The early Renaissance and vernacular culture /

This book is part of a growing corpus of writing dealing with the vernacular in art and literature and its indispensable role in people's understanding of the Italian Renaissance. Each of the first three chapters focuses on a different period and narrative from the beginning of the 14th to the end of the 15th centuries. Simone Martini, Botticelli, and the anonymous creator of the Orsini cycle of sibyls in 15th-century Rome are the engines moving the argument. The book's chronological scope is useful is establishing how pervasive the intersections of lived and depicted life were during this time period. From clues like the blond hair of Simone's Maesta madonna to the filigree gold embroidery of female costume to contemporary theater, Dempsey (emer., Johns Hopkins Univ.) demonstrates how the familiar penetrated the fictive and gave broad legibility. The narratives of these images--so alive in the oral culture of the period--also humanize the classical, so that, as Dempsey explains, sibyls participate in the popular religious theater of the time, along with demonstrating the knowledge and creative imagination of the authors who retrieve and invent their histories from classical antiquity. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty. J. T. Paoletti emeritus, Wesleyan University