Parution : Lina Bolzoni, “The Crystal Heart. Love, Poetry, and Portraiture in Renaissance Italy”, Turnhout, Brepols, 2025
In his Canzoniere, Petrarch evokes the image of the “crystal heart” as a metaphor for a correspondence 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 image as a heuristic tool,...



