Department of Italian

Paper It 9

Text and Image

Download the specimen exam paper

Course description

This paper is new for Tripos 2014. It offers an opportunity to study visual culture as embedded in textual traditions across a broad range of periods and mediums in Italy. Whether we think of Botticelli's illustrations of Dante's Comedy or Leonardo da Vinci's notes that work through theories of the visual alongside illustrations of the dissected eye or Michelangelo's sonnets describing the act of sculpting or Giorgio Vasari's canonisation of the great Florentine artists or the theorists and agents of twentieth-century design or Pasolini's work as both writer and film-maker, visual and textual art in Italy have always fed one another in productive and challenging ways. Topics taught each year on this paper will vary but each topic will emphasise theoretical approaches to the study of visual culture and the interaction between word and image. Students will be encouraged to develop their own particular research interests for their written work in consulation with their supervisor.

Four to five main topics will be taught in any one year. The paper allows for great flexibility in terms of teaching provision. It is designed to allow the participation of different members of staff, who may wish to contribute with a topic according to their specific research interests, always within the general scope and methodological and theoretical parameters of the paper. Topics can change in different years in order to ensure variety. Examples of topics include:

• The Worlds of Leonardo da Vinci: Vision and Creation
• Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the private gift
• Leonardo's Children: Art, Design, and Industry in Italy, 1930-1960
• Pasolini Between Text, Image and Film
• Graphic Novels
• Illustrating Dante
• Vasari: Writing the Canon
• Alberti and Architecture
• Seeing and seeming at court: Castiglione and Bronzino

The topics for 2013-14 are as follows:

1. The Worlds of Leonardo da Vinci: Vision and Creation
2. Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the private gift
3. Leonardo's Children: Art, Design and Industry in Italy, 1930-1960
4. Pasolini Between Text, Image And Art

Teaching

The course will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars and supervisions. Students will be strongly encouraged to attend all lectures in order to gain a broad insight into the broad range of the paper.

Examination

The paper will be assessed by three-hour examination or by Optional Dissertation. In the examination, there will be a choice of essay questions relating to each topic in that year's list. Candidates will be required to answer three questions, one on each of three topics. There will be no sections on the paper, and no obligation to answer any particular combination of questions, as long as the same material is not used in more than one question.

General introductory bibliography

• Roland Barthes, Stephen Heath, trans. Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977)
• W. J. T. Mitchell, 'Ekphrasis and the "Other"', in his Picture Theory, Chicago, 1994.
• 'Interdisciplinarity and Visual Culture', Art Bulletin, Vol. LXXVII, No. 4: 540-44.
• 'What is an Image?, New Literary History, Vol. 15, No. 3, (Spring, 1984): 503-537.
• Renée Riese Hubert, 'An Introduction to the Artist's Book: The Text and Its Rivals', Visible Language, Vol. 25, no. 2-3, Spring 1991, pp. 117-136.
• Jean Khalfa, The Dialogue Between Painting and Poetry. Livres d'Artiste 1874-1999, Cambridge, 2001.
• Mark Cruse, Illuminating the Roman d'Alexander in MS Bodley 264: The Manuscript as Monument. D.S. Brewer, 2011.
• Marilynn Desmond and Pamela Sheingorn, Myth, Montage and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture.
• Marilynn Desmond, "The Visuality of Reading in Pre-Modern Textual Cultures," The Australian Journal of French Studies, "New Directions in French Medieval Studies," ed. Sharon Kinoshita. 46(2009), pp. 219-234.
• Marilynn Desmond, "The Goddess Diana and the Ethics of Reading in the Ovide moralisé," in Metamorphoses: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Alison Keith and Stephen Rupp. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007. pp. 61-75.
• Elina Gertsman & Jill Stevenson, On the Threshold of Medieval Visual Cultures: Liminal Spaces. Boydell Brewer, 2012.
• Giuliana Minghelli, The Modern Image: Intersections of Photography, Cinema and Literature in Italian Culture, special issue of L'anello che non tiene, 2009.
• The Anjou Bible: A Royal Manuscript Revealed. Naples 1340. Ed. L. Watteeuw, L and J. Vander Stock. Peeters Publishers, 2010.

