Renaissance Medicine, Magic, and Alchemy in Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita

Autori

  • Yuri Rudnev National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/4566

Parole chiave:

Benvenuto Cellini, Vita, Renaissance, Neo-Platonism, Renaissance medicine, Hermetic tradition, animation of the statue, practice of the self

Abstract

The article aims to rethink the several stereotypes of Romantic tradition, which are still reproduced in regard to Benvenuto Cellini and his Vita. Using the approaches of intellectual history and iconographical studies, the present study pays attention to the coherent system of lay, scientific and ‘secret’ knowledge of the epoch lurking under the surface of the simplicity and even naivety of the author’s language. I argue that this autobiographical writing embodies a certain type of culture of the self deeply rooted in contemporary medical, alchemical and magical contexts. Organized around the concept of “getting pleasure,” Cellini’s practices of the self are built into the Neo-Platonic picture of the world. Analyzing the two passages of Vita, I demonstrate the author’s spiritual ascent from the corporeal suffering to union with ‘the One’ by means of individual and collective magic rituals, transforming his Life into a work of art.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Agrimi, Jole, and Chiara Crisciani. Les ‘Consilia’ Médicaux. Turnhout: Brepols, 1994. Print.

Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. Ed. A.Bayer. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008. Print.

Baretti, Giuseppe. La frusta letteraria. V. 1. Bari: Laterza & Figli, 1932 [1728]. Print.

Barolsky, Paul. Michelangelo’s Nose: A Myth and Its Maker. University Park, PA: Penn-sylvania State UP, 1997. Print.

---. “Cellini, Vasari, and the Marvels of Malady.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 1. (1993): 41–45. Print.

Berk, M.F.M. van den. Magic flute. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2004. Print.

Biow, Douglas. The Culture of Cleanliness in Renaissance Italy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2006. Print.

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Trans. S. G. C. Middle-more. London, Penguin, 1990 [1860]. Print.

Burke, Peter. The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1986. Print.

Celenza, Christopher S. “Marsilio Ficino.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web. 10 December 2014. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ficino/ >

Cellini, Benvenuto. La Vita. A cura di G. D. Bonino. Einaudi, Torino 1973. Print.

---. Opera di Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni della Casa, Benvenuto Cellini. A cura di C. Cor-dié. Milan: Riccardo Riccardi, 1960. 497–1160. Print.

---. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Trans. J. A. Symonds. New York: Colli-er&Son, 1910. Print.

---. Vita di Benvenuto Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino da lui medesimo scritta. Colonia: P. Martello, 1728. Print.

Croce, Benedetto. “Sul Cellini scrittore.” Quaderni Della Critica diretti da B. Croce 17–18 (1950): 216–217. Print.

Crompton, Louis. Homosexuality and Civilization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003. Print.

Dzelzainis, Martin. “Milton, Foucault, and the New Historicism in Milton, Foucault and the New Historicism.” Rethinking Historicism from Shakespeare to Milton. Ed. A.B. Coi-ro, T. Fulton. New York: Cambridge UP, 2012. 209–233. Print.

Feinstein, Sandy. “Horsing around: Framing Alchemy in the Manuscript Illustrations of the “Splendor Solis”.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 3(37) (Fall, 2006): 673–699. Print.

Ficino, Marsilio. “Consilio contro la pestilentia.” Katinis, Teodoro. Medicina e filosofia in Marsilio Ficino: Il Consilio contro la pestilentia, Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007. Print.

---. Three Books of Life. Eds. and trans. C. V. Kaske and J. R. Clark. New York, Bing-hamton: Renaissance Society of America, 1989. Print.

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. London, New

York: Routledge Classics, 2002 [1966]. Print.

---. The History of Sexuality Vol. 3: The Care of the Self. Trans. R. Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986 [1984]. Print.

Gallucci, Margaret A. and Paolo L. Rossi, eds. Benvenuto Cellini: Sculptor, Goldsmith, Writer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

Gallucci, Margaret A. Benvenuto Cellini: Sexuality, Masculinity, and Artistic Identity in Re-naissance Italy. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Print.

Gombrich, Ernst. “Icones Symbolicae: The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thought.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948): 163–192. Print.

