Leonardo da Vinci's arguments for the supremacy of painting over the arts of poetry, music, and sculpture address issues that have been relevant to debates over the nature of representation since the time Plato discussed imitation until today, maintains Claire Farago in this wide-ranging critical analysis of the first important modern contribution to the comparison of the arts. This study systematically examines 46 passages compiled in the mid-sixteenth century from eighteen of Leonardo's notebooks and their relationship to the artist's holograph writings on painting, providing a critical...

The beginning of the Greek revival in the West is generally attributed to the teaching of the Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras in Florence between 1397 and 1400. Causes, aspects, and consequences of this important cultural phenomenon still need to be analyzed in depth. The essays collected in this volume examine the development of the study of Greek from the fifteenth to the early sixteenth century, reconstructing its spread and impact on early modern literatures, philosophy, and visual arts. An analysis of the methods and tools used to teach and learn Greek sheds light on the complex...

In Mytho-poetics at Work Rengenier Rittersma offers an account of the posthumous fame of the Count of Egmont (1522-1568), whose public decapitation triggered the Dutch revolt. Drawing from numerous European sources – pamphlets, chronicles, and literature – this monograph tries to unravel why and how the alleged freedom fighter became an icon in European thought. It demonstrates that Egmont unfurled an evocative power over several centuries and cultural regions, as his name could be deliberately instrumentalized by different groups of people in order to corroborate their own confessional...

Tracing key biblical topics recurrent in Grotian and Hobbesian discourses on the church-state relationship, The Sovereign and the Prophets examines Spinoza’s Old Testament interpretation in the Theologico-political Treatise and elucidates his effort to establish what Hobbes could not adequately offer to the Dutch: the liberty to philosophize. Fukuoka develops an original method for understanding seventeenth-century biblical arguments as a shared political paradigm. Her in-depth analysis reveals the discourses that converged on the question, ‘Who stands immediately under God to mediate His...

In Sperone Speroni and the Debate over Sophistry in the Italian Renaissance Teodoro Katinis mines a number of little or unstudied primary sources and offers the first book on the rebirth of ancient sophists in the Italian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from Leonardo Bruni to Jacopo Mazzoni, with a focus on the Italian writer and philosopher Sperone Speroni (1500-1588). Katinis convincingly argues that Speroni is a unique case of an early modern thinker who explicitly rejected Plato’s demonization and defended the public role of the sophistic rhetoric, which enhanced...

The Rhetoric of Tenses in Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” examines the tenses of the predicates in the famous and typical passages of the monumental work to explore the intricacies of the rhetoric and argument they support, paying particular attention to the question of temporality. Smith’s subtle modulation of language attests to his reluctance to offer a mere theory of economics and to his refusal to ignore the complicated challenges history and actuality offer to his beliefs in the natural system of liberty. The theoretical frame of the book is derived from the grammarians of...

Jill Kraye, Professor Emerita of the Warburg Institute, is renowned internationally for her scholarship on Renaissance philosophy and humanism. This volume pays tribute to her achievements with essays by friends, colleagues, and doctoral students—all leading scholars—on subjects as diverse as her work. Articles on canonical figures such as Marsilio Ficino and Justus Lipsius mix with more quirky pieces on alphabetic play and the Hippocratic aphorisms. Many chapters seek to bridge the divide between humanism and philosophy, including David Lines's survey of the way fifteenth-century...

Steno and the Philosophers offers an account of the life and works of the Danish scientist and theologian Nicolas Steno (1638-1686). Its aim is to study the intricate relations between philosophy, theology, and the emerging sciences (anatomy, medicine and geology in particular) in the early modern Republic of Letters through the biographical prism of one of its most fascinating members. Concentrating on Steno’s contributions to natural philosophy and his relations to philosophers, the volume portrays Steno, not only as an influential scientist and theologian, but also as a natural...