Nymphs in Renaissance Literature and Art I – Enigmas, Phantoms, and Modes of Reflection
Organizer:
Anita Traninger, Freie Universität Berlin
Chair:
Anita Traninger, Freie Universität Berlin
Discussant:
Barbara Baert, KU Leuven
Elke Anna Werner, Freie Universität Berlin
Tamed Gazes. Cranach’s Fountain Nymphs as the Object of Pictorial Self-Reflection
Lucas Cranach the Elder, court artist to the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, at Wittenberg,
created between 1515 and 1540 a series of paintings that show a reclining nymph in the nude in front
of either a fountain or a rock spring. These paintings, which are among the earliest depictions of
nymphs north of the Alps, are characterized by a dynamic interplay between visual representation and
designating inscriptions, between iconic and linguistic signs. In inserting an inscription that
admonishes the beholder not to wake the nymph, Cranach playfully frames the act of seeing as a
direct interaction with the image and the nymph as a nude. Cranach thus stages a reflection on the
medium of the image as an artefact and the potential of sense perception. In this paper, I will discuss
the genesis and the development of Cranach’s fountain nymphs and will relate them to courtly and
humanist discourses on images.
Agata Chrzanowska, Durham University (UK)
Ghirlandaio’s Nymph in the Tornabuoni Chapel: Between a Classical Form and a Modern Meaning
In the scene of the Birth of St. John the Baptist in the Tornabuoni chapel in Florence, Domenico
Ghirlandaio painted a nymph, who boldly enters the puerpera’s room. She wears an ethereal blue
dress and holds on her head a plate full of fruit. This enigmatic figure attracted already the attention of
Aby Warburg, who put her image on the cover of the manuscript of his Florentine Nymph, kept today
in the Warburg Institute Archive. To this day, however, the meaning of this strange presence in the
scene of St. John’s birth has continued to be enigmatic. In my presentation, I will demonstrate that the
nymph constitutes one of the elements of a complex program which strongly links the cycle with the
intellectual circle of the Medici. Moreover, it will be argued that the figure introduced the subject of the
role of women in the history of salvation.
Alexander Roose, Ghent University / Clare College, Cambridge University
Montaigne and the Vanished Nymphs
A ghost is haunting Montaigne’s Essais — the ghost of a beautiful nymph who in Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata convinces the valiant hero to give up all desire for fame. Montaigne quotes her
arguments, echoing his introductory words about the common obsession with glory: “the concern for
reputation and glory, which we expose even to the point of giving up (…) effectual and substantial
goods, to follow that vain phantom”. The pagan goddess is exiled, just like the pagan dream of
immortal glory is. And yet other nymphs disappeared: in the poems by Etienne de La Boétie which
Montaigne intended to publish in his own book, the narrative voice begged for the nymphs to assist
him with their helpful insights. But they vanished too, as if the ancient ideals and the quest for wisdom
were corrupted, as if the transitional moment for Montaigne forces him both to evoke and revoke the
nymphs.
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Nymphs in Renaissance Literature and Art II – Between Nature and Culture
Organizer: Anita Traninger, Freie Universität Berlin
Chair: Elke Anna Werner, Freie Universität Berlin
Mira Becker, Freie Universität Berlin
The Mediality of the Nymph in the Cultural Context of Pirro Visconti’s Villa at Lainate
This paper will focus on a specific constellation in late sixteenth century Milan in order to grasp the
concept of the nymph as it was conceived in different media, genres, and materials: the cultural
context of Pirro Visconti’s Villa at Lainate. The villa was a renowned meeting point for artists and
writers, famous for its Ninfeo, and admired by visitors for its grottos, water-fountains, statues and
paintings. Celebrating the creative power of nature, the grottos offered a world beyond aesthetic and
moral regulations and a home to the nymphs. Being a recurrent motif in artworks, art theory, poems,
and prose directly connected to the villa’s artistic circles, I will trace the nymphs as ‘empty signifiers’
and elusive figures (countless, timeless, forever in motion) within the different media, taking into
account questions of female beauty and in particular the relation of the nymphs to the three Graces.
