Publications
MONOGRAPHS
- Mario Equicola. Selected works, edited and translated by Bernhard Schirg. Cambridge (Mass.)-London (Harvard University Press: The I Tatti Renaissance Library) (handed in to the editors summer 2019).
This volume for James Hankin's I Tatti-series will contain key texts by which the Italian humanist Mario Equicola (c. 1470–1525) shaped his profile as intellectual at the court of Isabella d'Este in Mantua. The volume will comprise Latin editions and English translations of exemplary texts by Equicola that permit deep insight into Italian humanist circles and court culture as well as the interaction of literature and patterns of patronage at Renaissance courts.
Texts will include:- On women (De mulieribus, 1501): A treatise on famous women from antiquity that responds to a new self-awareness of women at Isabella's court.
- On opportunity (De opportunitate, 1507): A dialogue interpreting and intellectually enhancing the visual device (impresa) adopted by Isabella's brother, Cardinal Ippolito d'Este. This was recently revealed as an invention by Leonardo da Vinci (see my article "Decoding da Vinci's impresa"). Moreover, the dialogue constitutes an intriguing testimony of an early humanist theory of imprese and related symbolic devices.
- Neither by fear nor hope (Nec spe nec metu, 1506/1513): A dialogue in which Mantuan humanists sound out the eponymous motto adopted by Isabella d'Este and also used for the decoration of her famous studiolo. Originally dedicated to Isabella as a birthday present in 1506, the text was only printed in 1513, when it was modified and rededicated to gain the favour of the Florentine potentate Giuliano de' Medici.
- La fenice e il banano. Metamorfosi botaniche di un mito classico nella Svezia moderna, translated by Simone Signaroli. Ceto (il leggio: Le bocce), 2021 (single publication of the translated article "Phoenix going bananas"; see below)
- Die Ökonomie der Dichtung. Pietro Lazzaronis Lobgedicht an den Borgia-Papst Alexander VI. (1497). Hildesheim-Zürich-New York (Olms: Noctes Neolatinae), 2016 (518 pp.).
(reviews by: Lorenzo di Maggio, Seventeenth Century News 75 (2017), 52–54; Carla Piccone, in: Anzeiger für die Altertumswissenschaft 69 (2016), coll. 249-253)
EDITED VOLUMES
- Boreas rising. Antiquarianism and the building of national narratives in 17th and 18th century Scandinavia, edd. Bernd Roling – Bernhard Schirg, Berlin-Boston (Walter de Gruyter: Transformationen der Antike), 2019.
- Economics of Poetry. Efficient techniques of producing Neo-Latin verse, edd. Paul Gwynne – Bernhard Schirg, Oxford et al. (Peter Lang: Court Cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance) 2018.
- Apotheosis of the North. The Swedish Appropriation of Classical Antiquity around the Baltic Sea and Beyond (1650 to 1800), edd. Bernd Roling – Stefan Bauhaus – Bernhard Schirg. Berlin-Boston (Walter de Gruyter: Transformationen der Antike), 2017.
ARTICLES IN JOURNALS AND EDITED VOLUMES
- "The perfect pitch. Refashioning antiquities and the hunt for patronage under the Swedish Empire - a case study (1680-1700)", in: A Companion to Renaissance Antiquarianism, ed. William Stenhouse, Leiden-Boston (Brill: RSA Series), 2022.
- (with Bernd Roling) "Introduction", in: Boreas Rising 2019 (see "Edited volumes").
- "The Northern Face of January. Narratives of early cultural history between Rome and their appropriation in Swedish antiquarianism (Janus, Saturn, Numa)", in: Boreas Rising 2019 (see "Edited volumes").
- “Pietro Lazzaroni professore di retorica e poesia a Pavia”, in: Profili di umanisti bresciani. Seconda serie, ed. Carla Maria Monti. Travagliato-Brescia (Edizione Torre d‘Ercole: Adunanza erudita), 2019, 151–180.
- "Spamming the Council of Milan. Neo-Latin Poetry and the quest for patronage under Ludovico Sforza (1480–1499)", in: Economics of Poetry 2018 (see "Edited volumes"), 179–198.
- "Cortese's ideal cardinal? Art, splendour and magnificence in Cardinal Bernardino de Carvajal’s (1456–1523) Roman residence", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 80 (2017), 61–82.
- "(Re)Writing the Early Biography of the Alhambra’s Fountain of Lions. New Evidence from a Neo-Latin Poem (1497)", Muqarnas. An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World 34 (2017), 259–271.
- "The Daphnic fate of Camerarius. Olof Rudbeck the Younger's botanical dissertation (1686) revealed as Sweden's first printed emblem book", in: Emblems and the Natural World (1500–1700), edd. Karl A.E. Enenkel - Paul J. Smith, Leiden-Boston (Brill: Intersections), 2017, 227–270.
- “Phoenix going bananas. The Swedish Appropriation of a Classical Myth, and its Demise in Botanical Scholarship (Engelbert Kaempfer, Carl Linnaeus)”, in: Apotheosis of the North 2017 (see "Edited volumes"), 17–46.
- “Formare un poeta. Bernardino Bornato a Pavia e il modesto Fortleben letterario della poesia panegirica”, in: La lettura e i libri tra chiostro, scuola e biblioteca. Libri e lettori a Brescia tra Medioevo ed Età moderna (Atti della sesta giornata di studi “Libri e lettori a Brescia tra Medioevo ed Età moderna”, Brescia, 8 Maggio 2015), ed. Luca Rivali. Udine (Forum: Libri e biblioteche), 2017, 69–76.
- “Decoding da Vinci’s impresa. Leonardo’s gift to cardinal Ippolito d’Este and Mario Equicola’s De opportunitate (1507)”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 78 (2015), 135–155.
- (with Paul Gwynne) “‘The ‘Economics Of Poetry’. Fast Production as an Essential Skill in Neo-Latin Encomiastic Poetry”, Studi Rinascimentali 13 (2015), 11–32.
- “Betting on the antipope. Giovambattista Cantalicio and his cycle of poems dedicated to the schismatic Cardinal Bernardino de Carvajal in 1511 (with an edition and translation from Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, ms. XVI A 1)“, SPOLIA. Journal of Medieval Studies 2015, 248–285.
- “In bivio. Zur Lebenswegentscheidung als Motiv frühhumanistischer Selbstdarstellung bei Geri von Arezzo und Francesco Petrarca”, Studi Medievali 55 (2014), 299–340.