Papers by Werner Gundersheimer
In his Gesta Grayorum (1594), the young polymath Francis Bacon summarized the surroundings approp... more In his Gesta Grayorum (1594), the young polymath Francis Bacon summarized the surroundings appropriate to the life of a learned gentleman. He stipulated four different environments, and gave pride of place to a library, like the bookish sort of man he was. His gentleman sho uld collect "a most perfect and general library, wherein whosoever the wit of man hath heretofore committed to books of worth ... may be contributory to your wisdom." He then recommended a splendid garden, fill ed with an immense va riety of botanical and zoological specimens. Next, he called for "a goodly, huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff , form , or motion ... shall be sorted and included. " Finally, he prescribed "such a stillho use, so furni shed with mills, instruments, furnaces, and vessels as may be a palace fit for a philosopher's stone.'" Bacon here has deftl y delineated the institutional forms through which Western societies have sought to preserve th eir cultural heritages, as well as to make them available to new generatio ns. Libraries; arboretums. zoos, wetlands, and parks; museums of the several arts , sciences, and natural history ; institutions devoted to technology and the applied sciences-all of these staples of the modern cultural smorgasbord are prefi gured by the Baconian banquet. Ho wever , the recipes have become much more elaborate over nearly four centuries, as th e "special collections" of the late Renaissance have evolved into the diverse, laminate d institutions around us. Thus, the priva te individual's "cabinet of curiosities" or "Wunderkam mer" has shed its carapace of elite, sequestered elegance and been metamorphosed into the museum , with its " blockbuster" exhibitions, Werner Gunde rsheim er is Directo r of Th e Folger Shakespeare Li brary . This pape r was delivered as the keynote address at the 1988 RBM S Preconference in New Orleans . its mixed-media programmatic extravaganzas, its elaborate aural and written guides to the vagrant perplexed , its multinational politics and diplomacy. Meanwhile, Bacon's "most perfect and general library" evolved from its classical , patristic , medieval and Renaissa nce origins into the modern storehouse of information-interactive, polyglot, and virtually unbounded in substantive scope and intellectual range . While both kinds of institutions developed along parallel tracks from private enclave to public entity, museums and libraries tended to adopt , if onl y implicitly, divergent assumptions about the nature of their public roles. Like two noble kinsmen, they reflect a common ancestry, but have evolved separatel y, so that their relationship to one another may not be readil y apparent. For example, although it has always been considered ideal that they would both be open to the public free of charge, museum officials have long accepted the notion that their collections were of interest to a large segment of the public, which ought by right to have access to it. Administrators of libraries, in contrast, have tended to operate on the premise that aside from serious users of their collections, the public at large would have relatively little interest, and even less cl aim , on the time, energy, and attention ofthe curatorial staff , or access to th e principal works. Such early American subscription libraries as the Boston Athenaeu m, where a limited number of members pay for the privilege of using the collections, has few if any analogues in the museum world. No librarian would be at a loss to suggest some explanations for this traditional distinction. In the first place, although books and manuscri pts may undeniably be works of art , a great many of them are not. Their artifactual status therefore differs from objects in museums. These may be atrocious, or unintelligible, but they have for better or worse been subsumed under the category of some a uthority's definition of art. Secondly, textual materials constitute for the most part forms of expression which are verbal , in contrast to objects in museu ms which are largely non-verbal , notwithstanding the vigorous existence of book illustration and manuscript illumination on the one hand, and on the other, paintings and sculptures that incorporate inscriptions, texts, and other scribal or typographical elements. We know that folklore values a picture over a very great number of words, and that is a relative theory of value that even today is quite sensitively reflected in the auction markets, and not only there. Some may recall the extensive nationwide ceremonies and publicity that attended the twentieth anniversary, in 1986, of the National Endowment for the Arts. Hardly any of the articles dealing with this notable event bothered to acknowledge the same milestone for the National Endowment for the Humanities, which was established by the same piece of legislation. The difference, also reflected in a gap of about $10 million in the annual appropriations of the two agencies , clearly relates to the greater visibility of the arts, and therefore their greater political appeal.
