Three Ladies, Three Medals (Studies in Iconology, 21) 9042948086, 9789042948082

Citation preview

S T U D I E S I N I C O N O L O G Y 

Three Ladies, Three Medals Monica Centanni

P EE T ER S

THREE LADIES, THREE MEDALS

THREE LADIES, THREE MEDALS

MONICA CENTANNI

PEETERS LEUVEN–PARIS–BRISTOL, CT 2023

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.

ISBN 978-90-429-4808-2 eISBN 978-90-429-4809-9 D/2023/0602/30 © 2023 – Peeters, Bondgenotenlaan 153, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)

Contents I. The all’antica Medal: A Renaissance Invention ........



I.1

Pisanello and the all’antica Medal ...........



I.2

The all’antica Nudity ................



II. Three Ladies, Three Medals ...............



II.1 Cecilia Gonzaga as Diana (1447) ...........



II.2 Isabella d’Este Gonzaga as Nemesis (1498, 1505) .....



II.3 Elisabetta Gonzaga as Danaë (1495) ..........



II.4 Three Ladies, amid the Renaissance ..........



III. Epilogue .......................



III.1 Il Cortegiano, a Posthumous Writing ..........



III.2 The Lady in the Palace ...............



Bibliography .....................  Index nominum ....................  Colophon....................... 

I The all’antica Medal: A Renaissance Invention



I.1 Pisanello and the all’antica Medal The crisis marking the passage from one era to another sometimes occurs in the blink of an eye: in a brief, revolutionary moment in which a radical change of perception, a change in the way of seeing things, takes place. It was only at the beginning of the Quattrocento that the cultural climate of Humanism – which had sparked a renewed passion for classical texts throughout the previous century – slowly took effect on visual aesthetics as well. Pisanello, along with Jacopo Bellini, was among the first artists to look anew at the remnants of the past. A series of drawings and sketches of statues or sarcophagi of the Hellenistic or Roman periods was probably executed by him between 1431 and 1432 – when he was in Rome to complete the frescoes in Saint John in Lateran left unfinished by Gentile da Fabriano.1 So, Pisanello was among the first to apply a Humanistic eye to antiquities, which – although physically exposed and visible for centuries – had remained culturally invisible, semantically mute. Only some years later, in the wake of the new aesthetic perspective, would these same antiquities be appreciated as admirable examples miraculously reaching from the past to teach their forms to the present. Pisanello is also commonly regarded as the inventor of the Renaissance medal, inspired by Antiquity.2 Sporadic precedents have come to light, the most important of which is the casting of a celebrative medal inspired by the Roman sestertius type, commissioned by Francesco II da Carrara to commemorate the capture of Padua, in 1390.3 Nonetheless, it was Pisanello who, starting from the 1438 medal for John VIII Palaeologus (most likely his first medal work), invented a compositional style inspired by Hellenistic and Roman coins, and his canons and models remained valid for at least a century. The fundamental objection to the hypothesis according to which Pisanello’s first medal was the celebrative one for the basileus Rhomaion is founded on stylistic motivations and on more practical reasoning: a major political actor like Palaeologus would never have entrusted such an important commission to an artist with neither

4

three ladies, three medals

curriculum nor fame. Thus, critics suppose that, in 1438, Pisanello already had these attributes to obtain the commission.4 Certainly, Pisanello learned to look anew towards Antiquity during his Roman period,5 deducing precise formal cues and suggestions and inaugurating his precocious and entirely unique Early Renaissance style.6 The opportunity, however, to apply this acquired sensitivity was given by his activity as a medallist: his encounter with Leonello d’Este was crucial. Indeed, during the 1430s and 1440s, the Humanist prince, a disciple of Guarino, held his court in Ferrara, a privileged meeting place for artists, scholars, and rhetors. In this regard, a critical look at Pisanello’s artistic profile contains a contradiction, which tends to separate the figure of the late-Gothic painter from the Renaissance medallist, setting up an implausible dichotomy.7 Undoubtedly, passion for Greek and Roman antiquities was a trait held in common by both the prince and the artist. A document of the Modena State, dated 1 February 1435, states that a servant of Pisanello brought Leonello an effigies of Julius Caesar: ad ipsum dominum Leonellum famulus idem Pisani nomine Divi Iulii Caesaris effigiem detulit et presentavit (a servant brought and gave to his Master Leonello a portrait of Julius Caesar on behalf of Pisanello). The date of the document suggests the hypothesis that it was a gift of the artist on the occasion of the marriage of Leonello to Margherita Gonzaga, which took place in February 1435. Critics have at length discussed the nature of this effigies: whether it was a small wooden work, or a different object (coin or something else) created by Pisanello himself for Leonello, and whether it was a gift or a commission. That is to say, whether the two gold ducats involved should be considered (too) generous a tip to the servant who brought the object as a gift, or the (rather) insufficient payment for a commissioned work.8 Some facts corroborate the hypothesis according to which it was indeed a numismatic piece. The expression Divi Iulii Caesaris may derive from a legend placed on the coin, but even more probative is the fact that in the effigies in Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria, set in the Este court, we see again a reference to imperial portraits engraved in antique gems and medals.9 As stated by the most erudite among the participants in the Guarino’s dialogue, Leonello wanted to have medals in order to effigies principum (…) verum regnoscere manuque tractare (recognise with his own eyes the portraits of emperors and have a material connection with them). Instead, Guarino recommends using literary

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention

5

texts in order to gain the same knowledge even more directly. Leonello replied reaffirming his physical pleasure in handling those objects, and the perspicuous knowledge of Antiquity he obtained by looking at the coins: I always feel delighted both by looking at the faces of the Caesars – not less admiringly at the faces on bronze coins, indeed there remained more bronze than silver and gold ones – and their aspect; as if retrieving the images from the writings by Suetonius or others, which can only be done through the intellect.10

Decembrio confirms that Leonello (like the first medal collector, Petrarch) used to hoard antique coins, not for mere antiquarian curiosity,11 but to truly identify the faces of the Caesars, to have a physical contact, however mediated, with them and, thus, to get to know them ‘in person’. Furthermore, in a previous passage of the Dialogue, at the conclusion of a learned chapter on Greek and Latin numismatic vocabulary, we find pieces of information on the important circulation of antique gems and coins at the time. Nicolò Strozzi was pleased to have learned so many things regarding those ancient terms “which often we see in books, and even on tombs, or on façades, but mostly on coins and statues.”12 Elsewhere, Porcellio, in the sonnet praising Pisanello, also resorts to the term effigies for the portraits on medals executed by the artist: What can I say? / How many portraits on bronze medals / by which he did not fail to save mortals from death? / Look how precisely he reproduced / Prince Leonello’s features (…).13

Therefore, effigies, in the lexicon of the time, indicated ‘portrait’, generally a profile, on a coin or a gem. And just such an antique coin, among the many minted by Octavian with the profile of the worshipped Julius Caesar, may be the object that Pisanello procured for Leonello on 1 February 1435, and for which Leonello reimbursed the (otherwise inexplicable) cost of two ducats. Whatever the nature and the medium of the portrait, we have certain evidence of the passage of one of Caesaris effigies from the hands of Pisanello to those of Leonello.14 However, Pisanello personally owned some ‘medals’ i.e., some antique coins. This possession is confirmed by a letter, dated 31 October 1455, on which the

6

three ladies, three medals

terminus ante quem of the artist’s death is based. From Rome, Carlo de’ Medici, Cosimo’s love child, writes the following to his brother Giovanni: I bought more or less 30 silver medals, from one of the apprentices of Pisanello, who died recently (…).15

Further in the letter, we read that Pietro Barbo forced the young clerk Carlo to hand over the precious antiquities.16 Given the use of the term ‘medals’, it seems likely that these were antique coins.17 The fact that Pisanello’s silver medals were antique coins would also be confirmed by Pietro Barbo’s intense interest: in order to acquire the precious antiquities, he threatened the young Medici and subjected him to a violent body search.18 Furthermore, many sources confirm that Leonello owned many antique coins and gems, considered one of the first collections of antiquities in a ‘modern’, Renaissance sense.

I.2 The all’antica Nudity Leonello’s collection of effigies on gems, seals, and coins sparks one of the most interesting parts of Decembrio’s work: the already cited chapter LVIII of Book VI in the De Politia Litteraria, containing a discussion on ancient and modern ‘pictorial’ composition stemming from the observation of a few gems.19 The work’s title (editio princeps Augusta 1540, but the text we refer to in this paper is Basel 1562) is explained as follows by the author himself, a brother of the wellknown Humanist Pier Candido Decembrio: We will define this Politia Litteraria not from ‘polis’, which is the Greek for ‘city’ or ‘State’, but (…) by our word polire, which means ‘to refine’ and ‘do with accuracy’.20

As noted, the text, composed in dialogue form in the years 1447-1450 (and thus, as occurs in Plato’s dialogues, with a time deferral of twenty years in respect of the chronology of the literary fiction), stages a series of conversations at the court of Leonello, often in the presence of Guarino. The chapter unfolds with the description of the precious stones, carnelians and gems procured for Leonello from the antique market in Venice:

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention

7

(…) engraved stones and rings of many kinds, which the Latins call carnelians, the Spanish minios, and many gems brought to Leonello from Venetian lands.21

The observation of figures on gems and rings induces Angelo Decembrio – through Leonello’s voice – to pose a question, which will provide an important thematic thread to the Dialogue: why do they choose to show heads or, in cases of full bodies, why are these shown naked? A first answer to this question is that the gems’ reduced dimensions lead the artist to reduce the depicted details, stripping down the images as much as possible: This happens because of the tiny dimension of the gems. For this reason, we find either heads (…) or entire figures, and if so the entire figures are completely nude.22

For this reason, the first preference for nudity is technical, propter gemmarum angustiam, motivated by the spatial limitation of the tiny media, leading the engraver to economise on markings. Leonello, though, replies by reminding that even statues of great size plurimum nudata omni ex parte vel seminuda conspiciunt (are mostly bare in every part or semi-nude). After alluding to the dispute between Pisanello and Jacopo Bellini for Leonello’s portrait (an allusion that the Prince refers to for self-praise, as the best artists of the time in mutua aemulatione contend for the honour to portray him), the issue under discussion returns to the heads depicted on the gems. Leonello specifies they are imperatorum capita: bare heads, bald or capillata depending on the age of the imperator, and, if integrae figures, always nude. As you remember, Pisanello and the Venetian ( Jacopo Bellini), the best painters of our times, in disagreement as to how my face should be painted, as one had my skin too candid with a tone of emaciation; the other had painted me too pale, but still not too delicate. Thanks to my prayers, they have reconciled.23

Therefore, either full or partial nudity – also a peculiar characteristic of marble or bronze statues of much greater size – can be seen as a proper mark of Antiquity.

8

three ladies, three medals

In full figure portraits, clothes are not visible and that is precisely in order to recognise them as ancient artists and times, and it is for the nudity itself that they are appreciated.24

Temporum illorum insignia opera: the nudity of the figures is a mark of antiquity. In fact, Leonello argues, the tegumenti usus is variable, clothing fashion varying by epoch; but there is instead a repertory of subjects – natural works – which never changes following the temporum novitas. The animal repertory, on the other hand, remains unaltered: leones, aquilas, dracones, equi, rhinocerontes et multorum generum animantes (lions, eagles, dragons, horses, rhinos, and many other animals), and also the natural elements entering the pictorial composition are unvarying: silvae, flumina, montes, arbores, volucres, maria, fluctus, pisces, littora, aeriae nubes et turres et id genus (woods, rivers, mountains, trees, birds, seas, waves, fish, shores, clouds, and towers). Decembrio’s list is remarkable because among the elements of a natural landscape that remain unchanged by temporum novitas, turres are also mentioned. The turreted profiles of castles and walls – far from being regarded as a reference to historically connotated architectures – are deemed slightly more than a natural articulation of the landscape, and enliven the landscape itself as do the aeriae nubes. Regarding these elements, the variations in relation to naturale vestigium consist only of adding inessential details: (…) if, as an example, you can see a crowned or two-headed eagle, or an elephant carrying a tower, or a huge stag with gold jewellery and blooming antlers, or leopards and tigers dragging a cart with a triumphant Bacchus.25

Many passages of this chapter of the De Politia Litteraria find exact parallels with the Latin version of the De pictura by Alberti, to include that of nudity as a mark of Antiquity.26 As noted by Baxandall, the concern for nudity itself is much more explicit in Decembrio’s treatise compared with Alberti’s. As an example, when depicting a mixed composition with many figures, Alberti describes the variety of positions but also the mix of nude and clothed figures, and adds: Be the figures nude, if that is appropriate, or be they clothed or partly bare, always be ware of modesty and decency. The obscene body parts and less gracious ones are to be covered by cloth, fronds, or by hands.27

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention

9

Hence, Alberti discloses ‘moralistic’ concerns about nudity that seem resolved in the De Politia Litteraria: Decembrio, instead, worries about underlining – in a more historicised vision of the issue – how the tegumenti usus does not match with the style of the time. In fact, by varying clothing and following fashion – Leonello argues – what seems normal in one era already appears ‘ridiculous’ to the next generation. The condition which Antiquity and the nudity of Antiquity refer to is the measure of artistic immortality. Therefore, by avoiding the variable of fashion and underlining the constants of immutable compositional elements, the Renaissance artist is involved in a challenge that is the same as that of the artists of Antiquity. Leonello confirms that there are, at the time, a few very refined painters, antiquitatis aemuli, who aim to reduce and proportion figures, just as in Antiquity: Others, even though they are few, are emulators of painters from Antiquity, and extraordinarily reshape the entire figure they want (…) to represent.28

As affirmed in the text, the representation of nudity allows the artist to prove his ability, by demonstrating his talent in rendering the subtilitas of bodies. With respect to Antiquity, they have to address the same compositional problems, even reinventing long-lost techniques, proportioning figures and considering them anatomically. For this reason, setting the configuration of the poses of the bodies constitutes the first compositional exercise for both nude and clothed figures. For the same reason, the most capable artists, emulators of Antiquity, try (…) to contract some parts, to intervene with some more relaxed poses in other parts, so that the attitude may look natural with an appropriate simulation; be the figure standing, sitting, or lying – in every body movement. Only after that, do they add the clothes and other details.29

After having studied the figure anatomically, the artists demum vestimentorum aliosque corporis habitus superducunt. The artist is thus called to project nude figures and then to clothe them: suis locis habitus armaque disponere. This is also suggested by Filarete, in the case of ancient models, to make appropriate clothes and put them on articulated mannequins:

10

three ladies, three medals

Study nature for robes, [study also] antique [robes], for they are good drapes. You can learn how to do them in many ways. When you have to clothe a person, whether you wish the dress to be ancient or modern, do as I tell you. Have a little wooden figure with jointed arms, legs and neck. Then make a dress of linen in whatever fashion you choose, as if it were alive. Put it on him in the action that you wish and fix it up. If these drapes do not hang as you wish, take melted glue and bathe the figure well. Then fix the folds as you want them and let them dry so they will be firm. If you then wish to arrange them in another way, put it in warm water and you can then change them into another form.30

However, according to Decembrio’s text, the dispute is not only between contemporary and past artists: with respect to the limitation of space, the challenge is aimed directly at the very same Nature that encloses the admirable forms of insects in amber resin Phaetontiadum gummi compressa. In turn, the artist has to test himself in a limited space. In Alexander’s time, Pyrgoteles managed to fit the following words on a Sardonyx stone the size of a human fingernail: Apollo with lyre and laurel crown seeming to play and sing, and he himself standing amidst a chorus of nine Muses.31

The virtuous challenge is thus between the artist and spatial scarcity: between the subtilitas of represented forms and the tenuitas of the artist’s style. Behind this argument we hear the echo of the contest between Apelles and Protogenes in Pliny’s Naturalis Historia: the two painters compete on canvas, drawing thinner and thinner lines, one after the other. I am informed that it was burnt in the first fire that occurred in Caesar’s palace on the Palatine; it had been previously much admired by us, on its vast surface containing nothing but the almost invisible lines, so that among the outstanding works of many artists it looked like a blank space, and by that very fact attracted attention and was more esteemed than every masterpiece there.32

The contest is not just between the two artists directly, but between the artists and space: the ever-thinner lines drawn inside each other, effugientes, so as to

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention

11

break through by means of the optical effect of the lucent, create an eminentia-effect that perforates the material dimension of space. A contest with the ancients, rivalry with his contemporaries, and simulation of the techniques of miniature painting: the artist engages himself in competition in all these fields. As Porcellio, secretary and poet at the court of Alfonso I in Naples, writes in the last lines of the In laudem Pisani Pictoris, in 1449: It is over for past and current painters / he arrived on a par with Antiquity, and won over his contemporaries / honour and glory are alive in painters, and a second Apelles lives / and Antiquity is restored by him.33

Even the reintroduction of classical models – in order to spark rigour in artistic and literary style – is thus at the centre of theoretical debates in the circle of the Este, as Decembrio described. The portrait of the ideal artist, his theory and his poetics exactly correspond to Pisanello’s features and qualities, particularly as medallist. He is a painter who observes the picturae ratio, which derives compositional schemes for artworks from classical objects – specifically the gems and coins depicting the profiles of Caesar. Pisanello is accurate, attentive to the manufact’s ‘pictorial’ quality, to the subtleness of the line and to the precision of the details; in his miniatures, he joins in a virtuous competition with nature and the ability of the first, ancient artifices. In this understanding – his extraordinary technical ability in a titanic contest with Nature – we must note the exaggerated praise of Leonardo Dati, Florentine poet and secretary of Cardinal Orsini in Rome. Probably in 1432, he wrote an epigram In laudem Pisani pictoris: I praise Pisanello to the stars / and if I could say it, I would say he would win against Prometheus.34

In comparison with ancient coins that were minted and had a practical use and a well-defined economic value, Pisanello reinvented the form of celebrative medals, cherishing only the essential, non-monetary function and restoring it with its intangible values. The medal openly transmits – both to contemporaries and most of all to posterity – the Prince’s features, the symbolic translation of his device, and the circulation of his name.35 It is thus about glory, classically

12

three ladies, three medals

named kleos (the repetition of the name), and spreading his reputation through the centuries. As Basinio writes in a eulogy dedicated to Pisanello: Pisanello, you reproduce noble images of things / you make one live eternally / you are the best of the painters who are and were / and of those who had the highest glory / (…) You make princes and leaders have an eternal name.36

However, Pisanello saves a place and a graphic relevance for his own name beside that of the patron’s: this is unprecedented in classical numismatic pieces. The artist’s signature, placed on the reverse of the medal, constitutes an element of innovation and originality compared with the classical model.37 In classical texts – particularly in Pliny and Lucian, eagerly perused during those years by humanists in search of novelty and examples – there are various anecdotes remarking the importance conferred by the artist to the esteem, success, but most of all to the glory of his own name. The qualification of the role of pictor next to the artist’s name on Pisanello’s medals therefore acquires a precise meaning; it is the sign of a carefully made decision to adopt a well-defined technique with a clear stylistic imprint.38 The artist’s signature was already commonly found on artifacts of the classical and even archaic periods. The first anecdote regarding an artist’s signature is by Lucian, on Sostratus, the architect of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, who engraved the name of the sovereign-patron on the perishable layer of gypsum plaster and his own name on the underlying stone. The plaster eventually eroded and what remained visible was the name of the architect, and no longer that of the patron.39 Humanists learn from classical texts that the relationship between patron and artist is a mutually convenient contract: the artwork conveys the glory of both. As in Antiquity, the artist looks for the occasion to spread light on his aretè, seizing the opportunity for glory in the patron’s yearning for his own glory. This is exactly what happens in all the medals by Pisanello, who positions his name – with the contextually significant qualification of pictor – beside the patron’s, conferring upon himself (evidently with the agreement of the patron) a position of equal dignity. Glory, thus, is the ground of the deepest complicity between prince and artist. Confirmation is found from the double signature on the Palaeologus medal: on the reverse of the coin, along with the Latin signature opus pisani pictoris – which will become conventional in all his medals – the

