Will the king of Naples die?

The following is the translation from Latin of an horary question  asked to the prophet- astrologer Annius of Viterbo. The querent is Galeazzo Sforza, duke of Milan, who was inquiring about the health of his enemy Don Ferrante of Aragon, King of Naples, who was sick in his bed. Planetary positions as given in the Latin  [...]

Love in Renaissance Rome

This morning, as every year, I visited the traditional  Christmas books’ exhibition and I had the opportunity to attend a lecture about the star crossed love between Raffaello Sanzio, the famous painter and the beautiful Fornarina, made immortal by one of his paintings. Who was that woman is not clear but many say she was Agostino [...]

….and Henry II

About Caterina de Medici’s husband, it is well know the prognostication Luca Gaurico made for him. Percopo, Gaurico’s biographer mentions it: “Itinera tamen aquea videntur infausta et ab equis nonnihil impedimenti et lachrimulis ex oculo sinistro fluentibus“ “Travels by water are inaspicious and accidents with horses and tears from the left eye.” While in his Tractatus, Gaurico mentions [...]

Caterina de Medici

The black legend about Caterina de Medici depicts her as a wicked woman, adept to black magic and every kind of sorcery in order to keep the power and the throne, and i found this story in several astrological sites too. Alexandre Dumas writes in his wonderful novel “La reine Margot” about her

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 [...]

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