<ong>Art History lecture highlights North Africa’s impact on Renaissance Italy
Professor of Art History at Tufts University Cristelle Baskins will present “Giorgio Vasari’s Life of Filippo Lippi: A Renaissance Tale of Captivity and Creativity on the Barbary Coast” on Monday, Feb. 22 at 5 p.m. in the Boliou Hall Auditorium on the Carleton College campus. Her presentation illustrates North Africa’s significant impact on Renaissance Italy through the lens of Giorgio Vasari’s fictional anecdote about a young Filippo Lippi. This talk is free and open to the public.
Giorgio Vasari (1511 –1574) was an Italian artist who famously laid the foundation for art-historical writing in his biographies of Italian artists of his generation and immediately prior. Although his accounts are wonderful primary resources, usually unbiased in aesthetic judgment, they are also interspersed with comical gossip from his time. For instance, when recounting the life of Italian painter Filippo Lippi (1406-1469), he wrote that Lippi was captured and enslaved by Moorish pirates. Apparently, Lippi was only released after drawing a compelling portrait of his captor. Modern biographers remain skeptical.
The significance of North Africa on the Italian and greater European Renaissance is often overlooked. Despite Vasari’s selective credibility, Baskins recognizes Filippo’s tale as an important reflection on Italian/North African relations, and hopes to draw larger conclusions from it.
Cristelle Baskins is a distinguished scholar of Italian art, and author of Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gender in Early Modern Italy (1998), The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance (2005), Early Modern Visual Allegory: Embodying Meaning (2007), and numerous articles.
Carleton Players to present Tony Kushner’s Drama, Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches
The Carleton College Players will present Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches nightly at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 19 and 20, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 21 in the Arena Theater on the Carleton College campus; performances continue the following weekend at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 26 and 27. Directed by associate professor of theater, David Wiles, Angels in America maintains its critical acclaim as a “searching and radical rethinking of American political drama” in an edgy and moving portrayal of the impact of AIDS on the homosexual community in modern America. This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are suggested and can be made by calling (507) 222-4471.
Renowned playwright Tony Kushner’s first major work, Angels in America premiered worldwide in May 1991 in a production performed by the Eureka Theatre Company of San Francisco, and debuted on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre only two years later. The plot centers around two couples in 1980s America against a backdrop of conservatism, sexual politics, and a burgeoning AIDs epidemic. Angels tackles the social and political climate of a nation embracing new sexual identities and communities, creating an epic drama that sets it apart from most love stories of its time.
Since its debut, Angels has received numerous awards and critical accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play in 1993. Produced and performed in dozens of countries around the world, translated into several languages, and adapted for an HBO television miniseries, Kushner’s play represents “a turning point in the history of gay drama, the history of American drama, and of American literary culture.”