Robin O’Bryan, Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania
Nymphs, Muses, and the Source of the Laurentian Library Staircase
This paper examines the concept of nymphs expressed as a metaphor in architecture. In 1559, tasked
to complete Michelangelo’s unfinished staircase in the vestibule of the Laurentian Library, Ammannati
fashioned the central steps with volutes to resemble water flowing down an inclined plane. While this
design element accords with Vitruvian ideas on ornamental details appropriate to nymphs, I argue that
Ammannati was duly inspired by ancient nymphaea, artificial grottoes that paired the flow of water with
steps. He thus interpreted the vestibule space as a grotto, the source of water and the sanctuary of
nymphs and their sister muses. This conceit played to the classical tradition whereby nymphaea and
grottoes functioned as places for intellectual discourse and study, which complements the library
setting. Ammannati’s Laurentian design also paid homage to Lorenzo il Magnifico’s poem describing
how the nymph Ambra turned to stone after being pursued by the river god Ombrone.
Anke Kramer, University of Vienna
Sive bibas sive lavere tace. Nymphs, Inspiration, and the Agency of Matter
I will explore how certain renaissance texts and artworks employ nymphs to renegotiate borders
between the human and the non-human, humans and nature, animate and inanimate, mind and
matter. Drawing on neoplatonic interpretations of the nymphs, texts like the epigram Huius nympha
loci […], Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or – in a different tradition – Paracelsus’ Liber de
nymphis and Opitz’ Schäfferey von der Nimfen Hercinie; artworks like Boccaccio’s Primavera, the
woodcut of the sleeping nymph in the Hypnerotomachia, and Cranach’s paintings of sleeping nymphs,
sketch out transitions between humans and their natural environment. I will discuss to what extent
these texts and artworks, instead of contrasting matter to human agency and activity, accord certain
agentic and generative capacities to matter; and in which sense their idea of an inspirited and inspiring
matter can be read as a precursor to concepts of matter opposing Descartes’ idea of an inert and
passive res extensa.
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Nymphs in Renaissance Literature and Art III – The Politics of Arcadia
Organizer: Anita Traninger, Freie Universität Berlin
Chair: Andreas Mahler, Freie Universität Berlin
Winfried Wehle, Catholic University Eichstätt / University of Bonn
Nymphs and Human Libido in Giorgione’s and Titian’s ‘Pastoral Symphony’
The literature of Renaissance humanism built on elements of the classical pastoral tradition to let
Arcadia emerge as a fictitious landscape. The lifestyle cultivated there, far removed form
contemporary realities, does, however, above all provide a graceful dressing-up for a salient
anthropological problem: where does the libido, embodied in the nymph, figure in a general notion of
humankind?
Against the literary background of the Renaissance pastoral, Giorgione and Titian came forward with a
painted manifesto, the ‚Pastoral Symphony’. By way of an analysis of the painting’s internal references
it will be demonstrated that man is best able to encounter his dual nature by capturing it through the
arts.
Andreas Keller, Zentrum für Literaturforschung, Berlin
Renaissance Nymphs as Go-Betweens in Religious, Territorial and Political Areas of Tension
In Renaissance Germany we see a multi-faceted reception of antiquity that is adapted to the
particularities of a highly fragmented Empire. Thus a ‚decentralized‘ Arcadia emerges, an Arcadia that
speaks to different political settings and which is home to the nymphs Hercinie (Silesia), Noris
(Nuremberg) or Mycale (Brandenburg) respectively. Joachim Heinrich Hagen’s nymph Gottesfurcht
(‚Fear of God‘, 1669), for instance, mediates between religion and rationality in a way that theological
concerns – between a mystic pantheism and a pragmatic confessionalism –can also be expressed. In
my talk, I will explore how nymphs are conceived as go-betweens between animated nature (or rather
the numinous knowledge located there) and an institutionalized scholarship in the service of territorial
Princes. It is only poets who have encounters with nymphs and who then translate their messages into
artful and memorable verse. With the ‚connubium artis cum natura‘, the question of inspiration is
equally at stake.
Nicola Suthor, Freie Universität Berlin / Yale University
Poussin’s Nymphs
My talk will focus on the shift within Poussin’s representations of nymphs from an erotic object to be
seen and to be marvelled at to a withdrawn witness that contemplates the scene from a distance. I will
try to clarify the function of the grouping of the mostly anonymous nymphs in the foreground that, at
first glance, seems to be random but actually creates a threshold through which a particular view on
the main scene is staged. The central question of my talk will be: Does the presence and testimony of
the nymphs help to convey Poussin’s own vision of Arcadia?
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