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p. 288
The
Shepherd Meets the Cowherd:
Ruzante's
Pastoral, the Empire, and Venice
Linda L. Carroll,
Newcomb
College,
Tulane
University
At
the end of the Cambrai wars, despite official peace with all its former
enemies, Venice harbored a preference for France. Rooted in the need to defend
its mainland territory against imperial reassertion of ancient hegemony, this
preference was fortified by the greater military strength that France had
demonstrated in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and its
contribution to the relatively positive outcome for Venice of the wars. Venice
also wished to promote trade with the Turks, cultivated by the French. A small
but influential number of Venetian patricians, nonetheless, made overtures to
the Holy Roman Empire. Some belonged to families of long imperial affiliation,
while others preferred the looser governmental organization of the empire. Those
in a third group, previously averse to the empire, were compelled to
rapprochement by changing economic circumstances. During the war years, the
future Charles V assumed control of large portions of the seacoast along which
Venice's Western galleys would resume sailing after eight years in port. In
1519, after his election as emperor, he planned an aggressive campaign of
Italian conquest and influence over the Church[1].
Leading
Venetian patricians with commercial interests, aspirations for ecclesiastical
careers, and property in the mainland state became convinced that it was wiser
to be the emperor's friend than his enemy. Their initial overtures to
Maximilian were indirect, including attendance at Venice's celebration of the
peace accord with the empire ending the war and contact with leaders of
imperially-leaning Italian states visiting the city. With the election of
Charles, recognized as the most powerful king in the world, expressions gained
explicitness: patricians persuaded their peers in governing bodies to placate
him and sponsored festivities with imperial themes. Because of the risks
involved, some of the overt gestures were made by performers or other
surrogates invited by these patricians.
In
1520, the Compagnia della Calza Immortali celebrated the induction of Federico
II Gonzaga to its ranks with an elaborate festivity which, like all Compagnia
festivities, was permitted but not sponsored by the government. Their purpose
went beyond cultivating the new sovereign of a neighboring state and furthering
friendly relations between Immortale families and Gonzaga; more important was
garnering military advantages for Venice in the war between Francis and Charles
that many anticipated would be fought on Italian soil. Gonzaga had increased
his efforts to obtain a captaincy in the Venetian army a few months previously
on hearing that Venice was hiring soldiers. While the Republic remained
uninterested, it could not afford to alienate the leader of a state which,
lying to the southwest of its territory, served as both a buffer and a bridge
for Venetian troops sent to defend its western borders or Milan. Leading
members of the
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Immortali
and their relatives, including Alvise Molin, Alvise Pisani, Zorzi Corner and
Andrea Gritti, some of Venice's most influential patricians, made Gonzaga vague
promises that the Republic would reward his loyalty, as Federico and his mother
Isabella d'Este Gonzaga learned from their ambassador in Venice, Giovanni
Battista Malatesta. His dispatches also relayed information, some of it
confidential, about the deliberations of Venetian government bodies and the
stances of specific patricians. Included were the first indications of a
Venetian peace with the empire, with hints of support even by stalwart
Francophile Andrea Gritti. Malatesta advised Federico to abandon France and
join the empire and Venice, seconding the politically astute Isabella, one of
the first to discern Charles's importance to the future of Italy[2].
The
1520 festivities featured a hydra, a Laocoon, a 'troja' (probably either a
prostitute or a sow) whose name clearly punned on the ancient city, and a
classical god. The building of Troy was mimed on the women's platform, from
under which emerged a devil accompanied by "a big firework display."
The final act was "another peasant-style comedy, done by a Paduan called
'Ruzante' who speaks with a very good peasant accent."[3]
It was the first recorded performance of Angelo Beolco, whose (future?) patron,
Alvise Corner, had been an intimate of the Immortali for at least a year[4].
The Trojan images embodied the
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claim
of a single patriline for both Venice and the empire. Trojan origins had long
been asserted by the Holy Roman Empire as the descendant of the Roman Empire
founded by Aeneas. Venice began searching for its own in the fifteenth century,
after the conquest of a mainland empire that included Beolco's home city of
Padua. To support his assertion of universal civil and ecclesiastical
authority, Charles had recently valorized the descent of both imperial and
French ruling families from the Roman empire's Trojan progenitors[5].
Numerous
advantages would accrue to many Immortali and their families from the sharing
of Trojan origins with the empire, principally protection of the Venetian
mainland state and their personal properties during anticipated imperial
invasions, and the improving of their ability to obtain benefices. To take the
signal case of Padua and its environs, Venetian civil and military governors
included many Immortale families, even smaller ones such as the Diedo and the
Duodo. Early governors numbered many
Trevisan, Morosini, Foscari, Loredan and Corner, while the more recent group
added Molin, Querini, Marcello, Dolfin, Lion, and Contarini. Military governor
in 1518 was Marc'Antonio Loredan, apparently father of Immortale Zuan
Francesco, and in 1519 and 1520 Alvise Contarini, kinsman but not father of
Immortale Francesco[6].
Bishops
of Padua after the conquest had almost unfailingly been Venetian patricians.
