Jutta Sperling
Biographic Data
| ID | 3950535 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jutta Sperling |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jutta |
| FAMILY NAME | Sperling |
| SIGNATURE | SPERLING J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Trials and Tribulations of Exile
Nägärä Maryam [The Story of Mary] is a unique Ethiopian narrative, which entered written form in the late seventeenth century in the context of exegetical practices [andǝmta] devoted to Marian literature. It is hard to periodize, because various story fragments may have circulated in oral culture or are already documented in fifteenth-century Gǝˁǝz manuscripts and fourteenth-century translations of Marian writings from the Arabic.1 Some plot elem…
Venus Lactans / Venus Pudica
Die Stillende Jungfrau in der äntiopischen Buchmalerei des 15. Jahrhunderts. Bemerkungen zu Stil, Medium, Gegenwärtigkeit und (Un)Mittelbarkeit
While painted wooden icons of the Nursing Virgin were relatively common in fifteenth-century Ethiopia, only one miniature of the motif of the time has come to light. This image, bound into a later manuscript of the Miracles of Mary, is painted in a decidedly abstract style, comparable to other representations of the Virgin in fifteenth-century Ethiopian book illustration. Relying on Peirce’s distinction between index and icon, this article consid…
Milk and Miracles
This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In pos…
Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk
The focus on three drops of milk issuing from the Virgin’s breast in “The Virgin in Front of a Fire Screen” was inspired by contemporary representations of the Lactation of Saint Bernard. This latter iconography provides the visual context for the vivid address of eroticized depictions of the Madonna’s “one bare breast” in Flemish art and shows the intricate connections between visuality and materiality in fifteenth-century Flemish religious art.…
Dowry or Inheritance? Kinship, Property, And Women's Agency in Lisbon, Venice, and Florence (1572)
The marital property regimes, inheritance practices, and kinship structures of Renaissance Italy and early modern Portugal were at opposite ends of a spectrum. In Italy, the legitimacy of marriage was defined as the outcome of dowry exchange governed by exclusio propter dotem, thus conceptually linked to the disinheritance of daughters and wives. In Portugal, where the Roman principle of equal inheritance was never abolished, domestic unions qual…
Wonderful Blood
Caroline Walker Bynum. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. xviii + 402 pp. + 32 b/w pls. index. illus. map. bibl. $49.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-3985-0. - Volume 60 Issue 4
Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent (1560-70)
A close analysis of marital dispensations granted by the Holy Penitentiary shows that so-called clandestine marriages were widespread all over Catholic Europe before the Council of Trent. Only in Italy and perhaps in France were domestic partnerships rare, while they were very common in Portugal and Spain. This essay argues that the popularity of the dowry system in Italy made it difficult for women to choose their partners without parental conse…
Working Women of Early Modern Venice
Monica Chojnacka. Working Women of Early Modern Venice (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 3.) Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. xxii + 188 pp. $32.50. ISBN: 0-8018- 6485-2. - Volume 55 Issue 2
The Paradox of Perfection
The gorgons had thus the same effect as paradoxes. For paralysis means: immobility; and immobility: to be unable to observe (Niklas Luhmann).Niklas Luhmann, “Sthenographie und Euryalistik,” Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht und K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. (Frankfurt a. M., 1991), 58. Recently, the “paradoxical” character of sixteenth-century Venetian politics and culture has become the focus of attention among scholars o…
Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk
The focus on three drops of milk issuing from the Virgin’s breast in “The Virgin in Front of a Fire Screen” was inspired by contemporary representations of the Lactation of Saint Bernard. This latter iconography provides the visual context for the vivid address of eroticized depictions of the Madonna’s “one bare breast” in Flemish art and shows the intricate connections between visuality and materiality in fifteenth-century Flemish religious art.…
Milk and Miracles
This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In pos…
Dowry or Inheritance? Kinship, Property, And Women's Agency in Lisbon, Venice, and Florence (1572)
The marital property regimes, inheritance practices, and kinship structures of Renaissance Italy and early modern Portugal were at opposite ends of a spectrum. In Italy, the legitimacy of marriage was defined as the outcome of dowry exchange governed by exclusio propter dotem, thus conceptually linked to the disinheritance of daughters and wives. In Portugal, where the Roman principle of equal inheritance was never abolished, domestic unions qual…
Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent (1560-70)
A close analysis of marital dispensations granted by the Holy Penitentiary shows that so-called clandestine marriages were widespread all over Catholic Europe before the Council of Trent. Only in Italy and perhaps in France were domestic partnerships rare, while they were very common in Portugal and Spain. This essay argues that the popularity of the dowry system in Italy made it difficult for women to choose their partners without parental conse…
The Paradox of Perfection
The gorgons had thus the same effect as paradoxes. For paralysis means: immobility; and immobility: to be unable to observe (Niklas Luhmann).Niklas Luhmann, “Sthenographie und Euryalistik,” Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht und K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. (Frankfurt a. M., 1991), 58. Recently, the “paradoxical” character of sixteenth-century Venetian politics and culture has become the focus of attention among scholars o…
The Paradox of Perfection
The gorgons had thus the same effect as paradoxes. For paralysis means: immobility; and immobility: to be unable to observe (Niklas Luhmann).Niklas Luhmann, “Sthenographie und Euryalistik,” Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht und K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. (Frankfurt a. M., 1991), 58. Recently, the “paradoxical” character of sixteenth-century Venetian politics and culture has become the focus of attention among scholars o…
Working Women of Early Modern Venice
Monica Chojnacka. Working Women of Early Modern Venice (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 3.) Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. xxii + 188 pp. $32.50. ISBN: 0-8018- 6485-2. - Volume 55 Issue 2
Marriage at the Time of the Council of Trent (1560-70)
A close analysis of marital dispensations granted by the Holy Penitentiary shows that so-called clandestine marriages were widespread all over Catholic Europe before the Council of Trent. Only in Italy and perhaps in France were domestic partnerships rare, while they were very common in Portugal and Spain. This essay argues that the popularity of the dowry system in Italy made it difficult for women to choose their partners without parental conse…
Dowry or Inheritance? Kinship, Property, And Women's Agency in Lisbon, Venice, and Florence (1572)
The marital property regimes, inheritance practices, and kinship structures of Renaissance Italy and early modern Portugal were at opposite ends of a spectrum. In Italy, the legitimacy of marriage was defined as the outcome of dowry exchange governed by exclusio propter dotem, thus conceptually linked to the disinheritance of daughters and wives. In Portugal, where the Roman principle of equal inheritance was never abolished, domestic unions qual…
Wonderful Blood
Caroline Walker Bynum. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. xviii + 402 pp. + 32 b/w pls. index. illus. map. bibl. $49.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-3985-0. - Volume 60 Issue 4
Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk
The focus on three drops of milk issuing from the Virgin’s breast in “The Virgin in Front of a Fire Screen” was inspired by contemporary representations of the Lactation of Saint Bernard. This latter iconography provides the visual context for the vivid address of eroticized depictions of the Madonna’s “one bare breast” in Flemish art and shows the intricate connections between visuality and materiality in fifteenth-century Flemish religious art.…
Milk and Miracles
This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In pos…
Die Stillende Jungfrau in der äntiopischen Buchmalerei des 15. Jahrhunderts. Bemerkungen zu Stil, Medium, Gegenwärtigkeit und (Un)Mittelbarkeit
While painted wooden icons of the Nursing Virgin were relatively common in fifteenth-century Ethiopia, only one miniature of the motif of the time has come to light. This image, bound into a later manuscript of the Miracles of Mary, is painted in a decidedly abstract style, comparable to other representations of the Virgin in fifteenth-century Ethiopian book illustration. Relying on Peirce’s distinction between index and icon, this article consid…
Venus Lactans / Venus Pudica
The Trials and Tribulations of Exile
Nägärä Maryam [The Story of Mary] is a unique Ethiopian narrative, which entered written form in the late seventeenth century in the context of exegetical practices [andǝmta] devoted to Marian literature. It is hard to periodize, because various story fragments may have circulated in oral culture or are already documented in fifteenth-century Gǝˁǝz manuscripts and fourteenth-century translations of Marian writings from the Arabic.1 Some plot elem…
History (8 works) · Art (6 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Historical Economic and Social Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Archaeology (3 works)