Niccolò Liburnio’s Selvette, published in Venice in 1513, is an undiscussed source for the role of art as ambiguous evidence in the early cinquecento. One of the stories in Liburnio’s book is a fictional adultery trial, in which the main evidence is a painting by Giovanni Bellini. Both the prosecutor and the defense use this painting in their arguments. No such painting by Giovanni...
Child Monuments in Renaissance Poland
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In Renaissance Poland (1500–1650), there was a tradition of erecting funeral monuments to commemorate young children, a practice unique in Europe at that time, which raises interesting issues beyond the appearance of the monuments themselves. A large subset of these monuments illustrate a single iconographic type: the child as a sleeping putto with a skull, a motif that is particularly...
The Spanish Hieronymites and the Reformed Texts of the Council of Trent
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In the wake of the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church mandated the printing of new, uniform religious texts. This article examines the manner in which the Hieronymite monastic order in Spain responded to the council’s directive. It demonstrates that the Hieronymites, despite their own reforming activities and their extraordinarily close relationship with the Spanish monarchy, at first...
Marie Dentiere: An Outspoken Reformer Enters the French Literary Canon
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For ten years, the University of Chicago Press has been publishing the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, edited by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. This series publishes translations and editions of works written during the period 1300–1700 that in some way challenge the dominant negative view of women. Most of these texts are by women, and with forty-four works in...