Immortale families were represented by Albanio Michiel; Pietro Marcello; Fantin
Dandolo; Pietro Foscari, who purchased the enormous palazzo at the Eremitani
and was kinsman to the Zuan Foscari hosting the 1520 festivity; Giovanni
Michiel, who was appointed but did not assume office; and Pietro Dandolo. In
1517, after a brief assignment to a child member of the intensely papalista and Ortolano Lippomano family
and then to Sisto Gara della Rovere, the bishopric had been returned to the
Immortale fold with its conferral on papal favorite Marco Corner, who harbored
papal ambitions of his own. Formal possesso
of the diocese was taken by his brother, Immortale Zuan. When Corner took
possession himself in 1521, Beolco delivered not only the well-known “First
Oration” at Asolo, but one in Padua "a nome dei Collegi" "on behalf
of the faculties."[7]
Zuan Pisani, a student in Padua and son of Alvise, had achieved the cardinal's
hat in 1517 at the tender age of seventeen. The cathedral's canons and its primiceri and arcipreti also included many members of the Dandolo, Dolfin, Malipiero,
Marcello, Michiel, Morosini, Querini,
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Trevisan,
and Vendramin families, a number of whom held other church offices and enjoyed
papal favor. In claiming these benefices, Venetian families vied with the
local, often imperial, families who had long held them, such as the Alvarotti[8].
Immortale
families were among the most eager purchasers of mainland agricultural
property, income-producing apparatuses such as mills, and tax collections. They
often transformed themselves into feudal nobles by buying old estates or
creating them ex novo. The Pisani,
for example, acquired vast holdings near Montagnana, Este, and Rovigo that
included former demesnial lands of the Este, to which patriarch Alvise
frequently repaired[9]. The
Marcello created a veritable feudal rocca
at Monselice as an anchor to their land in the Polesine[10]. Other Immortale families with land,
benefices, or business dealings in or near Padua included the Dandolo, Diedo,
Dolfin, Foscari, da Leze, Loredan, Malipiero, Molin, Morosini, Pasqualigo, Priuli,
Querini, Taiapiera, Trevisan, and Vendramin[11].
Mario
Baratto hypothesized that the play Beolco presented was the Pastoral, with its Arcadian shepherds
redolent of the pastoral texts of Poliziano and Sannazaro meeting the cowherd
Ruzante and his friend Zilio[12].
Mopso, believed by his fellow Arcadian Arpino to
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have
died in sympathy for the love suicide of their mentor Milesio, is discovered to
be alive by Ruzante when he attempts to take the shepherd's coat. Ruzante
refers Arpino to the medical services of Doctor Francesco and, converting
Arpino's exclamation to Pan into an offer of bread (XI, vv. 40-41 p. 61), is
persuaded to help carry Mopso to the doctor, who revives him. More aggressive
than Ruzante, Zilio marvels that his friend has not fulfilled his lust for
Betia by simply overpowering her, implying that in this play as in others
Ruzante's companion has cuckolded him. Ruzante explains that he is too timid to
do so (XV, vv. 43-63 p. 91). Zilio's indulgence of his appetites has its
disadvantages: his overeating has given him a stomachache. He wants to add his
urine to the flask that Ruzante is taking to the doctor for analysis. The urine
already in it belongs to Ruzante's injured father; Zilio promises Ruzante a
cake when he (Zilio) gets married if Ruzante obtains a second diagnosis, but
Ruzante doesn't fall for it. Ruzante's domineering father dies, at which his
son rejoices. The Arcadians organize a sacrifice to Pan to celebrate Mopso's
revival, to which they invite Ruzante. The play ends with a general dance, into
which Ruzante draws the audience[13].
Recent
research has provided some possible sentimental and cultural factors supporting
Baratto's hypothesis. Poliziano, having broken with the Medici, wrote his Orfeo while in Mantua under Gonzaga
patronage. Possibly composed for the engagement of Federico's parents, the Orfeo may have been inspired by momarie observed during a visit to
Venice in which Poliziano frequented some of the families whose next
generation, shortly before the Cambrai Wars, would found the Immortali. They
included the Marcello, Pisani, Vendramin, and the branch of the Contarini
connected with Giorgione, who would become Molin in-laws[14].
In 1491 Poliziano visited Padua with Pico della Mirandola, who had studied
there. He located valuable manuscripts in the library of Santa Giustina, near
the Beolco home, and was in contact with a number of humanists including Pico's
teacher Nicoletto Vernia, with whom Beolco's father had studied at about the
same time[15].
Sannazaro
too enjoyed great respect and popularity in Venice and Padua in the early sixteenth century. The first,
unauthorized, edition of the Arcadia
appeared in Venice in 1502, reflecting and increasing the following of the
Neapolitan poet, also known for his comic compositions in the vernacular,
farces and gliuommeri in Neapolitan
dialect. The Arcadia enjoyed frequent
reprintings in Venice, where many copies were made by hand, including the ones
in the manuscript containing the only known version of the Pastoral (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, It. IX. 288) and the zibaldone containing many other of
Beolco's plays (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, It. XI. 66). Sannazaro was well
informed
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about
the Gonzaga and, as he said in a letter of about this time, "I have a goodly
number of patrons and friends in Venice" "Ben ho signori et amici in Venezia," including Immortale
kinsman Marc'Antonio Michiel[16].
