Renaissance – The Canadian Institute for Mediterranean Studies

Relics of Roman Identity: Re-Collecting the Lost Palazzo del Bufalo, Rome (c. 1450-1600)

Noel McFerran — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Matthew Coleman, PhD candidate, University of Toronto (Art History)

The antiquities collection of the del Bufalo family was one of the largest and most influential in Rome, c. 1450-1600. Unfortunately, unlike richer contemporary collections (e.g., of the Medici or d’ Este), neither the Bufali artifacts nor their home exist today. This talk explores both the bookish and globetrotting methodologies used to reconstruct Renaissance antiquities collections which have been lost to time, in an effort to restore their extraordinary cultural legacies for future study.

Zoom link: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/86310345964

Co-sponsored by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, the University of Toronto Department of Italian Studies, the University of Toronto Department of Classics, the University of Toronto Department of Art History, and the University of Toronto Archaeology Centre.

Rethinking Parmigianino’s Portraits

Noel McFerran — Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:15:00 +0000

Giancarla Periti, University of Toronto

Judging the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel

Noel McFerran — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dr. Michael O’Connor, Associate Professor, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto

In the 1530s Michelangelo added the Last Judgment to the previous work he and others had painted in the Sistine Chapel. In doing so, he completed but also disrupted the artistic program of the Chapel begun half a century earlier under the patronage of Pope Sixtus IV.

Is the result a success? This talk will consider different answers to that question.

Michael O’Connor is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Christianity and Culture program and Book and Media Studies program at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.

His research interests include music and liturgy, early modern intellectual history (especially Renaissance Rome), Christianity and the arts, and history of biblical exegesis. Recent courses have included “Ritual and Worship” and the First Year Foundations Seminar “The Sistine Chapel: History, Image, Use.”

Professor O’Connor is the director of the St. Michael’s Schola Cantorum and the college Singing Club. A board member of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music and the Royal School of Music, Canada, he is also active as composer, arranger, and music editor.

He arrived at the University of St. Michael’s College in 2005. He formerly served as Warden of the Royal School of Music, UK and Lecturer in Theology, Ushaw College, UK. Professor O’Connor holds degrees from Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome (STB, STL), and Oxford, Oriel College (DPhil).

Renaissance Readers and Their Books: Representations of a Fugitive Act

mediterraneanstudies_0ftro0 — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 19:00:00 +0000

Antonio Ricci, York University

The image of a person holding a book appears frequently in Renaissance art and literature. The privileged status of texts in humanist culture and their proliferation after the coming of print technology contributed to the motif’s popularity. This lecture will examine depictions of readers in paintings and poems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The intention is to recover aspects of the experience of reading during the period and, at the same time, to gain a measure of insight into what remains an elusive phenomenon. What does reading mean? What is it, really, that we are doing when we engage in this fundamentally human act? The Renaissance offers us intriguing answers.

Generously funded by Joe Di Geso.

Presented jointly by CIMS Ottawa and CIMS Toronto.

Who Created Florence? Making a Renaissance City

mediterraneanstudies_0ftro0 — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 23:00:00 +0000

Nicholas Terpstra, University of Toronto

Florence stands out for many as embodying the peak of Italian Renaissance creativity. But what made it the artistic centre that we see today? Many Renaissance cities had artists, architects, authors, and musicians, but few have the reputation that Florence continues to enjoy as the place to go in order to immerse yourself in the culture of the Renaissance. To understand why, we have to go beyond the artists themselves and look at those who later collected, conserved, and (re)created the art and architecture we see today. This lecture will move form a fifteenth century creator, to a sixteenth century collector, an eighteenth century conservor, and a group of nineteenth century expatriates in order to answer the question of “who created Florence” as the modern Renaissance capital that we see today.

Generously funded by Joe Di Geso. Presented jointly by CIMS Ottawa and CIMS Toronto.