Overview

This volume brings together new scholarship in Italian art and culture from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries first presented during April and May 2007 at two conferences celebrating Charles Dempsey on his retirement from teaching at The Johns Hopkins University. The authors represented here – many, among the most noted scholars in their fields – address a wide range of issues including patronage, style, iconography, reception, textual sources, and cultural context. This book is an important new contribution to the scholarly literature, and will draw a wide readership of both advanced students and scholars from a variety of disciplines within the Humanities.

Melinda Schlitt is Professor of Art History and William E. Edel Professor of Humanities at Dickinson College. Her research focuses  on art and criticism of the Italian Renaissance, with emphasis on the relationship between literary and visual culture.

485 pp., 52 colour images, 44 black and white images 
ISBN: 978-0-7727-2130-3 softcover
Published: 2012

Contents

Melinda Schlitt, “Introduction”

Bibliography of Charles Dempsey

1. C. Jean Campbell, “Poetic Genealogies and the Weight of Style: Boccaccio and the Early Italian Painters”
   2. Thomas Willette, “Giotto’s Allegorical Painting of the Kingdom of Naples”
   3. Stephen J. Campbell, “Mantegna’s Hagiography”
   4. Carl Brandon Strehlke, “Nofri di Palla Strozzi: Amateur Painter and Friend of Mantegna”
   5. Jane Tylus, “Looking for Pastoral in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence”
   6. Giancarlo Fiorenza, “Tadpoles, Caterpillars, and Mermaids: Piero di Cosimo’s Poetic Nature”
   7. Kim E. Butler, “Eloquence and Intertextuality in the Sistine Chapel”
   8. Alessandra Galizzi Kroegel, “The Dispute over the Immaculate Conception by Guillaume de Marcillat at the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin”
   9. Melinda Schlitt, “‘… viri studiosi et scientifici …’ Pietro Antonio Cecchini, Michelangelo, and the Nobility of Sculptors in Rome”
   10. Elena Cavillo, “Reading Pliny in Francisco de Holanda’s Roman Dialogues“
   11. Giovanna Perini Folesani, “A New Document Related to Correggio’s Noli Me Tangere“
   12. Pamela M. Jones, “Bare Feet, Humility, and the Passion of Christ in the Cults of Mary Magdalene and Carlo Borromeo in Seicento Rome”
   13. Frances Gage, “Illness, Invention, and Truth in Caravaggio’s Death of the Virgin“
   14. Peter M. Lukehart, “Ut icona poesis: Gabriello Chiabrera, Bernardo Castello, and the Sacro Volto of Genoa”
   15. Ingrid D. Rowland, “Poussin, Egypt, and the Destiny of Rome”
   16. Elizabeth Cropper, “Malvasia’s Anti-Vasarian History of Art: A Tradition, Not a Rebirth”
   17. Karen-edis Barzman, “Gregorio Lazzarini’s Judith and Holofernes: Decapitation, Islam, and the Venetian State”

Praise

“Gifts in Return is a rich and richly varied volume; as such, it represents a splendid homage to the range, depth, and transformative power of the scholarship of Charles Dempsey.” — Stuart Lingo, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Washington

Reviews

Sixteenth Century Journal, 45:1 (2014), pp. 272-273. Reviewed by Martha Dunkelman.