Mysterium Magnum : : Michelangelo's Tondo Doni / / by Regina Stefaniak.

• Superior document: Brill's studies in intellectual history, v. 164. Brill's studies on art, art history, and intellectual history ; v. 1
• Author: Stefaniak, Regina.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Brill's studies in intellectual history ; v. 164.; Brill's studies in intellectual history. Brill's studies on art, art history, and intellectual history ; v. 1.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (180 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

This study presents the Tondo Doni to the new Florentine republic as a model of the 'great sacrament' of marriage from the New Testament book of Ephesians. Following fifteenth-century theology, Michelangelo portrayed Mary as a humble wife dominated and possessed by a virile guardian Joseph, the couple united as if ‘two in one flesh’. To compensate for their symbolic propinquity, the painter cast her as a paragon of virginity, a muscular mulier fortis . In order to keep this virago in her place, Michelangelo coupled the Virgin in spiritual union with Christ, maenad-Psyche to bacchic Eros, attempting to mystify her social subordination into self-sacrificing love via Ficinian commentary and Saint Paul. Then, firing the Doni infant’s vehemence with a distinctly violent strain of Christian love, the painter turned to Dante’s rime petrose to continue the implied action and authorize a new painterly style, a sculptural stile aspro . Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History , volume 1

Table of Contents

Preliminary Materials / R. Stefaniak -- Introduction Tondo Doni / R. Stefaniak -- Chapter One. Prime Nozze: Generation / R. Stefaniak -- Chapter Two. Seconde Nozze: Regeneration / R. Stefaniak -- Chapter Three. Così Nel Mio Parlar Vogli’ Esser Aspro / R. Stefaniak -- Bibliography / R. Stefaniak -- Index / R. Stefaniak.