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention

13

Greek translation is also present: ΕΡΓΟΝ ΤΟΥ ΠΙΣΑΝΟΥ ΖΩΓΡΑΦΟΥ.40 The reason is clearly to guarantee that the artist’s name will be legible even among the Byzantine intellectuals who had already migrated to Italian lands, and among Hellenophone scholars; but, also, to emphasise, through linguistic uniformity, the interdependence of the artist’s and the patron’s reputation. There are two reasons behind the medal’s dimensions, both concerning aesthetic values learned from the texts and from ancient remains: the smaller size sets the virtuous challenge of space; the celebrative function sets the ancient challenge of glory against the brevity of time. Even the compositional coordinates derive directly from the model of ancient coins and engraved stones. On the obverse of the medal, Pisanello represents the figure in profile. Pisanello’s iconographic paradigm of profile representation is inspired on one hand by the exemplum of Caesarum capita on ancient coins,41 on the other, there is the iconographic convention (still in effect) of the position of the donor’s profile in painting, most of all in altarpieces.42 However, the revival of this typology has a very rhetorical-syntactical and formal meaning. The technique of representation in profile (and its technical qualities, including the durability of the materials) is also discussed by Alberti,43 in the light of instructions by Quintilian44 and Pliny. The latter had interpreted this portrait typology as an apt resolution to highlight the eminentia of the figure, in reference to the more general issue of the chiaroscuro and of the tridimensional effects of light on the different marks.45 The head profiles that in the Caesar medals were limited to the caput (from the top of the head down to the base of the neck) in Pisanello become busts: slightly wider at the base of the neck in almost all of Leonello’s profiles, and eventually including the shoulders and a substantial portion of the chest. The busts on Pisanello’s medals, often depicted in generous proportions – and most of all depicting the typically redundant headwear – seem to express (and complicate) the artist’s ancient challenge against spatiality: fitting, focusing, and emphasising in a small space excessive, superfluous, oversized elements like headwear. The reverse of the medal, on which Pisanello reinvents the antique medal ‘device’, also shows his reworking of the ancient standard. Specifically, the artworks lean toward a symbolic-allegorical dimension and Pisanello resorts to the iconographic repertory. Paraphrasing Decembrio, these are “the constant and unchangeable elements”: animals, natural, or environmental elements (for example, rocks and castles), but also mythical or allegorical figures. On the other side

14

three ladies, three medals

of the medal, the figures, as outmoded symbols, may be nude as in Antiquity. Pisanello draws the first suggestions from the remains of archaeological figures, also for these allegorical or symbolic inventiones. The ‘Hellenic’ elegance of Pisanello’s nude figures derives from his practice of copying archaeological models, testified by his drawings. An analysis of his Taccuino unequivocally shows that the novelty lies in the choice of model, favouring figures from available archaeological remains. Particularly concerning human figures, Pisanello first looks for bare bodies. The first repertoires of poses and models come from the Roman sarcophagi visible at the time. Most inspirations for the medals, though, both on the formal and on the iconographic levels, may have been suggested to Pisanello by Leonello’s collection of coins and gems: the artist had the possibility of finding a repertory – almost an alphabet of elementary signs – ready to use for the new inventiones, his vital and original reinterpretation of Antiquity.46 Leonello’s numismatic collection was merged into the Medagliere Estense, now held at the Galleria Estense in Modena. The lack of any chronological documentation and the absence of a revised catalogue of the items complicate any further research. Analysing and comparing the coins (there are over 30,000 pieces of differing periods and provenances) is problematic.47 On the very first, extraordinary pieces of this new genre of medal, we not only find the faces and war deeds of princes, dukes, and leaders of the time. We also see portraits of intellectuals, poets, philosophers, and, against all expectations, the faces of young women, precociously educated in classics (especially in the courts of Mantua and Ferrara), destined to become the main characters of the artistic and cultural renaissance of Italian courts in the fifteenth century.

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention 1

2

3

4

On dates and duration of Pisanello’s stay in Rome: Lionello Puppi (ed.), Pisanello. Una poetica dell’inatteso, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 1996, p. 24ff; Dominique Cordellier & Bernadette Py (eds.), Pisanello. Actes du colloque (Musée du Louvre, 26, 27 et 28 juin 1996), Paris, 1998, p. 37ff. “The Roman Book”, considered by critics as a voyage notebook of Pisanello’s atelier, is at the centre of a critical and attributive querelle. Francesco Panvini Rosati, Ispirazione Classica nella medaglia italiana del Rinascimento, in La medaglia d’arte, Proceedings of I International Conference (Udine, October 1970), Udine, 1973, p. 95-105, p. 56; Stephen K. Scher, Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, London, 1999; Luke Syson & Dillian Gordon, Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court, London, 2001, p. 86ff; Bernhard Degenhart, Pisanello, Vienna, 1941, p. 45; Bernhard Degenhart & Annegrit Schmitt (eds.), Pisanello und Bono da Ferrara, Munich, 1995. Claudia Cieri Via, Cultura antiquariale e linguaggio simbolico in alcune medaglie del Pisanello, in Da Pisanello alla nascita dei Musei Capitolini. L’antico a Roma alla vigilia del Rinascimento, eds. Anna Cavallaro & Enrico Parlato, exhibition catalogue (Rome 1988), Milan-Rome, 1988, p. 109-113; Syson & Gordon, o.c., p. 109ff. Ruggero Rugolo revamps Syson’s hypothesis, s. Luke Syson & Stephen K. Scher (eds.), The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, catalogue of the exposition (WashingtonNew York 1994), New York, 1994, p. 53, note 36. Here, Syson, based on a letter written by Pisanello in Rome addressed to the Duke of Milan, argues that his medal primus opus should be the medal for Filippo Maria Visconti. The beginning of Pisanello’s medal activity would

5

6

7

8

9 10

11

15

then be advanced to 1431. For a chronological revision: Ruggero Rugolo, Il classicismo gotico del Pisanello medaglista, in Puppi (ed.), Pisanello, o.c., p. 132-193, p. 138ff and p. 144-146. On the inventione of Pisanello’s medals: Tanja L. Jones, The Renaissance Portrait Medal and the Court Context: on the Origins and Political Function of Pisanello’s Invention, Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy, Florida State University, College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance, 2011. On the controversial terminological definition of the Renaissance, I tried to summarise it in: Monica Centanni, Per una cronologia (warburghiana) del Rinascimento, in I molti rinascimenti di Aby Warburg, Proceedings of the Conference (Ferrara, February 2012), ed. Marco Bertozzi, in Schifanoia, 42-43, Pisa-Rome, 2013, p. 133-150. As an example of the persistence of such dichotomy in studies on Pisanello, one need just think of the title of the exhibition inaugurated in London in October 2001 and its related catalogue (Syson & Gordon, o.c.), which is “Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court”: not “of the” but “to the” Renaissance courts. Donata Battilotti, Regesto documentario, in Puppi (ed.), Pisanello, o.c., p. 236-249, p. 242. Angelo Camillo Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, Munich-Leipzig, 2002. Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 21: “Nempe Caesarum ego vultus non minus singulari quadam admiratione aereis nummis inspiciendo delectari soleo, nam idcirco ex aere frequentiores quam ex auro argentove super fuerunt, quam eorum staturas; ut Svetonii vel aliorum scriptis contemplari quod intellectu solo plus percipitur.” Roberto Weiss, Petrarch the Antiquarian, in Classical, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies in Honour of Berthold Louis

16

12

13

14

15

three ladies, three medals Ullman, II, ed. Charles Henderson Jr., Rome, 1964, p. 199-209. Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., V, 53, 32: “quas frequenter in libris saepenumero in tumulis vel parietibus aereisque praecipue nummis et signis inspicimus.” “Quid loquar? Effigies humanas aere refuso / Non hic mortales morte carere fecit? / Aspice quam nitide Leonellis principis ora / Finxit (…).” The poetical works in honour of Pisanello were first collected and commented by Julius Friedländer, Die Italienischen Schaumünzen des fünfzehnten Jahrunderts (14301530): ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 1882, p. 11-17. On Pisanello, who in Tito Vespasiano Strozzi’s eulogy surpasses the greatest artists, painters and sculptors of Antiquity: Fabrizio Lollini, Production littéraire et circulation artistique dans le cours de Rimini et Cesena vers 1450: un essai de lecture parallèle, in Cordellier & Py, o.c., p. 461-498, p. 465. On the importance of the figure of Julius Caesar at the court of Leonello: Marianne Pade, Guarino and Caesar at the Court of the Este, in La corte di Ferrara e il suo mecenatismo, 1441-1598. The Court of Ferrara and its Patronage, eds. Marianne Pade, Lene Waage Petersen & Daniela Quarta, Copenaghen-Modena, 1990, p. 71-91, p. 71ff. Based on this documentation, Fabrizio Lollini has succeeded in confirming the attribution of the miniature of Caesar in the Plutarch of Cesena to Pisanello (f. 27v del Ms S XV.1: Lollini, Production littéraire, o.c., p. 472-474). As for the discussion on the nature of the Caesaris effigies – ancient coin, Pisanello’s medal, miniature or painting – read: Syson & Gordon, o.c., p. 112, with bibliographical references. Battilotti, o.c., p. 249: “Io avevo a questi dì comprate circa 30 medaglie di ariento, multo buone, da uno garzone del Pisanello che morì a questi dì (…).”

16

17

18

19

The letter, containing last biographical trace of Pisanello, is preserved at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo Avanti il Principato, string 7, number 107. It was first published in 1839 and last published by Battilotti, o.c., p. 249, who notices (possibly giving the letter too much evidential weight) that in the De Viris illustribus liber by Bartolomeo Facio, written in 1456 (a year after the letter), “lodando Pisanello si esprime al passato confermando implicitamente l’avvenuta morte dell’artista” (praising Pisanello, he speaks in past tense, implicitly confirming the death of the artist). As known, in the lexicon of the fifteenth century, the difference between ‘coin’ and ‘medal’ does not refer to a technical diversity of crafting (the former minted, the latter melted). Until the Carolingian reformation of 800, the term ‘medal’ indicated a small coin, valued half a denarius. Once this kind stopped circulating, the term ‘medal’ – until the end of the XVIII century – indicated “moneta fuori corso, moneta vecchia e quindi qualsiasi moneta greca e romana” (withdrawn currency, old coin and therefore any Greek and Roman coin): Giovanni Gorini, Monete antiche a Padova, Padova, 1972, p. 12. On Pisanello as an ancient coin collector: Bernhard Degenhart, Ludovico II Gonzaga in einer Miniatur Pisanellos, in Pantheon, 30, 25, 1972, p. 193-210, p. 209. Large sections of the De Politia Litteraria are dedicated to lexicographic, erudite problems (weight of medals, correspondances between Greek and Latin lexicons, and so on) and among these, there is the chapter here under discussion. The chapter has been annotated and partially translated by Michael Baxandall, A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d’Este. Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria pars LXVIII, in Journal of the War-

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention burg and Courtland Institutes, 26, 1963, p. 304-326. 20 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., I, 2, 2: “Ita ergo politiam hanc litterariam definiemus: non a civitate seu rei publicae Graecorum appelatione (…) verum enim a polio verbi nostri significatione unde ipsa politia vel expolitio.” 21 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 1: “Multorum generum excisos lapillos, annulosque quos latini vernaculo sermone corniolas, Hispani minios appellant, gemmasque conspicuas et uniones ad Leonellum ex Venetiis attulerant (…).” Late Antiquity and Humanistic Latin use the term ‘gem’ both in reference to seals and cameos: in context, the locution gemmas conspicuas most likely indicates cameos. 22 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 5: “Propter gemmarum angustiam factum videri. Nam vel capita sola, (…) vel integra, ideo nudaque simulachra describi solita.” 23 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 7: “Meministis nuper Pisanum Venetumque, optimos aevi nostri pictores in mei vultu descriptione varie dissensisse, cum alter macilentiam candori meo vehementiorem adiecerit, alter pallidiorem tamen, licet non graciliorem, vultum effingeret, vixque precibus meis reconciliatos.” 24 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 7: “(…) integris etiam effigiebus non tegumenta cernuntur: eo profecto consilio ut artificium et temporum illorum insignia opera censerentur quae ipsa praesertim nuditate iudicantur.” 25 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 9: “(…) ut, si forte coronatam aquilam videris, vel gemino utrinque vertice despectantem, seu elephantem castelliferum, aut praestanti forma cervum cum aureo monili cornibusque florigeris, aut pardos tygresve frenatas currum cum triumphante Baccho trahentes.”

17

26 Baxandall, A Dialogue on Art, o.c., p. 307. 27 Leon Battista Alberti, De pictura, ed. Cecil Grayson, Rome-Bari, 1975, p. 75-76: “Sintque nudi, si ita deceat, aliqui, nonnulli mixta ex utriusque arte, partim velati, partim nudi assistant. Sed pudori semper et verecundiae inserviamus. Obscoenae quidem corporis et hae omnes partes quae parum gratiae habent, panno, aut frondibus, aut manu operiantur.” 28 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 11: “Alios contra, et quidem paucos, videas antiquitatis pictores aemulos, qui exquisitissime, omnem prius corporis staturam, quam effingere volunt (…) remetiuntur.” 29 Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 15: “(…) quas corporis partes contractiores, quasve remissiores, intromissas et quasi latentes esse deceat, ut stando, sedendo, recumbendo. Postremo cuiusque corporis motus vera simulatione naturalis insit aptitudo. Tum demum vestimentorum aliosque corporis habitus superducunt.” 30 Antonio di Pietro Averlino (Filarete), Treatise on Architecture, trans. John Richard Spencer, New Haven-London, 1965, vol. I, p. 315: “Anche di quegli che sono antichi ci è di buoni panni. In più modi si può imparare a fargli: quando n’hai da fare, da’ vestire a uno di quello abito che lo vuoi fare, s’egli è moderno, e s’egli è antico, fa’ come ti dirò. Da’ d’avere una figuretta di legname che sia disnodata le braccia, le gambe e ancora il collo, e poi fa’ una vesta di panno di lino, e con quello abito che ti piace, come se fussino d’uno vivo, e mettigliene indosso in quello atto che vuoi ch’egli stia, l’acconcia, e se que’ panni non istessino come tu volessi, abbi la colla strutta e bagnalo bene indosso a detta figura; e poi acconcia le pieghe a tuo modo e falle seccare e staranno poi ferme. E se poi la vuoi fare

18

31

32

33

34

35

three ladies, three medals in altro modo, mettilo in acqua calda e potra’ lo mutare in altra forma.” Decembrio, De Politia Litteraria, o.c., VI, 68, 18: “Phebum cum lyra laureaque corona, quasi modulantem psallentemque conciderit, seque medium inter novem musarum chorum.” Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia XXXV, 83: “Consumptam eam priore incendio Caesaris domus in Palatio audio, spectatam nobis ante, spatiose nihil aliud continentem quam lineas visum effugientes, inter egregia multorum opera inani similem, et eo ipso allicientem, omnique opere nobiliorem.” The anecdote is read and interpreted in: Ernst Hans Gombrich, The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London, 1976. “Pace loquar veterum pictorum, et pace novorom. / Aequiperat veteres, vincit et ille novos. / Vive decus pictorum et gloria, et alter Apelles / Cuius ob ingenium tempora prisca virent.” “Pisanum ad sidera laudo / dicere si fas est etiam ut Promethea vincat (…).” The epigram is published in: Barbara Mazza, Pisanello: itinerario critico, in Puppi (ed.), Pisanello, o.c., p. 225-235, p. 226. On the reinvention of the medal genre as a stable means to transmit the commissioner’s glory in the context of the debate on the dominance of the Arts in the first half of the fifteenth century: Maria Grazia Trenti Antonelli, Il ruolo della medaglia nella cultura umanistica, in Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue, eds. Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale, Modena, 1991, p. 25-35; Davide Gasparotto, Pisanello e le origini della medaglia rinascimentale, in Pisanello, exhibition catalogue, ed. Paola Marini, Milan, 1996, p. 325-330; Fabrizio Lollini, “Exegi monumente aere perennius”. Topoi scritti (e visivi) di celebrazione, in Monumento e memoria. Dall’antichità al contemporaneo,

36

37

38

Proceedings of the Conference (Bologna, 11-13 October 2006), eds. Sandro de Maria & Vita Fortunati, Bologna, 2010, p. 41-55, in particular p. 42ff. “Qui facis ingenuas rerum, Pisane, figuras / qui facis aeternos vivere posse viros, / optime pictorum, qui sunto, quicumque fuerunt / quique etiam magnae gloriae laudis erunt. / (…) Tu facis aeternum nomen habere duces.” On the nexus between Pisanello’s medals and Basinio’s elegy: Trenti Antonelli, o.c., p. 25-35. Ernst Kris & Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment, New Haven, 1979, p. 3-4: “Traditional records concerning the life and career of an artist come into being only when it is customary to link a work of art with the name of its creator. It is well-known that this is not a universal custom. We encounter it neither among all peoples nor in all periods of time (…). Whether an artist’s name is recorded depends not upon the greatness and perfection of his artistic achievements (…) but upon the significance attached to the work of art (…). Very generally speaking, one can say that the urge to name the creator of a work of art indicates that the work of art no longer serves exclusively a religious, ritual, or (in a wide sense) magic function; it no longer serves a single purpose, but its value has at least to some extent become independent of such connections. In other words, we have the perception of art as art, as an independent area of creative achievement.” On the signature Opus Pisani pictoris, see Luke Syson, OPUS PISANI PICTORIS: les medailles de Pisanello et son atelier, in Cordellier & Py, o.c., p. 377-426. In general, on the signature of the artist in medieval times, see: Maria Monica Donato (ed.), Forme e significati della ‘firma’ d’artista. Contributi sul Medioevo, fra premesse classiche e prospettive moderne,

the all’antica medal: a renaissance invention in Opera Nomina Historiae. Giornale di cultura artistica, 1, 2009. 39 Lucian of Samosata, How to Write History, XXV, 62. Lucian was known also by Alberti, who speaks of his ekphrasis in the De pictura, III, 92. On the relationship between Italian and Latin redactions: Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition. 1350-1450, Oxford, 1971, p. 168ff. Leonardo also dedicates a note in his Treatise on Painting (chapter 17) to the artwork. Furthermore, the first pictorial reconversion attested by Lucian’s ekphrasis of the “Calumny” – which can be dated ca. 1470 – is a miniature of a codex now preserved in Berlin (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, cod. 78), which shows the vulgar version of Lucian by Bartolomeo della Fonte dedicated to Ercole d’Este. On this matter: Lucia Faedo, Le immagini dal testo, in Luciano di Samosata, Descrizione di opera d’arte, ed. Sonia Maffei, Torino, 1994, p. 129-142, p. 130. 40 On the importance of the role of John VIII Palaeologus and of his trip to Italy in occasion of the Council of Ferrara, in the transmission and the reintroduction of iconography and Imperial symbology: Ivan Đurić, Sumrak Vizantije: Vreme Jovana VIII Paleologa 1392-1448, Belgrade, 1984 [Italian trans.: Ivan Djuric, Il crepuscolo di Bisanzio. I tempi di Giovanni VIII Paleologo (1392-1448), Rome, 2009]. 41 Roberto Weiss, The Study of Ancient Numismatics During the Renaissance (1313-1517), in Numismatic Chronicles, 8, 1968, p. 177-187; Chiara Tellini Perina, Monete, medaglie, decorazioni pittoriche e plastiche: intersezioni, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 363-382, p. 364ff.

