CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Rudnev, Iurii Vladimirovich |
|---|---|
| Title | Senses and Passions in Benvenuto Cellini's Vita: The Life of a Neoplatonic Mannerist |
| Summary | This study is devoted to the emotional experience of the famous Renaissance sculptor, goldsmith, and writer, Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571), as it is portrayed in his life writing, the Vita. Providing the variety of arguments on the connection between the artist and contemporary intellectuals, who attended the Florentine Academy (1540–1583) together, I demonstrate that Cellini’s literary production can be examined productively against the background of Neoplatonic thought. In particular, Marsilio Ficino’s On Love, first published in the vernacular Italian in 1544, helps to establish an explanation of what Cellini meant when he decided to play the cornet while falling in love simultaneously with a young boy and girl, or how he justified kicking or punching his servants, or why he did not kill his adversary, the artist Baccio Bandinelli, when he had the chance. These cases of radical affectivity are inscribed into Ficino’s concept of the “melancholy genius” manifesting melancholic madness. In Cellini’s Vita, the latter can not only turn humans almost into beast, literally (for example, in a bat); but, properly tempered by the means of music and poetry, as well as of individual and collective magic, it elevates one’s soul “on high,” which corresponds to the Neoplatonic concept of divine madness. |
| Supervisor | Szőnyi, György Endre |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/rudnev_iurii.pdf |
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