Digital Sepoltuario, The Tombs of Renaissance Florence: Scholarly Access and Search

FAIN: PW-277539-21

University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)
Worthy N. Martin (Project Director: July 2020 to present)
Anne Conyers Leader (Co Project Director: June 2021 to present)

The development and implementation of a public interface for research into medieval and early modern burial and commemoration through Digital Sepoltuario: Scholarly Access and Search (DSsas), a database and platform documenting the tombs of Renaissance Florence.

Digital Sepoltuario will support research on a fundamental human activity: caring for and commemorating the dead. It will make accessible a catalogue of memorials installed in Florence’s church buildings 1250-1650. Manuscript tomb registers (sepoltuari) in the Florentine State Archives provide information on location, ownership, and decoration of Florence’s tombs and burial chapels. We propose to interlink these records to social, professional, political, and family networks of those interred in these sepulchers over successive generations; substantially expand the dataset already curated; design and build an interactive interface enabling access to this rich material from several scholarly perspectives; and create methods to visualize spatial and social relationships. The creation and re-use of these omnipresent tombs are untapped sources to investigate and contextualize religious beliefs, power struggles, economic growth, and cultural products of the late middle ages and Renaissance.

Media Coverage

OLLI Instructor Receives NEH Award (Media Coverage)
Author(s): OLLI
Publication: The Observer
Date: 6/30/2021
Abstract: Write up in a “'by local people, for local people' newspaper that focuses on the people, places and events of Opelika, Alabama and surrounding communities." First paragraph: "Local art historian Dr. Anne Leader and her research team at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) have received a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant for $299,000 from The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). In addition to teaching art history classes for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Auburn, Leader is a visiting fellow at IATH, where she and her colleagues are building an interactive digital research site on the connections between burial choices, family networks and religious and social affiliations in Florence, Italy. The project, called Digital Sepoltuario, links city and church burial records with the commemorative landscape and culture of premodern Florence."
URL: https://opelikaobserver.com/2021/06/30/olli-instructor-receives-neh-award/

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute instructor receives NEH award to support research on commemoration of the dead in Renaissance Florence (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Shawnee McKee
Publication: Auburn University Campus Notices
Date: 6/22/2021
Abstract: Press release published by The Newsroom of the Office of Communications & Marketing of Auburn University.
URL: https://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/campus_notices/2021/06/220845-olli-neh-award.php

Los detectives de Leonardo da Vinci: así buscan a sus parientes y las claves de su genialidad (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Teresa Guerrero
Publication: El Mundo
Date: 8/25/2021
Abstract: Discussion of the tomb of the father of Leonardo da Vinci. "Anne Leader, investigadora del Instituto de Tecnología Avanzada en Humanidades de la Universidad de Virginia, es una auténtica experta en las tumbas de la familia Da Vinci. Tal y como explica a través de un correo electrónico, se conocen algunas de las tumbas donde están sus familiares pero admite que será complicado dar con los restos de Leonardo, enterrados en el castillo de Amboise, en Francia, y de su padre, Piero Frusino. "Es seguro que el padre fue enterrado en la Badia Fiorentina, al igual que nueve de sus hijos, pero por las mismas razones que las de Leonardo es muy improbable que los encontramos porque la iglesia fue renovada completamente a mediados del s. XVII y ha habido numerosas inundaciones catastróficas, entre ellas las de 1966. Y si se encuentra, lo más probable es que encontremos no sólo los restos de los parientes y el resto de personas enterradas entre 1474 and 1614, posiblemente hay restos posteriores..."
URL: https://www.elmundo.es/papel/historias/2021/08/25/611e7ae7fc6c83ed188b463f.html

NEH announces grant funding for hundreds of projects (Media Coverage)
Publication: CBS19 News: Charlottesville News First
Date: 4/14/2021
Abstract: Charlottesville news station (WCAV) report on NEH grants awarded in April 2021 naming UVA project.
URL: https://www.cbs19news.com/story/43671925/neh-announces-grant-funding-for-hundreds-of-projects