Clues
to a political message relevant around 1520 proliferate in the play, beginning
with its reliance on genres developed by Virgil. Flattering to Federico were
the Mantuan origins of the poet, to whom Italian humanists had accorded pride
of literary place for his Aeneid and Eclogues[17].
While the former gave voice to the rise of empire, the latter, with which the Pastoral plays, laments the differential
treatment of poets by imperial patrons, themselves reacting to a variety of
historical constraints. Taking as his point of departure a Sicilian genre,
Virgil created a poetic rural refuge where sensitive souls could come to terms
with their fate, their principal hope being that great men, after their deaths,
would be transformed into protective gods. The subsequent Roman tradition
focused on a growing hierarchicalization of society that "reduced almost
all classes except the senatorial rank to a form of political servitude,"
restricting freedom of speech and action. Recent copies of Virgilian texts had
included illustrations with realistic representations of peasants, while
members of Immortale families had written pastorals about patronage with the
characters' true identities labelled[18].
In
the Pastoral, Beolco examined how the
confines and solipsism of Arcadia had brought it to a state of exhaustion and
unreality, yet offered a different kind of hope, drawn in part from the revivifying
practicality of the Georgics. Much of
his program is conveyed through the kind of etymological word play in which
name manifests substance and which Virgil had brought to a high art. In
indicating Beolco's familiarity with Greek philosophy, Milesio, the name of the
elderly Arcadian character in love with Siringa, points to the character's
fatalism as the reason for the failure of Arcadia. Led by Thales and
Anaximander and deriving their collective name from their home in Miletus, the
Milesians were an influential group of pre-Socratic philosophers who posited
for the cosmos an entirely natural origin and organization by law. A signal
feature of the system's equilibrium was "the necessary dissolution of all
generated things back into their source of birth" and the "continuous
change of opposing forms or powers into one another."[19]
Adopted as a philosophical system by humans, such overpowering cyclicity
tending toward destruction could lead only to passivity and death.
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Beolco
linked the Pastoral to the Eclogues through the emphasis on Pan and
the characters Siringa (a nymph) and Mopso. Even the name of the minor
character Lacerto who squirms out of responsibility was a sixteenth-century
learned word of Virgilian origin meaning 'lizard'[20].
Mopsus appeared in Virgil's Fifth and
Eighth Eclogue to lament the loss to
Arcadia of Daphnis, who has been seen as Julius Caesar[21].
His central role caused his inclusion in virtually all texts deriving from
them, including Eclogue Five of
Sannazaro's Arcadia. The Pastoral's clearest link to Virgil is
the name Zilio, one of whose several origins is Virgil, referred to as Virzilio
and Verzilio in the historically-detailed "Prologo per le recite in
pavana" of Beolco's Betia[22].
As
a character, Zilio represents what it takes to make an empire, as does another
Paduan source, Egidio. The church of S. Zilio (S. Egidio) near the Beolco home
was believed built at the behest of Charlemagne, who appeared in one of its
frescoes[23]. The towers
of Padua's castle were named the zilie
for the thirteenth-century architect Egidio who reinforced them for Ezzelino
III, who had received the city from Frederick II after the imposition of
imperial control through treachery and force. Padua, "the chief stronghold
of the Guelph party in the Veneto" "la principale roccaforte del
partito guelfo nel Veneto," resisted and, with military assistance from
the pope, overthrew Ezzelino[24].
The symbiotic relationship between Zilio and Ruzante explicates the conflict
between the appeal of power and the appeal of love. Zilio derives power from
ruthlessness, which, while it earns him respect, renders him antipathetic,
particularly when he exploits his friend. Here is the echo of the zilie: power derives from aggression,
which calls forth more aggression. On the other hand, lack of aggression
results in being conquered. The
capacity to love that endears Ruzante to the audience is rooted in his
powerlessness; to love as he does, to allow the beloved to take complete power,
one must lack a sense of personal power.
With
Arpino's name Beolco gives a sly nod to one of the most important protagonists
in the Virgilian revival, Petrarch, who, in the Bucolicum Carmen as the dispossessed poet Meliboeus, continued the
Arcadian tradition with a penetrating and carefully-encrypted critique of the
failings of the powerful and the prevalence of flattery. Silvanus (Petrarch),
while on a journey to acquaint himself with the literary traditions of the
ancient world, encounters an elderly man from the woods of Arpino. He is Plautus, upon whose works Beolco would
later base two plays. He is near two
live oaks that protected his herds of cows twice. One represents Caius Marius,
who saved Rome from Germanic and Celtic invasion, an event having clear echoes
around 1520. The other represents Cicero. Both were from Arpino[25].
Arpino's
name contains a second clue to Beolco's meaning. Arpi was the ancient name of
Foggia, the city to which Ferrante moved the administration of the pastoral
system that dominated the economics of southern Italy after wresting control of
it from the Angevin barons. His purpose was to increase its independence and
thus its role in forming an Aragonese power structure "which stood above
and apart from provincial administration
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and
baronial prerogatives." The
Spanish subsequently implemented as the scaffolding of their power and revenue
in southern Italy a model in which, through the manipulation of law, their
hierarchical, centralized government balanced the system's competing interests,
favoring small holders over large, international ones. The resulting system,
which "elaborated a program of conservative defense of the status
quo," was stable and produced a highly competitive product[26].
