Allison Levy

House of Secrets tells the remarkable story of Palazzo Rucellai from behind its celebrated façade. The house, beginning with its piecemeal assemblage by one of the richest men in Florence in the fifteenth century, has witnessed endless drama, from the butchering of its interior to a courtyard suicide to champagne-fueled orgies on the eve of World War I to a recent murder on its third floor. When the author, an art historian, serendipitously discovers a room for let in the house, she lands in… Show more

House of Secrets tells the remarkable story of Palazzo Rucellai from behind its celebrated façade. The house, beginning with its piecemeal assemblage by one of the richest men in Florence in the fifteenth century, has witnessed endless drama, from the butchering of its interior to a courtyard suicide to champagne-fueled orgies on the eve of World War I to a recent murder on its third floor. When the author, an art historian, serendipitously discovers a room for let in the house, she lands in the vortex of history and is tested at every turn—inside the house and out. Her residency in Palazzo Rucellai is informed as much by the sense of desire giving way to disappointment as by a sense of denial that soon enough must succumb to truth. House of Secrets is about the sharing of space, the tracing of footsteps, the overlapping of lives. It is about the willingness to lose oneself behind the façade, to live between past and present, to slip between the cracks of history and the crevices of our own imagination. Show less

Playmates and game changers, teammates and tricksters, matchmakers and deal breakers, gamblers and grifters, scripts and ventriloquism, charades and masquerades, game pieces and pawns. Playthings in Early Modernity emphasizes the rules of the game(s), as well as the breaking of those rules. Thus, a "plaything" is understood as both an object and a person, and play, in the early modern world, is treated not merely as a pastime, a leisurely pursuit, but also as a pivotal part of daily life, a… Show more

Playmates and game changers, teammates and tricksters, matchmakers and deal breakers, gamblers and grifters, scripts and ventriloquism, charades and masquerades, game pieces and pawns. Playthings in Early Modernity emphasizes the rules of the game(s), as well as the breaking of those rules. Thus, a "plaything" is understood as both an object and a person, and play, in the early modern world, is treated not merely as a pastime, a leisurely pursuit, but also as a pivotal part of daily life, a strategic psychosocial endeavor: Why do we play games—with and upon each other, as well as ourselves? When are winners also losers, and vice-versa? How and to what end do we stretch the spaces of play: from the salon to the street, from the piazza to the pulpit, from the palace to the prison, what happens when players go "out of bounds," or when games go "too far"? Moreover, what happens when we push the parameters of inquiry, when we play with traditional narratives of ludic culture?

Re-defining the early modern plaything and re-thinking the study of play generally, this volume contains fifteen provocative essays at the nexus of material culture, performance studies, and game theory. The contributors represent a range of disciplines, including art history and archaeology, film and media studies, modern languages and literature, history, philosophy, psychology, and economic and social history. Yet central to their investigations is the plaything itself, be it a game board, a jeton or die, a deck of cards, a lottery book, a letter, a rumor or whisper, a dinner guest, a dance partner, a pen pal, a gambler, a horse trader, or a cellmate. The majority of essays collected here emphasize the visual or material thrust of play in and against textual sources; thus the volume is lavishly illustrated, with over seventy images related to early modern play, from painting, sculpture, and architecture to drawing and print media, manuscript illumination, decorative, and everyday objects. Show less

Emphasizing the peculiar, the perverse, the clandestine and the scandalous, this edited volume opens up a critical discourse on sexuality and visual culture in early modern Italy. Contributors consider not just painted (conventional) representations of sexual activities and eroticized bodies, but also images from print media, drawings, sculpted objects and painted ceramic jars. In this way, the volume presents an entirely new picture of Renaissance sexuality, stripping away layers of… Show more

Emphasizing the peculiar, the perverse, the clandestine and the scandalous, this edited volume opens up a critical discourse on sexuality and visual culture in early modern Italy. Contributors consider not just painted (conventional) representations of sexual activities and eroticized bodies, but also images from print media, drawings, sculpted objects and painted ceramic jars. In this way, the volume presents an entirely new picture of Renaissance sexuality, stripping away layers of misconceptions and manipulations to reveal an often-misunderstood world.

'Sex acts' is interpreted broadly, from the acting out, or performing, of one's (or another's) sex to sexual activity, including what might be considered, now or then, peculiar practices and preferences and a variety of possibly scandalous scenarios. While the contributors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, this collection foregrounds the visual culture of early modern sexuality, from representations of sex and sexualized bodies to material objects associated with sexual activities. The picture presented here nuances our understanding of Renaissance sexuality as well as our own.