19

Cieri Via, o.c., p. 109; Syson & Gordon, o.c., p. 101ff. 43 Alberti, De pictura, o.c., II, 26. 44 Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria, X, 2, 7. 45 Pliny, Naturalis Historia XXXV, 15; Gombrich, o.c., p. 22. 46 Luisa Scalabroni, Il sarcofago bacchico di S. Maria Maggiore, in Da Pisanello alla nasciata dei Musei Capitolini. L’Antico a Roma alla vigilia del Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue (Rome 1988), eds. Anna Cavallaro & Enrico Parlato, MilanRome, p. 161-163, p. 161ff; Joanna Woods Marsden, Art and Political Identity in Fifteenth Century Naples, in Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy: 1250-1500, London-Notre Dame, p. 11-37; Reinhold Merkelbach, Die Hirten des Dionysos. Die DionysosMysterien der römischen Kaiserzeit und der bukolische Roman des Longus, Stuttgart, 1988, 290 (III.75); Charles Rosenberg, Arte e politica alle corti di Leonello e Borso d’Este, in Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue, eds. Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale, Modena, 1991, p. 44; Brigit Blass Simmen, Pisanellos Tätigkeit in Rom, in Pisanello und Bono da Ferrara, eds. Bernhard Degenhart & Annegrit Schmitt, Munich, 1995, p. 81-116, p. 279280, p. 112; Rugolo, o.c., p. 185-186: here, the figure is juxtaposed to a miniature in Cod. Ross. 555, dated 1436, in which a young butcher is depicted at work, in the act of slaughtering a boar. A point on Pisanello’s medal production is: Syson & Gordon, o.c., p. 112ff. 47 On the Medagliere Estense: Elena Corradini, Per una storia delle collezioni di antichità dei duchi d’Este, in Da Borso a Cesare d’Este. La Scuola di Ferrara: 14501628, Ferrara, 1985, p. 179-187. 42

II Three Ladies, Three Medals



II.1 Cecilia Gonzaga as Diana (1447) The medal executed in 1447 to honour Cecilia Gonzaga is an artwork inspired by Classical Antiquity. The medal of Cecilia Gonzaga made by Pisanello shows, on the obverse, the profile of a young woman: not only the head, but a half-bust portrait. This is quite unusual in Pisanello’s style: the format allows for displaying the high-neck dress and a portion of the wide sleeves, as well as the neck and hairstyle. The half-bust portrait also allows for displaying the belt binding the clothes under the breast. The face appears bright and luminous, the forehead high, the neck – a very Pisanellian neck – is very long and bare of any jewellery; the ear is well-proportioned, the hair is not thick and is neatly tied at the nape of the neck. Around the portrait runs an inscription with the words: CICILIA VIRGO FILIA IOHANNIS FRANCISCI PRIMI MARCHIONIS MANTUE (Cecilia Gonzaga, virgin, daughter of Giovanni Francesco I, Marquis of Mantua). The girl’s traits and her dress resemble the female portrait by Pisanello kept at the Louvre: on account these similarities, critics have long thought that the painting depicted Cecilia, but recently many identify the image as Margherita, Cecilia’s sister and the wife of Leonello d’Este, who died an early death in 1439. The most convincing hypothesis is that the portrait was for Leonello’s young bride, done after her death: the identification seems to be confirmed by the pearls – the margaritae – decorating her sleeve. In support of the hypothesis that the portrait is posthumous, attention has been drawn to the presence of a butterfly, which could have a symbolic meaning in addition to being decorative. In ancient times, the butterfly represented the soul; in the painting, it detaches itself from the background and soars upon the woman’s face.1 By comparing the painting and the medal, the traits and the hairstyles of the two young women without doubt resemble each other, but they do not match perfectly: they are clearly not the same woman. It is very plausible that the resemblance (in physiognomy,

24

three ladies, three medals

clothes, and pose) is a resemblance between two sisters, portrayed by the same artist, in the same years, one on a painted panel, and the other on a bronze support. The reverse of the medal shows the figure of a young woman in a moonlit landscape: she is almost completely nude; only a light veil covers her right shoulder and one hip. The surrounding landscape is rocky and deserted; a light emanating from the crescent moon bathes the composition in magic. In the foreground, a woolly unicorn is crouching at the girl’s feet as she holds both hands on the horn of the animal. The unicorn seems to lower its head under the caress of the young woman.2 In the background, a stele bears the signature of the artist – OPUS PISANI PICTORIS – and the date, 1447. Born in 1426, as a daughter of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga and Paola Malatesta, the girl had received a classical education, being a pupil of Vittorino da Feltre.3 By the early age of eight years, Cecilia’s wit and preparation in Greek had impressed Ambrogio Traversari so much that he would later write: [Vittorino da Feltre] When the prince’s daughter was eight, she was so cultured that she read and wrote Greek, effortlessly declining nouns and verbs, to our great admiration.4

We know she had an intense relationship with Gregorio Correr (future abbot of San Zeno in Verona, Mantegna’s patron of the well-known altarpiece), whom she met at Ca’ Zoiosa, Vittorino’s school. Gregorio became her counsellor and spiritual advisor.5 He had written a brief work, in the form of an epistle, addressed to ad Ceciliam verginem, significantly entitled De fugiendo saeculo: the letter, probably written in 1443, supported the girl’s decision to retire to a convent.6 Gregorio affirms he was urged by Vittorino to write to Cecilia in order to support her intentions: Please write something to our Cecilia – so our teacher Vittorino told me (…) – as your pen is not ineffective in such encouragements.7

Further in the letter he claims his right to intervene is based on Victorini monitu. The topic of the letter is the merits of virginity. Gregorio advises his young friend to abstain from self-mortifiying practices at home (through fasting) in

three ladies, three medals

25

order to avoid criticism by family members. The family, in fact, objects to and hinders her inclinations, except for her mother, Paola Malatesta.8 Gregorio encourages her to abandon literary studies – her beloved saeculares litterae – to dedicate herself to the Holy texts, the sacra volumina et scriptores ecclesiasticos: Despite Vittorino: instead of Virgil, take up the Psalterium; instead of Cicero, take up the Gospels.9

His insistence on this point – an ample passage of the epistle is on this subject – reveals that Cecilia continued to devote herself, with particular ardour, to the classics, to which Vittorino introduced her.10 In one passage, Gregorio made reference to poems composed by Cecilia herself, evidently on a non-religious subject: Furthermore, as I came to know you write elegant verses, I exhort you to devote your study only to religion. Disdaining profane poetry, may singing hosanna with the children of the Hebrews be sweet to you.11

In order to convince his friend to abandon classical studies (and the poetry inspired by them), Gregorio cites himself as an example of voluntary renunciation despite his recognised talent: Vittorino was animated by the hope I could become a second Virgil. (…) I wrote, when I was eighteen, a tragedy, Procne, and Vittorino put great hope in me: while reading it, he cried his heart out. (…) Why am I telling you so many things about me? Because you shall know I went through the thorns and anguishes of profane letters, from which I now try to dissuade you with such zeal.12

Gianfrancesco Gonzaga had already arranged a marriage contract with the Montefeltro family, the Dukes of Urbino. Even in the De fugiendo saeculo, the signals of the paternal hostility to Cecilia’s choice are made clear. Particularly, in the incipit, Gregorio writes of how he came to know of her decision (and of the difficulties brought about by her father) from her mother: Recently, in visit to your revered mother in Florence (…), the conversation turned to the fact you refused earthly nuptials and chose the celestial husband. Having

26

three ladies, three medals

disdained and crushed secular life, you yearn at heart for the convent, even if your father’s hostile will is a barrier.13

However, Gregorio encourages Cecilia not to give up hope of convincing her father otherwise, and advises her to beg him while hugging his knees: In this way, I hope your father may bend, as he is not made of iron.14

In due course, Gianfrancesco convened a religious and juridical commission (including also the bishop of Mantua) to convince the young woman that her marriage contract took precedence over her virginity vow and that, for this reason, the former had to be respected.15 Cecilia’s firmness prevailed, in spite of the insistence of doctores viri. Although Cecilia wilfully failed to honour the marriage agreement, her father did not subordinate the important political plan (linking them to the Montefeltro family) to her personal inclinations. The familial bond between the Gonzagas and the Montefeltros began during the times of Ca’ Zoiosa: Alessandro, a son of Gianfrancesco first Marquis of Mantua, married a Montefeltro noble woman. However, the union of the two families – which would have formed a preeminent power axis in the geopolitical framework of the time – was destined to be consolidated only forty years later, with the marriage agreement stipulated on 29 August 1486 between Elisabetta Gonzaga and Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (the wedding was celebrated in 1488).16 The young woman persisted in her intentions, and on his deathbed, Gianfrancesco freed his daughter from the marriage agreement: a provision written in his testament, dated 23 September 1444, contains his consent, given in articulo mortis to Cecilia’s religious vows.17 At last, after the deaths of both Oddantonio (Duke of Urbino) and her father (both occurred in 1444, just a few months apart), Cecilia was free to make her choice. On 2 February 1445, Cecilia, together with her brothers, walked through the streets of Mantua to enter the convent of the Clares, which her mother Paola had herself founded in 1420. Her mother would withdraw there too, shortly after, and remain until her death in 1449.18 The medal by Pisanello was likely commissioned by Cecilia’s brother Lodovico, who had also been educated at the school

three ladies, three medals

27

of Vittorino Feltre, and became Marquis of Mantua in 1444, at the death of his father. The year 1447 – engraved on the stele on the reverse of the medal – is the same year that Pisanello created the medal for Lodovico, to celebrate him being appointed to Captain of the Troops of Florence.19 It was the beginning of a successful period for Lodovico, which would culminate in the hosting in Mantua of the 1459 Council, convoked by Pope Piccolomini to arm a Crusade against the Ottomans. The year of Lodovico’s first success as Marquis of Mantua coincides in all probability with the period in which Cecilia took her final vows, two years after she had entered the convent.20 Thus, the medal represents Lodovico’s homage to his beloved sister, and is an accurate symbolic representation of her choice. Regarding the date, I would suggest that we must fill the two-year gap between the date of the entry in the convent – 1445 – and the date signed on the medal – 1447. There is a period of novitiate between entry into the convent and the final vows, and this is as true today as it was at the time. We have certain evidence of the date of Cecilia’s entry in the Convent of the Poor Clares; but we have no evidence of the date of her final vows. There is, however, a small piece of evidence supporting the fact that she did not take her final vows immediately. In the State Archive (Document D, IV 2 C) we can read that on 1 February 1446, Cecilia renounced her father’s inheritance, donating two thousand ducats to her monastery for restoration works. The fact reveals that at this time Cecilia was not yet a nun, because the Poor Clares had to take a vow of absolute poverty. Only a few months sometime between February 1446 and the beginning of 1447 are missing for our argument. I think that, with all probability, 1447 is the date of Cecilia’s final vows. The most significant date of Cecilia’s life was put on a stele behind the nude female and the unicorn, under the light of a young moon, on the reverse of her medal. Indeed, it is a celebration of Cecilia’s virginitas. Virgo is the first attribute given to the young woman in the words encircling the portrait: CICILIA VIRGO FILIA IOHANNIS FRANCISCI PRIMI MARCHIONIS MANTUE. The half-bust style allowing for the display of the belt binding the clothes under her breast – in perfect consonance with classical iconography – is also a symbol of her virginal status. On the reverse, we find a rendering of the young woman’s mythological, daring device in the figure of Diana, the solitary goddess of the woods, who

28

three ladies, three medals

refuses male contacts. Pisanello’s composition closely follows the classical iconographic model, as we can see in several cameos of the Augustan and Imperial Age, some of which could well have been present in the Gonzaga collection. On coins and gems, the goddess Diana is represented with one nude breast, in a wild deserted landscape, under a sky where the stars and the crescent moon shine: the moon is the attribute and the astral equivalent of the goddess. Usually, beside the goddess there is the representation of a stag, on whose horns Diana rests her left hand while the right one holds her bow.21 On Cecilia’s medal, Pisanello repeats the classical composition, while also introducing some important variations. In place of the stag, he inserts an animal – a legendary animal – of comparable dimensions: the unicorn, which according to the medieval legend could only be tamed by a virgin. The symbolism of the unicorn reinforces the meaning of the composition: on the medal, we clearly understand that the theme is the celebration of Cecilia’s virginitas.22 The scandalous rebellion of the young girl against her marriage is transformed into a heroic device, in which she has the opportunity of showing a virtue that made her worthy of celebration and glory. This is possible thanks to the vital presence, in the imaginary of both artist and patron, of a hermeneutic system offered by mythology and classical iconographic symbols. On the medal of the young Gonzaga reaffirming her choice against her father’s, the meaning is suggested by the ancient image of the goddess of virginity and made even more evident thanks to the substitution of Diana’s totem animal, the stag, with the legendary unicorn. So, Pisanello’s inventio crossed classical and medieval sources, and the alteration of the ancient schema is perfectly fitted to the event: by reinforcing the symbolic meaning, rather than dissipating it. Entrusting Pisanello with the execution of the two medals, Lodovico seeks to celebrate himself and his sister at their best, as perfect expressions of their virtues in action. Brother and sister, as diurnal and nocturnal celestial bodies: Lodovico Sol, Cecilia Luna. As for the date signed upon the stele on the medal (1447) some scholars have noted that Pisanello depicted Cecilia in lay costume on the obverse of his medal, although – as we have remarked – she had entered the convent two years earlier. It has been suggested that it was because the artist could not have seen the girl in the monastery, therefore he would have substituted the nun’s attire with normal dress rifacendosi ad un ritratto o ad un disegno precedente al suo ingresso in convento (using a portrait or a drawing previous to her entry in the convent as

three ladies, three medals

29

a model). This hypothesis is unsustainable for a number of reasons. In that period, it is very unlikely that a noble woman would normally have worn a nun’s attire, especially in the convent founded by her own mother. Furthermore, in the semiotics shared by Humanist patrons and artists in the Renaissance, the religious aspect of Cecilia’s choice seems rather secondary: the nun’s attire is translated without hesitation into the chaste nudity of Diana. The symbolic translation is thus the young woman’s virtue, in the form of a magnificent Diana resting her hand on a tame unicorn’s horn. The non-religious clothing – not-so unusual for young nobles who entered the convent until the nineteenth century – is on the obverse of the medal, presenting a contemporary, mundane portrait. The guise of her device is translated into nudity all’antica, on the reverse.23 The refusal of marriage is understood as the gesture of a mythical heroine and the monastic retreat as fidelity to her genius and as devotion to the daimon (guiding spirit) of Diana. On Cecilia’s medal, there is no rhetorical excess: the language translates and exalts the urgency of the present with no mediation. In the wild landscape, in light of the moon, the virginal binding belt is released, and the young woman gains her liberty. She is, finally and perfectly, compos sui: alone, chaste – and nude like Diana.

30 1 2

3

4

5

6 7

8 9

10 11

three ladies, three medals Puppi, Una poetica dell’inatteso, o.c., p. 90ff; Syson & Gordon, o.c., p. 103ff. Massimo Rossi, Le medaglie dei Gonzaga, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 394-446, p. 396 Graham Pollard, Le medaglie dei Gonzaga, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 383-393. Ambrogio Traversari, Hodoeporicon: “Denique principis filiam octo ferme annorum ita imbuerat ut legeret iam et scriberet, graecaque et nomina et verba inoffense declinaret, non sine admiratione nostra.” So quoted in: Isabella Lazzarini, Gonzaga, Cecilia, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, LVII, 2001, p. 680-682. Lionello Puppi, Il trittico di Andrea Mantegna per la Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore in Verona, Verona, 1972, p. 35-36. Puppi, Il trittico di Andrea Mantegna, o.c., p. 36. Gregorio Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, in Gregorio Correr. Opere II, ed. Aldo Onorato, Messina, 1994, p. 529-554, p. 537: “Quin tu igitur, inquit praeceptor noster Victorinus (…) Ceciliae nostrae aliquid scribe: est enim stilus tuus ad huismodi exhortationes non inefficax.” Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 537-538. Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 549: “Proinde tuum illum dilectum Maronem vel cum Vittorini pace, dimittito: sume pro eo Psalterium, pro Cicerone Evangelium.” Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 548-553. Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 551: “Ceterum, quoniam audivi te versum non ineleganter facere, hoc quoque studium ad religionem et pietatem convertas moneo. Tibi dulce sit, spretis canticis seculi, cum pueris Hebreorum cantare Osanna.”

Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 553: “Tenebat spes Victorinum quasi alter Maro futurus essem (…) Scripsi Prognem tragoediam anno aetatis meae decimo octavo, quam postquam edidi, nihil non speravit de me Victorinus: cadebant legenti ubertim lacrimae (…) Quorsum hec tam multa de me? Ut intelligas me per spinas et tribulos secularium litterarum, quas tibi tanta cura dissuadeo, transisse.” 13 Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 529-530: “Nuper cum illustrem feminam genitricem tuam Florentiae visitassem (…) in sancti propositi tui incidimus mentionem quod repudiatis terrenis nuptiis, caelestem sponsum elegeris et, spreto calcatoque saeculo, monasterium tota cordis intentione suspires, tantum tibi obstare voluntatem patris adversam.” 14 Correr, De fugiendo saeculo, o.c., p. 544-545: “His et huismodi rationibus spero patrem tuum (neque enim ferreus est) flecti posse.” 15 Lazzarini, Gonzaga, Cecilia, o.c. 16 Arch. Gonzaga, Contratti nuziali D III, 23, in Alessandro Luzio & Rodolfo Renier, Mantova e Urbino. Isabella d’Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle relazioni famigliari, Turin-Rome, 1893, p. 8. 17 Lazzarini, Gonzaga, Cecilia, o.c. 18 Rossi, o.c., p. 396. 19 Rossi, o.c., p. 395; on the relationship between Pisanello and the Gonzagas and the medals’ commission by the two siblings: Jones, The Renaissance Portrait Medal, o.c., p. 126ff, in particular on Lodovico’s medal p. 132ff. 20 In this sense, the observation by Rugolo, o.c., p. 172; “La medaglia realizzata nel 1447 (…) quando Cecilia era monaca da ormai due anni dimostra che Pisanello effigiandola in abiti laici, non ebbe modo di vedere la giovane e dovette probabilmente rifarsi ad un ritratto o ad un disegno precedente al suo ingresso in convent” (The medal realised in 1447 12

three ladies, three medals

21

22

(…) when Cecilia had been in the convent for two years, demonstrates that Pisanello – depicting her in usual, common clothes – did not have the chance to see the young woman and probably had to base his depiction on a portrait or drawing precedent to her entry in the convent) is not of great relevance. The same notation is already found in Rossi, o.c., p. 396. Lilly Kahil & Noëlle Icard, Artemis / Diana, in LIMC - Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, II, Zurich-Munich, 1984, p. 618-753, nos. 225-226. Tanja L. Jones, Classical Chastity and Chivalric tradition: Pisanello’s portrait medal of Cecilia Gonzaga, in Athanor, 23, 2005, p. 15-23; Jones, The Renaissance Portrait Medal, o.c., p. 174ff, dedicates an ample treatment to the medal of Cecilia, and to the sources of the late antique and medieval bestiaries, recognising the theme of chastity represented by the unicorn, but not the classical matrix of the lunar image of the chaste Diana.

23

31

According to a reading intentionally not linked to the young Gonzaga’s biography, this is an abstract representation of a general character. Syson & Gordon, o.c., p. 117: “Cecilia is in a court dress. This fact already gives a strong indication of the unreliability of the image as a contemporary likeness. She is identified as a virgin on the obverse inscription, but the medal makes no mention of the fact that Cecilia was a nun. The image is abstracted from the particular circumstances of her virginity and so takes on a generalised exemplary character.” So, Jones, Classical chastity, o.c., and also Jones, The Renaissance Portrait Medal, o.c., p. 179-180 follows this weak hermeneutical, paradigmatic trace and remarks: “the disjunction between Cecilia Gonzaga’s biographical circumstances and the portrait that elevated the subject to ‘Cecilia’, an exemplar of contemporary behavior and appearance. Pisanello’s medal presents Cecilia Gonzaga as a personification of the virtuous female’s primary attributes of chastity and piety.”

32

three ladies, three medals

2.

1.

3.

4.

5-6.

7.

three ladies, three medals

Fig. 1. Pisanello (1390/95-1455?), Medal for Cecilia Gonzaga (obverse), bronze, 1447 Fig. 2. Pisanello (1390/95-1455?), Portrait d’une princesse d’Este, tempera on wood, ca. 1435-1445. Paris, Musée du Louvre Fig. 3. Diana, carnelian intaglio, (second half of the 1st cent. BCE). London, British Museum Fig. 4. Pisanello (1390/95-1455?), Medal for Cecilia Gonzaga (reverse), bronze, 1447 Fig. 5. La Dame à la licorne, tapestry, late fifteenth century. Paris, Musée National du Moyen Age, Musée Cluny Fig. 6. Flemish tapestry with animals and courtly scenes, from the fifteenth century. Mantua, Palazzo Ducale dei Gonzaga, Francesco Gonzaga Museum Fig. 7. Comparison between Pisanello (1390/95-1455?), reverse of Lodovico Gonzaga’s medal with the Sun (placed above the author’s signature, on the left), and the reverse of his sister Cecilia’s medal with the Moon

33

three ladies, three medals

35

II.2 Isabella d’Este Gonzaga as Nemesis (1498, 1505) The interpretation of the medal of Isabella d’Este is, to this day, an enigma that is difficult to solve. Yet, this object, for the personality of the woman who commissioned it, for the refinement of its craftsmanship, and for its explicit function as a representative emblem, possesses all the requirements necessary to make it a symbol of the Renaissance. On the obverse of the medal, we find a bust portrait in profile: a young woman wearing a pearl necklace, with her hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and with curls cascading down the side of her face. The gold version, undoubtedly made later, shows some small changes that indicate that there was a reworking of the model for a new mintage and, later still, small corrections probably made to pieces already cast. The most significant differences between the obverses of the bronze and gold versions concern Isabella’s profile, in which the nose is straighter and the chin strap slightly thicker, and the necklace which in the gold version is no longer, as in the bronze version, composed of simple pearls spaced one from the other, but rather looks like a braid of golden ribbons. An example of this gold version of the medal, with a precious crown mount also in gold, set with precious stones and enamels, is conserved in Vienna and is described in the so-called ‘Inventario Stivini’ of 1542 as the personal property of Isabella, housed nell’armario di meggio della Grotta in Corte vecchia (in the central cabinet in the Grotta in Corte vecchia).1 Around the head runs the inscription ISABELLA ESTEN MARCH MAN (Isabella d’Este Marchioness of Mantua). Isabella d’Este commissioned Giancristoforo Romano to cast the medal in 1495, the year in which she met the artist during a visit to her sister Beatrice, wife of Lodovico Sforza. The first to attribute the medal to Giancristoforo Romano and to suggest the terminus ante quem is 1498 was Adolfo Venturi in 1888.2 Isabella would also entrust Giancristoforo Romano with the portrait of her beloved son Federico, which was later identified (in 1936) as the marble bust preserved in the Galleria Franchetti, at the Ca’ D’Oro in Venice.3 It is worth noting the coincidence of the date with that of the letter in which her sister-in-law Elisabetta recommended Adriano Fiorentino to Isabella as a medallist: we can assume that in those months Isabella was looking for an artist to whom she could entrust this important commission.

36

three ladies, three medals

From a letter written by Niccolò da Correggio to Isabella, dated 19 May 1498 – which contains indications for the motto to be adopted for the reverse4 – and from the fact that the medal was already mentioned in other sources from the autumn of 1498,5 it can be assumed that the medal was not finished until the summer of 1498, three years after it had been commissioned. In 1498, Giacomo Filippo Faella wrote as follows to Isabella d’Este: Having Tebaldeo come here on holiday for a few days and brought with him the medal of Your Excellency, I had a fancy to write a sonnet about it; and, when it was finished, Tebaldeo encouraged me to send it to Your Excellency; but because it did not seem worthy, I did not want to send it; but he insisted until I felt bold enough to send it.6

Sadly, he adds a note: “The sonnet is such a miserable work that we have omitted it.”7 When the medal was first conceived, designed, and executed, Isabella was between twenty-one and twenty-three years old, and had been married to Francesco Gonzaga since 1490. We also know that as early as 1495, Isabella desired to have a celebrative medal made and she was in search of an exceptionally gifted artist who could face the challenge. In May 1495, Elisabetta Gonzaga, in a letter to her sister-in-law Isabella d’Este, highly recommended Adriano Fiorentino as an expert sculptor. She declared that in the three months of his sojourn in Urbino, he had created some beautiful medals for her. The same compliments for the talent of Adriano are also mentioned in a letter she wrote to her beloved brother Francesco (husband of Isabella), dated May 1495: “I would like to point out that he [Adriano Fiorentino] is a good sculptor, and here has made some very beautiful medals.”8 On the reverse, a standing winged female figure, facing left, holds in her right hand a cane and in her left hand a palm branch: in front of her, a serpent rises from the ground. Above her head soars a centaur (Sagittarius), facing right, with his bow aimed and the arrow nocked to the bowstring. Above the spine of the centaur shines a large, eight-pointed star. The motto BENEMERENTIUM ERGO encircles the figures. We know the identity of the motto’s author from the already cited 1498 letter, in which Niccolò da Correggio asks Isabella forgiveness for proposing a motto

three ladies, three medals

37

that others were already using and proposes other possible solutions. This is the text of his missive: To the most Illustrious and Excellent Lady. Since Your Excellency – as you wrote – found out that the motto for your medal has been used elsewhere, I agree that you should not do something that someone else has already done. I assure you I have never seen it [the motto] before, and I invented it specifically for you. So, if you want, you could say the same thing with a different phrase: BENEMERENTIUM ERGO i.e. BENEMERENTIUM CAUSA (…) Postscript. I have created two other mottos with the same meaning, which I propose to Your Excellency: NATURAE OFFICIUM; GRATITUDINIS STUDIO.9

The first casting had an error in the inscription of the motto on the reverse side of the medal: BENEMOERENTIUM in place of BENEMERENTIUM. The fact that BENEMOERENTIUM is an error is proven by the changes made to the medal when it was cast for the second time: the superfluous letter O in the Latin script was scratched away, leading to some copies being cast and appearing with BENEM ERENTIUM, with an empty space between the letters M and E, instead of O. The lack of variations and this (clearly manual) correction lead one to think that the second casting was likely redone completely, as the obverse of the medal was enhanced with more details and sensibly modified to correct previous errors. However, with all probability, the reverse of the medal was only slightly altered: the winged figure’s arm is slightly higher, and the motto is now correct. At this point, the device acquires its precise meaning from the combined reading of “body and soul”, i.e. the “figures and words”, the images and the motto, together. Several scholars have been busy interpreting the significance of Isabella’s medal, focusing in particular on deciphering the reverse. The two main figures, the winged female figure and the centaur above her, are exceptionally difficult to identify. They are challenging to interpret on their own, and even more so in combination. The standing female figure has been interpreted in various ways: as ‘Victory’, ‘Salus’ (the Roman goddess of safety and well-being), ‘Astrology’, ‘Virgo’, and ‘Minerva’.10 The only identification that appears to be based on the iconography and backed up by the documents is the one identifying the standing winged figure as ‘Victory’. This is the definition we find as far back as Stivini’s Inventory,

38

three ladies, three medals

compiled only three years after Isabella’s death. Indeed, the golden medal – the extraordinary work, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna – was described in the 1542 Stivini Inventory as the personal property of the Marchioness, safeguarded in the central cabinet of the Grotta: A gold medal with the effigy of our departed Lady, portrayed when she was young, with letters formed of diamonds that surround her and spell ISABELLA, with enamelled red rosettes between each letter, and with a woven frame around that of rosettes enamelled white and blue. On the reverse side, a Victory in relief.11

The idea that the winged figure may be a personification of Astrology12 may have been suggested – superficially – by the presence of a zodiac sign in the emblem. The identification as ‘Salus’ is based upon the presence of the serpent, the totemic animal of Salus-Hygea and of Asclepius. Identifying her as ‘Virgo’ has only one, mistaken, premise: the presence of what was erroneously thought to be a sheaf of wheat held in her left hand. The iconographic source for this theory was indicated as an illustration for Igino’s Poeticon Astronomicon, published in Venice in 1485, which presents the attributes of ‘Virgo’ as the hasta (cane) and the spica (wheat). According to Pollard, the identification of the winged figure as Virgo is confirmed ex post by a letter sent by Pellegrino Prisciani to Isabella, in order to inform of a favourable astrological combination that would benefit her. What becomes clear after an analysis of this important testimony is that the interpretation of Prisciani’s missive proposed by Pollard is imprecise and inaccurate. The combination in question would have involved planet Jupiter and the constellations of Serpens, Sagittarius, and Virgo, all zodiac signs appearing on the medal. Prisciani’s letter – in which there is no mention of Virgo, or of Sagittarius – does not prove anything in respect of the medal that was minted more than ten years earlier, but the letter is significant in another way altogether. Later, the figure was interpreted as an “allegorical image, meant as an allegory of knowledge with reference to Minerva.”13 In this sense, again in the sphere of knowledge, the figure of the centaur – identified as Chiron – was read without considering that in the related iconographic convention Minerva never appears winged and Chiron is never armed with a bow and arrow. In this reconstruction,

three ladies, three medals

39

we find ourselves in a vicious circle; one that closes itself, clumsily, even with the interpretation of the motto.14 In fact, the winged figure is not a Virgo, a Salus, or even a Victory. It is a loyal reproduction of the image engraved on a coin reverse representing Emperor Claudius, which belonged to the large Este collection – and, thus, one which Isabella and her court erudites may have seen – now preserved in the Este Medal Collection in the Civic Museum of Modena.15 Among the most important and most popular portraits of the first Roman imperial lineage, there is, indeed, a silver denarius dated 47 AD.16 The obverse of the coin bears the laurel-crowned Claudius, encircled by the inscription TI.CLAUD.CAESAR.AUG. On the other side of the coin, a winged female figure advances toward the right, pointing a staff at a serpent standing erect in front of her.17 Around the edge of the coin run the words PACI AUGUSTAE. The iconography of this winged figure is conventional for Nemesis, the goddess of reestablishing Justice. In some other coins and gems of the Imperial Age, the figure is even more similar to that of the Claudius denarius, then renewed on Isabella’s medal. Nemesis appears here as a manifestation of Dike, or Themis, or the celestial virgin Astraea, who – according to the myth – represents both peace and prosperity of a distant ‘golden age’.18 The allegory of Claudius’ coin is clear: Nemesis-Astraea – the re-establishment of offended or betrayed Justice – is a salvific figure (as the staff and the serpent show), who will bring a renewed saeculum aureum in the pax augusta guaranteed by the emperor. The Claudius coin is thus dedicated “to the peace of the Emperor.” The winged figure on Isabella’s medal is a reproduction of the image found on this Roman coin; hence, it too portrays Nemesis. Isabella’s medal is extremely similar to the Claudius coin, but it also differs from the ancient model. Most obviously because it is a mirror image: actually, this fact is a strong and certain confirmation that a cast or imprint was created as a means of transmitting the image from the original to the medal, by way of a mold. Additionally, a cast would have been an easier object to transport from the court of Ferrara to that of Mantua, as the original coin would have been difficult to remove from the complete Este collection of ‘Caesars’. The medal only reveals slight differences when compared with the norms of conventional Roman iconography: this unrelenting Justice holds a staff and not

40

three ladies, three medals

a caduceus in her right hand, and a palm branch in her left, unequivocal symbol of triumph. The differences in details should be considered retouches carried out by Giancristoforo Romano while he was making the wax model for the medal. Isabella’s choice of being portrayed once again in this figure, the model of which came from the family’s medal collection, is without a doubt intentional and significant. Her contemporaries were not exactly wrong when they defined the female figure a ‘Victory’ (as we read in the Stivini Inventory). However, here we encounter a very particular Victory: not Nike, but Nemesis, the triumphant return of Justice. The re-establishment of Justice that has been either offended or betrayed – the victory of Justice-Nemesis – is redeeming, as is shown by the symbolic presence of the serpent. It is also the seal of the Pax Augusta for Isabella. An additional confirmation of the derivation of Isabella’s medal from the Claudius coin can also be found on the obverse side. Isabella’s hairstyle – two thin braids, that begin at her temples and gather her hair together, are tied in a knot at the nape of her neck, while two loose curls are left to fall along the sides of her face – is very unusual and is not attributable to any style that was in fashion at her time. It looks much more as if it was inspired, almost like a quote translated into hairstyle, by the laurel crown with loose ribbons typical of Roman imperial portraits: the same kind of adornment we find on Claudius’ head on the front of the coin that we have identified as the model. In a study carried out independently, but almost simultaneously, with the first steps of this research, Luke Syson used similar methods that could be considered an indirect confirmation of our hypothesis. Syson, too, considers the Claudius coin as a possible model for the female winged figure, and identifies the model for the figure of Sagittarius in the set of Antoninus Pius zodiac coins.19 The scholar also identifies the female winged figure as a ‘Victory’, or as a personification of ‘Peace’ according to the dative case PACI (“for the Peace”) on the Roman coin. However, Syson appears unaware of the fundamental fact that the Claudius coin was in the Este medal collection, and was therefore easily accessible to the Marchioness of Mantua. A noteworthy observation by Syson regards the dimensions of the medal: the scale of the medal (the diameter) is extremely reduced compared with the size in use for Renaissance medals. This reduced dimension finds a precise reference in imperial coins.20

three ladies, three medals

41

Above the figure of the victorious Nemesis soar Sagittarius and a star. Since scholars have tried to explain the iconographic meaning in all its elements appearing on the reverse of Isabella’s medal, the presence of Sagittarius constitutes a problem. In 1836, Chabouillet (the first scholar to get involved in the hermeneutics of this venture), by basing his dates on the astrological sign, believed the medal to have been created in 1539 – the year Isabella died – hypothesising that the Sagittarius figure indicated the time that Isabella fell ill. Venturi, as early as 1888, exposed the many errors of this theory.21 In criticising Chabouillet, Venturi did not take into account that there are two versions of the medal. On the first version, we find the error BENEMOERENTIUM ERGO (of which the Italian scholar appears not to have known the existence). Evidently, Chabouillet only had a medal with the spelling error at his disposal; an error that was correctly translated as “for those who cry for her.” Pollard, to support the identification of the winged figure as ‘Virgo’, resorts to an argumentation that is equally as abstruse from an astrological perspective.22 Additional difficulties have arisen for those who attempt to find a connection between the winged Victory figure, the other images, and the motto. In the entanglement of the most Delphic interpretations, critics have even surrendered to its mysteries by affirming that the medal is nothing more than a nonsensical hodgepodge of symbols, neither connectable to each other nor linked in any way with the motto that encircles them: a combination that the Marchioness herself was not all that satisfied with.23 This untenable simplification is proven wrong by the absolute dedication and care that Isabella lavished for the making of her medal; a medal that represented her through the diffusion of many issuances, and a medal she cherished and safeguarded in her Grotta, among her other treasures, until her death in 1539. After identifying the winged figure as a victorious Nemesis, the presence of the centaur and star above her remains to be interpreted. All the hypotheses so far proposed have read the Sagittarius as a sign of the zodiac. All attempts to find a link between the sign of Sagittarius and the sequence of life events of the Marchioness have been controversial, if not inconclusive. There is no important event in Isabella’s life (neither her birth, nor marriage, nor childbirths, or military operations undertaken by her husband Francesco), which could have taken place in the period of the year assigned to Sagittarius. In attempts

42

three ladies, three medals

to find an explanation for the astrological symbol on the medal, some scholars have grasped at the most disparate and random hypotheses (and totally unfounded in astrological science), proposing everything from the date of her conception to the period in which Isabella fell ill with the disease which led to her death. All of these shots in the dark could only be defined as nonsensical argumentations if we consider them in light of historical and astrological records and reasoning. Venturi himself writes that Sagittarius, in the astrological symbolism of the time, “meant power.” Indeed, it is a power symbol. One strongly connected to Isabella’s profile. We owe the solution to this issue – remained unsolved until only recently – to the research of Lorenzo Bonoldi.24 Preserved in the Estense Library in Modena and dated between 1474 and 1479, the Codex L 5.16. (Ital. 720) contains a “Genealogy of the Este Princes.”25 On page 3v, we find a series of round miniatures: in the top centre column, on a gold background, are the portraits of the Dukes of Ferrara, Ercole I and Eleonora of Aragon. On three sides (on the right, left, and lower part of the page), there are seven circles with miniature portraits, but only three are completed with colour on a blue background: the portraits of Lorenzo, Lucrezia, and Isabella. Beatrice, Alfonso, Ferrante, and Ippolito are missing. Important personal data are annotated beneath each tondo. Fortunately, under the miniature with the portrait of Isabella as a child, we find the details pertaining to her birth, annotated with unusual precision: (…) naque marti adì 17 mazo 1474 a hore una e meza de nocte. The indication of the hour, according to the conventions of the time, means that this phrase is to be read as “born on Tuesday the 17th of May 1474, one and a half hours after sunset.” Isabella was born under the sign of Gemini: the birth date of 17 May fell under this sign, and not – as it would today – under the sign of Taurus. In 1474, the Julian Calendar was still in use; the Gregorian Calendar would become conventional only in 1582. By checking the exact time of the sunset on the day of Isabella’s birth, we can establish her time of birth: at exactly 9:47 pm. Thanks to the precise coordinates of the place and time of her birth (Ferrara, 17 May 1474), we are able to compose Isabella’s horoscope. The research was conducted blindly, consulting an astronomer who knew nothing of Isabella and the medal. This was the response: Ferrara, 17 May 1474, hour 9:30 pm: the only visible planet at that moment was Jupiter, found at 24° in Sagittarius.26

three ladies, three medals

43

Bonoldi, then, writes: At the moment of Isabella d’Este’s birth, the ascendant fell in Sagittarius, and more precisely at the 27th degree of this sign. The number 27, incidentally, was a number that was particularly dear to Isabella, so much so that it became one of her devices: ‘XXVII’, interpreted also by its sound (in Northern Italian, vinti sette), as vinte [tutte] le sette (victorious over all sects).27 Planet Jupiter would have risen just a few minutes later, joining with the ascendant. Under this astrological profile, the position of planet Jupiter is extremely strong: Jupiter – the god and the planet of power and authority, under which every prince wishes to rule – dominates Sagittarius. From Isabella’s star charts, we find that Jupiter was ‘born’ with her, and rose to meet Sagittarius, his dominion.28

The reading of this celestial chart shows that, at the time of Isabella d’Este’s birth, the only visible planet was Jupiter, found in the sign of Sagittarius and in the tenth house, in proximity to Midheaven. This location is very significant for the planet. Indeed, Jupiter’s dominion is in the sign of Sagittarius: the position itself expresses power and authority. Since Jupiter’s domicile is the tenth house – standing for honour – his power appears even stronger. It should be noted, as well, that Jupiter is almost in the Midheaven – the highest point of the zodiac, where every celestial body expresses all its strength – and that the planet forms very positive aspects together with Mars, the Ascendant, and the Lot of Fortune. This exact celestial situation is represented on the reverse of Isabella’s medal. The image, therefore, not only represents a sign of the zodiac in a narrow sense, but also the astral joining of a planet ( Jupiter) with the degree of a sign (Sagittarius). Through close examination of the medal, we can see that the celestial body represented is not generically a star, but more precisely a planet represented (according to the convention of the day) as an eight-pointed star. Finally, we see Jupiter in Sagittarius: the planet of royalty and of authority at the top of the sky and inside his dominion, the sign of power. Just as Nemesis on Isabella’s medal was based on an antique Roman coin, the figure of Sagittarius beside – or rather ‘dominated’ by – planet Jupiter has also been adopted directly from another coin of Imperial Rome. A drachma depicting Jupiter and Sagittarius is part of a series of twelve coins issued by Antoninus Pius, which have the effigy of the Emperor on their obverse,

