The Italian Renaissance Podcast

Author and historian Sarah Dunant joined me for a riveting conversation about her new book treating the life of Isabella d'Este, The Marchesa. A master of the historical fiction genre, Sarah walks us through her creative process from the archives of Mantua to the rich pages of her exceptional prose. We discuss art, patronage, and some newfound evidence that uncovers details about Isabella's intimate life during the 16th century Syphilis outbreak. 

This title is the latest in a long list of Sarah Dunant's works set during the Renaissance and with a particular focus on giving voice to the women who helped shape and craft this exciting historical moment. 

You can find Sarah Dunant's The Marchesa here: https://weatherglassbooks.com/ravenna-press/themarchesa

Some of the images discussed: 

Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of Isabella d'Este, 1499/1500 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020111146

Titian, Portriat of Isabella d'Este, ca. 1536 https://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/t/tiziano/10/1/09isabel.html

Andrea Mantegna, Parnassus, 1475-1500 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010059312

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Among the many artists employed by Agostino Chigi, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, better known as Il Sodoma, painted a remarkable fresco cycle of Alexander the Great in Rome's Villa Farnesina. At the center of the discussion is a question: what happens when an ancient story of Alexander, Hephaestion, and Roxana is filtered through the erotic and social culture of Renaissance Rome? Alexander the Great's relationship to his childhood friend and general Hephaestion has long been a subject of debate. Were they lovers, or simply life partners? Here, in the Villa Farnesina, close observation tells us that Renaissance artists and patrons were asking the same questions, and creating visual answers. 

Ultimately, how these frescos are read informs us about the social construction around Sodoma, his patron Agostino Chigi, and the world they inhabited in the early 16th century. 

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Works Discussed: 

Il Sodoma, Marriage of Alexander and Roxane, ca. 1519 https://www.villafarnesina.it/en/percorso-di-visita/the-wedding-hall/ 

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At the height of his career in Rome, Raphael was commissioned by the wealthy banker Agostino Chigi to join a large workforce of artists decorating his villa on the outskirts of central Rome, known today as the Villa Farnesina. The decoration is entirely secular, depicting a wide range of pagan mythologies all throughout what can be considered a pleasure palace. 

Raphael's major contributions were his Galatea and his decoration of the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche. This episode explores the history of these works, particularly how they relate to their function and to their patron, Agostino Chigi. Raphael did not paint very many mythological works, so this villa serves as a stunning example of Raphael's work beyond the typical conventions of High Renaissance Rome. 

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Works Discussed: 

Sebastiano del Piombo, Polyphemus & Raphael, Galatea, ca. 1512 https://www.wga.hu/html_m/s/sebastia/polyphe.html

Raphael and workshop, Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, 1518 https://www.wga.hu/html_m/r/raphael/5roma/4a/

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In this episode, we explore Raphael’s extraordinary decoration of the Vatican’s Stanza della Segnatura, one of the defining achievements of the High Renaissance. At the center is the famous School of Athens, but the true masterpiece is the whole of the room’s larger intellectual and theological program. We examine how Raphael brings together classical philosophy, poetry, law, and Christian theology into a unified vision of knowledge itself. Along the way, we consider the remarkable portraits, ancient influences, and artistic personalities embedded within these frescoes. The episode ultimately reveals how the School of Athens leads toward the theological vision, unifying the glorified pagan past with his Christian present. 

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Works Discussed: 

Raphael, Stanza della Segnatura, 1508-1511 https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/stanze-di-raffaello/stanza-della-segnatura/stanza-della-segnatura.html

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In 1534, Michelangelo was called back to Rome to complete his final work inside the Sistine Chapel for the altar wall, his Last Judgement. In the decades between his painting of the ceiling and his return, Rome was subject to two major historical events: the start of the Protestant Reformation and the 1527 Sack of Rome. 

This episode looks at the Last Judgement as a product of this new historical shift in Renaissance Rome. We also look at the critics of the work, both locally from Biagio da Cesena, and from far off Venice from the infamous Scourge of Princes, Pietro Aretino, in order to understand how society responded to Michelangelo's work in the most holy chapel in all of Catholicism. 

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Works Discussed: 

Michelangelo, Last Judgement, 1535-41 https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/giudizio-universale.html

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Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the defining masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, but its creation was equally defined by friction as much as genius. This episode follows Michelangelo's turbulent relationship with Pope Julius II, from the abrupt cancellation of the pope's monumental tomb commission to the unlikely assignment of painting the chapel's vast ceiling. We explore how Michelangelo transformed the project into an ambitious visual narrative and testament of divinely inspired artistic genius.

We examine how his revolutionary approach to anatomy, composition, and artistic invention, exemplified in The Creation of Adam, forever changed the course of Renaissance painting. 