Associated Products

The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti (Book Section)
Title: The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti
Author: Anne Leader
Editor: Nicholas Terpstra
Abstract: Although the initial donor to the Ospedale degli Innocenti intended to establish a secular institution, the foundling hospital soon came to have its own church, consecrated in 1451, which included sponsored altars and tombs in the manner found across Florence. Prior to its late-eighteenth-century renovation, the pavement of Santa Maria degli Innocenti held nine floor tombs, all but one dedicated to individual men between the years 1445 and 1766. One slab marked a burial site reserved for priests of the hospital. The remaining eight honored individuals by name. By requesting burial in the hospital church, these men entrusted their memories to the residents and priests of the Innocenti. Rather than join kinfolk in established family sepulchers or use one of the Innocenti’s communal graves, they opted to create personalized tombs ex novo. These bespoke monuments provide sharp contrast to how resident children and most hospital staff were buried. The elite men memorialized in the hospital church received specific, personal, and direct intercessory prayers for their salvation and the preservation of their names; whereas foundlings and staffers buried anonymously, usually in communal graves, faded quickly into obscurity. Examination of the Innocenti’s sepulchral landscape enriches our understanding of the hospital’s social hierarchies and corporate identity as a family. (pp. 135-163)
Year: 2024
Primary URL: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674296169
Primary URL Description: book description on publisher website
Access Model: print book
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Book Title: Lost and Found: Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World
ISBN: 9780674296169

Digital Sepoltuario: Memorial Culture in Renaissance Florence (Web Resource)
Title: Digital Sepoltuario: Memorial Culture in Renaissance Florence
Author: Anne Leader
Author: Worthy Martin
Author: Susanna Klosko
Abstract: An illustrated digital catalogue of tombs, altars, chapels, and other memorials in Florentine churches from ca. 1240 to 1785. As of 30 May 2024 it contained 171,501 records.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: http://sepoltuario.iath.virginia.edu/
Primary URL Description: Home page for Digital Sepoltuario

How Will They Remember Me? Tomb Reuse in Renaissance Florence (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: How Will They Remember Me? Tomb Reuse in Renaissance Florence
Author: Anne Leader
Abstract: In January 1384 a marble slab carrying an effigy was installed at the foot of the stairs before the high altar of the Benedictine monastery of the Badia Fiorentina. The portrait showed the silk merchant and magistrate Filippo di Ser Giovanni Pandolfini. Despite his portrait, the inscription indicated that the grave was not only for Filippo but also for his descendants. More than 120 Pandolfini women and men were buried under their forbear’s slab from 1384 through 1663 when the church floor was redone. The singularity of the tomb’s portrait effigy masks the repeated use of this gravesite and raises interesting questions about what it meant to be a tomb honoree in the Renaissance, who was remembered, and how. Continual burial is explored with reference to a Book of the Dead (Libro dei defunti) kept by the Badia’s monks from 1499 through the 1700s that reveals often surprising interments under inscriptions that gave little indication of the multiple burials within the tombs they adorned. Far from the cult of an individual, effigy tombs could and did serve Florentines as family sepulchers.
Date: 3/22/2024
Primary URL: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/2024/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/16798
Primary URL Description: Online conference program link to paper title and abstract as submitted.
Secondary URL: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/2024/meetingapp.cgi/Session/7352
Secondary URL Description: Online conference program link to session in which paper appeared
Conference Name: Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 21-23, 2024

Rarely a Tomb of Her Own: The Burial of Women in Renaissance Florence (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Rarely a Tomb of Her Own: The Burial of Women in Renaissance Florence
Author: Anne Leader
Abstract: In death, as in life, Florentine women had relatively few choices. Burial was typically constrained by a woman’s husband or father when her corpse was placed in a matrimonial or paternal tomb. While some elite families installed adjacent grave-pits to separate men- and womenfolk, most family tombs were available to both sexes. Women’s names were rarely included in tomb inscriptions and were usually subsumed under generic labels like “suorum” or “descendentium” (his descendants) or the gendered “uxorum” (his wives). The NEH-sponsored Digital Sepoltuario, an online research tool, allows new, comprehensive analysis of how much burial choice was available to Florentine women ca. 1300-1650, allowing us to put interesting anecdotes and case studies such as these into more meaningful context.
Date: 4/2/2022
Primary URL: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/11282
Primary URL Description: Online conference program link to paper with abstract.
Secondary URL: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Session/5273
Secondary URL Description: Online conference program link to session in which paper appeared
Conference Name: The Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Dublin, Ireland, March 30-April 2, 2022

Death, Databases, & the Culture of Commemoration in Renaissance Florence: Developing "Digital Sepoltuario" (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Death, Databases, & the Culture of Commemoration in Renaissance Florence: Developing "Digital Sepoltuario"
Abstract: Online lecture on development of Digital sepoltuario co-sponsored by Med-Ren, History Department, and Department of Art & Music Histories at Syracuse University
Author: Anne Leader
Date: 10/7/2022
Location: Syracuse University
Primary URL: https://calendar.syracuse.edu/events/2022-oct-07/death-databases-the-culture-of-commemoration-in-renaissance-florence-developing-digital-sepoltuario/
Primary URL Description: announcement of public lecture on university website

Digital Sepoltuario presented in "Digital Approaches: Projects in Progress" (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Digital Sepoltuario presented in "Digital Approaches: Projects in Progress"
Abstract: One of four project teams invited to speak at Warburg Institute online workshop "Between Technology and Theory: Digital Humanities Projects in Progress" organized by Rheagan Martin and Louisa McKenzie.
Author: Anne Leader
Author: Worthy Martin
Date: 6/9/2022
Location: The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study University of London (online)
Primary URL: http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/node/10771
Primary URL Description: public announcement and description of workshop

Roundtable Discussant in "New Directions in Digital Humanities and Renaissance Italy" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Roundtable Discussant in "New Directions in Digital Humanities and Renaissance Italy"
Author: Anne Leader
Abstract: One of six participants invited to speak in "New Technologies and Renaissance Studies IV: New Directions in Digital Humanities and Renaissance Italy," sponsored by Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, organized by Amanda Grace Madden, and chaired by Andie Silva.
Date: 3/31/2022
Primary URL: https://rsa.confex.com/rsa/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Session/5970
Primary URL Description: Conference program describing roundtable and participants.
Conference Name: The Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Dublin, Ireland, March 30-April 2, 2022

Digital Sepoltuario: Burial and Commemoration in Medieval and Renaissance Florence (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Digital Sepoltuario: Burial and Commemoration in Medieval and Renaissance Florence
Abstract: Presentation on development of Digital Sepoltuario to The Cambridge Medieval Art Seminar Series (online).
Author: Anne Leader
Date: 1/31/2022
Location: Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge (online)
Primary URL: https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/file/medievalseminarsposterlent2022editedjpg
Primary URL Description: Link to poster announcing lecture
Secondary URL: https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/events/cambridge-medieval-art-seminar-series-digital-sepoltuario-burial-and-commemoration-medieval
Secondary URL Description: Link to event on departmental website

The Florentine Way of Death (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: The Florentine Way of Death
Abstract: Presentation hosted by Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) on burial customs in early Renaissance Florence, providing an overview of the memorial landscape of the city as Boccaccio and his contemporaries knew it and the ways in which Florentines reformed and renewed their interrupted memorial traditions. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended cherished burial rituals worldwide and has also renewed interest in the pandemic of 1348 that killed upwards of 60% of Europe’s population. 14th-century authors have become newly relevant as their vivid descriptions of the plague seem ripped from today’s headlines.
Author: Anne Leader
Date: 8/18/2021
Location: Auburn Public Library (Auburn, AL)
Primary URL: https://news.auburnalabama.org/article/City%20News/4141
Primary URL Description: Public announcement of lecture, third in a series.

Burial Within the Walls: Perceptions and Realities of Intramural Burial in Premodern Florence (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Burial Within the Walls: Perceptions and Realities of Intramural Burial in Premodern Florence
Author: Anne Leader
Abstract: Presented at virtual conference hosted by FAPAB (Forensic Anthropology, Paleopathology and Bioarchaeology) Research Center, Avola, Italy
Date: 9/16/2021
Primary URL: https://www.academia.edu/66720811/Burial_within_the_walls_perceptions_and_realities_of_intramural_burial_in_premodern_Florence
Primary URL Description: Draft manuscript in press for publication in volume 3 of Acta Palaeomedica-International Journal of Paleomedicine
Conference Name: Health, medicine, and socio-cultural aspects in the Late Middle Ages and through the Renaissance: new research perspectives

Poster at Shannon Library (UVA) Grand Opening (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Poster at Shannon Library (UVA) Grand Opening
Abstract: IATH had a set of posters focused on past and present projects by IATH Fellows including Digital Sepoltuario. Staff were available to discuss and explore the projects and to talk more about digital humanities work at the UVA Library.
Author: Anne Leader
Author: Sarah Wells
Author: Lauren Massari
Date: 4/4/2024
Location: Shannon Library, DH Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Primary URL: https://www.academia.edu/120297185/Fellow_Poster_for_Grand_Opening_of_Shannon_Library_at_the_University_of_Virginia
Secondary URL: https://cal.lib.virginia.edu/event/12261991

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