Picturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis

Picturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Tacuinum SanitatisSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/HVCXBP5X/tei

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2024-08-15-04:00

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Agnes AcolosBertizPicturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatishttp://syriaca.org/cbss/HVCXBP5Xhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/HVCXBP5Xhttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/HVCXBP5X2003The illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis from northern Italy is the most important family of late fourteenth-century health handbooks. The handbooks are based on the Latin translation of an Arabic health treatise from the eleventh century, the Taqwim al-sihha by Ibn Butlan, which treats the doctrine of the “six nonnaturals,” dietary and environmental factors necessary for the proper maintenance of the body. The nonnaturals comprise of the following categories: air; food and drink; movement and rest; sleep and wakefulness; evacuation and retention of bodily fluids; and “accidents of the soul” (or emotions). While the late fourteenth-century Tacuinum enumerates health factors like the Arabic original, its most striking feature are the nearly full-page illuminations, which feature courtier figures engaging in playful activities as well as individuals from the laboring classes hard at work in fields and in shops. This dissertation focuses on images of garden and landscape, and courtiers at play in these nature settings. It examines the implications of these illuminations for the social and cultural life of late fourteenth-century Lombardy. First, the study addresses the Tacuinum's purpose as a manual of health by analyzing how these images elucidated contemporary fourteenth-century ideas of health maintenance, and how they are manifested visually in the depictions of nature. Secondly, in the handbook's capacity as a complex social document, this dissertation offers a new reading of the illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis, considering the images as ideological constructions, rather than “illustrations” of historical experience as scholars have regarded them. The illuminations can be seen as reinforcing and maintaining the hegemony of the upper class, as they embody and display the values and occupations of the handbooks' commissioners. The Tacuinum images are representational tools that served importance functions for their aristocratic patrons, including class distinction and depiction of social status. Bertiz, Agnes Acolos. “Picturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 2003. Agnes Acolos Bertiz, Picturing Health: The Garden and Courtiers at Play in the Late Fourteenth-Century Illuminated Tacuinum Sanitatis” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 2003).Arab ChristiansIbn ButlanNestoriansSyriac influence [Europe]VII-XVIII CEXIV CEmedicine