The reference to Foggia may also recall Venice's failed attempt to take Apulian
sea ports from Spain, one factor provoking its enemies to form the League of
Cambrai (cf. Proemio a la Villana p. 13 vv. 114-17; Proemio in lingua tosca, p.
17 par. 1). Venice's return of them after Agnadello had been one of the steps
in its reconciliation with Spain[27].
The
framework of an encounter between Arcadian shepherds and realistic peasant
animal tenders was originally developed in Tuscany, both in Sienese
aristocratic theater groups and as part of a "self-endorsing" Medici
iconography[28]. The Medici had long been identified with
Greek philosophy, particularly that of Plato. Under Leo, the Medici program of
self-presentation extended to the identification of the now-papal family and
their hegemonic designs with the Greeks as opponents of Troy who cleansed its stain,
depicting Leo as similar defender of Italy[29].
Sannazaro of course was the leading cultural light of the Neapolitan court of a
cadet branch of the House of Aragon displaced by Ferdinand in his creation of a
unified southern Italian province. The 1520 Immortale performance's sympathy
toward Troy by implication rejected the Greeks as treacherous. The Arcadians'
use of Tuscan in the Pastoral, beyond
echoing Sannazaro's adoption of it in the Arcadia, may, when connected to the
genre's mythical setting in Greece, indicate the nature of the treachery.
Despite having accepted Aragonese help to return to power in 1512, the Medici,
under the leadership of Leo, showed no loyalty to Ferdinand but formed
individual, multiple, and conflicting alliances with a variety of states in
pursuit of their own hegemonic designs[30].
Greece, synonymous in the Trojan context with treachery, became linked to
Tuscany and the Medici; the antidote to Greek plotting and deceit was the
empire founded by Aeneas, cleansed through his trial by fire and now manifest
in the Holy Roman Empire.
A
near-perfect reproduction of classical rituals, the Arcadians' concluding
sacrifice resembles one appearing in a relief made in Padua about the same time
by Antonio Ricci. It adorned the tombs of Girolamo della Torre and his son
Marcantonio, University professors, physicians and humanists probably referred
to in Beolco's 1521 First Oration,
the senior of whom was connected to his father[31].
The iconography was drawn from a reading of Book Six of Virgil's Aeneid prompted by the deaths of the
della Torre; formulated in a discussion
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296
held
in Padua at the home of jurist and humanist Francesco Alvarotto, it was
published by Niccolo Leonico Tomeo in his Alverotus[32].
The
della Torre, Alvarotto, and Beolco families belonged to the landed nobility
that had long governed the Po Valley, at least nominally in feud to the empire.
They also had strong ecclesiastical ties including, in many cases, personal
connections to Leo. The della Torre, with branches in Verona and the Friuli,
owned numerous properties and castles; some of its members had strong links
with the empire or were in conflict with Venice. Girolamo della Torre's second
son, Giovanni Battista, appeared as the character Batto in a pastoral composed
in commemoration of condottiero
Cesare Triulzio by Gian Giorgio Trissino.
Trissino, a familiar of Angelo Beolco's, spent the Cambrai war years at
the imperial court but at their conclusion reconciled with Venice[33].
Member of an old imperial knightly family, Francesco Alvarotto was the
grandfather of Beolco's stage partner, Marc'Aurelio Alvarotto, who probably
played Zilio[34]. Drawing
its name from Castel Beolco, among their many possessions in the Brianza
region, the Beolco family kept a strong presence in Milan, holding office and
serving in the city's defense. Their wealth permitted them to make important
loans to Ludovico Sforza and to undertake significant commercial activity in
Venice's mainland state, where Angelo's grandfather settled in the mid
fifteenth century. The family
maintained connections with Milan, Angelo's uncle receiving the benefice of S.
Bernabo in 1501[35]. Numerous
members of the families, including Beolco's two uncles, Marc'Antonio's father
and grandfather, Bernardino Speroni, Leo's personal physician and friend of
Beolco's father, and his son Sperone, in whose Dialogo delle lingue Angelo would appear, were arrested by the
Venetians as imperial partisans in the wars of Cambrai. The Alvarotti were
freed only with papal intervention[36].
Given
the peasants' general adherence to the Venetian cause as superior to
exploitation by local imperial landlords and the Pastoral's criticisms of the harsh treatment of the peasants by
Spanish and German troops in the Cambrai wars, one might wonder how Beolco
reconciled his advancing of peasant rights with espousing the imperialist
cause. A close reading of the Pastoral
provides valuable clues. The play's criticisms fall into two groups: a satire
of the artificial Arcadian topos adopted by the old Aragonese court in Naples
and references to the harm caused both to peasants and to learning at the
University of Padua by soldiers and the war, which many believed caused by
Venetian expansionism. Included in the criticism is the Venetian general whose
impetuousness was blamed by many for the disastrous rout at Agnadello with
which the war opened, if the foolish and self-destructive 'ser Bartolomio' of
the peasant prologue is Bartolomeo d'Alviano. In other
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passages,
the play demonstrates a supportive attitude toward imperial affines. The
imperial soldiers have left the peasants in peace at the end of the war; the
audience would have known that Venetian soldiers, usually billetted with
peasants, did not[37].
