Renaissance Studies

This Festschrift is dedicated to Edward J. Olszewski and was created by his former PhD students in gratitude and honor of a professor whose innovative and comprehensive research spans the Renaissance and Baroque periods. His research provided much insight to the arts, issues of patronage, conservation, and context. The text includes an array of topics conceived by each author while studying with Olszewski. His intense seminar on Michelangelo was the catalyst for many articles: Jennifer Finkel introduces new ideas regarding the proposed sculptural plan for the façade of San Lorenzo; Dena M. Woodall provides keen insight on the representations of genii on the Sistine Ceiling; Karen Edwards proposes the early creation of the figura serpentinata in Michelangelo’s own drawings and paintings; and Rachel Geshwind offers a new interpretation of his use of color symbolism in the Sistine Chapel. This seminar, and another on Mannerism, involved provocative discussion of the competitors of Michelangelo, where the foundation was laid for the much needed re-examination of Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus in Michael Morford’s article, which introduces the probability of Machiavellian influence, and Christine Corretti’s interpretation of Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa as the symbol of Cosimo’s I ideas of justice and the influence of women in his life. Olszewski’s own research on patronage, especially of the Ottoboni, mirrors Henrietta Silberger’s article on the collecting habits of Livio Odescalchi. Finally, Holley Witchey provides a personal experience in authenticating works of art in collections (a topic of interest for Olszewski) and ends her essay with a series of important questions for each of us to ask ourselves.

Michael D. Morford is Assistant Professor of Art History at The City University of New York – Borough of Manhattan Community College. Morford specializes in painting and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance, especially Mannerist art and artists. He completed a dissertation entitled Carving for a future: Baccio Bandinelli securing Medici patronage through his mutually fulfilling propagandistic «Hercules and Cacus.» Morford was awarded his PhD in Art History in 2009 from Case Western Reserve University. He has recently presented research on the study of dreams and their influence on Mannerism, and has published catalogue entries and biographies in Drawings in Midwestern Collections. II. 1500-1600, Ed. by Edward Olszewski, Brepols Press (Belgium), 2008. Jennifer H. Finkel is Curator of contemporary art at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, where she oversees art installations at the main Cleveland campus as well as community hospitals and family health centers in Ohio and Florida. She wrote her dissertation, Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: The «Tragedy» of the Façade, on the sculptural program for the façade and was awarded her PhD in Art History in 2005 from Case Western Reserve University. Publications include: Contemporary Art in Medicine: The Cleveland Clinic Art Collection (Cardiovascular Diagnosis Therapy, Sept 2011); as well as catalogue entries in Edward J. Olszewski’s co-edited Drawings in Midwestern Collection, II. 1500–1600, Brepols Press (Belgium), 2008. Dena M. Woodall is Assistant Curator of Prints & Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Specializing in Renaissance and Baroque art, she wrote her dissertation on Sharing Space: Double Portraiture in Renaissance Italy and was awarded a PhD in Art History in 2008 from Case Western Reserve University. Her publications and exhibitions include Princes and Paupers: The Art of Jacques Callot (2013), The Art of Exaggeration (2012), Acid on Metal: The Art of Etching and Aquatint (2011), and Drawing from Nature: Landscapes by Liebermann, Corinth, and Slevogt (2010).