This essay examines the reception of the Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE) in the northern Italian city of Bergamo. Analysis of book inventories, teacher contracts, episcopal correspondence, and other primary sources from the long sixteenth century indicate that Horace was a well-known author in Bergamasque schools, convents, and libraries, albeit always secondary to Cicero and Virgil. The essay...
Princes and Ambiguities of French Protestantism
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This article rethinks the important question of why, despite the remarkable success of the French Protestant movement in the late 1550s and early 1560s, France did not turn Protestant. It does so by focusing on a hitherto neglected group: the French princely houses. Recent research has forced reconsideration of the motives and confessional identity of some of the best-known princes, such as...
Vasari and the Etruscan Manner
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The expansive literature on Giorgio Vasari (1511–74) has paid little notice to his views on the ancient Etruscans. Yet Vasari was the first author to establish a canon of Etruscan style and to apply his criteria to the analysis of an Etruscan object. His passages on the Etruscans are, therefore, a landmark in the history of art historical method. This paper considers Vasari’s notion of the ...
Search for the Northwest Passage
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In the last quarter of the sixteenth century, John Dee, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and John Davis, became key advocates of the English search for the a northwest passage. Before the English explorers set out in search of such a passage, they needed reasons to believe that there might be an open sea route to China. These three men were instrumental in constructing rational arguments for the...