Webinar 1

EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “Doubting Witchcraft: Opposing the Witch-hunt in the Renaissance”  
Presented by Dr. Matteo Duni

For about three centuries (1400-1700), Europeans believed that some persons would make a pact with the Devil and renounce Christianity, fly over broomsticks to huge gatherings where they would kill and eat babies, urinate on the cross, and worship Satan as their god. Church and state authorities mobilized against such mortal enemies of humankind, the witches, prosecuting hundreds of thousands of people in a campaign that killed at least 90,000 women and men and destroyed the lives of countless others. Popular culture paints the picture of an entire continent supporting the great European witch-hunt, but in reality not a few significant figures dared to challenge the consensus about the sect of devil-worshipping, night-flying witches. My talk will focus on the witchcraft skeptics, a series of high-profile intellectuals, professionals, officials who argued that the witch-hunters’ theories were impossible physically, unsound theologically, and unprovable legally. While their voices were not sufficient to prevent the massacre, they did – in the long run – help bring about the decline and end of witchcraft prosecutions, while also giving a fundamental contribution to the rise of a secularized approach to the study of law and nature.

Webinar 2

EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “At the Altar of Medicine: Medical Secrets in Medieval and Renaissance Altarpieces”  
Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser

Medieval and Renaissance altarpieces found in churches throughout Europe and in museum collections worldwide, represent some of the most beautiful and profound examples of religious art.  What may not be obvious, is that along with a great deal of religious symbology many altarpieces also bear direct or indirect representations of disease. Some, like the magnificent early 16th century Isenheim Altar painted by Matthias Grünewald, can be said to be principally about medicine. The Isenheim Altar and others like it were specifically commissioned for display in monasteries belonging to hospital orders or in hospital chapels. Many other altarpieces allude to issues of medical morbidity and mortality if you know where to look and how to interpret the signs!

Join physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, for a closer look at altarpieces that tell a medical as well as a spiritual or liturgical story. Of course, we will discuss Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece focusing on the botanical and medicinal properties of the plants depicted in the panel illustrating the desert meeting of St. Anthony the Great and St. Paul the Hermit. Learn what the healers of that time believed about the curative powers of these plants and discover what modern medical science has to tell us about them.

We will also focus on less well-known altarpieces created by both southern and northern European artists that contain overt or hidden medical meanings and associations. Some of these also contain serendipitous illustrations of physiology and disease. Discover the imagery and symbology that was used to transmit a medical message in these works of art and learn why the artists and those who commissioned the altarpieces wanted these messages embedded in them. You will never look at an altarpiece in quite the same way again!

Webinar 3

EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “Michelangelo’s Last Paintings”  
Presented by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Even before completing “The Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, Pope Paul III had chosen Michelangelo to decorate the walls of his new namesake chapel – the Pauline Chapel located in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. Used as an antechamber to the Sistine Chapel, the Pauline Chapel contains Michelangelo’s last two paintings – the “Conversion of St. Paul” (which was executed when he was 67 years-old) and the “Crucifixion of St. Peter” (70 years old.) Considered by many to be Michelangelo’s least successful paintings, they not only lack the dramatic pathos typical of the artist’s earlier works but seem to possibly betray a personal sense of melancholy in the artist as well.

Webinar 4

EXCLUSIVE WEBINAR | “Florence: A City of Merchants”
Presented by Dr. Fabrizio Ricciardelli

The merchant class that took power in Florence in August 1282 gained strength from the inexorable economic and demographic growth of the century’s early decades. The Florentine economy was based on three main activities, banking, industry, and trade. In spite of the fact that the city had no direct outlet to the sea, it still managed to become one of the most important markets in Italy and in Europe. Florentine merchants purchased wool in England, cloth in Flanders, and dye substances and alum, an essential mineral for fixing colors, in northern France and the East. Thanks to this huge network they processed, dyed and decorated textiles to sell as finished goods throughout the known world. The first half of the fourteenth century was the period of greatest splendor for the Wool Manufacturers Guild: it employed about three hundred men who produced approximately one hundred thousand bolts of cloth each year. Alongside the larger businesses, there were others that were more strictly local. Even if at different levels, all guilds in Florence were public patrons of art and provided funding for charity.