March 2, 1956

Seventeen academic departments and some 500 students participated in a Renaissance Colloquium, celebrating the art, dance, drama, music, thought and food of the era. The idea, according to the chairman, Professor of Music Elizabeth Katzenellenbogen, was “to create the actual sights and sounds and flavors of Renaissance daily life, as a background for a provocative discussion of Renaissance ideas.”

Erwin Panofsky, professor of art at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, spoke on “Pandora’s Box, a Northern Contribution to the Renaissance,” and Edward Lowinsky, professor of music, Queens College, discussed “Humanism in the Music of the Renaissance: North and South.” Erich Auerbach, professor of romance languages at Yale, addressed “Humanism and the Vernaculars” and Roland H. Bainton, professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale, spoke on “Petrarch and St. Francis.”

Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist was presented by the Experimental Theatre under the direction of Professor Mary Virginia Heinlein ’25, and 40 student “pageboys” served a dinner whose menu, compiled by an English class, was inspired by a banquet of Henry VIII.