By the middle of the fifteenth century Rimini had become a major center of Italian humanism. The cultural patronage of the famous condottiere Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417–1468), attracted numerous artists, writers, and scholars, who came to the city and created works for which Rimini is still widely known today. In spite of recently intensified research on this topic, various questions about the philosophical, literary and artistic output of this circle remain open. In particular, the historiography of Rimini itself leaves considerable room for new exploration, and this despite recent work on the architecture and pictural arts of the quattrocento city. In the philosophical and literary sphere, for example, the Aristotelian-Platonic milieu around Sigismondo has not yet received in depth study, and Valturio’s imaginative tract De Re Militari still awaits a modern edition or commentary.
One of the authors who has received attention, and whose profile underlines the importance of the Renaissance in Rimini is the poet Basinio da Parma. Basinio was a prolific author in many literary genres: His mythological poem Meleagris provides a modernised version of the Calydonian pigsticking; his didactic poem Astronomica studies the stars and the zodiac; while the Liber Isottaeus is an epistolary novel in elegiac couplets about the love between Sigismondo and Isotta degli Atti.
An ongoing project at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Neo-Latin Studies in Innsbruck (Austria), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), is currently working towards a digital edition of his epic poem Hesperis, along with with a commentary and English translation. This poem was Basinio’s masterpiece and can only be understood against the wider backdrop of humanism in fifteenth century Northern Italy, and Rimini in particular. Not only do considerable historical and biographical details appear in the poem, the piece also reflects and discusses the most important cultural and literary debates of its time: philosophy, philology and education, art history and architecture etc.
The conference L’amore, le armi, le stelle intends to contextualize Basinio’s works and those of other humanists and artists within a broader framework. We invite interested speakers to propose conference papers of approx. 30 minutes with a focus on one of the following suggested (by no means exclusive) topics:
Proposals (max. 250 words) are welcome before 4th November 2019
Rimini (Museo della Città, Sala del Giudizio and Palazzo Buonadrata)
Date: 14–16 May 2020
Languages: English, Italian
For any questions contact: