The Return of the Giants: Reflections on Technical Mastery and Moral Jeopardy in Leon Battista Alberti's Letter to Filippo Brunelleschi

In 1436, Leon Battista Alberti wrote a letter to Filippo Brunelleschi, which he attached to a manuscript of his recently completed treatise on painting, De pictura. In it, Alberti lauded some of the Florentine artists of his day, singling out Brunelleschi for particular praise on account of the unprecedented engineering feat of constructing the cupola of the Florentine cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. This article undertakes a close reading of some parts of the letter, focusing especially on the link that Alberti draws between great intellects (ingegni) and giants. Exploring the cultural traditions that might have informed Alberti’s thinking—in particular, canto XXXI of Dante’s Inferno—the article considers how the giants introduce an element of moral jeopardy, significantly complicating what might otherwise appear to be a purely celebratory text. This sense of ambivalence is further explored in relation to the ‘long exile’ from which Alberti says that his family (banished from Florence for nearly three decades, until 1428) had recently returned. Similar phrases appear in Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and consideration of these poems, it is argued, might further inflect our understanding of Alberti’s words in the letter. In this way, the article investigates how Alberti employed sophisticated literary means in order to express his own feelings regarding Brunelleschian ingegno and technical mastery; feelings that were both highly nuanced and, ultimately, unsettled

The Imaginative Struggles of Europe

This paper examines a number of works of art that relate to the issues of borders, mobility, space and place in Britain and the European Union (EU). It focuses on the years 2014–16 in which the financial crisis, the migration crisis and the impending referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU weighed heavily upon public debate. Some of the works considered—installations by the Italian group The Tomorrow and by Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture—can be related directly to the EU’s own initiatives: specifically, the New Narrative for Europe that was championed by the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. Others—stencilled murals by the street artist Banksy in Clacton-on-Sea and Calais—approach the issue of Europe more obliquely. All of the works, it is argued, engage in forms of visual and spatial thinking that bear upon the idea of Europe and its much-discussed imaginary

(2,2′-Bipyridine-4,4′-dicarb­oxy­lic acid-κ2 N,N′)chlorido(2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridyl-κ3 N,N′,N′′)ruthenium(II) perchlorate ethanol monosolvate monohydrate

In the title compound, [RuCl(C15H11N3)(C12H8N2O4)]ClO4·C2H5OH·H2O, the geometry of the ClN5 coordination set around the RuII atom is close to octa­hedral, but distorted on account of the limited bite angles of the polypyridyl ligands. The complexes are linked by O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds between the carboxyl groups and the crystal lattice water mol­ecules into chains along [110]. Face-to-face stacking inter­actions are formed between terpyridine ligands, with inter­planar separations of 3.66 (1) and 3.42 (1) Å, and between bipyridine-4,4′-dicarb­oxy­lic acid ligands, with inter­planar separations of 3.65 (1) and 3.72 (1) Å. Three O atoms of the perchlorate ion are each disordered equally over two positions. The hy­droxy group of the ethanol mol­ecule is also disordered over two sites with refined occupancies of 0.794 (9) and 0.206 (9)

New Labour?new renaissance

This paper explores the term ?urban renaissance? in relation to the historiography of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. It examines the place of the Renaissance in cultural history and considers how it has, since its inception, been utilised by writers to reflect on the present. The paper situates the urban renaissance within the context of New Labour rhetoric at the time of the Millennium. It argues that the idea of renaissance can, in this instance, be connected to a kind of millenarianism that was reflected in public rhetoric regarding the city and in a number of building projects

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Visions of the city in Leon Battista Alberti's 'De re aedificatoria'

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

An observational study of alemtuzumab following fingolimod for multiple sclerosis

Objective: To describe a series of patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS) who experienced significant and unexpected disease activity within the first 12 months after switching from fingolimod to alemtuzumab. Methods: Patients with relapsing MS treated sequentially with fingolimod then alemtuzumab who experienced significant subsequent disease activity were identified by personal communication with 6 different European neuroscience centers. Results: Nine patients were identified. Median disease duration to alemtuzumab treatment was 94 (39-215) months and follow-up from time of first alemtuzumab cycle 20 (14-21) months. Following first alemtuzumab infusion cycle, 8 patients were identified by at least 1 clinical relapse and radiologic disease activity and 1 by significant radiologic disease activity alone. Conclusions: We acknowledge the potential for ascertainment bias; however, these cases may illustrate an important cause of reduced efficacy of alemtuzumab in a vulnerable group of patients with MS most in need of disease control.We suggest that significant and unexpected subsequent disease activity after alemtuzumab induction results from prolonged sequestration of autoreactive lymphocytes following fingolimod withdrawal, allowing these cells to be concealed from the usual biological effect of alemtuzumab. Subsequent lymphocyte egress then provokes disease reactivation. Further animal studies and clinical trials are required to confirm these phenomena and in the meantime careful consideration should be given to mode of action of individual therapies and sequential treatment effects in MS when designing personalized treatment regimens