Durling, Robert and Martinez, Ronald. Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante's Rime Petrose. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990.Google Scholar
Eitner, Lorenz. Neo-Classicism and Romanticism: 1750 -1850. Vol. 1. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970.Google Scholar
Fermor, Sharon. Piero di Cosimo, Invention and Fantasia. London, 1992.Google Scholar
Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art. 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1994.Google Scholar
Hibbard, Howard. Bernini. Harmondsworth, 1965.Google Scholar
Juren, Vladimir. “Fecit-faciebat.” Revue del'Art 26 (1974): 2730.Google Scholar
Lazzaro, Claudia. The Italian Renaissance Garden. New Haven and London, 1990.Google Scholar
Lorenzo de’ Medici. Selected Poems and Prose. Ed. J. Thiem. University Park, PA, 1991.Google Scholar
Novelle italiane: il Quattrocento. Ed. Gioachino Chiarini. Milan, 1982.Google Scholar
Ovid, Metamorphoses. 2 vols. Trans. F. J. Miller. Cambridge, MA and London, 1968, 1971.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York, 1962.Google Scholar
Petrarch's Lyric Poems. Trans. Robert Durling. Cambridge, 1976.Google Scholar
Pico della Mirandola. On the Dignity of Man. Trans. C. G. Wallis. Indianapolis and New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Pon, Lisa. “Michelangelo's First Signature.“ Source 14 (1996): 1619.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. Only Connect … Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton, 1972.Google Scholar
Vasari, Giorgio, Le vite de'piu eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori. 8 vols. Ed. G. Milanesi. Florence, 1906.Google Scholar