The death of the child Valerio Marcello / Margaret L. King.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

King, Margaret L., 1947-

Contributor:

University of Glasgow. Library.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marcello, Jacopo Antonio, approximately 1400-approximately 1464.

Marcello, Jacopo Antonio.

Marcello, Valerio, 1452-1461--Death and burial.

Marcello, Valerio.

De obitu Valerii filii consolatio.

Nobility--Italy--Venice--Biography.

Nobility.

Consolation.

Mourning customs--Italy.

Mourning customs.

Venice (Italy)--History--697-1508.

Venice (Italy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (503 pages) : illustrations, maps

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Margaret King shows what the death of a little boy named Valerio Marcello over five hundred years ago can tell us about his time. This child, scion of a family of power and privilege at Venice's time of greatness, left his father in a state of despair so profound and so public that it occasioned an outpouring of consoling letters, orations, treatises, and poems. In these documents, we find a firsthand account, richly colored by humanist conventions and expectations, of the life of the fifteenth-century boy, the passionate devotion of his father, the feelings of his brothers and sisters, the striking absence of his mother. The father's story is here as well: the career of a Venetian nobleman and scholar, patron and soldier, a participant in Venice's struggle for dominion in the north of Italy. Through these sources also King traces the cultural trends that made Marcello's century famous. Her work enlarges our view of the literature of consolation, which had a distinctive tradition in Venice, and shifting attitudes toward death from the late Middle Ages onward. For the depth and acuity of its insights into political, cultural, and private life in fifteenth-century Venice, this book will be essential reading for students of the Renaissance. For the grace and drama of its storytelling, it will be savored by anyone who wishes to look into life and death in a palace, and a city, long ago.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustration

Abbreviations

Prorogue

CHAPTER ONE. The Death of a Child

CHAPTER TWO. The Birth o fa Book

CHAPTER THREE. Marcello in Word and Image

CHAPTER FOUR. Marcello in War and Peace

CHAPTER FIVE. Father and Son

CHAPTER SIX. In Sympathy

APPENDIX ONE. Marcello Family and Monuments

APPENDIX TWO. Chronology

APPENDIX THREE. Texts

Notes

Bibliography

1ndex

Notes:

English, Italian, and Latin.

The illuminated ms., De obitu Valerii ..., which is discussed in this work is located in the University of Glasgow Library.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 425-461) and index.

ISBN:

9786612172311

9781282172319

128217231X

9780226436272

0226436276

OCLC:

55719354