One of the enemy soldiers' supposed rapacious acts, the stealing of Ruzante's
cow Lorina (whose name echoes that of the region most contended by France and
the empire), was faked by Ruzante to avoid giving her to the doctor as payment.
The
most significant events are Ruzante's revival of Mopso and the union of
shepherds, peasants and public under his leadership. Ruzante thereby adds his
earthy body to the shepherds' ethereal bodies and the patrician public's real
political body to produce a complete social corpus. In Virgilian terms, Beolco
was urging the abandonment of the sheltered Greek refuge of the “Arcadia” for
the Trojan heroism of the “Aeneid” and the rural Italic problem-solving of the
“Georgics”. His message in political terms is that the peasants, when treated
properly, will heal the damage to the old mainland noble families. Peasant
vitality will form the glue of a new society that will include all groups with
a stake in the countryside: the old noble families, the peasants, and the new
Venetian overlords, if the Venetians will concentrate on what they already
have. The system of external control of the rustic province embodied in Arcadia
will fade away in favor of a mixed local government based on cooperation, both
for the state and for the Church. All of this occurring in a loosely-organized
imperial system favoring small holders over large, as in southern Italy, would
go far to accomplishing the equality of treatment that Beolco would overtly
advocate in the 1528 “Second Oration”. It appealed to Immortale patricians'
desire to retain local control of their lives and to lead international
entities such as the Church rather than be led by them. Later events would
prove such hopes misplaced, but between 1517 and 1520 Beolco's unifying vision
of a local Utopia was plausible[38].
NOTES
I
am grateful to the American Philosophical Society and to the Georges Lurcy
Research Fund of the Center for Scholars of the Faculty of the Liberal Arts and
Sciences of Tulane University for providing funding for some of the research,
and to the Bishopric of Padua for its hospitality.
For this material, permission is granted
for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and
personal use.
Whether you intend to utilize it in
scientific purposes, indicate the source: either this web address or the Annuario.
Istituto Romeno di cultura e ricerca umanistica 4 (2002), edited by ªerban
Marin, Rudolf Dinu and Ion Bulei, Venice, 2002
No permission is granted for commercial
use.
© ªerban Marin, August 2002, Bucharest,
Romania
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Homepage Annuario 2002
[1] For this and
following paragraph, see Linda L. Carroll,
"Venetian Attitudes toward the Young Charles: Carnival, Commerce, and Compagnie della Calza,", in Young Charles V 1500-1531 (ed. by Alain Saint-Saёns), New Orleans:
University Press of the South, 2000: 13-52. The present article is part of a
larger project exploring the political, economic and ideological implications
of Beolco patronage.
[2]
Festivity: Carroll,
"Venetian Attitudes". Gonzaga politics: Alessandro Luzio, "Federico ostaggio alla
corte di Giulio II," Archivio della
R. Società Romana di Storia patria 9.2 (1886): 509-582; Idem, "Isabella d'Este e Leone X,
dal Congresso di Bologna alla presa di Milano (1515-1521)", Archivio Storico Italiano, 5th
ser., 40 (1907): 18-97, 44 (1909): 72-128, 45 (1910): 245-302; and bibliography
in Carroll, "Venetian
Attitudes": 13, n. 3, 14 n. 5, 26, n. 43, 32 n. 57 and n. 58, 33 n. 60.
Gonzaga military history: Carroll,
"Venetian Attitudes,": esp. 13-15; M. J. Rodriguez-Salgado, "Terracotta and Iron: Mantuan
Politics (ca. 1450-ca. 1550)", in La
corte di Mantova nell'eta di Andrea Mantegna/The Court of Mantua in the Age of
Mantegna: 1450-1550. Atti del convegno (Londra, 6-8 marzo 1992, Mantova 28
marzo, 1992) (ed. by Cesare Mozzarelli,
Roberto Oreski, Leandro Ventura), Rome: Bulzoni, 1997: 15-59;
M. E. Mallett, "Venezia e la
politica italiana: 1454-1530" [hereafter, Mallett], in Storia di
Venezia, Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1996, IV: Il Rinascimento. Politica e Cultura (ed.
by Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci): 245-310, esp. 284-285, 300-302.
Venetian (esp. Immortale) and Gonzaga relations: Archivio di Stato di Mantova
[ASMN], Da Venezia, Cart. G. B. Malatesta, busta 1454, fols. 74, 91, 181
(Donà da Leze in Padua), 249, 254, 260, 269, 325 bis, 376, 426, 450; for
state affairs, including Federico's reward fols. 35, 36, 42v, 45v (hiring
soldiers), 47 (possible peace accord Venice-empire), 50, 54, 89 (French-papal
league), 110, 120 (French friendliness to Charles), 216, 216 (soldiers of
Taddeo della Volpe, also Immortale, in Mantua), 242 (possible truce between
Venice and empire), 252, 257 (Senators tell of secret league between Venice and
empire), 269, 273 (advice to abandon France, ally with emperor, who will have
Gonzaga hired by Venice), 278, 279 (support in Senate by Immortali early March,
1520), 282, 283 (secret papal-French league, cf. Marino Sanuto, I Diarii
[hereafter, Sanuto] (ed. by R. Fulin et al.), 58 vols., Venice:
Visentini, 1879-1902, 28: 160-62 Jan. 6, 1520), 284v (Venice cooling toward France,
warming to empire, Gritti), 289, 301, 336, 351-52 (Gritti's promises), 353
(Charles offers alliance to Venice, which is undecided, wants to stay with
France but fears emperor's enmity), 368, 376 (Zorzi Corner asks Gonzaga's help
for a client), 438; fols. 502r, 504r, 513r from successful candidate
Marc'Antonio Martinengo. In some instances, Malatesta names patrician
informants; those giving him confidential information are termed "l'amico," "questi s[igno]ri," and "ho[min]i de p[re]gadi": fols. 89, 242,
257, 273.