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1. The Worlds of Leonardo Da Vinci: Vision and Creation

This topic will examine the multi-dimensional worlds created by the words and images of Leonardo da Vinci. Through study of the interplay between text and image in Leonardo's notebooks, students will be encouraged to think through the value that Leonardo ascribes to the visual and his modes of analysing the visual both textually and through the manipulation of images. Special attention will be paid to (1) Leonardo's anatomies, dissection work, and depictions of the body (2) his treatise on painting and notions of the artist and artistic creation (3) the principle of animation and his studies of motion and (4) definitions and configurations of gender in Leonardo's work.

Suggested reading

Primary texts:

• L'uomo e la natura (Universale economica. I classici) di Leonardo da Vinci e M. De Micheli (Brossura, 2008)
• Scritti artistici e tecnici (Classici) di Leonardo da Vinci e B. Agosti (Brossura, 2002)
• Trattato della pittura, Leonardo da Vinci (Giunti Demetra)
• Scritti letterari, Leonardo da Vinci, ed. A. Marinoni (BUR Biblioteca Universale, Rizzoli, 2002)

You may also want to look at the Oxford edition of Leonardo's Notebooks to help orient yourselves.

Secondary texts:

• Rolando F. Del Maestro 'Leonardo da Vinci: the search for the soul' J Neurosurg 89:874-887, 1998
• Karl Jaspers, Leonardo filosofo (Abscondita, 2001)
• Martin Kemp, "Il concetto dell anima in Leonardo's Early Skull Studies," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 115-134
• Martin Kemp, "Dissection and Divinity in Leonardo's Late Anatomies," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 35 (1972): 200-225
• Stephen Jay Gould, "The Upwardly Mobile Fossils of Leonardo's Living Earth," in his Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (New York: Harmony Books, 1998), pp. 17-44
• Mary Garrard, "Leonardo da Vinci: Female Portraits, Female Nature," in The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, ed. Norma Bronde and Mary Garrard (New York: Icon Editions, 1992), pp. 59-79
• Paolo Galluzzi, "The Career of a Technologist," in Leonardo da Vinci: Engineer and Architect (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), pp. 41-109
• Mark Rosheim, Leonardo's Lost Robots (Springer, 2006)
• Giorgio Vasari, Le vite (Einaudi, 1996)
• Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Oxford, 1988)
• Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (Princeton, 2006)
• Giuseppe Fornari, La bellezza e il nulla: L'antropologia cristiana di Leonardo da Vinci (2005)

A full reading list will be provided at the start of the academic year.

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2. Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna and the private gift

Michelangelo Buonarroti and Vittoria Colonna developed a close friendship, centred in their shared interest in matters of religious reform, that found expression through the exchange of gifts, of both manuscript poetry and works of art. This topic considers the function of these works as spiritual gifts, within the context of reformed practises of the time, and probes the status of the poems, drawings and paintings as manifestations of particular religious and cultural attitudes.

Primary texts:

• Vittoria Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, ed. by Abigail Brundin (Chicago, 2005)
• Michelangelo Buonarroti, Rime, (any modern Italian edition, or parallel text translation)
• Various presentation drawings by Michelangelo, as well as a number of painted works on panel attributed to his workshop

Secondary texts:

• Abigail Brundin, 'Vittoria Colonna and the Poetry of Reform', Italian Studies, 57 (2002): pp. 61-74
• Emidio Campi, Michelangelo e Vittoria Colonna. Un dialogo artistico-teologico ispirato da Bernardino Ochino, e altri saggi di storia della Riforma (Turin: Claudiniana, 1994)
• Robert J. Clements, ed. and trans., Michelangelo. A Self-Portrait. Texts and Sources (New York: New York University Press, 1968)
• Una Roman D'Elia, 'Drawing Christ's Blood: Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, and the Aesthetics of Reform', Renaissance Quarterly, 59 (2006): pp. 90-125
• Roberto Fedi, '"L'immagine vera": Vittoria Colonna, Michelangelo, e un'idea di canzoniere', Modern Language Notes, 107 (1992): pp. 46-73
• Silvia Ferino-Pagden, ed., Vittoria Colonna: Dichterin und Muse Michelangelos. Catalogue to the exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 25 Feb. - 25 May 1997 (Vienna: Skira, 1997)
• Alexander Nagel, 'Gifts for Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna', Art Bulletin, 79 (1997): pp. 647-68.

A full reading list will be provided at the start of the academic year.