44

three ladies, three medals

and on the reverse of each one a sign of the zodiac, with its respective supporting planet, symbolised by the profile of the divinity associated with it. With regard to Isabella’s medal, the Roman coin appears to be the model both for the form (the compositions are more or less superimposable) and for the subject (for the dominating aspect Jupiter has over Sagittarius). The only difference is the substitution of the profile of the god Jupiter with the eight-pointed star. Jupiter, who in Hellenistic and Roman antiquity was both god and planet, in the Renaissance is a god-planet: the process of becoming a star (in Greek katasterismos, “placings among the stars”) is completely fulfilled. The variation is also justified by the desire for a more harmonious composition, to avoid an overcrowding of human figures on the reverse of Isabella’s medal. The symbols are now clear: not a general astrological sign dotted with a star, but the most fortunate heavenly position of Jupiter, the planet that bestows upon her authority and power at the precise moment of her birth. We shall now consider the connection between the figures and the motto. Niccolò da Correggio – who, as seen above, was entrusted by Isabella with finding an appropriate motto for her device – proposes three different mottos for the same medal: BENEMERENTIUM ERGO, NATURAE OFFICIUM, and GRATITUDINIS STUDIO. Evidently, the figure with which the motto would appear had already been prepared. Isabella chose the first of the three proposals, but all three mottos – in light of Niccolò’s own assertion – must have analogous meanings: warm gratitude (studiosa, as in the third proposed motto) toward Nature (the allegiance of which is celebrated in the second). In other, clearer terms, warm gratitude toward the stars. Indeed, the meaning of the first, which Isabella will choose and adopt, has to be explained in the following sense: “Thank you, benevolent stars, to whom I owe the credit for my success.” Isabella’s medal expresses her pride, her strength, and her ability to rise again from any misfortune. The following lines were written by Isabella in 1490, when she was eighteen years old, for a strambotto: I am a tree and I have lost my branches / my trunk and roots have dried up / and my leaves have been blown away by many winds / I have lost all fruits, I am troubled, miserable! / My wood has been cut by several people / woe is me, what evil did I do? / Submerged by the wheel of Fortune, / how wretched are those who contradict Fortune!29

three ladies, three medals

45

Directing Fate toward Nemesis – this purpose had already been clear to Isabella since her youth and would become ever clearer: on one of her devices, a candelabra shows all the flames are extinguished except for one. The motto reads SUFFICIT UNUM (one is enough). What you have, along with tenacity and strength, is all you need to turn volatile Fortune into Justice. Indeed, one should consider the meaning of the astrological prediction by Pellegrino Prisciani, who, in 1509 – while Francesco Gonzaga, Isabella’s husband, was held prisoner by the Venetians – wrote to the Marchioness: Because I was anguished, exhausted, and my heart was all concerned about the serious and unfortunate situation of Your Husband, last night I was unable to rest, being anxious. God, to whom we mortals cannot lie, is my witness. Then, unable to sleep, I felt all my blood and my heart moving away from their proper places. Suddenly I remembered a very ancient belief, known even today. I felt this was the moment in which I should give proof of my loyalty and my devotion to Your Ladyship – with the favour of God, and even more than I did in the past – so that You can know the wonderful power of the conjunction between the Head of the Dragon and the salutary star of Jupiter. After having remained thoughtful for a while, and after consulting the books by candlelight, when the moment had passed, knowing that this fact is true, that this is the will of the sky and that this is the right time, I have immediately taken the pen and started to write all this to Your Illustrious Ladyship, knowing that if You are going to act with good devotion, soon You will see wonderful effects.30

Pollard notes that the combination pointed out by the astrologer “coincidentally corresponds to the signs found on the medal, including Jupiter (the planet of Sagittarius) and the dragon.”31 In reality, as is clear from a reading of the document, neither the winged figure (for Pollard identifiable as ‘Virgo’) nor the symbol of Sagittarius are ever mentioned. Prisciani explicitly alludes, however, to the conjunction of planet Jupiter with the lunar node, the point at which the orbits of the sun and moon intersect, creating an eclipse: a point commonly defined by astrologers as Caput Draconis. Therefore, there is no relationship between Prisciani’s ‘Head of the Dragon’ and the serpent on the reverse of the medal. The prophetic dream of Prisciani is not, nor could have been, an iconographic program for the celebrative medal, as it was made many years before the

46

three ladies, three medals

letter, dated 1509. Most probably, Pellegrino Prisciani in his letter points out to the Marchioness that the sky would manifest – in an exceptional astral conjunction – the sign of Jupiter and the stars that were already visible on her medal. Fortune had to be seized at that precise moment.32 This is the augural prediction (decorated with a veneer of Christianity): because the signs will coincide, Nemesis will triumph. Isabella, in fact, takes this prediction to heart and invokes God so that her husband Francesco – captured and imprisoned by the Venetians – would be freed as soon as possible. Nemesis prays to Jupiter so that Justice offended may be redressed. From the imperial medal collection of the Caesars, Isabella selects a potent image from the Claudius coin: a not only vindictive, but also fair, peace-bearing Nemesis. A terrible Nemesis; an inescapable (and vindictive) Justice. However, it is also a redeeming Nemesis (the serpent), as found in the Roman coin from which it is inspired. And a victorious Nemesis – as in the antique model – where she is winged like Nike. A Nemesis with the palm branch and the staff (in place of the caduceus). These attributes are shared with the divine star-maiden, Astraea: the luminous name of Nemesis guaranteeing wealth in the Golden Age, before escaping to the heavens and abandoning earth to desolation. Now – the medal of Isabella says – a reconversion is possible: Nemesis, in the renewed Golden Age, may come back as the virgin Astraea, bringing back happiness, peace, and justice to the world. Furthermore, the bright light of the planet Jupiter, in its house, shines on re-established Justice: thanks must be given to the celestial bodies for this harbinger of triumph. In this manner, Isabella is (figuratively) representing her virtue and her ambition: born under the star of power, she herself will be the Nemesis, which will see to saeculum renovare. As recalled by Giovio, she “in different periods of her life had to overcome much misfortune”33: she herself will be an inexorable Justice, ready to respond with Revenge against those who obstruct her plans. Amongst the Gonzagas’ many devices, this medal was chosen to represent the Marchioness officially and personally. By rendering Isabella’s star chart in a symbolic way, the medal is meant to celebrate her power. From the inscription of her title on the obverse side we see that Isabella does not opt to represent herself as the wife of Francesco Gonzaga, unlike other women of the Renaissance, like her beloved sister-in-law, Elisabetta, who decided to include the title FELTRIA on her own medal, as she was married to a Montefeltro. She

three ladies, three medals

47

rather opts for ‘Lady of Mantua’, an independent holder of power in her own right. For many years, this medal – presenting her portrait and device – was Isabella d’Este’s favourite gift to bestow upon nobility, relatives, and friends: it was distributed to the courts of Naples and Urbino and many of her cultivated friends (Tebaldeo, Giacomo Filippo Faella, and Bernardo Accolti). The choice of Nemesis as the central figure in Isabella’s device may also have been influenced by the fact that the bridles – a conventional attribute and symbol of Nemesis-Fortune – also appear on the device of her beloved sister-in-law, Elisabetta. As we know, she was Isabella’s favourite interlocutor on medals – both ladies were commissioning them from the most important medallists of the time. As we have seen from their letters, lords and ladies would discuss devices with scholars and artists: the enigmas, the cultured references, the symbolic crossroads were more appreciated the more exclusive and refined they were. Furthermore, the form of the devices was also discussed in court conversations, in between an improvised sonnet and an erudite anecdote, as we may read from the Il Libro del Cortegiano by Baldesar Castiglione. The Book of the Courtier was published by Aldo Manuzio in Venice in 1528 but set in 1506-1507, at the court in Urbino. All the well-known figures animating the dialogue revolve around the Duchess, Elisabetta Gonzaga. With her grace and her spirit, she interlaces the threads of the game chosen by the group: formar con parole un perfetto cortegiano (to train with words a perfect courtier). About devices, we read: Sometimes other discussions arose about different matters, or biting retorts passed lightly back and forth. Often [devices (imprese)], as we now call them, were displayed; in discussing which there was wonderful diversion, the house being (as I have said) full of very noble talents.34

Nothing is more plausible than Elisabetta and Isabella reasoning with each other about symbols and devices, with direct allusions to the vicissitudes of their lives. As we have seen, their affection and relationship was so deep as to have Isabella give her daughter Leonora to her unlucky sister-in-law Elisabetta. Thus, Elisabetta gained a surrogate motherhood, by having as her own daughter Leonora, Isabella’s (not so beloved) first born, whose godfather was Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. The ‘adoption’ was then destined to become official

48

three ladies, three medals

with the marriage between Leonora and Francesco Maria della Rovere, Elisabetta’s adoptive son.35 In this context – intertwining signs and myth in a designedly complex nexus – we cannot disregard a detail on the reverse of Elisabetta’s medal. The supine female figure holds bridles, a conventional and ancient attribute of Nemesis, Isabella’s chosen mythical hypostasis. It seems likely that Isabella’s JusticeNemesis – re-establishing order, peace, and fortune – has a completely different significance with regard to the allegorical figure on Elisabetta’s medal. There probably is a link, though, between the bridles of Fortune and the figure of Nemesis on Isabella’s medal. The broad and ambitious allegory chosen by the Marchioness of Mantua, as a figure of civil and political Peace-Justice, also has a more personal undertone – hoping for a miraculous fecundity and for the end of an unjust and punitive sterility – on the medal of her beloved sister-in-law, Elisabetta Gonzaga. Incidentally, it should be borne in mind that Isabella chose to be represented in the guises of Venus and Minerva as ‘civilising divinities’ bringing humanitas into the allegorical-mythical paintings that Mantegna produced in those same years for her Studiolo.

three ladies, three medals 1

2

3 4

5

6

7

The Stivini Inventory is published in: Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, “La prima donna del mondo”. Isabella d’Este Fürstin und Mäzenatin der Renaissance, Vienna, 1994, p. 282ff. As cited in: Adolfo Venturi, Giancristoforo Romano, in Archivio Storico dell’Arte, I, 1888, p. 49-59, 107-118, 148-158, p. 108. Ferino-Pagden, o.c., p. 41ff. Clifford Michael Brown & Anna María Lorenzoni, Gleanings from the Gonzaga Documents in Mantua, Gian Cristoforo Romano and Andrea Mantegna, in Mitteilungen Des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florence, 17, 1, 1973, p. 153-159. Karl Schulz, Le medaglie di Isabella d’Este, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 447. Giacomo Filippo Faella, AS Mantova Busta 1599, Brescia e Stato, anno 1498: “Essendo venuto il Tebaldeo qui a piacere per qualche zorno, et havendo cum se la medaglia de la Eccellenza Vostra, mi venne fantasia di farne un sonetto; et fatto che l’hebbi, il Tebaldeo me exhortò mandarlo a la Eccellenza Vostra; et parendomi che non fosse cosa degna di quella, non lo volea fare; ma lui me ha facto tanta instantia che mi è stato forza mandarlo.” “Perché il sonetto è veramente opera trista l’abbiamo omesso”: Carlo D’Arco, Notizie di Isabella Estense moglie a Francesco Gonzaga. Aggiuntivi molti documenti inediti che si riferiscono alla stessa Signora, all’istoria di Mantova, ed a quella generale d’Italia, in Archivio Storico Italiano, Appendix, II, Florence, 1845, p. 203-326, p. 299. Venturi, o.c., p. 108, notes (as he corrects the date reported by D’Arco from 1499 to 1498): “A questa lettera non si trova più accluso il sonetto che il D’Arco disse d’aver veduto” (The sonnet that D’Arco claims to have seen attached to this letter is no longer to be found).

8 9

10

11

49

Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 84. Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 254: “Ill.ma et Ex.ma D.na mia observ. ma. Puoi che la Ex.tia V.ra, como ella mi scrive, ha ritrovato in altro loco il motto de la medaglia sua, io mi accordo seco che epsa non debba fare cosa prima facta da altri, certificandola io che non l’havevo veduto mai, anzi pure mi occorse in simile proposito. Ma in cambio di quello, piacendoli, poterà dire in quello medesimo significato: BENEMERENTIUM ERGO, che vene a dire BENEMERENTIUM CAUSA. (…) Postscripta. Me ne sono occorsi dui altri pure di quello significato ch’io ho voluto subgiongere ben che tutti pocho cunti, et iterum a la Ex. Vostra mi raccomando: NATURAE OFFICIUM; GRATITUDINIS STUDIO.” ‘Victory’: Venturi, o.c.; Andrea S. Norris, Costanzo de Moysis, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXX, 1984; Schultz, o.c.; Syson, o.c.; ‘Salus’, the Roman goddess of safety and well-being: Georg Habich, Die Medaillen der italienischen Renaissance, Berlin, 1922; ‘Astrology’: George Francis Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, I-II, London, 1930; M. Patrizia Chévez Gobio Casali, I salottini di Isabella ed un pizzico di astrologia, in Per Mantova una vita. Studi in memoria di Rita Castagna, eds. Anna Maria Lorenzoni & Roberto Navarrini, Mantua, 1991, p. 25-51, p.83-91; ‘Virgo’: Pollard, o.c.; ‘Minerva’: Leandro Ventura, Isabella d’Este, committenza e collezionismo, in Isabella d’Este, i luoghi del collezionismo, in Civiltà Mantovana, 14-15, March-June, 1995, p. 47-69. Ferino-Pagden, o.c., p. 282ff (Stivini [1542] 1995, charta 7v): “Una medaglia d’oro con l’effigie di Madamma bone memorie, quando sua signoria era giovane, con lettere di diamante adorno che dicono ‘Isabella’, con rosette tra l’una e

50

three ladies, three medals

l’altra lettera smaltate di rosso, con un retortio atorno, con rosette smaltate di bianco e azzurro et de roverso una Victoria di relievo.” 12 Hill, A Corpus, o.c., p. 55. 13 Ventura, o.c., p. 54. 14 So wrote Ventura, o.c., p. 54: “The motto encircling this image (…) is unusual because instead of celebrating the woman who commissioned it, it explains the function of the medal. The phrase, in fact, means “for good services”, since the object was given by the Marchioness as a thank you.” 15 Elena Corradini, Le immagini dei Signori: gli Estensi e le altre signorie dell’Italia settentrionale, in Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue, eds. Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale, Modena, 1991, p. 58-176, p. 86ff. 16 Modena, Medagliere Estense, cat. 1090: in Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale (eds.), Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue (Milan, September-December 1991), Modena, 1991. 17 Corradini, Le immagini dei Signori, o.c., p. 88. 18 Harold Mattingly & Edward Allen Sydenham, The Roman Imperial Coinage, London, 1972, I, p. 126, no. 30. 19 Syson, o.c., p. 290. 20 Syson, o.c., p. 286. 21 Venturi, o.c., p. 108: “[Chabouillet] spiegò la scritta del rovescio BENEMERENTIUM ERGO in questo modo abbastanza strano: pour ceux qui la pleurent. Fisso nell’idea che la medaglia fosse fatta in commemorazione funebre d’Isabella, non ne guardò il ritratto, che la dimostra assai giovane; non osservò il titolo di marchesa che Isabella tiene nella medaglia, già mutato in quello di duchessa sin dal 1530.” ([Chabouillet] explained the writing BENEMERENTIUM ERGO on the back of the medal in this unusual way: pour ceux qui la pleurent (for those who cry for her).

Then, convinced in his idea that the medal had been made in commemoration of the funeral of Isabella, he did not even look at the portrait, which represents her as being very young; nor did he observe the title of Marchesa that Isabella held on the medal, a title that was changed to Duchessa in 1530). 22 Pollard, o.c., p. 384: “It is a token of Isabella’s gratitude for some fortunate combinations of celestial forces, probably at the moment of her conception, as she was conceived under the sign of Virgo, and born on the 15th of May.” 23 Norris, o.c. 24 Lorenzo Bonoldi & Monica Centanni, La medaglia di Isabella d’Este: Nemesi e le sue stelle [already in: La Rivista di Engramma, 1, September 2000], now in: Lorenzo Bonoldi, Isabella d’Este: A Renaissance Woman, Rimini, 2015, p. 53-70. 25 Now re-published in: Ferino-Pagden, o.c., p. 25. 26 I would like to thank the Astronomer Nico Montigiani for his precious collaboration. 27 Perhaps a bit affectedly by Paolo Giovio, see: Balbi de Caro (ed.), I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua, September-December 1995), Milan, 1995, cat. V 94.18, p. 460. 28 Bonoldi, o.c., p. 66. 29 “Arboro son che li miei rami persi / le tronco m’è sicao e la radici / e foglie squasa da venti diversi / li frutti ho perso, misero infelice! / Me legno taglia la gente diversi / misero me, che mal al mondo fece? / Fortuna sotto rota m’ha sommersi / O tristo chi Fortuna contraddice!” Isabella’s lines are cited in: Maria Bellonci, Isabella d’Este a cinquecento anni dalla sua nascita, in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella civiltà del Rinascimento, Proceedings of the Conference (Mantua, October 1974), Mantua, 1978, p. 47-56. 30 “Per questo (…) affanato, sbatuto et percosso al tutto il cor mio (…) del caso inopinato et tristo de lo Ill.mo S. con-

three ladies, three medals sorte vostro, et travagliandomene in questa nocte passata per modo che riposo alcuno non ritrovava, et di questo chiamo l’onipotente Dio in testimonio, quale da nui homini non se pote inganare, parse – et già non dormiva in veritate – che tuto il sangue et cor mi si movessero dal proprio loco, et subito se mi si presentasse certa doctrina antiquissima et anche da nostri moderni registrata, et sentesse quodammodo essermi dicto che hora era il tempo a V. S.ria la fede et devotione mia (cum bon piacere de Dio) se demonstrariano molto più anche di quanto per il passato si eran demonstrate, et che se cognosceria la meravigliosa possanza de la conjunctione del capo del Dracone cum la salutifera stella de Jove. Steti io cusì pensoso alquanto et dopo tolti libri in mane et candela, trascorso il fato et cognoscendo la cosa esser vera et li celi cusì volere et il tempo instare, subito pigliato in mane il calamo mi sun posto in scrivere il tuto a V.Ill.S., non dubitado afformarli che facendo la operatione cum bona devotione, la vederà presto de meraviglioso effecto”: Alessandro Luzio & Rodolfo Renier, La coltura e le relazioni letterarie d’Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, in Giornale storico della letteratura Italiana, XXV, 1900, p. 193-257, p. 255-256; cit. in Bonoldi, o.c., p. 68.

31 32

33

34

35

51

Pollard, o.c., p. 387. On Caput Draconis, see: Marco Bertozzi, “Caput Draconis”. I consigli astrologici di Pellegrino Prisciani alle principesse d’Este, in La parola e l’immagine. Scritti in onore di Gianni Venturi, eds. Marco Ariani et al., Florence, 2001, p. 245-251. On the importance of the role of Prisciani at the Este court in Ferrara: Elisa Bastianello, Una costellazione di fonti antiche e di disegni architettonici. Pellegrino Prisciani sotto il segno di Vitruvio, in Pellegrino Prisciani. Spectacula, ed. Elisa Bastianello, Rimini, 2015, p. 7-26. Paolo Giovio, Ragionamenti sopra i motti et disegni d’arme et d’amore che communemente chiamano Imprese, Venice, 1556, p. 75. Baldesar Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), ed. & trans. Leonard Eckstein Opdyke, New York, 1901, I, V: “Qualche volta nasceano altre disputazioni di diverse materie, o vero si mordea con pronti detti; spesso si faceano imprese, come oggidì chiamiamo; dove di tali ragionamenti meraviglioso piacere si pigliava per esser, come ho detto, piena la casa di nobilissimi ingegni.” Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 68.

52

three ladies, three medals

1.

2.

4.

3.

5.

6.

7.