[3]
Sanuto 28: 253-56 "gran fuogi," "una altra comedia a la vilanescha, la qual
fece uno nominato Ruzante padoan, qual da vilan parla excelentissimamente."
Troia/troia: James J. O'Hara, True Names. Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Word
Play [hereafter: O’Hara], Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996: 143.
[4]
Sanuto 26: 397 records a hunt
that included members of the Immortali and an Alvise Corner, probably Beolco's
patron, recorded by Paduan diarist G. da Corte as having returned to Padua with
bag from a hunt the following day, Jan. 28, 1519: [hereafter, da Corte], Historia di Padova, 1509-1530, Padua: Biblioteca Civica, B. P.
3159, fol. 121v; da Corte was an intimate of the Beolco family (fol. 262v),
though he did not write of Angelo. Also attending was Giacomo Corner; Alvise
had a brother Giacomo. See also ASMN busta 1454 fols. 326-27 (cf. 462), a
petition to Gonzaga of June 1520 to return goods of Vigo da Camposanpiero,
signed by the Immortali including "Alovise
Chornero."
[5]
Troy and the Habsburgs: Marie Tanner,
The Last Descendant of Aeneas. The
Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993: esp. 2, 4, 6-7, 31, 54, 59-60, 68, 71-74, 89, 97, 126, 128. Venice
and Troy: Patricia Fortini Brown,
Venice and Antiquity. The Venetian Sense
of the Past, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996: 13, 25, 38-42, 73;
Marino Zorzi, "Dal
manoscritto al libro" [hereafter, Zorzi],
in Storia di Venezia: IV, 833-34.
[6]
Members: Lionello Venturi,
"Le Compagnie della Calza (sec. XV-XVI)," Nuovo Archivio Veneto, n.s., 16 (1909), 2: 136-37; governorships:
Andrea Gloria, Il territorio padovano, 4 vols., Padua:
Prosperini, 1862: I, 84, 273-81; information about many Immortale families
available in Margaret L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician
Dominance, 2 vols., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986; the father
of Immortale Francesco Contarini died before 1520, evident from the designation
"qu." (Sanuto 28: 256). For Venetian-papal
politics see esp. Federico Seneca,
Venezia e Papa Giulio II, Padua:
Liviana, 1962.
[7]
For Foscari, Francesco Scipione Dondi
Dall'Orologio, Serie cronologico-
storico dei Canonici di Padova [hereafter: Dondi], Padua: Stamperia del Seminario, 1805: 82-83; for
bishops: Idem, Dissertazioni sopra l'istoria ecclesiastica
padovana, 9 vols., Padua: Stamperia del Seminario, 1802-1817): IX, 3-100
(Zuan Corner and Beolco: 99).
[8]
Dondi, canonici, 8-13 (Alvarotti), 71, 72, 121, 122, 123, 124, 176-77,
208, 214, 245, 249; see also Idem,
Dissertazioni, 9: 6-69, 80, 81.
[9]
Emilio Menegazzo, "Ricerche
intorno alla vita e all'ambiente del Ruzante e di Alvise Cornaro", Italia Medievale e Umanistica 7 (1964):
181; da Corte: fol. 109v; Sanuto 24: 258, 26: 177, 27: 574;
Sergio Zamperetti, Piccoli principi. Signorie locali, feudi e
comunità soggette nello Stato regionale veneto dall'espansione
territoriale ai primi decenni del '600 [hereafter, Zamperetti], Venice: Il Cardo, 1991: 278; Gloria 3: 47; Giuseppe Gullino, I Pisani dal Banco e Moretta. Storia di due famiglie veneziane in
età moderna e delle loro vicende patrimoniali tra 1705 e 1836, Rome:
Istituto Storico Italiano per l'età moderna e contemporanea, 1984:
28-29, 70-74.
[10]
King, The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1994; Gullino,
"Un progressivo sviluppo ... la proprietà veneziana nel
Polesine", in Eresie, magia,
società nel Polesine tra '500 e '600 (ed. by Achille Olivieri), Rovigo: Minelliana, 1989:
378.
[11]
Dandolo: da Corte: fols. 6r,
109r. Diedo: Sanuto 27: 571.
