New Book | Lazzari’s Discrizione della Villa Pliniana
Francesco Ignazio Lazzari’s Discrizione della Villa Pliniana is the 2023 winner of the Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award, from the Society of Architectural Historians. Members of the award committee—Kathleen John-Adler, Sonja Dümpelmann, and Tracy Ehrlich—note in their citation: “given that Lazzari lived until the year 1717, we are reminded that his dedication to the Plinian tradition was not simply an outgrowth of a narrow Renaissance antiquarianism, it reflected a broader pan-European concern for the classical language of architecture that flourished in the eighteenth century.”
Distributed by Harvard UP:
Anatole Tchikine, Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, and Taylor Ellis Johnson, Francesco Ignazio Lazzari’s ‘Discrizione della Villa Pliniana’: Visions of Antiquity in the Landscape of Umbria (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2021), 241 pages, ISBN: 978-0884024873, £35 / €37 / $40.
A cultivated patrician, a prolific playwright, and a passionate student of local antiquity, Francesco Ignazio Lazzari (1634–1717) was a mainstay of the artistic and intellectual life of Città di Castello, an Umbrian city that maintained a remarkable degree of cultural autonomy during the early modern period. He was also the first author to identify the correct location of the lost villa ‘in Tuscis’ owned by the Roman writer and statesman Pliny the Younger and known through his celebrated description. Lazzari’s reconstruction of this ancient estate, in the form of a large-scale drawing and a textual commentary, adds a unique document to the history of Italian gardens while offering a fascinating perspective on the role of landscape in shaping his native region’s identity. Published with an English translation for the first time since its creation, this manuscript is framed by the scholarly contributions of Anatole Tchikine and Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey. At the core of their discussion is the interplay of two distinct ideas of antiquity—one embedded in the regional landscape and garden culture of Umbria and the other conveyed by the international tradition of Plinian architectural reconstructions-that provide the essential context for understanding Lazzari’s work.
Series | Ex Horto: Dumbarton Oaks Texts in Garden and Landscape Studies
Anatole Tchikine is Curator of Rare Books at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey is Professor in the Department of Art at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
C O N T E N T S
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Prologue: Fitting Together the Pieces of the Lazzari Puzzle — Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey
1 Repatriating Pliny: Lazzari and His Reconstruction — Anatole Tchikine
2 ‘So That the Memory of This Villa…’: Lazzari’s Two Antiquities — Anatole Tchikine
3 ‘Tuscos Meos’: Visions of Pliny’s Villas by Lazzari, His Predecessors, and His Contemporaries — Pierre de la Ruffiniere du Prey
Epilogue: Local Memory and National Myth — Anatole Tchikine
Description of Pliny’s Villa — Francesco Ignazio Lazzari, translated with notes from Italian and Latin by Anatole Tchikine and Taylor Ellis Johnson
Discrizione della Villa Pliniana — Francesco Ignazio Lazzari, transcription by Anatole Tchikine and Taylor Ellis Johnson
Appendices
1 Pliny the Younger, Letter to Apollinaris — translated from Latin by Taylor Ellis Johnson
2 Nine Latin Inscriptions Found in the Area of Città di Castello (Appendix to the Città di Castello Manuscript) — transcription by Anatole Tchikine
3 Legend to Lazzari’s Drawing — transcription by Anatole Tchikine
4 Chronology of Lazzari’s Writings — Anatole Tchikine
Contributors
Index
Call for Essays | Studi Neoclassici
From ArtHist.net:
Studi Neoclassici: Rivista internazionale 11 (2023)
Submissions due by 30 June 2023
The journal Studi Neoclassici—created to publish the results of the activity promoted by the ‘Istituto di ricerca per gli studi su Canova e il Neoclassicismo’ (‘Research Institute for Studies on Canova and Neoclassicism’) of Bassano del Grappa—has been a tool for disseminating research of the Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Antonio Canova (‘’National edition of the works of Antonio Canova’), that converges in the critical editions of the enormous Canova’s epistolary, with the historical, biographical, stylistic insights that matter requires. The major scholars of Neoclassicism constitute the scientific and editorial council of the journal. The magazine proposes itself to the attention of scholars in various fields of research, from history to literature, from archeology to art history, from the history of culture to art criticism to the history of collecting, from the history of music to that of dance and costume. Journal articles follow the same methodological approach that characterized the “Canovian Weeks”, that is connecting different artistic and cultural experiences, from literature to art history, to history and to other arts included in the historical period between second half of the eighteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century, with the intention of proposing a complete and not only specialized picture of the theme.
Studi Neoclassici publishes monographic numbers and free topic numbers relating to the historical period of the journal, the texts of which, selected through a Call for Papers procedure, are all—except for rare and justified exceptions—subject to peer review by a ‘double blind’ procedure. In the case of the aforementioned exceptions it is the management, in its collegiality, that after careful examination assumes the responsibility of accepting the texts. Issue number 11 (2023) will host free articles and one / two reviews of volumes relating to the period covered by the magazine, edited in 2021 and 2023.
The editorial rules are available here. Texts can be presented in Italian, German, French, English, or Spanish; must not exceed 35,000 characters (spaces and notes included); and must be sent by 30 June 2023 to the journal’s scientific directors: giuliana.ericani@gmail.com and gianpavese@gmail.com.
Fellowship | Reception of Antiquity, 1350–1900
From ArtHist.net:
Census Fellowship: Reception of Antiquity
Berlin, Rome, and London, 2023–24
Applications due by 31 May 2023
The Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, and the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, are pleased to announce a fellowship in Berlin, Rome, and London, offered at either the predoctoral or postdoctoral level. These fellowships grow out of the longstanding collaboration between the Humboldt, the Hertziana, and the Warburg in the research project Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance.
The fellowships extend the traditional chronological boundaries of the Census and are intended for research and intellectual exchange on topics related to the reception of antiquity in the visual arts between ca.1350 and ca. 1900. In the context of the fellowships, the topic of the reception of antiquity is also broadly conceived without geographical restriction. Proposals can optionally include a digital humanities perspective, engage with the database of the Census, or make use of the research materials of the Census project available in Berlin, Rome, and London.
The Humboldt, the Hertziana, and the Warburg co-fund a research grant of 6–9 months for students enrolled in a PhD program, or 4–6 months for candidates already in possession of a PhD Fellows can set their own schedule and choose how to divide their time between the three institutes, but they should plan to spend at least one month in residence at each of the three institutions. The stipend will be set at about 1500 EUR per month at the predoctoral level and about 2500 EUR per month at the postdoctoral level, plus a travel stipend. The fellowship does not provide housing.
Candidates can apply via the Hertziana recruitment platform by uploading the requested PDF documents in English, German, or Italian by 31 May 2023, with details of their proposed dates for the fellowship during the academic year 2023/24 (July 2023–July 2024).
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