Contributions by Allison Levy, Catherine Hess, Paolo Fasoli, Ann Rosalind Jones, Diane Wolfthal, Patricia Simons, Karina Feliciano Attar, Chriscinda Henry, Timothy McCall, Erin Griffey, Will Fisher, Jutta Sperling, Rachel E. Poulsen, Robert Mills, Allie Terry, Daniella Rossi, and Sergius Kodera. Show less

Questo volume propone un discorso critico sulla sessualità e sulla cultura visiva dell’Italia rinascimentale. I saggi raccolti tentano di fare luce su una serie di zone d’ombra, dando spazio a tutte quelle pratiche o preferenze considerate in genere come alternative o anomalie, e a un’ampia varietà di scenari “scandalosi”. Particolare attenzione è stata riservata all’aspetto materiale della cultura sessuale, dalle modalità di rappresentazione erotica del corpo agli oggetti e agli strumenti… Show more

Questo volume propone un discorso critico sulla sessualità e sulla cultura visiva dell’Italia rinascimentale. I saggi raccolti tentano di fare luce su una serie di zone d’ombra, dando spazio a tutte quelle pratiche o preferenze considerate in genere come alternative o anomalie, e a un’ampia varietà di scenari “scandalosi”. Particolare attenzione è stata riservata all’aspetto materiale della cultura sessuale, dalle modalità di rappresentazione erotica del corpo agli oggetti e agli strumenti associati all’attività sessuale. Ne emerge un quadro completamente nuovo della sessualità rinascimentale, che spazza via secoli di manipolazioni ed equivoci socio-culturali, svelando scenari finora trascurati o volutamente nascosti. Diciassette saggi provocatori, con incursioni nel campo dell’arte, della letteratura, della storia, e persino della filosofia, organizzati intorno a quattro assi fondamentali: la pratica, la performance, la perversione e la punizione. Questo volume rivela un panorama molto più complesso e una visione del sesso e della sessualità rinascimentali carica di nuove sfumature. Show less

From Pliny to Petrarch to Pope-Hennessy and beyond, many have understood the obvious connection between portraiture and commemorative practice. This book expands and nuances our understanding of Renaissance portraiture; the author shows it to be complexly generated within a discourse of male anxiety and pre-mortuary mourning. She argues that portraiture could defer memory loss or, at the very least, pictorially console the subject against his own potentially unmourned death.

This book… Show more

From Pliny to Petrarch to Pope-Hennessy and beyond, many have understood the obvious connection between portraiture and commemorative practice. This book expands and nuances our understanding of Renaissance portraiture; the author shows it to be complexly generated within a discourse of male anxiety and pre-mortuary mourning. She argues that portraiture could defer memory loss or, at the very least, pictorially console the subject against his own potentially unmourned death.

This book recognizes a socio-cultural anxiety – the fear not merely of death but also of being forgotten – and identifies a set of pictorial, literary and theoretical strategies consequently formulated to ensure memory. To explore this phenomenon, this interdisciplinary but fundamentally art historical project merges early modern visual culture and critical theories of the body. The author examines an extensive selection of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century male and female portraits, primarily associated with the Medici family, circle and court, in and against both historical writings and contemporary discourses, including literary and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, feminism and gender studies, and critical theories of race and disability.

Re-membering Masculinity generates new ideas about both male and female portraiture in early modern Florence, raises even more questions about the experiences and representations of widowhood and mourning, and re-configures our understanding of masculinity – from the early modern male body to 'Renaissance Man' to postmodern manhood. Show less

PRIZE: Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Book Award for a Collaborative Project Published in 2003.

Whereas recent studies of early modern widowhood by social, economic and cultural historians have called attention to the often ambiguous, yet also often empowering, experience and position of widows within society, Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe is the first book to consider the distinct and important relationship between ritual and representation. The… Show more

PRIZE: Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Book Award for a Collaborative Project Published in 2003.

Whereas recent studies of early modern widowhood by social, economic and cultural historians have called attention to the often ambiguous, yet also often empowering, experience and position of widows within society, Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe is the first book to consider the distinct and important relationship between ritual and representation. The fifteen new interdisciplinary essays assembled here read widowhood as a catalyst for the production of a significant body of visual material-representations of, for and by widows, whether through traditional media, such as painting, sculpture and architecture, or through the so-called 'minor arts,' including popular print culture, medals, religious and secular furnishings and ornament, costume and gift objects, in early modern Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Arranged thematically, this unique collection allows the reader to recognize and appreciate the complexity and contradiction, iconicity and mutability, and timelessness and timeliness of widowhood and representation.

Contributions by Allison Levy, Catherine Lawless, J. S. W. Helt, Marina Arnold, Joyce de Vries, Elizabeth McCartney, Michael E. Yonan, Holly S. Hurlburt, Laura D. Gelfand, Sara French, Stephanie Fink De Backer, Cristelle L. Baskins, and Amelia Carr. Show less