Dolfin: Bruno Rigobello,
"Modi di interventi del capitale veneziano nel polesine e l'insediamento
agricolo dei Loredan, dei Corner, dei Badoer, e dei Grimani," in Palladio e palladianesimo in Polesine,
Rovigo: Minelliana, 1984: 24, 28; Sanuto
31: 136, 27: 401. Foscari: Dondi,
canonici: 82-83, da Corte: fol. 243v. Da Leze: ASMN
busta 1454, fol. 181 and for a connection to a Paduan mariazo: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, cod. Magl. VII,
130: fols. 93v-94r, 105v, 111r-116v. Loredan: Marina Stefani Mantovanelli, "Presenze
cinquecentesche documentate di famiglie veneziane in Polesine," in Eresie, cit.: 387; Rigobello, op. cit.: 24; Sanuto
28: 422. Malipiero: Mallett 250; Sanuto 28: 118. Marcello: da Corte fols. 121r, 154r, 195r, 203r.
Molin: Lesley A. Ling, "La
presenza fondiaria veneziana nel padovano (secoli XIII-XIV)" [hereafter, Ling], in Istituzioni, società e potere nella Marca Trevigiana e Veronese.
Sulle tracce di G. B. Verci (ed. by Gherardo Ortalli and Michael Knapton,
Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1988: 312. Morosini: Gullino, "Un progressivo":
378; da Corte: fols. 77v, 286r; Ling: 312, 316; Menegazzo, "Ricerche": 181, n. 1; Zamperetti: 314; Gullino, "I patrizi veneziani di
fronte alla proprietà feudale (secc. XVI-XVIII). Materiali per una
ricerca", Quaderni storici 43
(1980): 184. Pasqualigo: da Corte:
fols. 68r, 82r, 204v; Michele Fassina,
"'Astrenzer i contadini e lasciar stare il monastero.' Le disavventure
della proprietà di un ente ecclesiastico in una comunità
contadina nel XVI secolo", Annali
Veneti 1 (1984): 150. Querini: da
Corte: fol. 107v; Guido Ruggiero,
Violence in Early Renaissance Venice,
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1980: 7-8. Taiapiera: da Corte: fol. 229v. Trevisan: Gullino, "Un progressivo":
378; Ling: 312; da Corte: fol. 18r-v; Andrea Calore, "Giovanni Foscari, un
amico veneziano di Angelo Beolco," in III
Convegno Internazionale di Studi sul Ruzante (ed. by Giovanni Calendoli), Padua: Società
Cooperativa Tipografica, 1993: 22; Sanuto
17: 498, 500, 501, 27: 574; 30: 99-100. Vendramin: da Corte: fols. 8v, 119v-120r; Zamperetti: 222.
[12]
Mario Baratto, "L'esordio
del Ruzante," in Tre studi sul
teatro, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1968: 11-68; Carlo Grabher, Ruzzante
[hereafter, Grabher],
Milano-Messina: Principato, 1953: 45-46. Citations are to Ruzante Teatro (ed. by Ludovico Zorzi),
Turin: Einaudi, 1967. References to Arcadia include Proemio a la vilana, vv.
82-83 p. 11; vv. 150-53, p. 15, (see n. 19 p. 1285); Proemio in lingua tosca
par. 1 p. 17 (see n. 24 pp. 1285-86); XIX, v. 222 p. 125; XXI, v. 136 p. 141.
Beolco's humble position echoes that of Virgil as Tityrus, a recently freed
slave, for which see Annabel Patterson,
Pastoral and Ideology. Virgil to Valery
[hereafter, Patterson], Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987: 24-25.
[13]
Peace with the empire was celebrated with a similar festivity: Sanuto: 23, 583; various Pastoral themes appear in numerous
compositions in Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana It. XI. 66, the manuscript
containing most of Beolco's plays: fols. 232-37, 241-42, 242-47.
[14]
See Vittore Branca, "Momarie
veneziane e 'fabula d'Orfeo'", in Poliziano
e l'Umanesimo della parola, Turin: Einaudi, 1983: 55-72, esp. 57, 60, 61;
Salvatore Settis, Giorgione's "Tempest" Interpreting
the Hidden Subject (trans. By Ellen Bianchini),
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990: 153-55; Sanuto: 33, 311.
[15]
Branca, "Alla ricerca di
libri e di docenti nel Veneto umanistico," in Poliziano,: 134-35, 137-9; Paolo Sambin,
"Lazzaro e Giovanni Francesco Beolco, nonno e padre del Ruzante"
[hereafter, Sambin], Italia Medievale e Umanistica 7 (1964):
157.
[16]
Iacobo Sannazaro, Opere volgari (ed. by Alfredo Mauro), Bari: Laterza, 1961: 421, 427,
428, 445, 446, 447, 475; Gonzaga: Letters from Sannazaro XXIX: 339-342, XXXI:
343-344, XLVII: 365, Letters to Sannazaro IX: 405, LV: 391; Venetians: Letters
from Sannazaro II: 310, XIII: 318-19, XIX: 324-28, XXVIII: 338, XLI: 360, LIV:
388-89, LV: 389-91 (qt. 391); Letters to Sannazaro VIII: 404-5, XII: 409-10; Sanuto: 27, 223-24; Marchiò
Michiel: Sanuto: 28, 255, 544,
562; he attended the 1519 hunt (Sanuto 26: 397), whose party included Andrea
Navagero, close to Sannazaro.
