The Crystal Heart
Love, Poetry, and Portraiture
in Renaissance Italy
Lina Bolzoni
This book reveals an original investigation of
Renaissance literature and portraiture.
n his Canzoniere, Petrarch evokes the image of
the “crystal heart” as a metaphor for a corre-
spondence between the inner self and external
appearance. Expanding on the classical theme
of the soul’s open window, the metaphor of the
crystal heart embodies the utopia of amorous
transparency, conveying the desire to cast aside
the barriers between interior and exterior,
between emotion and expression, rendering love
perfectly visible from the outside. Using this im-
age as a heuristic tool, Lina Bolzoni takes us into
an original investigation of Renaissance literature
and portraiture. Focusing on and taking as a de-
parture point Pietro Bembo’s famous dialogue on
love, the Asolani (first published in 1505), Bolzoni
guides us into a meaningful exploration of love
poetry and prose, letters, paintings, mirrors, and
medals. Barriers fixed by the critical tradition fall
along the way, for words, images, and objects, far
from being relegated to their own spheres, refer
constantly back and forth to one another, their
interconnections woven together into refined and
secret rituals that disclose the centrality of love in
Italian Renaissance culture and society. Bolzoni’s
magistral book reveals not only the pivotal role
played by a reflection on love in the creation of
a new court society, and of the early-modern
courtier, but also love’s inextricable bond with
friendship and the pleasures of interpretation.
336 p., 2 b/w ills, 81 col. ills, 220 x 280 mm,
ISBN 978-1-915487-50-6
Hardback: € 160 / $200.00 / £136.00
Series: Renovatio Artium, vol. 16
forthcoming
SAMPLE PAGES www.brepols.net