User:Egyptian925/Maddalena scrovegni

Maddalena Scrovegni (1356-1429) Humanist Maddalena Scrovegni, was born in Padua, Italy, located in Northern Italy in the year 1356 and died in 1429. She was born during the [| Quattrocento] period, which is the totality of cultural and artistic events and movements that occurred in Italy during the 15th century, the major period of the [| Early Renaissance]. She remained in Venice until her death in 1429. Maddalena was knowledgeable and aimed to keep learning more through private prayer and studies. Becoming known as the first female humanist, throughout her works we are able to see how the content of her letters portray the education that most women during this time period usually get their research from, although her literary output is largely forgotten. Through religion, paternal knowledge, and private studies, Maddalena uses these as a basis for her particular style of writing.

Early Life/Family History
Maddalena Scrovegni was born into a noble Paduan family in 1356, where she spent most of her life in Padua and Venice. Since childhood, she would have known the Arena Chapel very well, which her grandfather, Enrico Scrovegni, was the founder. The sermons and lectures given, as well as the divine offices that were performed there, played an influential role in her life, as it is evident throughout her works. At the end of 1388 in December, Jacopo dal Verne, who was the commander of the forces under [|Giangaleazzo Novello da Carrarra] (former Signore of the city), entered the conquered hometown of the Scrovegni’s, Padua. As they entered, [|Francesco Novello da Carrara] (former Signore of the city) fled along with many of the leading members of his regime, except one of his chief counselors, Ugolino Scrovegni. Maddalena’s father, Ugolino, stayed behind with his family and welcomed the conquering forces. He was a man with a deep and secret ancestral grievance against the dynasty, which he had apparently served so faithfully for his entire adult life.

Maddalena’s grandfather, Enrico Scrovegni, in 1320 was forced into exile by a Carrara coup d’etat when Ugolino was no more than a baby. Once Enrico died, as a teenager Ugolino was allowed to return to Padua where he eventually rose to become a trusted and apparently loyal supporter of the Carrara regime. Maddalena’s father Ugolino and her two brothers were even knighted in the service of the state but when given the chance, the entire family turned on the regime and devotedly supported the city’s Milanese conquerors.

The Carrara family ruled Padua, but the [| Scaligeri], who ruled Verona and Vicenza was challenging them. By 1387, these two cities ceded control to the Visconti of Milan. [| Ugolotto Biancardo], a cousin of Maddalena’s was the Visconti governor of Vicenza. By the end of that year, the city was taken by Jacopo dal Verme. The victory was short-lived and the Carrara soon resumed control of the city and the Scrovegni family was forced to flee to Venice.

Ugolino’s daughter, Maddalena Scrovegni was given a role in cementing the family’s volte-face into the arms of their enemy’s enemy. In regards to her mother and brothers, not much more information could be found. Her early life was not talked about much either, which was common among women during this time period.

Education/Intellectual Development
Since childhood, she was constantly around the Arena Chapel that her grandfather had build so it ended up playing an influential role in her life. Through the way she uses Latin in her works, it shows how she was well educated, although her education was restricted to what was looked at as appropriate to her sex during this time. So for her and other women during this time, access to nonreligious material was always limited, and religious instruction would large. The Arena Chapel had walls of various images and some believe that the Giotto [| frescoes] of the stories consisting of the Lives of the Virgin and Christ could possibly be where Maddalena gained some of her knowledge, but more at a literal and moral understanding of those images. “The frescoes offer an anagogic vision of human salvation presided over by the Heavenly Scene above the chancels arch, which is understood as the Mission to Gabriel.”  Some others believe that the more she grew, the more likely she could’ve been introduced to less precise levels of interpretation.

“Thus Maddalena would have learned that God’s interventions include the dispatch of his angels not only to the Annunciate Virgin immediately beneath the scene, but also to Joachim and to Anna on the south wall, and the descent of the holy spirit during the Baptisms and Pentecost depicted on the north wall.” It was said that in the images of the daily restoration during the [| liturgical year] of Christ to life and that the image on the opposite wall in the Chapel, showing his future intervention in the Last Judgment, was something Maddalena would have appreciated, especially because God was present in them.

Later Years/Marriage
She is considered one of the earliest of the women humanists and was born into a noble Paduan Family. She was married in 1376 to a nobleman of Reggio, but widowed shortly thereafter. By 1381, she restores her home in Padua and she fled the city in 1390 with her family when the Visconti forces of Milan (which her family supported) lost the city to the Carrara. Not much more about her marriage was found, which was also common among women during this time.