8.

three ladies, three medals

53

Fig. 1. Gian Cristoforo Romano (1456-1512), Medal for Isabella d’Este (obverse, with a variant in the titulus: ISABELLA ESTEN MARCH MA), bronze, diameter 38,5 mm, 1498. London, British Museum Fig. 2. Nemesis protecting goddess of Pax Augusta (obverse) issued by the Roman emperor Claudius (47 AD), silver denarius, diameter 19 mm Fig. 3. Gian Cristoforo Romano (1456-1512), Medal for Isabella d’Este (reverse), bronze, diameter 38,5 mm, 1498. London, British Museum Fig. 4. Nemesis protecting goddess of Pax Augusta (reverse) issued by the Roman emperor Claudius (47 AD), silver denarius, diameter 19 mm Fig. 5. Jupiter and the Sagittarius, Alexandrian bronze drachma issued by Antoninus Pius (reverse), 138 AD Fig. 6. Gian Cristoforo Romano (1456-1512), Medal for Isabella d’Este (obverse and reverse), gold, diamonds and enamels, diameter 69 mm, 1505. Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum Fig. 7. Tondo with the portrait of Isabella d’Este, detail from the Genealogia dei Principi d’Este, cod. L 5.16. (Ital. 720), f. 3v, ca. 1474-1479. Modena, Estense Library Fig. 8. The birth sky chart of Isabella d’Este (a graphic reconstruction by Lorenzo Bonoldi)

three ladies, three medals

55

II.3 Elisabetta Gonzaga as Danaë (1495) On the obverse of the medal, we find a feminine head in profile turned to the right. The dress has a squared neckline; the woman is wearing a long pearl necklace, wrapped like a choker around her neck and then cascading down; her hair is in a cap, with a thread passing around the forehead; on the nape, the hair is wrapped and contained by a ribbon, forcing it into a long, narrow ponytail. Encircling the figure, enclosed in a double row of pearls: ELISABET GONZAGA FELTRIA DUCIS URBINI (Elisabetta Gonzaga of Montefeltro, wife of the Duke of Urbino). The medal celebrates Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471-1526) – sister of Francesco Marquis of Mantua, husband of Isabella d’Este. At the age of sixteen, Elisabetta marries the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, to whom she had been promised in marriage since 1486. We do have a detailed description of the wedding feasts – celebrated with great fanfare on 11 February 1488 in Urbino – thanks to a letter that loyal courtier Benedetto Capilupi writes to Maddalena Gonzaga to comfort her about her sister’s parting. In the document, we read that the religious ceremony occurred on Monday, in the church of San Francesco, in the presence of the Pope’s ambassador, who: auctoritate apostolica benedisse gli sposi (by his apostolic authority blessed the newlyweds). In amongst the several days of celebration, we read about Wednesday, two days after the wedding: There was a beautiful performance filled with significance, in which there were 70 or even 80 men, dressed as sprites: in this representation, there was Jupiter with all gods and goddesses described by poets, dressed according to their allegories with their own attributes. Many of them acted and recited verses in different performances; for example, Juno and Diana discussed in elegant rhymes if it is better to be married or a virgin, in front of Jupiter, who then judged in favour of Juno. Many were the reasons, here is the last one: if everybody preserved their virginity, there would be no newborns, which is against divine law.1

The author of this allegorical ‘operetta’, who had foreseen the tension between Juno and Diana, was – according to Capilupi – “Zohanne de Santo”, Raffaello’s father, whose literary activity is only known for a poem in tercets, also dedicated to Guidobaldo.2

56

three ladies, three medals

The engraving on the medal highlights the title of “Wife of the Duke of Urbino” DUCIS URBINI [UXOR], a title that Elisabetta often employs for herself, for example in her signature of a letter dated 27 April 1510, written by her prestigious chancellor Baldesar Castiglione. The pearls adorning her neck and encircling the inscription underline her marital condition. On the reverse, we see a nude female figure lying on a bed, her head leaning on another headboard: her hands hold some bridles. Above her, a cloud radiates some little flames raining down on the woman. As demonstrated by extensive, substantiated iconographic comparisons,3 it is a depiction of Danaë, represented in a manner compatible with the ancient and medieval iconographic tradition. The woman’s nudity and pose – her legs slightly crossed and her arms open to bear something (in classical iconography the flap of the dress is a real and metaphorical womb collecting rain) – are superimposable on the image of a classical Danaë. The medieval Danaë is often depicted locked in a tower, either standing or sitting, and properly dressed. Danaë’s classical iconography may have been known through the Roman imperial gems circulating widely among Renaissance court collections. The high, odd headboard (shaped as a grid) may symbolically allude to the prison in which Danaë is locked and where the miracle of insemination occurs.4 As for what tradition hands down to us, Danaë appears for the first time in literature in Simonides of Ceus’ admirable fragment (the lullaby for little Perseus resting in a chest at the mercy of the sea-waves).5 Her mythographic and iconographic fortune revolves precisely around the episode of the miraculous conjoining of the girl locked in the tower with Zeus (sub specie of a golden rain) and of her resulting prodigious pregnancy.6 To recapitulate briefly, the story of Danaë based on the mythical accounts of Apollodorus and Hyginus, is as follows: Acrisius, king of Argos, consults an oracle to find out if he will have male descendants. The oracle replies that his daughter’s son would kill him. Acrisius locks Danaë in a tower in order to prevent his daughter from giving birth. However, Zeus – in the form of golden rain – seeps through the tower’s ceiling, drops on her, and fertilises her. From this union, Perseus is born and Acrisius, not believing the father to be Zeus, locks mother and son in a wooden chest, throwing them into the sea. When the chest lands on the coasts of the island of Seriphos, Dictys receives them and takes them to king Polydectes, who – depending on the different

three ladies, three medals

57

variations of the myth – marries Danaë and raises Perseus. He subjects the young man to a series of tests, which constitute his heroic initiation and culminate in the capture of the Medusa’s head, thanks to Athena’s help. After a sequence of events, during a pentathlon competition in Larissa or during the funeral games held for Polydectes’ death,7 Perseus accidentally kills his grandfather Acrisius by throwing the discus, thus fulfilling the prophecy.8 Amongst various ancient literary sources, we recall the passage of the Metamorphoses by Ovid in which Danaë’s divine maternity and Acrisius’ death are included in the range of punishments of several characters of the myth, for their impiety towards the gods: But Acrisius, the son of Abas, of the Cadmean race, / remained to banish Bacchus from the walls / of Argos, and to lift up hostile arms / against that deity, who he denied / was born to Jove. He would not even grant / that Perseus from the loins of Jupiter was got of Danaë in the showering gold.9

In the Greek and Roman imaginary, Danaë is thus represented as a girl miraculously fertilised by God. Nonetheless, a more lecherous (if not downright pornographic) reading is possible – especially in classical iconography – of Danaë’s figure lying on the bed, waiting for the sacred golden rain.10 Starting from Late Antiquity, Danaë’s figure is interpreted in ambivalent ways: positively, as a symbol of chastity that only divine strength can overcome; or, conversely, as a figure of lechery, going beyond the boundaries of a secure detention cell in a high tower. As noted by Salvatore Settis, the double interpretation of Danaë’s figure depends on the Christian two-way interpretation of the myth. The first text in which Danaë is mentioned as a negative example of feminine decency, corrupted by gold, is Augustine: “As to his impregnating Danaë through a golden shower, that means that the woman’s virtue was corrupted by gold.”11 Augustine also mentions Danaë as an example of the pretence of mythical fabulae and of pagan corruption elsewhere. It is more difficult to research who first overturned the Augustinian interpretation of lustful Jupiter and of indecent Danaë into Jupiter-God and Danaë as typus Pudicitiae. As asserted by Settis, the first iconographic attestation of this positive, Christianised transfiguration of Danaë is a manuscript of the Fulgentius metaphoralis, dated the first quarter of the fifteenth century, in which Danaë appears in

58

three ladies, three medals

a closed tower.12 In the same iconographic field, we also find the imago Pudicitiae of a manuscript dated 1425-1440, in which Danaë appears in the tower.13 However, in the earlier Defensorium inviolatae virginitatis Beatae Mariae (dated 1388), the Dominican Franciscus of Retza proposes the parallelism, wondering “If it is clear that the golden rain makes Danaë pregnant by Jupiter, why would the pregnant virgin not generate thanks to the Holy Spirit?”14 Danaë’s story becomes argumentum ante litteram to foreshadow the miraculous pregnancy of the Virgin Mary with a mythical precedent. As for many ancient fabulae, the mediation role of the Ovide moralisé is fundamental: Now I will declare the wonder / of the God who entered the locked tower, / as golden rain, / without unlocking it and uncovering it; / without opening doors or windows. / Jupiter, God, our helpers, / our fathers, our saviours, / our king, our creator, / came down to the noble tower / where beautiful Danaë was quiet. / Danaë reveals that / virginity was beloved of God. / The tower in which she was locked / makes us hear the secret / of the virgin’s womb, / where God comes down as wool / rain, and take human flesh / and join us in our nature.15

In this sense, as imago Pudicitiae and as an allegory of Castitas, Danaë in the tower appears in a section of an altarpiece in Stams, in Tyrol, dated 1426. Here, the Virgin at the centre is kneeling in front of the Child Jesus.16 The same image appears in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Danaë is the central figure of a new Triumphus Pudicitiae and sits enthroned – with the hem of her dress in her hands, welcoming the divine rain – on a cart pulled by unicorns. The overturning is now complete: from image of corruption, in Augustine, Danaë has become exemplum Pudicitiae. During the Middle Ages, the figure of Danaë was looked upon suspiciously by patristic sources for the similarity of her myth with the divine fertilisation of the Virgin Mary (the only one authenticated as true) until being accepted as a prefiguration of Mary herself.17 This vision of Danaë as antecedent to Mary culminates in Mabuse’s representation of Danaë: the tower has become the Temple of Solomon and she is waiting for the Annunciation, ready to welcome the sacred fertilisation in her womb.18 Since the end of the fourteenth century, Danaë’s divine fertilisation has thus been interpreted in a positive way.19 The Danaë on Elisabetta’s medal would then

three ladies, three medals

59

be attributable to this moralised tradition, as the allegorical conversion of the Greek mythological figure to an imago Pudicitiae. Furthermore, at the end of his important 1985 essay, Salvatore Settis highlighted the role of “Fortune” appearing in the motto of the device – HOC FUGIENTI FORTUNAE DICATIS – and suggested that “the circumstances of the commission require further research and a more accurate explanation.”20 I suggest that the key to the allegorical reading of the myth of Danaë on Elisabetta’s medal is not to be found only in chastity, in demureness, and thus in the virtues of feminine honesty (with which the Duchess of Urbino chose to represent herself ). The focus is rather on the crucial, mythical event: Danaë’s miraculous fertilisation by divine intervention. As expressly suggested by Filippo Picinelli in his fundamental treatise entitled Mondo Simbolico (first published in Milan in 1653) – which indexes and interprets the elements constituting all known devices, from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century – the figure alone, the ‘body’, is not sufficient to render the plenitude of the meaning that the device as a whole means to convey. It is necessary to relate it with the ‘soul’, with the motto. In the scant bibliography dedicated to this theme, the Latin motto HOC FUGIENTI FORTUNAE DICATIS – not always correctly understood, not even in its first meaning – is directly related to the female figure that dominates the medal, almost as if it were the image’s caption. The set of text and image has been generally read as a depiction of the reversals of Fortune that troubled the political life of the Dukes of Urbino; namely, as an “Allegory of the reversal of Fortune which deprived Elisabetta of her estates.”21 Recently, accepting Settis’ convincing identification of the nude figure as Danaë, a more nuanced interpretation has been suggested: it agrees both with the reference to the mythical figure and with the supposed allusion to the negative political events experienced by Elisabetta and her husband.22 At this point, however, it seems appropriate to note the “more accurate explanation” which Settis, more than thirty years ago, indicated as the next goal of his research, in terms of an enquiry he himself had begun. If, as seems clear, HOC refers to the device itself,23 the meaning of the motto cannot be but “this medal is for those who turned to fleeing Fortune” – and not, as Gasparotto interprets, it “this you dedicate to fleeing Fortune.”24 “Fortune”, thus, cannot be the name of the figure lying on the bed (incompatible with any iconography of Fortune). Rather, Fortuna (FORTUNAE, in the dative case) is the

60

three ladies, three medals

deity to whom Elisabetta – and before her, Danaë, the hypostasis of the Duchess – seeks to consecrate herself. In this interpretation, the decoding of the symbolic meaning of a detail seems important: compared with the image of Danaë, both ancient and medieval, the figure on the reverse of Elisabetta’s medal has stretched-out arms. It differs from what happens in the consolidated iconographic tradition, in which the figure raises the edges of her garment to collect (metaphorically, more or less) the divine rain in her sinus; actually, on the medal, she is holding bridles. The variation is significant and – because the bridles and the bits seem unfitting tools to collect the burning raindrops falling from the celestial cloud – their presence must have a symbolic meaning. Currently, the presence of the bridles is intended as a further allusion to Elisabetta’s moral virtues, in support of the imago Pudicitiae, as the “usual symbol of temperance.”25 The bridles, though, are not only a symbol of self-control; for example, Picinelli explains the presence of “bits and bridles” on devices by stating: The bit, placed in the steeds’ mouths, is not enough to make them go where need requires, but the bits operate, move, and turn thanks to the hands of the rider: I, then, put the motto DIRIGIT SI DIRIGATUR. In the same way, our will cannot completely and by itself address the affections of virtues, but it does so in so far as it is helped and directed by exciting and concomitant grace.26

The description of the symbol by Picinelli moves the device’s interpretation from the sphere of moral virtue to an exact action: divine Grace, simultaneously, needs to be directed and addressed. In reference to the myth of Danaë, Grace is functionally analogous with Fortune. The image of Fortune as a horse to bridle and to ride already appears in another well-known illustration of the Poliphilus. Furthermore, in classical and then in Renaissance iconography, bridles often appear as attributes of Nemesis – goddess of Justice, imposed and re-established, in spite of current events, avenging misfortunes.27 In the Roman Imperial age, Nemesis was already associated to Fortune-Tyche: Through a stronger accentuation of her positive characteristic trait (cf. Hesych. s.v. Agathe Tyche, Nemesis kai Themis) and her increasing importance as goddess of Destiny, in the Imperial Age, Nemesis progressively resembles Fortune and finally she is completely assimilated.28

three ladies, three medals

61

The bridles appear as the attribute peculiar to Nemesis in the Emblema CLXXIII by Alciatus as they do in the representation by Albrecht Dürer, with Nemesis holding bridles in her hands.29 More than a century later, Lorenzo Pignoria – illustrating Vincenzo Cartari’s Le imagini de i Dei de gli antichi, in table LXXVI – associates two figures of Nemesis. One is unstable on the wheel of Fortune, holding a bit and a metre in her hands; the other holds a branch of an ash tree in her left and a vase in her right hand, according to one of Pausanias’ descriptions.30 Even this iconographic suggestion intertwining Nemesis and Fortune may have played a role in the inclusion of the element of the bridles on Elisabetta’s medal and in combining it with the motto explicitly referring to Fortuna fugiens. Therefore, this Danaë, while consecrated to Fortune, is also actively ready to bridle her: Fortune, indeed, is, by nature, fugiens; but Elisabetta/Danaë is ready to take the chance and ride luck. In the myth, Danaë acts precisely this way: Acrisius’ daughter is an allegorical figure of enforced chastity, but this chastity is miraculously relieved thanks to divine intervention and despite her segregation. Danaë, ready to welcome the divine rain, conceives and gives birth to Perseus. It is now time to establish the nexus between Danaë and Elisabetta: if it exists, it could present the analogy between the myth and the biography of the Duchess of Urbino and could explain why Elisabetta chooses Danaë to represent herself. By piecing together all the obtainable data from epistolary documents and texts in circulation at the time, the meaning of Elisabetta’s choice of Danaë as her mythical alter ego becomes clear. Several sources testify that Elisabetta Gonzaga’s sexual life – and thus her fertility – was sadly compromised by the impotence of her husband (Guidobaldo da Montefeltro). The fact, already rumoured before their marriage, became patently clear right after the wedding (celebrated, as stated earlier, on 11 February 1488). Ottaviano Ubaldini della Carda, the strict tutor of sixteen-year-old Guidobaldo, intervened by saying that, based on astrological calculations, the union of the couple had to be postponed until a more favourable date. On 14 February 1488, Capilupi wrote to Francesco Gonzaga, concerned for his sister Elisabetta: Although I wrote to Your Lordship, who believed they slept together for the words used by the Illustrious Octavian [Ubaldini] on the dispensation,

62

three ladies, three medals

nonetheless, narrowing it down more, the Lord has added many reasons why it should not be done now (…) and they will wait until the eighth of Easter.31

From another letter by Capilupi to the Marquis, we know that by 27 February the newlyweds were affectionate towards each other and would always stay together de la nocte in fore (from night until morning). The assiduity with which Capilupi updates the Marquis proves Francesco’s concern and interest in his sister’s marriage being consummated. At first, Guidobaldo actually seems impatient to consummate the marriage and, in fact, Capilupi himself often intervenes in favour of Ubaldini and the astrologists who established that lo ill.mo Duca non se accompagnasse cum Ma Duchessa fin al secondo dì de marzo (the Illustrious Duke should not sleep with the Duchess until the second day of March). At last – and it is now 19 April – Capilupi writes: I have had a new star chart made by the astrologers and shortened the due date: it is now this evening, Saturday 19th of the present month (April), and so with God’s peace they are sleeping together this evening.32

In addition, Capilupi sends a letter to the Marquis the day after, to assure him that the consummation had occurred, for further confirmation of how much waiting, participation, and publicity there was at court concerning the matter: As I wrote to Your Excellency, yesterday in the night the Illustrious Duchess slept with the Duke and, to let you know, how much effort, art, and industriousness I had to use: it was an inestimable struggle. This morning, she is now ashamed, she does not dare to look anyone in the eyes; though she is not too modest and contentious, but in her face she shows some grace and honesty, which could not be described in writing. I would be most pleased if your Excellency could see her: you would think her the most modest lady in the world, as we can indeed say she is.33

The much-awaited intercourse date is confirmed even by a letter from Ginevra de’ Fanti to Francesco: Saturday 19th of this (month), the Illustrious Duke slept with the Illustrious Madame, your sister: about this event, I will not write any other detail for honesty.34

three ladies, three medals

63

Apart from the long-awaited coupling – happening at last more than two months after the wedding – Elisabetta, “the most discreet Lady in the world”, would have had to make virtue out of necessity. The relationship between Elisabetta and her husband was – and would remain – warmly affectionate, but – relying on sources – any sexual intercourse would have been excluded. In the mythical representation staged for the wedding, Juno had won against Diana by reason, as noted by Capilupi, che se ognuno servasse verginità mancharia la generatione humana et saria contra la institutione divina: crescite et multiplicamini (if everybody preserved their virginity, there would be no newborns, against divine law).35 In her real life, despite the young Gonzaga’s natural expectations, chaste Diana would triumph. A later confirmation is also to be found in a letter written on 22 April 1507, in which Alessandro Picenardi writes to Isabella d’Este that Elisabetta, back from the pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Loreto: [She] came back as a Saint and with the intention of not engaging with her husband and to be free from any sin. And (…) I know they have never slept together since they left Venice (…).36

Elisabetta is the central figure in the Cortegiano. During the course of four nights, games are acted out in a teatro di parole e di gesti (theatre of words and gestures) in which the aesthetics of grace are theorised and practiced. In the words of Castiglione, grace is: (…) ‘a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought’, an absolute mode of living, in dancing, playing, chatting, dressing, riding, eating, writing (…), a sign of a gift, the reflection of a free and lavish economy, an act of a disinterested, and thus virtuous, magnanimous, noble social order.37

The distinguished guests, gathered in a circle, make the personification of grace the focus of their dialogue: Elisabetta. The Duchess pulls the strings of the dialogue: dice ridendo (says laughing: “said laughing”, “replied laughing”, these are the formulae introducing most of Elisabetta’s lines), in levity and gaiety. These are the qualities with which the Lady senza fatica (without effort) brings depth, intensity, and meaning to the dialogue. This is the personified sign of grace, ease, and noble spontaneity: the true mark of a uomo gentile. Elisabetta

64

three ladies, three medals

Gonzaga is a discreet but essential presence in Castiglione’s dialogue. The game starts in the evening, when Guidobaldo’s day comes to an end: Thus, all the hours of the day were assigned to honourable and pleasant exercises, as well for the body as for the mind; but since my lord Duke was always wont by reason of his infirmity to retire to sleep very early after supper, everyone usually betook himself at that hour to the presence of my lady Duchess, Elisabetta Gonzaga. (…) Here then, gentle discussions and innocent pleasantries were heard, and on the face of everyone a jocund gaiety was seen depicted, so that the house could truly be called the very abode of mirth: nor ever elsewhere, I think, was a place so relished, as once was here (…); and it seemed as if this were a chain that held us all linked in love.38

