Studies of the Warburg Institute
October 1, 1995
Erasmus of Rotterdam's "Adages" were first published in Venice in 1500. The Greek and Roman proverbs which he recorded and explained in this book met the Renaissance taste for ancient ethical precepts which could be used as a guide to living in the modern world. In many later editions, the maxims were vastly increased in number and Erasmus's commentaries often lengthened into moral essays. This manuscript provides an early example of the influence, direct and indirect, exerted by Erasmus. In this set of texts, word and image enhance each other in a way that prefigures the emblematic form which was to become so influential throughout Europe. The manuscript was intended for the character training of the future King Francois I. Its texts were...
April 1, 1993
November 1, 1992
This is a record of an Anglo-French colloquium held at the Warburg Institute in July 1988. The chief preoccupations were the interaction of the Christian religion with 7th-century society and the passage of Latin literature from the Mediterranean to the Celts and Anglo-Saxons.
December 1, 1989
The Kitāb al-manāẓir
or Book of Optics of Ibn al-Haytham,
composed in the second quarter of the 11th century AD, consists of seven books
(or maqālas) which may be divided
into two sections: the first is made up of books I-III and treats the
rectilinear radiation of light and colour, and vision produced by rectilinear
radiation; the second, consisting of books IV-VII, is a study of reflection and
refraction of light and of vision produced by reflected and refracted rays. The
present work comprises an English translation of and commentary on the first
section, following Abdelhamid I. Sabra’s edition of
the corresponding Arabic text, published in 1983. A Latin translation of
Ibn al-Haytham’s Optics, known as Perspectiva or De...
November 1, 1986
Three extant volumes of drawings after the antique together with scattered leaves from yet another sketchbook, by the Bolognese artist, Amico Aspertini, give an unusual opportunity to students of the relations between Renaissance and classical art. One of the volumes dates from the beginning of the century, the other two from the 1530s and later. They make it possible to assess the antiquarian studies of a representative painter of the time in his progress from youth to maturity. They also throw much light on the specific nature of Renaissance use of the legacy of Antiquity.In 1957 Phyllis Fray Bober’s Drawings after the Antique by Amicl Aspertini made available the relevant drawings from the two sketchbooks of Aspertini’s...
December 1, 1979
This is the first reconstruction of the Hortus deliciarum, the
unique manuscript of which was destroyed in 1870. The text was established from
19th-century transcripts (principally those made for Comte A. De Bastard), from
printed sources, and from C. M. Engelhardt’s record of the German glosses as
edited by E. Von Steinmeyer. The miniatures are reproduced from the best
copies, some in versions previously unpublished. Variants are also included.
All the painted copies are reproduced in colour. The reconstruction restores
the original sequence of text and illustrations and is intended to replace the
obsolete publication of Alexandre Straub and Gustave Keller (1879-99). The
edition was prepared under the supervision of Professor...
December 1, 1976
Girolamo da Carpi’s sketchbook, here assembled and catalogued by Professor Canedy, comprises the largest single graphic repertory extant of the antiquities known to a fifteenth-or sixteenth-century artist. More than a thousand sketches survive in the album belonging to the Philip H. and A. S. Rosenbach Foundation in Philadelphia and the portfolio in the Biblioteca Reale, Turin. A few more sheets are preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum. All the drawings are reproduced, with some comparative material.Professor Canedy deals with the problems raised by the Sketchbook in a long Introduction. The corpus of Mannerist drawings after the antique and after other artists’ renderings of the antique stands...
June 1, 1972
Benito Arias Montano (1527-1598), of the Order of Santiago, theologian, exegete, orientalist, humanist, representative of Spain at the Council of Trent and trusted political and religious adviser of Philip II, was perhaps the most famous Spanish scholar of his age. His chief monument is the great Antwerp Polyglot Bible in eight volumes, published by Plantin between 1569 and 1573, compiled under the supervision of Montano, with an apparatus largely written by him. This book is concerned with lesser-known but important aspects of Monano’s activity, his contacts with Netherlandish scholars of uncertain orthodoxy, his membership of the sect of Familists and his clandestine influence in the spread of Erasmianism in Spain. Based on a corpus of...