The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture

“From clues like the blond hair of Simone’s Maestà madonna to the filigree gold embroidery of female costume to contemporary theater, Dempsey demonstrates how the familiar penetrated the fictive and gave broad legibility. The narratives of these images—so alive in the oral culture of the period—also humanize the classical, so that, as Dempsey explains, sibyls participate in the popular religious theater of the time, along with demonstrating the knowledge and creative imagination of the authors who retrieve and invent their histories from classical antiquity.”—J. T. Paoletti, Choice