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23 results

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Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy
  • Art and the Verdant Earth
  • Edited by Leopoldine Prosperetti, April Oettinger, Karen Hope Goodchild
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    21 November 2020
    Print publication:
    06 June 2019
  • The green mantle of the earth! This metaphor is a poetic image that borrows from the vocabulary of weaving and epitomizes the Renaissance interest in "fashioning green worlds" in art and poetry. Here it serves as a motto for a cultural poetics that made representing living nature increasingly popular across Italy in the Early Modern period. The explosion of landscape art in this era is often associated with the rise of interest in the literary pastoral, narrowly defined, but this volume expands that understanding to show Green’s broad appeal as it intrigued audiences ranging from the ecclesiastic to the medical and scientific to the humanistic and courtly. The essays gathered here explore the expanding technologies and varied cultural dimensions of verzure and verdancy in the Italian Renaissance, and thus the role of visual art in shaping the poetics and expression of greenery in the arts of the 16th-century and beyond.

  • 5 - Naturalism and Antiquity, Redefined, in Vasari's Verzure

  • Edited by Leopoldine Prosperetti, April Oettinger, Karen Hope Goodchild
  • Book:
    Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy
    Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    21 November 2020
    Print publication:
    06 June 2019, pp 109-130

  • Summary

    Abstract

    Bringing green nature indoors had been an Italian domestic habit since the Middle Ages, but, as the real gardens outside of villas and palaces became more complex, erudite and splendid, so did the painted green architecture gracing palace interiors. This essay offers a careful reading of Lives of the Artists to show how Vasari understood such refined decorative programs. Tracing Vasari's very particular use of the word verzure, a term Vasari uses only in the second edition of his book and only in reference to trained plant structures, either painted or real, the essay examines Vasari's thoughts on the best way to deploy fictive green architecture in interiors and also which artists he believed had the appropriate skills for this task.

    Keywords: green architecture, garlands, Giorgio Vasari, Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), verdure, renaissance gardens, Raphael, Giovanni da Udine, pergola, ornament

    Ephemeral Courtly Verzure

    In a letter to Pietro Aretino, 25 year old Giorgio Vasari records a charming anecdote about verdure. Vasari claims that he worked many days preparing ornaments for Florence's welcome of Emperor Charles in 1536, proceeding almost unaided because local artists were leery of helping an interloper from Arezzo. Ultimately, on the morning of the entry, Vasari collapsed ‘for very weariness on a bundle of verdure intended for the decorations’. The story has a happy – and self-aggrandizing – ending. Duke Alessandro, taking a last minute tour of the festal ephemera, has Vasari roused from his green pillow and tells him, ‘Giorgio mine, this work of yours is larger, more beautiful, better executed, and more speedily finished than that of anybody else’.

    Although Vasari writes this story to demonstrate his early promise as an impresario, an organizer of court events, for our purposes it brings to the fore an essential use of verzure in Renaissance arts: festal greenery. Throughout his career, such verdure continued to occupy Vasari. We have a 1565 notation of expenditures for some decorations overseen by Vasari for the Palazzo Vecchio courtyard recorded as ‘terra cotta putti heads interspersed with ram and lion heads made of paper-mache, all hung with festonj di verzura’. As with many such ephemeral decorations, this grouping was partly made of actual plant matter, but included non-organic materials as well, and featured delights like exotic beasts and mythic creatures.

  • The TWIN-E Project in Emotional Wellbeing: Study Protocol and Preliminary Heritability Results Across Four MRI and DTI Measures

  • Justine M. Gatt, Mayuresh S. Korgaonkar, Peter R. Schofield, Anthony Harris, C. Richard Clark, Karen L. Oakley, Kaushik Ram, Hope Michaelson, Sarsha Yap, Melinda Stanners, Vikki Wise, Leanne M. Williams
  • Journal:
    Twin Research and Human Genetics / Volume 15 / Issue 3 / June 2012
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    15 June 2012, pp. 419-441
    • Article
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  • Despite the significant advancements being made in the neurogenetics for mental health, the identification and validation of potential endophenotype markers of risk and resilience remain to be confirmed. The TWIN-E study (The Twin study in Wellbeing using Integrative Neuroscience of Emotion) aims to validate endophenotype markers of mental health across cognitive, brain, and autonomic measures by testing the heritability, clinical plausibility, and reliability of each of these measures in a large adult twin cohort. The specific gene and environmental mechanisms that moderate prospective links between endophenotype-phenotype markers and the final outcome of wellbeing will also be identified. TWIN-E is a national prospective study with three phases: I) baseline testing on a battery of online questionnaires and cognitive tasks, and EEG, MRI, and autonomic testing; II) 12-month follow-up testing on the online assessments; and III) randomized controlled trial of brain training. Minimum target numbers include 1,500 male/female twins (18–65 years) for the online assessments (Phase I and II), 300 twins for the EEG testing component, and 244 twins for the MRI testing component. For Phase III, each twin out of the pair will be randomized to either the treatment or waitlist control group to test the effects of brain training on mental health over a 30-day period, and to confirm the gene–environment and endophenotype contributions to treatment response. Preliminary heritability results are provided for the first 50% of the MRI subgroup (n = 142) for the grey matter volume, thickness, and surface area measures, and white matter diffuse tensor imaging fractional anisotropy.

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