In the nineteenth century, new cemeteries were built in many Italian cities that were unique in scale and grandeur, and which became destinations on the Grand Tour. From the Middle Ages, the dead had been buried in churches and urban graveyards but, in the 1740s, a radical reform across Europe prohibited burial inside cities and led to the creation of suburban burial grounds. Italy’s nineteenth-century cemeteries were distinctive as monumental or architectural structures, rather than lands...

Historicizing both emotions and politics, this open access book argues that the historical work of emotion is most clearly understood in terms of the dynamics of institutionalization. This is shown in twelve case studies that focus on decisive moments in European and US history from 1800 until today. Each case study clarifies how emotions were central to people’s political engagement and its effects. The sources range from parliamentary buildings and social movements, to images and speeche...

"Walker here pairs off proto-architect Filippo Brunelleschi and doormaker Lorenzo Ghiberti in an often engaging version of Quattrocento Smackdown." — Library JournalJoining the bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, this is a lively and intriguing tale of two artists whose competitive spirit brought to life one of the world's most magnificent structures and ignited the Renaissance.The dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore, the gr...

The Renaissance was a diverse phenomenon, marked by innovation and economic expansion, the rise of powerful rulers, religious reforms, and social change. Encompassing the entire continent, Renaissance Architecture examines the rich variety of buildings that emerged during these seminal centuries of European history. Although marked by the rise of powerful individuals, both patrons and architects, the Renaissance was equally a time of growing group identities and communities - and architect...

In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Hainsworth and David Robey consider Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the present day, looking at themes and issues which have recurred throughout its history and continue to be of importance today.Examining themes such as regional identities, political disunity, and the role of the national language, they also cover a wide range of authors and works, including Dante, Petrarch, Manzoni, Montale, and Calvino. They explore some of the distincti...

Jane Tylus's Siena is a compelling and intimate portrait of this most secretive of cities, often overlooked by travelers to Italy. Cultural history, intellectual memoir, travelogue, and guidebook, it takes the reader on a quest of discovery through the well- and not-so-well-traveled roads and alleys of a town both medieval and modern.As Tylus leads us through the city, she shares her passion for Siena in novelistic prose, while never losing sight of the historical complexi...

The Italian painter, draughtsman, and architect known as Raphael has always been acknowledged as one of the greatest European artists. In his own time he was one of the most famous painters working in Italy during the High Renaissance, commissioned to create celebrated altarpieces and devotional paintings, and to decorate the papal apartments in the Vatican Palace. This fully illustrated and comprehensive Grove Art Essentials title covers Raphael's life and prolific artistic career, explor...

The Renaissance began at the end of the 14th century in Italy and had extended across the whole of Europe by the second half of the 16th century. The rediscovery of the splendour of ancient Greece and Rome marked the beginning of the rebirth of the arts following the break-down of the dogmatic certitude of the Middle Ages. A number of artists began to innovate in the domains of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Depicting the ideal and the actual, the sacred and the profane, the period...

Following Italy's unification in 1861, architects, artists, politicians, and literati engaged in volatile debates over the pursuit of national and regional identity. Growing industrialization and urbanization across the country contrasted with the rediscovery of traditionally built forms and objects created by the agrarian peasantry. Pride in Modesty argues that these ordinary, often anonymous, everyday things inspired and transformed Italian art and architecture from the 1920s th...

This book offers a major contribution for understanding the spread of the humanist movement in Renaissance Florence. Investigating the connections between individuals who were part of the humanist movement, Maxson reconstructs the networks that bound them together. Overturning the problematic categorization of humanists as either professional or amateurs, a distinction based on economics and the production of original works in Latin, he offers a new way of understanding how the humanist mo...

This book provides a broad overview of the main features of Spanish Milan and their transformations during the 16th and 17th centuries. At the same time, it addresses an important and long-lasting historiographical debate that traditionally interpreted the Spanish period as one of decline for Italian cities in general and Milan in particular.

Pizza is one of the best-known and widely exported Italian foods and yet relatively little is known about its origins in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Myths such as the naming of pizza margherita after the Italian queen abound, but little serious scholarly attention has been devoted to the topic. Eschewing exaggerated fables, this book draws a detailed portrait of the difficulties experienced by the then marginalized class of pizza makers, rather than the ultimate success of thei...