Death and Remembrance
After she became widowed in 1389, Maddalena began to seal herself in a small study space located in her father’s house, and started committing herself to self-academic studies. As a result [| Antonio Loschi], who was a humanist, delivered a eulogy for her, which showed how much he was moved by Maddalena’s action. Through his eulogy, he portrayed and transformed her as an embodiment of Chastity, which is located in her Temple in Scythia. “Antonio Loschi immortalized Maddalena Scrovegni through his work, which creates in her honor a temple of chastity, on a lone mountain peak in the icy land of the Amazons.” The question if she considered the same about herself, will never be known.

Although Maddalena has almost been completely forgotten, there are three different accounts on which she is remembered today: “By Lombardo della Seta, companion to Petracrh; by Loschi, and by Maddalena herself. Della Seta had dedicated to her a book on famous women, in which he praised her learning. Loschi deemed her worth to be praised by Demosthenes and Cicero, Homer and Virgil, and had reflected on the saceullum (study space) in her father’s house where she devoted herself to silent study and prayer. Scrovegni’s surviving works, which demonstrate a competence, and presupposes a serious humanist education.”

On these three separate accounts, she would eventually become recognized as one of the earliest and prominent figures of the Renaissance of woman humanists. Like most of the women who were to follow her path, Maddalena’s potential and her dreams were never accomplished. Why this is the case is very hard to trace and is not known. After she had to flee from the Visconti forces, she ended up dying in the city of Venice in 1429.

Survived Works
Only three works by Maddalena Scrovegni continue to survive, only one of which has been published, all in the forms of letters. Her writings provide information that in full or relate to, Giangaleazzo Visconit’s conquering of her city, Padua, from Jacopo dal Verne, and the various images and teachings of the Arena Chapel (founded by her grandfather) that include:

•	The Heavenly Scene •	Last Judgment •	Giotto’s Injustice and Hell •	“[Hell] What is there more wretched, more calamitous, more unfortunate for a cruel tyrant than to hurtle from the greatest height and the proudest throne to the depths of wretched despair, with everyone’s approbation, such that he understands (and then she quotes from Psalm 52:5-7) The righteous also shall see, and fear, and shall laugh at him”.

FIRST TWO: Unpublished letters

Two of Maddalena’s letters were written as an overwhelming flattery to Giangaleazzo Visconti and Pasquino de Capelli, who was his chancellor. Her letters follow the straightforward humanist letter structure, which is evident through the language she uses. The primary intent of these letters was meant to be available for the public to admire them for their scholarly method, as well as their content.

THIRD: “Shinning Star of Justice sent down from Heaven” Her third letter is the only one of her works that was published and is what she is known for today. Maddalena’s cousin Ugolotto, suggested her to write the letter addressing Jacopo dal Verme during the time of seizing the city, where he now governed. “It begins and ends with the kind of formal salutations and partings found in her other letters, but these briefly serve to ‘top and tail’ a composition which is completely different in nature.” For the majority of her work, she uses metaphorical visualizations of redemption and fairness during an apocalypse and ties quotations of the bible and her own innovations. One scholar states that the creation of her vengeful and rejoicing statements comes from the book of Revelations and the prophets and psalms that come with it, while she herself “supplies an over-arching allegorical narrative and some strikingly visual metaphors.”

In regards to her letter written to Jacopo dal Verme, it is evident to see very similar links that connect her writing to her grandfathers Arena Chapel. Some come in the forms of articulated graphic themes while others focus on the greater fundamental constructions by the chapel’s program. “Her over-riding concern in her letter is Divine Justice, but it is a particularly active formulation of Justice as the consequence of judgment, and particularly retribution against tyrants.”   When she describes the word tyranny, she describes it as those tyrants  who commit any sort of crimes against humanity and depicts those tyrants as cruel criminals, and how justice will be served.

During her passages about those tyrants and evildoers, she writes about the punishments and judgment that comes to them through various biblical quotations, but also through the use of visual imagery. She writes of “violent tyrants who have begun to walk with limping gait, condemned to hell…stumbling about through the depravity of their crimes, they have hastened towards the sentence of divine justice.” This may be a depiction of the sinners in Giotto’s frescoes on the Last Judgment, which are falling towards Hell.

External/Internal links

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padua
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quattrocento
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Renaissance
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_degli_Scrovegni
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Galeazzo_Visconti
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Novello_da_Carrara
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaliger
 * http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolotto_Biancardo
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrovegni_Chapel
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresco
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgical_year
 * http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Loschi