Gardener, Victoria C. “Homines non nascuntur, sed figuntur: Benvenuto Cellini's Vita and Self-Presentation of the Renaissance Artist.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 2(28) (Summer, 1997): 447-465. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.

Hadot, Pierre. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Trans. M. Chase, ed. A. Davidson. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995. Print.

Haeffner, Mark. Dictionary of Alchemy: From Maria Prophetessa to Isaac Newton. London, Aeon Books, 2004. Print.

Harmon, Daniel P. “Religion in the Latin Elegists.” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 16.3 (1986): 1960–1965. Print.

Ivanova, Yulia. “Boundaries of Fictio.” Enthymema 10 (2014): 1–4. Web. 10 December 2014. <http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/enthymema/article/view/4167 >

Jung, Carl. Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Volume 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis. Ed. G. Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1970. Print.

Katinis, Teodoro. A Humanist Confronts the Plague: Ficino's Consilio contro la Pes-tilentia.” MLN 1 (2010): 72–83. Print.

---. Medicina e filosofia in Marsilio Ficino: il Consilio contro la pestilenza. Roma, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2007. Print.

Klibansky, Raymond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art. New York: Basic Books, 1964. Print.

Merkur, Dan. “Stages of Ascension in Hermetic Rebirth.” Esoterica 1 (1999): 80–96.

McLean, Adam. “The Birds in Alchemy.” Hermetic Journal 5. (1979): Web. 10 Decem-ber 2014. http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alcbirds.html

Protopopova, Irina. Ksenofont Efesskij i poetika inoskazanija. Moscow: Russian State U for the Humanities, 2001. Print.

Russel, Paul A. “Ficino’s Consiglio Contro la Pestilentia in the European Tradition.” Verbum, Analecta neolatina 1 (1999): 85–96. Print.

Staf, Irina K. “Benvenuto Cellini i renessansnaja avtobiographija.” Istorja literatury Italii. Vol. II: Vozrozhdenie. Ed. M. Andreev. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, IWL, 2012. 557–576. Print.

Tomashevskij, Nikolaj B. “Ob etoj knige.” Cellini, Benvenuto. Zhizn’ Benvenuto Cellini. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaja literatura, 1987. 7–20. Print.

Trottein, Gwendolyn. “Cellini’s Roma.” Rethinking the High Renaissance. Ed. J. Burke. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2012a. 111–127. Print.

---. “Idea et disegno: les projets de Cellini pour le sceau de l'Académie.” Canadian Art Review 2 (2012b): 5-18. Print.

---. “Benvenuto Cellini: simbologia e autobiographia.” Il pensiero simbolico nella prima età moderna. Eds. A. Angelini, P. Caye. Florence: Olschki Editions, 2007. 173–195. Print.

---. “Cellini as Iconographer.” Benvenuto Cellini: Sculptor, Goldsmith, Writer. Eds. M. Gal-lucci, P. Rossi. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

---. “Le Problème de l'ornement chez Cellini: théorie, iconographie et humanisme.” Canadian Art Review. 1/2 (2000): 32–45. Print.

Varner, Erik R. “Maxentius, Constantine, and the Expropriation of Imperial Identi-ty.” Using Images in Late Antiquity. Eds. S. Birk, T. M. Kristensen, B. Poulsen. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014. 48–77. Print.

Waagen, Gustav F. Museums and Their Development: The European Tradition, 1700-1900. Vol. 1. London: Routledge/Thoemmes P, 1999. Print.

Wackernagel, Martin The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market. Trans. A. Luchs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1981. Print.

Walker, Daniel P. Spiritual and Demonic. Magic: From Ficino to Campanella. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2000. Print.

Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Print.

Pubblicato

27-12-2014

Come citare

Rudnev, Y. (2014). Renaissance Medicine, Magic, and Alchemy in Benvenuto Cellini’s Vita. ENTHYMEMA, (11), 25–43. https://doi.org/10.13130/2037-2426/4566

Fascicolo

Sezione

The Boundaries of Fictio – Ed. by Julia Ivanova
Ricevuto 2014-12-15
Accettato 2014-12-27
Pubblicato 2014-12-27