2011 Theodore Roethke Humanities Festival Celebrates the Spirit of the Renaissance

Adoration of the Shepherds by Giovanni Agostino da Lodi

The College’s 11th biennial Roethke Humanities Festival will explore the theme of “The Renaissance Spirit” through art exhibits, musical performances, and discussions on various topics in early modern studies.

The festival is anchored by the Revisiting the Italian Renaissance exhibit running Feb. 5-March 26 in the Williams Center Gallery. Paintings and sculpture, on loan from the Allentown Art Museum, chronicle the development of Renaissance art from its origins in the fourteenth century to its culmination during the sixteenth century. A photographic exhibit in Skillman Library’s Lass Gallery, Vedute di Venezia (Views of Venice), will run through June 30.

Performances include Madrigals, Dances, and Fantasias from the Italian Renaissance by wind ensemble Piffaro and string ensemble King’s Noyse on March 9 and the Venice Baroque Orchestra on April 16. There will also be talks by Lafayette and guest professors on fifteenth-century Italian painting, Italian madrigals, music in the Court of Ferrara, and Greece’s influence on the Renaissance.

Venice Baroque Orchestra

The festival is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke, who taught at Lafayette for four years in the 1930s. Focusing on a different theme every two years, the festival pulls from faculty expertise from the College’s six humanities departments. This year’s planning committee is comprised of Diane Ahl, Rothkopf Professor of Art History; Paul Cefalu, associate professor of English; Anthony Cummings, professor of music; Anna Duhl, professor of foreign languages and literatures; and Eric Ziolkowski, Dana Professor of Religious Studies.

Festival Schedule:

• Jan. 24–June 30
  Lass Gallery, Skillman Library
  Vedute di Venezia: Photographs by Ewa Monika Zebrowski

• Feb. 5–March 26
  Williams Center Gallery
  Revisiting the Italian Renaissance: Painting and Sculpture from the Allentown Art Museum

• Thursday, Feb. 10, 4:15 p.m.
  Skillman Library, Gendebien Room
  Diane Ahl, Rothkopf Professor of Art History, Lafayette College
  “This Splendid Noble Art”: Re-Viewing Fifteenth-Century Painting in Italy

• Tuesday, Feb. 15, 12:15 p.m.
  Williams Center Gallery
  Diane Ahl
  Gallery Tour: Revisiting the Italian Renaissance
  Lunch available at noon; please, no food or drinks in the gallery.

• Thursday, Feb. 17, 7 p.m.
  Williams Center Gallery and room 108
  Diane Ahl and J. Brooks Joyner, Priscilla Payne Hurd President and CEO of the Allentown Art Museum
  Gallery Talk and Reception: Revisiting the Italian Renaissance

• Monday, Feb. 28, 8 p.m.
  Kirby Hall of Civil Rights, room 104
  Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University
  “Reading in the Renaissance”

• Monday, March 7, noon
  Gendebien Room, Skillman Library
  Photographer Ewa Monika Zebrowski
  “Photographing Venice, a City in Peril”
  Lunch will be provided.

• Monday, March 7, 4:15 p.m.
  Williams Center for the Arts, room 108
  Patricia Fortini Brown, professor emeritus of art and archaeology, Princeton University
  “Empire of Fragments: Venice Beyond the Lagoon”

• Wednesday, March 9, 4:15 p.m.
  Williams Center for the Arts, room 108
  Anthony Newcomb, Terrill Professor Emeritus of Music, University of California, Berkeley
  “The Italian Madrigal and the Renaissance Court”

• Wednesday, March 9, 7 p.m.
  Williams Center for the Arts, room 108
  Anthony Cummings, professor of music, Lafayette College; Anthony Newcomb; and Robert Wiemken, artistic director of Piffaro wind ensemble
  “Musical Practices in the Court of Ferrara”

• Wednesday, March 9, 8 p.m.
  Williams Center for the Arts
  Piffaro, King’s Noyse, and soprano Ellen Hargis
  Madrigals, Dances, and Fantasias from the Italian Renaissance: works by Carlo Gesualdo, Cipriano de Rore, and their contemporaries

• Thursday, March 31, 8 p.m.
  Kirby Hall of Civil Rights, room 104
  John Monfasani, professor of history, SUNY Albany
  “Émigré Greek Scholars and the Italian Renaissance”

• Monday, April 11, 4:10 p.m.
  Gendebien Room, Skillman Library
  John L. Varriano, professor emeritus of art at Mount Holyoke College
  “Erotic Appetites:  Art, Food, and Sex in the Italian Renaissance”

• Saturday, April 16, 8 p.m.
  Williams Center for the Arts
  Venice Baroque Orchestra
  Antonio Vivaldi and his Circle