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3. Leonardo's Children: Art, Design and Industry in Italy, 1930-1960

This topic aims to explore the intersection between art, design and industrial innovation in a crucial period of Italian artistic and cultural production, which acted as the matrix from which one of the excellences of Italian industry emerged at world level. The years spanning from 1930 and 1960, in fact saw the gestational steps and the progressive consolidation of a corpus of theories and practices related to industrial design which became influential and dominant worldwide. The topic would single out key figures in the field (Fortunato Depero, Gio Ponti, Bruno Munari, Enzo Mari) who all worked at the intersection of various disciplines (visual art, architecture, industrial design, publishing, advertising, essaysm). The topic will try to account for the historical, aesthetic and epistemological presuppositions from which their art emerged, teasing out the communality of their methods and of their ideas about the relationship between art, design and technology, to reflect the web of connections and practices which link these different experiences.

Primary texts:

• Fortunato Depero, Ricostruire e meccanizzare l'universo
• Gio Ponti, Amate l'architettura
• Bruno Munari, Arte come mestiere
• Bruno Munari, Artista e Designer
• Enzo Mari, 25 modi per piantare un chiodo
• Enzo Mari, Francesca Alfano Miglietti, La valigia senza manico. Arte, design e karaoke.

Secondary reading:

• Matteo Vercelloni, Breve storia del design italiano
• Renato De Fusco, Made in Italy. Storia del design italiano
• Licitra Ponti, Lisa, Gio Ponti, The Complete Work, 1928-1978, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 1990;
• U. La Pietra, Gio Ponti. L'arte si innamora dell'industria.
• Maurizio Scudiero, Depero : l'uomo e l'artista.
• Gabriella Belli, Beatrice Avanzi, Depero pubblicitario: dall'auto-réclame all'architettura pubblicitaria.
• Bruno Munari: My Futurist Past, Miroslava Hajek and Luca Zaffarano eds. Milan: Silvana, 2012.
• Tanchis, Aldo. Bruno Munari. From Futurism to Post-industrial Design. London: Lund Humphries, 1986.
• P. Antonello, 'Beyond Futurism: Bruno Munari's Useless Machines' in G. Berghaus (ed.), Futurism and Technological Imagination. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009: 313-34. Longer web version: http://www.munart.org/doc/bruno-munari-useless-machine-pp-antonello-rodopi-2009.pdf

A full reading list will be provided at the start of the academic year.

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4. Pasolini Between Text, Image And Art

Pier Paolo Pasolini was one of the most significant writers and filmmakers of the second half of the 20th century in Italy. His eclectic interests also included extensive engagement with and theorization of the image - from Renaissance and Mannerist art and art history, to modernist painting, to the semiology of film. This topic will examine a series of works by Pasolini where text and image, or rather a complex triangle between text, art and moving image intersect and interact in ways that include, but also go radically beyond the paradigm of adaptation, centred on a philosophy of transposition and analogy between diverse sign systems. The key work at the centre of the topic will be the 1968 book and film Teorema.

Primary works by Pasolini:

• La ricotta (1963)
• Sopralluoghi in Palestina per Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)
• Il vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)
• 'Israele', section of poetry collection Poesia in forma di rosa (1964)
• **Teorema (1968) [film and book]
• Empirismo eretico (1970)
• San Paolo (1975), screenplays

[written texts and film screenplays are available in P.P. Pasolini, Opere (Milan: Mondadori, 1998-2003]

Secondary reading:

• Z. Baranski, "The Texts of " Il Vangelo secondo Matteo," in Pasolini Old and New. Surveys and Studies, ed. Z.G. Baranski, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999, pp. 281-32
• N. Greene, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinema as Heresy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
• R. Gordon, Pasolini. Forms of Subjectivity (OUP, 1996)
• R. Gordon, audio commentary to DVD of Teorema / Theorem (BFI, 2008)
• A. Maggi, The Resurrection of the Body. Pasolini from Saint Paul to Sade (Chicago UP, 2009)
• A. Marchesini, Citazioni pittoriche nel cinema di Pasolini (Nuova Italia, 1994)
• M. Viano, A Certain Realism. Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

A full reading list will be provided at the start of the academic year.

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Further information

For further information, please contact Dr Pierpaolo Antonello (paa25@cam.ac.uk) or Dr Heather Webb (hmw53@cam.ac.uk).