The Franciscan Bible from the National Museum Library in Prague (XII.B.13) Within the Context of 13th Century Painting The painted miniatures decorating the so-called Franciscan Bible (Prague, KNM XII.B.13), which dates in around the 1270s, illustrate the development of painting in Central Europe during the transition period between Late Romanesque and Gothic style. Illuminations in the Franciscan Bible are the work of four masters, the first of whom illustrated the Old Testament, and the latter three worked on the New Testament. The style of the illuminations places its authors firmly in the circle of artists drawing inspiration from the workshop of Giovanni da Gaibana. The Gaibanesque style is characterized by using traditional local motifs, with elongated tails expanding into the borders. Color tones gradually shift toward the cooler palette; form tends toward more schematic drawings and simplified shapes; imitation of Western style is characterized by gradual abandonment of heavy impasto modeling. The First Master most likely came from the Central Rhenish region, but his ornamental motifs are inspired by the Gaibanesque tradition; the other three masters, on the other hand, fully adopted the Gaibanesque style. Their works differ in the way they chose to interpret the common motifs, their use of...

The thesis is a performative and sensuous study based on pre-iconographic descriptions of the formal features in the ceiling paintings The Triumph of the Name of Jesus (1674-1679) by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (called Baciccio, 1639-1709) in Il Gesù, Rome and Glorification of Sant'Ignazio (1685-1694) by Andrea Pozzo (1642-1709) in Sant'Ignazio, Rome.  By tracing effects likely perceived by different visitors through eyesight and the movement in the room, the aim is to suggest why these artworks are perceived as powerful. The results show that the power of the illusion in both paintings lie in the questioning of elements a visitor will know devoid of iconography or theological understanding of the narrative. Through elements a visitor will recognize and have bodily and sensuous experience of, different features will make the visitor question reality related to painted fiction. This experience and how it affects a visitor is why the artworks hold a central place in the art historical view on the Baroque, and further, Jesuit Style. The method for this analysis is pre-iconographic descriptions of all the figures in the vaulted naves, that are analyzed by the author using performative theory and a sensuous perspective as the theoretical framework. The research question for the thesis is: How is a visitor affected by the formal features in "The Triumph of the Name of Jesus" by Giovanni Battista Gaulli and "Glorification of Sant'Ignazio" by Andrea Pozzo?

Il presente studio intende proporre una rilettura originale della pittura di Nomellini, fondata su un percorso critico incentrato sulle iconografie del lavoro. Tale analisi è limitata cronologicamente alla prima fase della sua attività: dagli esordi fiorentini, intorno al 1886, alle partecipazioni alla Biennale di Venezia nelle edizioni del 1907 e del 1909. Si intende così definire un ideale catalogo delle opere dedicate al tema del lavoro capace di ripercorrere e di precisare quell’evoluzione estetico-ideologica già messa in luce da Ragghianti, che aveva portato diversi artisti inizialmente ispirati a ideali sociali umanitaristi dapprima verso una «significazione idealista» di carattere dannunziano e poi all’adesione a un mitografismo nazionalista e «immaginifico». Uno sviluppo che nel caso di Nomellini parte da dipinti che ritraggono i contadini della Maremma secondo una prospettiva sociale umanitaria e con uno stile ancora in bilico tra il naturalismo e la rappresentazione di un nuovo senso della luce, e che trova un provvisorio punto d’arrivo nelle tele genovesi di dichiarata critica sociale, realizzate con la tecnica divisionista. Se la svolta simbolista di Nomellini comporta anche la scomparsa del tema del lavoro dalla sua pittura, l’iconografia del lavoro si ripresenta nuovamente nella produzione nomelliniana del primo decennio del Novecento, trasfigurata però da una nuova prospettiva ideologica tesa a una mitizzazione nazionalista del mondo del lavoro e dei lavoratori e affrontata con un divisionismo ormai maturo. / The present study intends to propose an original reinterpretation of Nomellini's painting, based on a critical path centered on the iconographies of work. This analysis is chronologically limited to the first phase of his activity: from the Florentine beginnings, around 1886, to the participations in the Venice Biennale in the 1907 and 1909 editions. Thus we intend to define an ideal catalog of works dedicated to the theme of work capable of retrace and clarify that aesthetic-ideological evolution already highlighted by Ragghianti, which had led several artists initially inspired by humanitarian social ideals, first towards an "idealist signification" of a D'Annunzian character and then adherence to a nationalist and "imaginative mythography ". A development that in Nomellini's case starts from paintings that portray the peasants of the Maremma according to a humanitarian social perspective and with a style still poised between naturalism and the representation of a new sense of light, and which finds a provisional point of arrival in the Genoese canvases of declared social criticism, made with the pointillist technique. If Nomellini's symbolist turning point also entails the disappearance of the theme of work from his painting, the iconography of work reappears again in Nomellini's production of the first decade of the twentieth century, transfigured, however, by a new ideological perspective aimed at a nationalist mythization of the world of work and workers and faced with a mature divisionism.