The Duchess is present: the game, though, orbits around an absence. “The interlocutors all in a circle: around an absence – the Duke’s, who is not involved in the dialogue, being sick.”39 The Duchess is present, the Duke is absent. In Book III, discussing love, Cesare Gonzaga cannot avoid mentioning the most known, and unsaid, of Elisabetta’s virtues: Nor can I refrain from saying a word of our lady Duchess, who having for fifteen years lived like a widow in company with her husband, not only was steadfast in never revealing this to anyone in the world, but when urged by her own people to lay aside her widowhood, she chose rather to endure exile, poverty, and every other sort of hardship, rather than accepting that which seemed to all others great favour and blessing of fortune.40

The grace of the perfect courtier demands that all be lived senza fatica (without effort), con sprezzatura (with nonchalance). And Elisabetta replies: Seguitando pur messer Cesare circa questo, disse la signora Duchessa: Parlate d’altro e non entrate più in proposito, ché assai dell’altre cose avete che dire (and as messer Cesare was going on to speak of this, my lady Duchess said: Speak of something else, and go no further with this subject, for you have many other things to say).41 Marin Sanudo, the Venetian historian and diarist, reports that the Duchess herself confirmed her viduità (widowhood).42

three ladies, three medals

65

We owe the complete account of Guidolbado’s impotence to Pietro Bembo’s treatise De Guidobaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini Ducibus, written on the occasion of Guidobaldo’s death in 1509: Lord Guido Ubaldo – either for a natural defect or, worse, as he believed, because of spells cast upon him – could not in his life know a woman carnally, nor consummate his wedding. Not knowing this, as he did not yet experience being a man, his uncle Lord Octavian very diligently taught him to live chastely and, for the same uncle’s desire, he married this Lady, sister of the Marquis of Mantua, a very noble man and great in the art of war. For this reason, for the desire of generating sons, in him alone the hope to preserve the lineage was entrusted: he marries his wife, they sleep together in the same bed for two years, and he experiences his virility. But recognising himself as impotent, with much grief, he reveals to his woman the spells cast upon him by someone envious of him, calling himself the most unhappy, both for the lack of children and for not satisfying her, which was her right by marriage law. He also adds that if this was known, he would be ashamed for the people of the Dukedom and scorned worldwide. The woman, who was already aware of this fact, had not been distressed and never told anyone. Now, hearing it from him, she tries to comfort him with levity and gaiety, she invites him to support her through fortune’s injury. It did not happen to him alone: many other kings and princes had found themselves not having children (…); and he could be sure that in two years this fact had not been told to anyone, not even to her lady-in-waiting as she could not in front of anyone make it evident. And her action coincided with her words (…).43

In the Latin version of the eulogy, Bembo explicitly states that the author of these “spells” is the uncle-tutor himself, Ottaviano degli Ubaldini: May it be for a physical defect due to nature, or rather – as everybody said – having been poisoned by his uncle Ottaviano with magical arts (in which he was deemed an expert) during his entire life, he could not sleep with any woman.44

In 1502, though, under pressure from Cesare Borgia – who conquered the Dukedom of Urbino and exiled Guidobaldo and his wife – the Duke’s impotence

66

three ladies, three medals

becomes public, and rumours of Guidobaldo and Elisabetta seeking divorce begin to circulate. According to Bembo, this was brought about by Guidobaldo himself to save his beloved spouse, at least. Bembo writes: And I do believe now it [Guidobaldo’s impotence] would be less known, if the Duke himself had not made it known. When banished by Cesare Valentino, he went to Milan, to the king of France (…), who was however an ally of Pope Alessandro Borgia, Valentino’s father. Not being able to obtain anything from the Duke and knowing that both the Pope and his son Valentino had made attempts on his life, he gave them hope he would divorce his wife, as he never knew her carnally, and he wanted to become a cleric.45

Pope Borgia was obviously ready to welcome the proposal, which would have excluded any possibility of the Dukes returning to their territory, thus guaranteeing more solidity to Valentino’s conquest. Venetian ambassador Antonio Giustinian reports that on 20 August 1502 the rumour had spread to Rome, as well, and that: El pontefice se contenta dispensar el matrimonio del Duca per essere impotente e far lui cardinale; la moglie si darà ad un baron de Franza (the Pope would be happy to annul, by dispensation, the Duke’s marriage for impotence and make him a cardinal; while his wife would marry a French baron).46 On 21 August – adds Giustinian – the paperwork was already under evaluation, but on 8 September it is archived. Bembo, in accordance with Castiglione’s version in the Cortegiano, through the words of Cesare Gonzaga, affirms that Elisabetta “(…) refused in all guises to accept the divorce. Because before the love of giving birth (…) and the pleasures women usually get from their husbands, she would always put chastity and virginal living first.”47 Still later, after Guidobaldo’s attempt to reclaim Urbino, according to Giustinian and Sanudo,48 the Duke asked Alexander VI to grant him the cardinal’s hat (evidently in exchange for the total recession of his rights over the Duchy), but the Pope refused, praising Elisabetta who più presto la ’l voleva tegnir per fratello che refutarlo per marito, (preferred to keep him as her brother more she wanted to refuse him as her husband).49 Elisabetta, though, refuses divorce and shares her marriage bed until the end, living nelli abbracciamenti e congiungimenti di lui, qualunque quelli si fussero (in his embraces and conjoinings, whatever they were).50

three ladies, three medals

67

Certainly, in this thorny situation, Elisabetta kept her promises (to which Bembo refers) to safeguard her husband’s honour. However, she never lacked admirers and lovers: Bernardo Accolti d’Arezzo (also known as Unico Aretino), in a letter dated 15 March 1502 to Isabella d’Este, praises her virtues, comparable only to those of the miraculous Duchess of Urbino, with whom he says he has fallen in love. In the Cortegiano, Aretino himself calls her ingrata (ungrateful) (as she does not reciprocate his love) and he bursts into a (not so) playful display of love and fury that stems from the S-shaped pendant she was wearing on her forehead. The symbol is perhaps identifiable with the scorpion hanging from a ribbon around Elisabetta’s head in the famous portrait by Raffaello at the Uffizi.51 Elisabetta thus repeatedly refused matrimonial annulment, even when the opportunity was offered (Guidobaldo consented to it) for political reasons and personal safeguard. According to Bembo, she even refused the Pope’s proposal to remarry with “a French baron”, as a substitute for the unfortunate marriage with Duke Guidobaldo. We know from the sources that, most likely, the medal portraying her – a work by Adriano Fiorentino – was executed in 1495, when Elisabetta had already been married for six years, and that the medal was particularly appreciated by her. In May 1495, indeed, in a letter to her sister-in-law Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, Elisabetta recommends Adriano as a skilled sculptor and affirms that in the three months of his stay in Urbino he had made her several beautiful medals. The same praises for his skills are also found in a letter to her beloved brother Francesco, also dated May 1495: Li significo come ell’ [Adriano Fiorentino] è bon scultore e ha qui facte alchune medaglie molto belle (I inform you that he [Adriano Fiorentino] is a good sculptor and has here made some very beautiful medals).52 On her medal, the composition of the motto and the emblem allow us to reconstruct a well-defined augural meaning in relation to Elisabetta’s biographical events. Using the language of myth, the augural device promises redemption from the shame of her sterility: the event of a miraculous fertilisation may always occur – as for Danaë, by divine intervention – as long as she makes a vow to Fortune, fugiens by definition but perhaps benevolent. Because it is fugiens, any unexpected grace that Fortune may bestow upon her has to be caught and directed by means of the bridles, ready to capture the flame-like droplets.

68

three ladies, three medals

Her wish will not come true, despite making a vow to Fortune. Guidobaldo died in 1508, when only thirty-eight years of age. Earlier, in 1503, the Dukes of Urbino had definitively reconquered their territories and had returned to the city. One year later, they decided to adopt Francesco Maria della Rovere – son of Giovanni della Rovere and grandson of Pope Julius II – as heir. The adoption contract was proposed to the Pope in May 1504: in September of the same year, the population of the Dukedom and leaders swore their loyalty to the young heir.53 We can presume that Elisabetta, by the year 1504, had given up her hopes for motherhood. On 2 March 1505, a marriage pact between thirteen-year-old Francesco Maria and the ten-year-old Leonora Gonzaga was signed. She was one of Isabella’s daughters:54 never really loved by her mother, she had enjoyed the affection of Elisabetta from her childhood. The marriage was celebrated in Urbino in December 1509 and then reconfirmed with a solemn ceremony before Julius II in Rome the following February. Elisabetta herself travelled to Mantua to accompany the young bride. From that moment onwards, the two became inseparable, and were called the “Duchesses of Urbino” until Elisabetta’s death in 1526. In several documents, Isabella recognises the ‘adoption’ of Leonora by her sister-in-law, not only as a matter of fact, but also in official form; in her testament, drafted in 1535, regarding her daughter, she writes: Knowing her Illustrious Testatrix as the Illustrious Isabetta Duchess of Urbino, of beloved memory, not only took as daughter the Illustrious Lady Leonora, at present Duchess of Urbino, adoptive daughter of her Lady Testatrix, she treated her as her own child and exercised with her the maternal office (…) in order for her to remember her, Lady Testatrix (…) leaves her the sixth part of twenty-five thousand ducats by her Lady Testatrix given as dowry.55

Luzio comments and explains: The generous Marchioness, selfless not only to her sons, but also to her servants, maids, and relatives of all kind, in writing her will in favour of Leonora, feels the need to mention the departed beloved Duchess, almost as if it would be for Elisabetta’s merit that she could benefit her daughter, Leonora. (…) We would

three ladies, three medals

69

almost say: even if she was much more a daughter to Elisabetta than to myself, I want her to remember me.56

Therefore, Elisabetta – infertile, “widow” before her time because of destiny and later because of her noble choice – was destined to pour her motherly affections on her adoptive son Francesco Maria della Rovere, and – most of all – on her niece Leonora. However, in 1495 – the date of the medal’s execution, when the case of Guidobaldo’s impotence was not yet public – twenty-four-year-old Elisabetta could still cultivate the hope for an unlikely maternity.57 Over the centuries, the figure of Danaë had proved to be tenaciously persistent, and open to contrasting interpretations, negative (as an example of corruption by Augustine) or positive (as imago Pudicitiae and a Marian pre-figuration). The subject of the divine fecundation of the daughter of Acrisius was destined, in the repertoire of Titian, Correggio and the artists of the High Renaissance, to become an image, more or less lustful and lascivious, of the triumph of seduction beyond any obstacle, of erotic power that overcomes any barrier. By the end of the fifteenth century, when myth was borrowing concepts and figures for a still humanistic and courtly imaginary, the Danaë mytheme was perfect for the representation of a maternity miraculously invoked and yearned for. After her death, Pietro Bembo writes of her: O aurea vergine, o singolar eccellenzia, o virtù incomparabile e quasi incredibile di costei (Oh golden virgin, rare excellence, oh, her incomparable and almost incredible virtue).58 In 1495, Elisabetta Gonzaga could hope to bridle, as Danaë, the miraculous occasion of Fortuna fugiens. She could hope that what had happened to Danaë could happen to her, and she would become an aurea vergine as her friend Pietro Bembo calls her, probably having in mind the mythical young woman the Duchess had chosen as the figure of her device. The image and motto on the reverse of Adriano Fiorentino’s medal thus captured, with the strength of an icastic figure, her condition and hopes.

70 1

2

3

4 5 6

7 8 9

10

three ladies, three medals “Si fece una bellissima representatione de più significati, ne la quale erano meglio de 70, forsi 80 homini vestiti con li spiritelli et in questo numero era Jove con tutti li dei et dee celeste finti dai poeti, vestiti secondo la allegoria sua con le insigne in mane. Furono molti che recitarono versi in diverse fictione, fra le quali fu Junone et Diana che contesino un pezo con rime ellegantissime qual fusse miglior vita si la matrimoniale o la virginale, et da l’una e l’altra fu alegato eficacissime rasone anti Jove, el quale poi dette la sententia in favore de Junone, reducendola in honore de questi ill.mi sposi et la aprobò con molta rasone, tra quale questa fu l’ultima che se ognuno servasse verginità mancharia la generatione humana et saria contra la institutione divina: crescite et multiplicamini”: Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 15ff. Bibl. Vat., ms. Ott. lat. 1305. On the manuscript, see: Heinz Hofmann, Literary Culture at the Court of Urbino during the Reign of Federico da Montefeltro, in Humanistica Lovaniensia, 57, 2008, p. 5-59. Salvatore Settis, Danae verso il 1495, in I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance, I, 1985, p. 207-237, p. 207ff. Settis, o.c. Simonides, fr. 271 Poltera = PMG 543. Jean-Jacques Maffre, Danae, in LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, III, Zurich-Munich, 1986. Gaius Julius Iginus, fab. LXIV. Apollodorus, Bibl. II, 4, 4. Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV, lines 607-611: “Solus Abantiades ab origine cretus eadem / Acrisius superest, qui moenibus arceat urbis / Argolicae contraque deum ferat arma genusque / non putet esse Iovis: neque enim Iovis esse putabat / Persea, quam pluvio Danae conceperat auro.” Recently, see: Gabriella Fényes, A Terracotta Mould from Aquincum depictitng the

11

12 13

14

15

16 17 18

19

story of Danaë, in La Rivista di Engramma, 178, December 2020/January 2021, p. 117-128. Augustine, De Civitate Dei XVIII, 13: “Vel Danaes per imbrem aureum appetisse concubitum, ubi intellegitur pudicitia mulieris auro fuisse corrupta.” Vat. Pal. Lar. 1066, f. 228r. Ms. Casanatese 1403, f. 34v.; Saxl is one of the first to dedicate an iconological glance to the manuscript (Fritz Saxl, A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middles Ages, in Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, V, 1942, p. 82-142). “Si Danae aurea pluvia a Iove pregnans claret, cur Spiritu Sancto gravida virgo non generaret?”, quoted by Settis, o.c., p. 211. Ovide Moralisé, ed. Cornelis de Boer, Amsterdam, 1920, tome II, livre IV, p. 127ff, v. 5573-5590: “Or vous desclairai la merveille / Dou dieu qui en la tour fermee / Entra comme pluie doree, / Sans la desclorre et descouvrir, / Sans huis et sans fenestre ouvrir. / Jupiter, Dieu, nostres aidierres, / Nostre peres, nostre sauverres, / Nostre roi, nostre creatour, / Descendi en la noble tour / ou Dané la bele iert en mue. / Par Dané puet estre entendue / Virginitez de Dieu amee. / La tour ou elle iert enfermee / nous done a entendre la cele / Dou ventre a la vierge pucele, / Ou Diex vault comme pluie en laine / Descendre, et prendre char humaine / Et soi joindre a nostre nature.” Settis, o.c., p. 212-213. Settis, o.c., p. 228-230. Barbara Baert, Oculi! Danaë and the Uncanny Space, in La Rivista di Engramma, 178, December 2020/January 2021, p. 179-202. See, for example, the final apotheosis of the main character in the myth in the Comedia di Danae by Baldassarre Taccone, staged in Milan in 1496 for the court of Ludovico il Moro, with scenic setup by Leonardo: see Piermario

three ladies, three medals Vescovo, “Ella si siede sola sopra un scanno; io mi vo’ tramutare in pioggia d’oro”. Note sulla Comedia de Danae di Baldassarre Taccone, in La Rivista di Engramma, 178, December 2020/January 2021, p. 159-178. 20 Settis, o.c., p. 230. 21 Rossi, o.c., p. 40; but also already: George Francis Hill, Pisanello, London, 1905. 22 So writes Davide Gasparotto, Medaglia ritratto di Elisabetta Gonzaga duchessa di Urbino, in Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue (Padua, February-May 2013), eds. Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto & Adolfo Tura, Venice, 2013, p. 200-201: “La fortuna che fugge della legenda sarebbe (…) da interpretare come il passaggio dalla prigionia (e dalla sfortuna) a uno stato di grazia e di fecondità” (The fortune escaping the legenda should be (…) interpreted as the passage from imprisonment (and misfortune) to a state of grace and fecundity). 23 Settis, o.c., p. 207. 24 Gasparotto, Medaglia, o.c., p. 200. 25 Gasparotto, Medaglia, o.c., p. 201. 26 Filippo Picinelli, Mondo simbolico, o sia Università d’Imprese, Milan, 1653, p. 543: “Non basta il solo freno, posto alle fauci dei destrieri, perché questi camminino ove il bisogno richiede, ma in tanto opera il freno in quanto nelle mani del cavaliere è mosso e raggirato, al qual io sovraposi DIRIGIT SI DIRIGATUR. Così anco la nostra volontà mal può da se medesima indirizzare gli affetti della virtù, ma in tanto ciò ella essequisce in quanto alla gratia eccitante e concomitante essa è aiutata ed indirizzata.” 27 Pavlina Karanastassi, Nemesis, in LIMC - Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, VI, Zurich-Munich, 1992, p.733-762: on coins “Nemesis is always depicted frontally and she holds the bridles.” 28 Karanastassi, o.c., p. 735; Federico Rausa, Nemesis, in LIMC - Lexicon Iconographi-

71

cum Mythologiae Classicae, VI, ZurichMunich, 1984, p. 762-770: “Durch eine stärkere Betonung ihres schonenden Wesenszuges (vgl. Hesych. s.v. Agathe Tyche, Nemesis kai Themis) und ihrer wachsenden Bedeutung als Schicksalsgöttin rückt N. in der Kaiserzeit immer stärker in die Nähe der Fortuna, und wird schließlich mit ihr völlig assimiliert (vgl. Mart. Cap. I, 88 und CIL III 1125: DEAE NEMESI SIVE FORTUNAE).” 29 On the depictions of Fortune during the Renaissance: Aby Warburg, Mnemosyne Atlas, Panel 48, and the relative reading article: Seminario Mnemosyne, coordinated by Giulia Bordignon et al. (eds.), Fortuna nel Rinascimento. Una lettura di Tavola 48 del Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, in La Rivista di Engramma, 137, August 2016, p. 25-58. 30 Pausanias, I, 33, 3. 31 Benedetto Capilupi, Lettera a Francesco Gonzaga, 14 February 1488, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 31: “Benché io scrivesse a la S.V. che credeva se ‘acompagnariano’ per le parole usate per lo Ill.mo S.r Octaviano [Ubaldini] sopra la dispensa, nondimeno, essendosi poi ristretta più la cosa, la S.S. ha allegato molte rasone perché non se debba fare adesso (…) et se differirà fin a l’octava de Pasqua.” 32 Benedetto Capilupi, Lettera a Francesco Gonzaga, 19 April 1488, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 32: “Ho facto fare nova electione de poncto a li hastrologi et abreviare il termine, qual è stato assignato per questa sera che è sabato XVIIII del mese presente (aprile), et cussì cum la pace de Dio se alectarono questa sera.” 33 Benedetto Capilupi, Lettera a Francesco Gonzaga, 20 April 1488, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 32: “Come scrissi a la S.V. heri sera la Ill.ma M.na Duchessa se acompagnò cum il S. Duca et lasso consederare a lei quanta