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Works Discussed: 

Michelangelo, Pietà, 1499 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_(Michelangelo)

Michelangelo, Tomb of Pope Julius II (unfinished), 1505-1545 https://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/michelan/1sculptu/giulio_2/giulio2.html

Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, 1508-1512 https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/volta.html

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Before the era of the High Renaissance, Pope Sixtus IV commissioned one of the most ambitious artistic projects of the Roman Quattrocento, the Sistine Chapel. In this episode, we explore the chapel's original decoration and the remarkable group of artists, including Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio, Signorelli, and Roselli, who transformed its walls into a monumental visual narrative in line with the symbolic force of the papacy. 

We begin by examining Pope Sixtus IV, his political ambitions, and his vision of the Sistine Chapel as a new Temple of Solomon and a powerful symbol of papal authority. From there, we analyze some of the cycle's greatest surviving frescoes, including Botticelli's Punishment of Korah, Perugino's Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter, Signorelli's Death and Testament of Moses, and Cosimo Roselli's underrated Last Supper. Together, these masterpieces reveal how art, theology, and politics combined to create one of the defining monuments of the Renaissance and laid the foundation for Michelangelo's later masterpiece upon the chapel ceiling. 

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Works Discussed: 

Sandro Botticelli, The Punishment of Korah, 1481-82 https://www.wga.hu/html_m/b/botticel/4sistina/punishme/korah.html

Luca Signorelli and Biagio d'Antonio, Testament and Death of Moses, 1481-82 https://www.wga.hu/html_m/s/signorel/sistina/moses.html

Pietro Perugino, Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter, 1481-82 https://www.wga.hu/html_m/p/perugino/sistina/keys.html

Cosimo Rosselli, Last Supper, 1481-82 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper_(Rosselli)

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Before the triumphs of Michelangelo and Raphael transformed Rome during the High Renaissance, the foundations of the Roman Humanism were laid by remarkable scholars, patrons, and artists whose stories are often overlooked. In this episode, we explore the extraordinary patronage of Cardinal Basilios Bessarion, the Byzantine humanist whose vision helped bridge the intellectual worlds of East and West following the fall of Constantinople.

Through the remarkable frescoes of the Bessarion Chapel, painted by the Roman artist Antoniazzo Romano, we uncover how theology, diplomacy, classical learning, and artistic innovation converged in fifteenth-century Rome. From Greek philosophy and manuscript collecting to the visual synthesis of Byzantine and Italian artistic traditions, this episode reveals how one cardinal's ambitious patronage helped shape the cultural landscape that would eventually give rise to the High Renaissance.

Works Discussed: 

Antoniazzo Romano, Bessarion Chapel, 1463-1467, Santi XII Apostoli, Rome https://www.churches-of-rome.info/CoR_Info/SA-040/ChapBessarion.html

Antoniazzo Romano, Madonna of Cardinal Bessarion, 1467 

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Raphael’s years in Florence (c. 1504–1508) placed him at the center of one of the most extraordinary moments in Renaissance art, where he encountered both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo at the height of their powers. Under the Soderini Republic, Florence became a stage for artistic innovation, marked by Michelangelo’s David, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, and the unrealized battle frescoes commissioned for the Palazzo Vecchio.

This episode explores how Raphael absorbed and transformed the lessons of these two rival masters. From Leonardo, he adopted naturalism, portrait composition, and sfumato; from Michelangelo, monumental form, line, and color. Yet Raphael forged a distinctive style defined by harmony, clarity, and balance, culminating in works such as the Maddalena Doni portraits and the Madonna of the Goldfinch before his departure to Rome under the patronage of Pope Julius II.

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Works Discussed: 

Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504 https://www.galleriaaccademiafirenze.it/opere/david-michelangelo/

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-19 https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062370

Leonardo da Vinci, The Battle of Anghiari, unfinished, lost. 

Michelangelo, The Battle of Cascina, unfinished. 

Raphael, Portraits of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni, 1504-07 https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/portraits-doni-raffaello

Raphael, Madonna of the Goldfinch, 1506 https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/mary-christ-and-the-young-john-the-baptist-known-as-the-madonna-of-the-goldfinch

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This episode explores the courtly culture of Renaissance Urbino through Baldassare Castiglione’s landmark Book of the Courtier (1528), one of the most influential literary works of the Renaissance. After considering Giovanni Santi’s Cronaca rimata and its celebration of Urbino’s artistic world, the discussion turns to Castiglione’s vision of the ideal courtier, shaped by his experiences in the courts of Milan, Mantua, and Urbino under Guidobaldo da Montefeltro.

Through a series of lively dialogues set in the Ducal Palace, Castiglione examines the qualities expected of the perfect courtier: elegance, wit, athleticism, eloquence, moral virtue, and the effortless display of mastery. Through this text, the episode also explores Renaissance attitudes toward humor, language, and the ideals around women of the court.

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The Florentine Renaissance Course

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