The works published by Giovanni Verga (1840-1922) between 1878 and 1889 exposed Italian culture to the most innovative European literary trend, French Naturalism, and marked a turning point in the landscape of Italian literature. While Verga’s stylistic choices are meant to create, in his own words, ‘the complete illusion of reality’ (having the author disappear from the text in order to make way for a supposedly unmediated representation), I argue that Verga’s Verist fiction ends up emphasizing precisely the ways in which people represent reality according to their own relative point of view. Since the narrative is given from the unreliable perspective of the characters, all the distortions inherent in every storytelling act become apparent. Their viewpoint is purposefully shown as being partial and informed by individual interests, feelings, and desires. These complex dynamics of representation, or misrepresentation, in Verga’s Verist production are at the heart of my enquiry. This critical focus allows me to reevaluate the traditional representation of Verism and Naturalism as backward-looking phenomena, firmly tied to a notion of art as a mirror up to nature. The present study is situated within a growing body of work (inaugurated by Luperini, Pellini, and Merola) that intends to re-frame Verga as having demonstrably paved the way for twentieth-century Modernism. The first chapter interrogates the way in which space is transfigured by characters in I Malavoglia (1881). By looking at how narratives of country vs city, past vs present are formed and shaped by the characters’ relative points of view, I argue that the novel should be read not simply as the account of the modernization of a rural village in post-unification Italy, but mainly as a study into how such oppositional narratives are formed and what aims they serve. The second chapter focuses on a specific character-type, the malevolent observer. I argue that this figure can be seen as a representation of the readers in the texts and that it is instrumental in exemplifying Verga’s skepticism toward the heuristic potential of literature. The third chapter examines the gap between reality and representation as articulated in Mastro-don Gesualdo (1889) by situating Verga in a completely new intellectual framework, that of elite theory as formulated by political theorist Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). This move allows me to re-read what has become a commonplace of Verga criticism – the theatrical conception of politics in Mastro-don Gesualdo as a bitter commentary on trasformismo – as a much wider point on social history, human nature, and on the inherently slippery essence of language, on its built-in capacity to deceive and dissimulate.

El trabajo doctoral da cuenta del análisis del lenguaje prescriptivo de Giovanni Tarello -que se inserta dentro del paradigma de la filosofía analítica del Derecho italiana- y de su teoría de la interpretación. Asimismo, reconstruye las tesis principales de la denominada Escuela genovesa, en el panorama de la filosofía y teoría del Derecho, que se ha caracterizado por la defensa de postulados teóricos que se reconducen, grosso modo, al realismo jurídico y que son: una concepción realista del Derecho, un escepticismo interpretativo y un no cognoscitivismo en materia metaética.

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Paul M. Walker points out the importance of three seventeenth-century manuscripts which, according to him, reflect the origins of the late Baroque monothematic fugue. The documents present a new "model" with specific criteria to write monothematic fugues. Walker suggests that the criteria presented in these manuscripts are first found in seventeenth-century Italian violin ensemble fugues. This thesis traces the development of seventeenth-century monothematic fugues and how they compare with the criteria presented in the manuscripts, with a particular emphasis on Italian violin ensemble fugues. The manuscripts indeed present a new "model" to write monothematic fugues as compared to earlier models. Generally speaking, the criteria included in the manuscripts are more present in monothematic fugues found in seventeenth-century violin ensemble music than in keyboard music of the same period. However, many of these imitative pieces present characteristics of fugato (rather than "true" fugues) and cannot be compared with the manuscripts' criteria. Therefore, the documents are important from a theoretical standpoint but their practical application in seventeenth-century violin music is not as clear or systematic as Walker implies.

War Giovanni Maria Artusi (um 1540–1613) zu Lebzeiten ein hochangesehener Musiktheoretiker, so hat insbesondere die Kontroverse mit Claudio Monteverdi und dessen Bruder Giulio Cesare dafür gesorgt, dass er in der musikalischen Forschung lange Zeit als Inbegriff eines reaktionären Musiktheoretikers rezipiert wurde, der nicht in der Lage gewesen sei, das Visionäre und Wegweisende der Musik Monteverdis zu erfassen. Trotz der weiten Kreise, die das Thema innerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Rezeption seither gezogen hat, wird erst in diesem Beitrag anhand einiger ausgewählter Passagen aus Artusis Canzonette a quattro voci (1598) auch dessen kompositorisches Schaffen in die Diskussion miteinbezogen. / Although Giovanni Maria Artusi (c. 1540–1613) was a well-respected music theorist during his lifetime, the controversy with Claudio Monteverdi and his brother Giulio Cesare ensured that the musical establishment regarded him as a mere reactionary, who was unable to recognise the visionary and ground-breaking aspects of Monteverdi’s music. Despite myriad academic publications on the topic, this is the first article to include Artusi’s own compositions in the discussion by considering selected passages from Artusi’s Canzonette a quattro voci (1598).

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