Italian Studies Research Seminar Series

‘Di certa similitudine dipinto’: The Imagination and Love in the Italian Renaissance

Speaker: Anna Corrias, University of Queensland

During the Renaissance, the imagination was considered a crucial mental power which played a key role in the general well-being of the individual as well as in his cultural, social, and religious life. Because of their intermediate nature between spirit and matter, images were thought to convey the influence of the soul to the body and vice-versa and to account for many psycho-physiological processes. By focusing on some key thinkers of the Italian Renaissance, this paper will discuss the ability of the imagination to bind the mind and transform the body. Special attention will be devoted to the relation between imagination and love, which was believed to have a tremendous binding power and to affect the ‘imagining lover’ on different levels.

Anna Corrias was trained in the history of philosophy and intellectual history at the Warburg Institute and is currently a Research Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland. Her work is primarily focused on the reception of ancient and late ancient philosophy in the Renaissance, with a special focus on the Platonic tradition. She is the author of the monograph The Plotinian Soul: The Renaissance of Plotinus in Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on the ‘Enneads’ (1492), published by Routledge and forthcoming in 2019, and of several articles. She is also working on a critical edition and English translation of, and commentary on Marsilio Ficino’s Expositio in interpretationem Prisciani Lydi super Theophrastum (1497). Before joining the University of Queensland, she was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the History Department at UCL (2015-2018) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Seeger Centre for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University (2014-2015).

For more information, contact: A/Prof Francesco Borghesi – francesco.borghesi@sydney.edu.au