The chariot of Love in Petrarca Trionfi

Vedi Venere bella e con lei Marte, cinto di ferri i piè, le braccia e ’l collo, e Plutone e Proserpina in disparte; vedi Iunon gelosa, e ’l biondo Apollo che solea disprezzar l’etate e l’arco che gli diede in Tessaglia poi tal crollo. Che debb’io dir? In un passo men varco: tutti son qui in prigion gli dèi di Varro; e di [...]

Interlude - Women in love

The celestial vault of Alessandro Farnese

Haec, Auguste, tamen, quae vertice sidera pulsat, par domus est caelo sed minor est domino. Augustus, this Dome whose vault touches the stars and is so similar to the sky, nevertheless is inferior to his Lord. (Martial, Ephigrams VIII, 36) A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION When I wrote my thesis about “manifestations of luxury in Renaissance Italian buildings” some years [...]

Marsilio Ficino casts his horoscope

Reply to a friend asking Marsilio’s birthday You are asking me about my birthday; and if our Plotinus, to the friends that often asked him about it, never replied, I’m so touched of your love for me, that I can’t deny anything if not what I’m not able to do. My birthday was on 19th October 1433. About [...]

The Sacred wood of Bomarzo 1552

Pontano stars

AD STELLAM in tenebris, mea Stella, nites, dum sidera pallent, Et nox ipsa tuo lucida honore placet; In medio, mea Stella, die sub sole nitescis, Clarior et per te solque diesque uenit. Sic es sideribus decus addita matutinis, Et radiis debent solque diesque tuis. Sed cur, quae tenebris honor es, decus una diebus, Cur lumen nobis nocte dieque negas? Nocte negas foribus clausis, in [...]

Jupiter in Cancer, year 1574

Firmicus, and pictures and paranatellonta

Pictures are taken from the astrological representation of paranatellonta in Villa Te in Mantua,1527 ARIES Haedus is in the 20th degree of Aries toward the North…….Also from this star are born shepherds who make sweet songs to rustic pipes. TAURUS When the Pleiades are descending in the sixth degree ofTaurus, if this degree is attacked by malefic influence, [...]

An alchemical Villa

Yesterday I spent the night at Villa d’Este, the alchemical villa of Ippolito d’Este, Lucrezia Borgia son,  Hercules offspring. Villa d’Este Aurora Consurgens

Hermes Book of Paranatellonta

Pseudo Pythagoras The book of Paranatellonta  in  Reginensis Vat. Lat. 1283 fol 1-8v. This is the first and likely the most important part of the selection of Spanish Medieval texts collected in the  manuscript known as Reginensis Vat. Lat. 1283,  written in the court of Alphonse the Wise around 1280. The illuminated  book was discovered [...]