[17]
Craig Kallendorf, In Praise of Aeneas. Virgil and Epideictic
Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance, Hanover, New Hampshire:
University Press of New England, 1989; Patterson;
Francesco Petrarca, Il "Bucolicum Carmen" di Francesco
Petrarca (ed., trans., annot. by Tonino Mattucci),
Pisa: Giardini, 1970. Further research linking the Betia with an imperial stance is currently under way.
[18]
Mattucci, "Prefazione":
VII-XVI; David Quint, Origins and Originality in Renaissance
Literature. Versions of the Source [hereafter, Quint], New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983: 51-55, 63-64;
Patterson: 24-25, 30, 40-43 (qt.
40), 50-52, 73, 81-82, 92, 96, 105. A Paduan pastoral about patronage involving
the Foscari and Michiel: Dondi, Dissertazioni, 9: 66-69, 113-18.
[19]
Word play: O'Hara: esp. 51-111;
Milesians: Charles H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek
Cosmology, New York: Columbia University Press, 1960: 7-8, 166, 170-71, 176
(qt.), 179-96 (184 qt.), 238-39.
[20]
On Pan see Patterson: 64-65;
'lacerto': Grande Dizionario della lingua
italiana (ed. by Salvatore Battaglia
et al.), Turin: UTET, 1973: 8, 673.
[21]
Quint: 53, Patterson: 64-65.
[22]
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, manuscript It. XI. 66: fol. 173r; Biblioteca
Civica Correr ms. 4: fol. 4r.
[23]
Giuseppe Toffanin, Le strade di Padova, Rome: Newton
Compton, 1998: 370; Zorzi: 1304,
n. 177.
[24]
Lionello Puppi and Giuseppe Toffanin, Guida di Padova, Trieste: LINT, 1983: 153; Gloria: 1, 48; Angelo Ventura,
Padova, Bari: Laterza, 1989: 26- 27
(qt. 26).
[25]
Ecloga X: 338, vv. 211-219, 363.
[26]
John Marino, Pastoral Economics in the Kingdom of Naples, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1988: 1-11 (qt. 10), 15-31 (19 Foggia; qt. 25).
[27]
Frederic C. Lane, Venice. A Maritime Republic, Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973: 242-246.
[28]
For Siena, Grabher: 41-42; for
Lorenzo, Patterson: 64 (qt.)-65,
73.
[29]
Fabrizio Cruciani, Il teatro del Campidoglio e le feste romane
del 1513, Milan: Polifilo, 1968: 57-58; cf. Patterson: 72.
[30]
For an exhaustive chronicle of the ever-changing alliances of the period:
Giuseppe De Leva, Storia documentata di Carlo V in
correlazione all'Italia, 4 vols., Padua: Francesco Sacchetta, 1873; Venice:
Naratovich, 1863-81), esp. vols. 1 and 2.
[31]
Prima Oratione: 1185, par. 3; Sambin: 157.
[32]
Anthony F. Radcliffe, cat. entry
for S17 and S18, Antonio Riccio,
“The Illness of the Professor, The Soul of the Professor in the Fortunate
Woods”, in The Genius of Venice 1500-1600,
catalogue of an exhibition held at the Royal Academy of the Arts, 1983-84 (ed.
by Jane Martineau and Charles Hope, New York: Royal Academy of the
Arts, Abrams, 1983 [1984]: 372-74. This origin hints at the discussion of soul
in Betia, probably earlier than
usually believed.
[33]
For della Torre: Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring. Vendetta and Factions in
Friuli during the Renaissance, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1993: 82-84; 34: 306, 308, 352; for Trissino: Bernardo Morsolin, Giangiorgio Trissino. Monografia d'un gentiluomo letterato del secolo
XVI, Florence: Le Monnier, 1894: 135; Carroll,
"Dating.".
[34]
Sambin, "Briciole
biografiche del Ruzante e del suo compagno d'arte Marco Aurelio Alvarotti
(Menato)", Italia Medievale e
Umanistica 9 (1966): 285-87.
[35]
Sambin: 134-36, 160; Emilio Lovarini, "Notizie sui parenti e
sulla vita di Ruzzante", in Studi
sul Ruzzante e sulla letteratura pavana (ed. by Gianfranco Folena), Padua: Antenore, 1965: 3-8.
[36]
Lovarini, "Ruzzante a
Venezia", in Studi: 98-100.
[37]
Proemio a la vilana, 90: 13 "sto ser Bartolomio" scorns
Milesio as a suicide for love; editor Zorzi identifies him as Bartolomeo
Colleoni: 1284, n. 13 but Beolco's repeated criticisms of d'Alviano (Betia: V, 885-886: 471; Parlamento: par. 44: 527-529) make him
the more likely referent. Da Corte
details in many passages the harsh, rapacious treatment of peasants by Venetian
soldiers: e.g. 86v, 96r-v.
[38]
See L. Carroll, "'Fools of
the Dukes of Ferrara': Beolco and Ferrarese Culture after Cognac,"
forthcoming in MLN; Idem, "A Nontheistic Paradise in
Renaissance Padua", Sixteenth
Century Journal 24 (1993): 881-898.