Review of Exhibition
Renaissance Studies, Jun 1, 1992
Cranach et son temps (Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 9 February–23 May 2011). Catalogue edited by Gu... more Cranach et son temps (Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 9 February–23 May 2011). Catalogue edited by Guido Messling, with contributions by Till-Holger Borchert, Elke A. Werner, Berthold Hinz, Véronique Bücken, Gunnar Heydenreich and Armin Kunz. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Flammarion, 2011. 271 pp. €49.00. ISBN: 978-2711858668 (hb, available only in French). The almost identical catalogue of the preceding Brussels exhibition, L’Univers de Lucas Cranach (1472–1553), Bozar Books, 2010, ISBN: 9789020991918 appeared in Flemish (ISBN: 978-9020990058) and German (ISBN: 978-902099192597) as well.
The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe. By Harry A. Miskimin. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. Pp. xi, 180. $5.95
The Journal of Economic History, Jun 1, 1970
The Italian Renaissance
An anthology of writings from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries designed to illustrate ... more An anthology of writings from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries designed to illustrate the life and thought of Italians for students and the general reader. It offers a broad sampling of humanist work by educators, statesmen, philosophers, churchmen and courtiers translated into English. This is a reprint of a book first published in 1965.
Chapter 2. Learning to Blush
Journal of Library Administration, Jun 1, 2003
This paper applies Edward Tenner's theory concerning the unintended consequences of technolog... more This paper applies Edward Tenner's theory concerning the unintended consequences of technological innovation to issues affecting library collections. In reviewing recent, highly publicized critiques of preservation strategy - particularly those of Nicholson Baker - the paper tries to bring some clarity to the complex choices librarians face regarding artifactual and content-based preservation. It also raises the question of how the culture of a technologically oriented but grossly underfinanced professional community may have affected some of our past efforts to manage change responsibly, as well as our stance when we do not get things quite right; and it offers suggestions on how we might do better going forward. If our great research libraries are to act responsibly with regard to preservation, they will have to assume a much more cautious stance toward the wholesale adoption of technology than they have shown in recent decades. To our collective embarrassment - we may, like many other professional cultures, have to learn to blush - print may well turn out to be the most stable of the technologies available to us.
Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1975
The Sack of Rome, 1527
Art Bulletin, Mar 1, 1985
This richly illustrated study of the sack as a cultural and artistic phenomenon reveals the ambig... more This richly illustrated study of the sack as a cultural and artistic phenomenon reveals the ambiguities of preceding events and the traumatic contrast between the flourishing world of art under Clement VII, and the city as it existed after the troops of Emperor Charles V had looted Rome in 1527.
The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434. Dale Kent
Speculum, Oct 1, 1979
Louis Leroy's Humanistic Optimism
Journal of the History of Ideas, Jul 1, 1962
... text, I have used selections available in Loys LeRoy, De la Vicissitude ou Vari6tt des Choses... more ... text, I have used selections available in Loys LeRoy, De la Vicissitude ou Vari6tt des Choses en l'Univers, ed. Blanchard W. Bates ... I foresee warres arising in all Countries, both civile and foreine; factions, and divisions pringing, which will profane both divine and humane what ...
The Life and Works of Louis Le Roy
History and Theory, 1968
This book is designed to achieve two somewhat divergent aims. The first is to provide a full desc... more This book is designed to achieve two somewhat divergent aims. The first is to provide a full description of the development of Louis Le Roy's ideas and opinions from his earliest writings in the 1540's to his most elaborate treatise in 1575. The second is to analyze his ...
Title pages for "Rare book and manuscript libraries in the twenty-first century: An international symposium, Part two", Harvard Library Bulletin, Volume 4.2
Harvard Library, 1993
In his Gesta Grayorum (1594), the young polymath Francis Bacon summarized the surroundings approp... more In his Gesta Grayorum (1594), the young polymath Francis Bacon summarized the surroundings appropriate to the life of a learned gentleman. He stipulated four different environments, and gave pride of place to a library, like the bookish sort of man he was. His gentleman should collect “a most perfect and general library, wherein whosoever the wit of man hath heretofore committed to books of worth ... may be contributory to your wisdom.” He then recommended a splendid garden, filled with an immense variety of botanical and zoological specimens. Next, he called for “a goodly, huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand . . .
Werner L. Gundersheimer, Ed. Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d'Este: The 'De triumphis religionis of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti. Geneve: Librairie Droz, 1972. 119 pp. 44 Fr.S
Renaissance Quarterly, 1973
Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1975
RBM, Mar 1, 2000
SIX OR SEVEN YEARS ACO, I began a quiet campaign to alert the trustees of the Folger Library that... more SIX OR SEVEN YEARS ACO, I began a quiet campaign to alert the trustees of the Folger Library that their eminent collection of special collections was well on the way to becoming what I called "road kill on the information high way." Until that time, I had stood back and watched my colleagues in the independent research libraries invest large numbers of very scarce dollars in online cataloging, the attendant costs of retrospective conversion, and the cascading expenses of hardware and software purchases and upgrades. For quite a while, it had been clear to me that it was not in our institution's best interests to try to be a frontline player in this exhausting and expen sive game. On the other hand, I recognized that a time would come when there would be a meeting point between the escalating expectations of our readers and the improving quality and declining costs of the inescapable technology. Folger's librarians and I had been keeping our heads well down in the sands blowing around this issue for a long time. Ostriches are not stupid, merely peculiar. Once in a while, we stole a peek at what was going on and realized we were not ready to play. But we also saw the rest of the flock moving toward an everreceding horizon. The nice thing about being an ostrich is that after you have decided to go someplace, you can move along at a good clip. That, I believe, is the main difference between the ostrich and the dodo. For us, the moment of convergence came in about 1994, when several
Trevor Dean. Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, 7.) Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. xiv + 212 pp. $44.50
Renaissance Quarterly, 1988
Werner Gundersheimer's roundtable discussion" in "Rare book and manuscript libraries in the twenty-first century, Part two, Session four: Roundtable discussion (four perspectives)
Hans Baron's Renaissance Humanism: A Comment
The American Historical Review, Feb 1, 1996
THESE THREE THOUGHTFUL ARTICLES revisit topics that Baron himself reviewed with varying frequency... more THESE THREE THOUGHTFUL ARTICLES revisit topics that Baron himself reviewed with varying frequency over his long career. Ronald Witt considers Leonardo Bruni's centrality to the articulation and diffusion of republican values in the light of post-Baronian and anti-Baronian chronological and analytical strategies. John M. Najemy assesses Machiavelli's late but crucial appropriation into the pantheon of-from Hans Baron's standpoint-politically correct writers on governance. Craig Kallendorf deftly examines recent efforts to advance the discussion of the transitional stature of Petrarch to the emergence of 'civic humanism." These authors all recognize that, despite the long-familiar defects in certain of Baron's methods, and growing recognition that his work suffers from questionable premises that he regarded as unassailable and dubious arguments that he regarded as incontrovertible, his overarching interpretation of the evolution and significance of Italian humanism has properly made, and rightly continues to make, a profound difference in the way Italian civilization is understood and interpreted. Baron himself would not be entirely happy with the idea that his arguments were only partially, or even largely, accepted, let alone with what may actually be the prevailing view, that his major thesis was magnificently and fruitfully overstated. He was probably one of the last great historical scholars who believed that something like absolute truth was attainable in matters of interpretation. His indefatigable labors were directed toward that end. Indeed, Baron's stance toward his work was precisely opposite to the current fashion of "moving on" to some new or unrelated topic, once a "project" is finished. Instead, he carried on a series of lifelong conversations-face-to-face, by letter, in print, and above all, I think, in the more efficient theater of his own capacious intellect-with his teachers, friends, junior colleagues, critics, and especially with the dead souls of the Italian humanists into whom it became his mission to infuse vibrant new life. Many have observed the passionate intensity underlying his work, and Riccardo Fubini has written with admirable warmth and detachment of Baron's formative engagement with his teachers and contemporaries in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany. Fubini proposes that, unlike many other refugee historians, Baron remained firmly within the ideological paradigm of his early studies, making few if any adjustments to the different American academic and intellectual environment. This, for Fubini, helps to explain the internal cohesion of Baron's work-the fact
Bartolommeo Goggio: A Feminist in Renaissance Ferrara
Renaissance Quarterly, 1980
Readers in late medieval and early modern Europe had access to a lively and extensive literature ... more Readers in late medieval and early modern Europe had access to a lively and extensive literature on the nature of women. Philosophers, theologians, poets, physicians, and antiquarians of all kinds and degrees sought to describe and classify, analyze and dissect, justify or vilify the "second sex." As with other intense debates in those times, writers called upon the ancient sources of scientia and sapientia—factual knowledge and moral truth—to witness and buttress their arguments. The range of authorities was immense, both in time and substance, offering the diverse views of Aristotle and Augustine, of Ovid and Jerome, of Genesis and the Song of Solomon.