BiblioVault - Books by Rowland, Ingrid

The Divine Spark of Syracuse

Ingrid D. Rowland

Brandeis University Press, 2018

Focusing on the figures of Plato, Archimedes, and Caravaggio, The Divine Spark of Syracuse discloses the role that Syracuse, a Greek cultural outpost in Sicily, played in fueling creative energies. Among the topics this book explores are Plato and the allegory of the cave, and the divine spark mentioned in his Seventh Letter. It also considers the machines of Archimedes, including his famous screw, and the variety of siege and antisiege weapons that he developed for the defense of his hometown during the siege of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, including “the hand” (a giant claw), the “burning mirror,” and the catapult. The final chapter offers a look at the artist and roustabout Caravaggio. On the run after yet another street brawl, Caravaggio traveled to Syracuse, where he painted Burial of St. Lucy (Santa Lucia) in 1608. Typical of his late works, the painting is notable for its subdued tones and emotional and psychological delicacy. This captivating book lends clear insight into the links between the sense of place and inspiration in philosophy, mathematics, and art. Rowland is the most learned tour guide we could ask for.

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From Pompeii

The Afterlife of a Roman Town

Ingrid D. Rowland

Harvard University Press, 2014

When Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the force of the explosion blew the top right off the mountain, burying nearby Pompeii in a shower of volcanic ash. Ironically, the calamity that proved so lethal for Pompeii's inhabitants preserved the city for centuries, leaving behind a snapshot of Roman daily life that has captured the imagination of generations.

The experience of Pompeii always reflects a particular time and sensibility, says Ingrid Rowland. From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town explores the fascinating variety of these different experiences, as described by the artists, writers, actors, and others who have toured the excavated site. The city's houses, temples, gardens--and traces of Vesuvius's human victims--have elicited responses ranging from awe to embarrassment, with shifting cultural tastes playing an important role. The erotic frescoes that appalled eighteenth-century viewers inspired Renoir to change the way he painted. For Freud, visiting Pompeii was as therapeutic as a session of psychoanalysis. Crown Prince Hirohito, arriving in the Bay of Naples by battleship, found Pompeii interesting, but Vesuvius, to his eyes, was just an ugly version of Mount Fuji. Rowland treats readers to the distinctive, often quirky responses of visitors ranging from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain to Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman.

Interwoven throughout a narrative lush with detail and insight is the thread of Rowland's own impressions of Pompeii, where she has returned many times since first visiting in 1962.

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Giordano Bruno

Philosopher / Heretic

Ingrid D. Rowland

University of Chicago Press, 2009

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) is one of the great figures of early modern Europe, and one of the least understood. Ingrid D. Rowland’s biography establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo—a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours.

Writing with great verve and erudition, Rowland traces Bruno’s wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy has been called into question, and reveals how he valiantly defended his ideas to the very end, when he was burned at the stake as a heretic on Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori.

“A loving and thoughtful account of [Bruno’s] life and thought, satires and sonnets, dialogues and lesson plans, vagabond days and star-spangled nights. . . . Ingrid D. Rowland has her reasons for preferring Bruno to Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, even Galileo and Leonardo, and they’re good ones.”—John Leonard, Harper’s

“Whatever else Bruno was, he was wild-minded and extreme, and Rowland communicates this, together with a sense of the excitement that his ideas gave him. . . . It’s that feeling for the explosiveness of the period, and [Rowland’s] admiration of Bruno for participating in it—indeed, dying for it—that is the central and most cherishable quality of the biography.”—Joan Acocella, New Yorker

“Rowland tells this great story in moving, vivid prose, concentrating as much on Bruno’s thought as on his life. . . . His restless mind, as she makes clear, not only explored but transformed the heavens.”—Anthony Grafton, New York Review of Books

“[Bruno] seems to have been an unclassifiable mixture of foul-mouthed Neapolitan mountebank, loquacious poet, religious reformer, scholastic philosopher, and slightly wacky astronomer.”—Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review

“A marvelous feat of scholarship. . . . This is intellectual biography at its best.”—Peter N. Miller, New Republic

“An excellent starting point for anyone who wants to rediscover the historical figure concealed beneath the cowl on Campo de’ Fiori.”—Paula Findlen, Nation

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The Scarith of Scornello

A Tale of Renaissance Forgery

Ingrid D. Rowland

University of Chicago Press, 2004

A precocious teenager, bored with life at his family's Tuscan villa Scornello, Curzio Inghirami staged perhaps the most outlandish prank of the seventeenth century. Born in the age of Galileo to an illustrious family with ties to the Medici, and thus an educated and privileged young man, Curzio concocted a wild scheme that would in the end catch the attention of the Vatican and scandalize all of Rome.

As recounted here with relish by Ingrid D. Rowland, Curzio preyed on the Italian fixation with ancestry to forge an array of ancient Latin and Etruscan documents. For authenticity's sake, he stashed the counterfeit treasure in scarith (capsules made of hair and mud) near Scornello. To the seventeenth-century Tuscans who were so eager to establish proof of their heritage and history, the scarith symbolized a link to the prestigious culture of their past. But because none of these proud Italians could actually read the ancient Etruscan language, they couldn't know for certain that the documents were frauds. The Scarith of Scornello traces the career of this young scam artist whose "discoveries" reached the Vatican shortly after Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition, inspiring participants on both sides of the affair to clash again—this time over Etruscan history.

An expert on the Italian Renaissance and one of only a few people in the world to work with the Etruscan language, Rowland writes a tale so enchanting it seems it could only be fiction. In her investigation of this seventeenth-century caper, Rowland will captivate readers with her sense of humor and obvious delight in Curzio's far-reaching prank. And even long after the inauthenticity of Curzio's creation had been established, this practical joke endured: the scarith were stolen in the 1980s by a thief who mistook them for the real thing.

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Stitch

Richard Stern

Northwestern University Press, 2004

Set against the splendor of Venice, Stitch is the moving story of the meeting between a group of Americans and a world-famous sculptor. Stitch, a character whom certain critics have recognized as one of the most remarkable portraits of Ezra Pound, is a man who has shaped and been shaped by the most profound intellectual and political experiences of the 20th century. What the Americans learn from him comprises the brilliant center of this novel.

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