72

34

35

36

37

38

three ladies, three medals faticha fosse indurla et quanta arte et industria me bisognò usare prima, che fu uno inextimabile impazo. Questa matina sta mo’ tuta vergognosa, né osa o ardisse guardare homa alcuno in volto; non sta anche perhò troppo grama né demessa, ma nel volto dimonstra certa venusta gratia et honestade, che non credo se poteria scrivere cum penna. Serìa ben contento che la EX.V. la potesse vedere, che veramente la extimaria la più pudica madonna del mondo, come certamente se può dire che la sij.” Ginevra de’ Fanti, Lettera a Francesco Gonzaga, 28 April 1488, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 34: “Sabato a li 19 di questo lo ill.mo Duca se acompagnò con la ill.ma M.a vostra sorella: circha questo non scrivarò altra particularità per honestà.” Benedetto Capilupi, Lettera a Francesco Gonzaga, 20 April 1488, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 31. Letter in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 36: “Fu ritornata tutta sancta et con l’intencione de non impazarsi più con il suo consorte né che più il la tocchi pechato. Et (…) io so che non hanno mai dormito insieme da poi che se partissimo da Venetia (…).” Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 187ff. As cited in: Amedeo Quondam, Introduzione, in Baldesar Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, Milan, 1981, p. V-XCIX, p. XXXIX. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, IV: “Erano adunque tutte l’ore del giorno divise in onorevoli e piacevoli esercizi così del corpo come dell’animo; ma perché il signor Duca continuamente, per la infirmità, dopo cena assai per tempo se n’andava a dormire, ognuno per ordinario dove era la signora duchessa Elisabetta Gonzaga a quell’ora si riduceva. (…) Quivi adunque i soavi ragionamenti e l’oneste facezie s’udivano, e nel viso di ciascuno dipinta si vedeva una gioconda

ilarità, talmente che quella casa certo dir si poteva il proprio albergo della allegria; né mai credo che in altro loco si gustasse quanta sia dolcezza che da una amata e cara compagnia deriva, come quivi si fece un tempo (…); e parea che questa fosse una catena che tutti in amor tenesse uniti.” 39 Quondam, Introduzione, o.c., p. XXXIX. 40 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, XLIX: “Non posso pur tacere una parola della signora Duchessa nostra, la quale, essendo vivuta quindeci anni in compagnia del marito come vidua, non solamente è stata costante di non palesar mai questo a persona del mondo, ma essendo dai suoi propri stimulata ad uscir da questa viduità, elesse più presto patir esilio, povertà ed ogni altra sorte d’infelicità, che accettar quello che a tutti gli altri parea gran grazia e prosperità di fortuna.” 41 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, XLIX. 42 Marino Sanudo, I Diarii IV, eds. Federico Stefani et al., Venice, 1879-1903, p. 568. 43 Pietro Bembo, Volgarizzamento des Dialogs De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini ducibus, ed. Maria Lutz, Geneva, 1980, p. 205: “Il Signor Guido Ubaldo, o per difetto di natura, o più tosto, come esso credea, per malie che fatte gli fussero non potè in tutto ‘l tempo di sua vita conoscer donna carnalmente, né il matrimonio exercitar. Questa cosa esso non sapendo, ché fatto non aveva ancora sperienza dell’esser uomo, perciò che dal Signor Ottaviano suo zio era con molta diligenza riguardato a castamente viver, per opera del medesimo zio gli è data per moglie questa Signora, sorella del Signor Marchese di Mantoa, molto nobile uomo di sangue e nell’arte della guerra grandissimo sopra ogni altro. Per che adunque egli, molto giovanetto, per il desiderio dello ingenerar figliuoli

three ladies, three medals come quello, in cui solo si riponeva la speranza di conservar la stirpe, ne mena a casa la moglie, dormoni in un medesimo letto due anni, nelli quali esso fa della sua virilità esperienza. Et alla fine, conoscendosi del tutto spossato, dolente oltre ogni modo discuopre alla sua donna questo dovergli avenir per malie fattegli d’alcuno che invidiasse gli suoi advenimenti felici, chiamando sé infelicissimo, sì per la mancata speranza dello ingenerar figliuoli come perché essa quello sodisfacimento non potesse ricever di sé, che per legge di matrimonio le è tenuto debitamente, aggiugnendo che, dove questo si sapesse, egli ne gli seguirebbe vergogna e da’ suoi popoli e da altri diverebbe sprezzato. La donna del quale del fatto se era molto inanzi aveduta, né per tutto ciò turbataglisi giamai, né fatto parola a veruno, udendo ciò, con allegro sembiante ingegnatasi di confortarlo, il pregò che la ingiuria della fortuna sostenesse con forte animo: né ciò esser a lui solo avenuto, anzi infiniti re, infiniti principi essersi sempre ritrovati e ritrovarsi al presente, che figlioli non hanno potuto avere (…); et oltre a ciò vivesse sicuro, ché quale per due anni non fusse stato da sé questo fatto manifestato ad alcuno, né pur alla propria nutrice, cotale da quinci inanzi a niuno lo manifesterebbe giamai. E fu l’opera corrispondente al detto (…).” 44 Pietro Bembo, Opere, IV, Paris, 1729, p. 299: “Sive corporis et naturae vitio, seu, quod vulgo creditum est, artibus magicis ab Octaviano patruo propter regni cupiditatem impeditum, quarum omnino ille artium experientissimus habebatur, nulla cum foemina coire umquam in tota vita potuisse.” 45 Pietro Bembo, De Guido Ubaldo, o.c., p. 20: “E meno credo ora si saperebbe [dell’impotenza di Guidobaldo] se il Signor Duca manifestato non l’avesse allora che, cacciato da Cesare Valentino,

73

ne andò a Milano, al re di Francia (…) [il] quale però era allegato con Papa Alessandro Borgia, padre di Valentino: niente valendo ottener il Signor Duca et oltre a ciò sentendo essergli da questi due, padre e figliuolo, fatte insidie in su la propria vita, diede lor speranza di voler tra sé e la moglie far divorzio, perciò che il poteva, con ciò sia che mai conosciuta non l’avea carnalmente e di volersi dar al chiericato.” 46 Antonio Giustinian, Dispacci II, 17; I, 96 and 110, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 141. 47 Pietro Bembo, De Guido Ubaldo, o.c., p. 208: “(…) ricusò in alcuna guisa di farlo. Perché all’amor di ingenerar figlioli (…) et a diletti che sogliono le donne prender da’ mariti, fu da lei con forte e costante animo anteposta la castità e ‘l viver verginale.” 48 Sanudo, I Diarii, o.c., IV, p. 568. 49 Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 141. 50 Pietro Bembo, De Guido Ubaldo, o.c., p. 210. 51 On the ardent courtship, ‘fighting fire with fire’ and on the ‘S-game’: Lorenzo Bonoldi & Monica Centanni, Catena d’onore, catena d’amore: Baldassarre Castiglione, Elisabetta Gonzaga e il gioco della ‘S’, in La Rivista di Engramma, 86, December 2010, p. 24-38. 52 Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 84. 53 Antonio Giustinian, Dispacci III, in Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 239. 54 Pietro Bembo, De Guido Ubaldo, o.c., p. 102, n. 4. 55 Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 282: “Sapendo essa Ill.ma Testatrice sicome la Ill.ma Si.a Isabetta Duchessa d’Urbino, di grata memoria, non solo tolse per figliuola la ill.ma Sig.ra Leonora, Duchessa al presente d’Urbino, figliuola di essa S.ra Testatrice, ma

74

56

three ladies, three medals anchora sì come figliuola l’ha trattata et exercitato in lei l’offitio materno (…) pur acciochè di contino ve tenga memoria di essa S.ra Testatrice (…) li lassa la sexta parte de ducati venticinquemillia ad essa S.ra Testatrice dati in dote.” Luzio & Renier, Mantova e Urbino, o.c., p. 282: “La generosa Marchesa, prodiga di lasciti non solo alla prole sua, ma a congiunti, damigelli e famigliari d’ogni genere, nel testare a favore di Leonora, sente il bisogno di chiamare a mediatrice la defunta prediletta Duchessa, quasiché in grazia sua unicamente essa benefichi

57

58

Leonora. (…) Vien quasi a dire: per quanto sia stata più figlia d’Elisabetta che mia voglio che si rammenti di me.” Most recent critics agree on this point, albeit in doubting and subordinating the prevalent interpretation of the device as an allegory of Elisabetta’s virtues, Gasparotto, Medaglia, o.c., p. 201: “Il rovescio alluderebbe alla virtù della Duchessa e forse anche alla sua Speranza che, nel 1495, era ancora viva, di poter mettere al mondo un erede.” Pietro Bembo, De Guido Ubaldo, o.c., p. 213.

76

three ladies, three medals

3. 1. 2.

5. 6. 4.

7.

8.

three ladies, three medals

77

Fig. 1. Adriano Fiorentino (1450/1460-1499), Medal for Elisabetta Gonzaga (obverse), 1495. Washington, Courtesy National Gallery of Art Fig. 2. Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520), Ritratto di Elisabetta Gonzaga, 1500-1506. Florence, Uffizi Gallery Fig. 3. Austrian glasswork, Scorpion-shaped pendant, 1590-1591. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Kunstkammer Fig. 4. Adriano Fiorentino (1450/1460-1499), Medal for Elisabetta Gonzaga (reverse), 1495. Washington, Courtesy National Gallery of Art Fig. 5. Danaë welcomes in her womb the rain of gold, carnelian. Munich, Staatliche Antikesammlung Fig. 6. Triumph of Danaë, woodcut from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice 1499) p. 170. Fig. 7. Danaë in a Tower, illustration from Defensorium Inviolatae Virginitatis Mariae, fol. 12r, Franciscus de Retza (1343-1427), ca. 1490. New York, New York Public Library, Spencer Collection Fig. 8. Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Nemesis, woodcut, ca. 1502. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

three ladies, three medals

79

II.4 Three Ladies, amid the Renaissance In designing the medals for the two Gonzaga Ladies, Adriano Fiorentino and Giancristoforo Romano somehow follow, half a century later, the master and inventor of the genre, Pisanello, who executed an exceptional medal for another woman of their lineage, Cecilia. Their works are inspired by Antiquity and combine their models in more complex emblems, as was the case with Pisanello. For their medals, both Isabella and Elisabetta make very different choices when compared with Pisanello’s poetics. While Pisanello reinterpreted classical figures and combined them with medieval images holding the same meaning (Diana, the goddess of chastity, and the unicorn, a medieval fantastical beast related to virginity), by the end of the century, Antiquity is reproduced according to precise models and is combined with new symbols. They are all Renaissance ‘hieroglyphics’ (the astrological sign, in the first case; bridles to control fugitive Fortune, in the second) composing encoded allegories, interpretable to any given situation: this new – complicated – allegorical figure is invested with a new meaning expressed through the motto. If on Elisabetta’s and Isabella’s devices we find a deliberate, precise reference to classical iconographic sources (at least in the case of Nemesis we do have the luck of physically being able to compare it with Claudius’ coin), on Cecilia’s medal the artist’s creativity seems to be completely free from having to philologically follow the source. By the time of Isabella and Elisabetta, Pisanello’s medals may have looked already outdated because of the combination of classical and ‘medieval’ elements, compared with the Renaissance codification of the device ‘genre’. All three medal examples we have examined – chronologically from the end and at beginning of a fifty-year period, at the heart of the Quattrocento – show the extent to which, decades after Pisanello’s first works, the Renaissance medal was still indebted to him. Nonetheless, there is also a clear distancing compared with Pisanello’s freedom of invention and use of the repertory of Antiquity. The devices of Isabella and Elisabetta (much appreciated by the patrons commissioning them because they were so original and, most of all, made to look antique) are faithfully based on the matrix of classical models, but revised, reinterpreted and elaborated into new erudite Renaissance versions, enriched with new and ancient signs and symbols. The device – Paolo Giovio states – surely

80

three ladies, three medals

does not have to appear tanto chiara ch’ogni plebeo l’intenda (so clear that any plebeian can understand it):1 it is a sort of secret language, shared with nobles by blood or intellect, only communicating to those with the ability to understand, who share the cultural and symbolic horizon of the celebrated person. However, as Paolo Giovio himself claims, it should also not be: oscura, di forte, ch’abbia mestiero della Sibilla per interprete à volerla intendere, (so obscure that it would be necessary to be a Sibyl to be able to understand it).2 This is precisely what happened, though; the ‘secret’ code was lost when the Renaissance ended and the signs – only a few years later – quickly became obscure and indecipherable.

1

Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell’imprese militari e amorose, In Roma appresso Antonio Barrè, 1555, p. 6.

2

Ibidem.

III Epilogue



III.1 Il Cortegiano, a Posthumous Writing The story of the Renaissance can be told through images: its complexity relies more on figures than on words. But there is an exceptional text that foregrounds the ethics and aesthetics of Renaissance style, setting them in the court of Urbino, a grand example and stage of the Italian Renaissance. The writer declares his difficulty in ‘depicting with words’ a portrait of the Renaissance court, compared with the ease and effortlessness of painting, which keeps erudition and artifice veiled and preserves the work from the drift of pretentiousness. Baldesar Castiglione writes: Often too in painting, a single line not laboured, a single brushstroke easily drawn, so that it seems as if the hand moves unbidden to its aim according to the painter’s wish, without being guided by care or any skill, clearly reveals the excellence of the craftsman.1

Now, the writing style too has to recover its rapport with a mimesis of real life, which is a peculiarity of Art. For this assimilation – by mimetic means between words and images, according to an uncommon rhetorical tradition – Castiglione reaches the definition of writing (even literary writing) as a form of incisive script. Writing is really nothing but a form of speech, which still remains after we have spoken, as if it were an image or rather the life of our words.2

In the Cortegiano, “writing”, considered as quasi imagine (as if it were an image), proposes itself as a distant echo of live words, and evokes a themed dialogue, among nobilissimi ingegni (very noble talents), set in the court of Urbino over four evenings during the winter of 1507. The background to everything is court life, entirely dedicated to the sophisticated pleasures of the body and mind,

84

three ladies, three medals

and the research revolves around the figure of the Lady. In this context, some “ingenious games” (i.e. devices) are invented: The custom of all the gentlemen of the house was to betake themselves straightaway after supper to my lady Duchess; where – among the other pleasant pastimes and music and dancing that were continually practiced – sometimes neat questions were proposed, sometimes ingenious games were devised at the choice of one or another, in which under various disguises the company disclosed their thoughts figuratively to whom they liked best. Sometimes other discussions arose about different matters, or biting retorts passed lightly back and forth. Often “devices” (imprese), as we now call them, were displayed.3

The portrait Baldesar Castiglione depicts is not a generic fresco of life at court; it is centred on a specific subject: during the four evenings acted in the Cortegiano, the discourse is focused on “portraying by words a perfect Courtier.”4 Even in this formulation, suggestive metaphorical borrowing is perceived in the artistic lexicon: it is indeed a work pointing to the construction of an image. Compared with literary treatises based on an argumentative and prescriptive system, here the “noble talents” who cooperate “to portray the perfect courtier” put themselves in front of a white canvas, as if they were painters themselves. Their words, like brush-strokes, define the traits of a personality whose peculiarities and virtues are gradually delineated by interaction with different lines of reasoning, by connections and choices that gradually become more and more clearly defined. When Baldesar Castiglione in his book composed and evoked the figure of the perfetto cortegiano, that “courtier” – as a synthesis of the ethical and aesthetic virtues of the homo renascimentalis – and the context of his definition no longer existed. The divergence is due to historical and cultural events that occurred in the chronological period – about twenty years – that separates the literary fiction from the publication of his book. In this specific case, this gap should not be ascribed to the topos of genre, which (from Plato to Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria) conventionally foresees a certain temporal span between the chronological setting and the final draft. As Castiglione says, for many years he felt “an urgence of memory”, and only belatedly did he reach its fulfilment. Since the dedicatory letter and the beginning of Book I, the Cortegiano describes itself as a posthumous writing. When the text is published (in 1528, a year after the fateful

epilogue

85

sack of Rome), the court of Urbino – depicted as the paradigm of a perfect Renaissance context – is already completely disempowered: the Montefeltro family is extinct, and all the main characters are dead. Castiglione himself, who will die a year later, writes in the Preface: I resolve to revise the book at once (…) with the intent to publish it (…). And so, to carry out this plan, I began to read the book again; and touched at the very outset by the title (…), I was saddened not a little, and far more so as I went on, by the thought that most of the personages introduced in the discussion were already dead. (…) Messer Alfonso Ariosto (to whom the work is dedicated) is also dead (…). Likewise Duke Giuliano de’ Medici (…), Messer Bernardo (…) too, is dead. Dead also is my lord Ottaviano Fregoso (…). And of those mentioned in my book many more besides are dead, to whom nature seemed to promise a very long life. But what should not be told without tears is that my lady Duchess [Elisabetta Gonzaga], too, is also dead.5

In the preface to Book IV, the author records the recent death of three other rarissimi gentilomini (very rare gentlemen) who take part in the dialogue: Gaspare Pallavicino, Cesare Gonzaga, and Roberto da Bari. The literary fiction revives the Renaissance theatre, but the text is saturated with the nostalgia of a lost time, by the sense of an irreparable dissolution. According to the same mechanism by which, from the second half of the Cinquecento, iconographic repertoires proliferate – an excess of taxonomy urged by the angst of oblivion – only ex post memory is activated for a world perceived as definitively lost. Il Libro del Cortegiano is set at the heart of the Renaissance: its drafting, chronologically, is on the edge of the dark shadow cast by the Reformation on the Renaissance revolution. Baldesar Castiglione tells, narrates, and sets the mise-en-scène in the Renaissance fearing the decay of memory, to prevent its loss. One of the most brilliant Renaissance mottos, serio ludere (playing seriously), is well represented in the Cortegiano but, by the time of the book’s publication, is outdated. In 1528, in the months following the sack of Rome, this signature style could only be an object of commemoration and no longer an actual aesthetic practice. The evoked scenario (thus consigned to memory) reproduces the ethical values of chivalry and courtship, crossing over the models derived from

86

three ladies, three medals

Antiquity and the Renaissance aesthetics of Grace and sprezzatura. Parea che questa fosse una catena che tutti in amor tenesse uniti (and it seemed as if this were a chain that held us all linked in love).6 All of them appeared as kind, virtuous political men in dialogue with cleverness and erudition, playing, laughing, just as in Plato’s Symposium. They are referring to noble men and women, of such nobility that it coincides with Grace – the ineffable gift of nature – but in the Cortegiano is also presented as a precise style of life, as a cultural code that can be described and shared. As in the most mature and highest lesson of classical Ethics, virtue is perfectible, but on the other hand it is also true that Grace lies in un sangue (a certain blood). It is an innate essence. Castiglione writes as follows about Ippolito d’Este: His person, his aspect, his words and all his movements are so disposed and imbued with this grace, that (…) likewise in conversation with men and women of every rank, in games, in pleasantry and in banter, he has a certain sweetness and manners so gracious, that whoso speak with him or even see him, must remain attached to him forever. But (…) there is a middle state between perfect grace on the one hand and senseless folly on the other; and those who are not thus perfectly endowed by nature, with study and toil can in great part polish and amend their natural defects. Besides his noble birth, then, I would have the Courtier favoured in this regard also, and endowed by nature not only with talent and beauty of person and feature, but with a certain grace and (as we say) air that shall make him at first sight pleasing and agreeable to all who see him.7

A more specific expression of the Aesthetics of Grace is sprezzatura. Possibly using a new word, to practice in everything a certain nonchalance that shall conceal design and show that what is done and said is done without effort and almost without thought.8

The implicit comparison is again with the practice of the painters’ brush strokes, as clarified elsewhere in the text, that are only seemingly easy and spontaneous. That sublime Grace, innate and at the same time cultivated with care, is – most of all – an effect of love. The Cortegiano records the echo of neo-Platonic

epilogue

87

aesthetics, already partially remoralised: affections and passions are not censored because they sono favorevoli alla virtù (are helpful to virtue). Strength, justice, magnanimity, and carefulness are aiutate dagli affetti (aided by the passions).9 Pietro Bembo, one of the famous interlocutors, is trusted to newly formulate the Platonic theory of beauty and love as manifest signs of God’s existence and of his emanation on earthly bodies: Speaking of the beauty we have in mind, which is only seen in the bodies and especially in the faces of men, and which excites this ardent desire that we call love – we will say that it is an effluence of divine goodness.10

Love is ardente desiderio (an ardent desire), peculiar to human nature and for this reason it is not to be nourished with quello che è commune alle bestie (that which is common in beasts); but it has to be addressed and directed towards santissimi misterii di Amore (Love’s most sacred mysteries). In this direction, Love fully maintains its carnal value, but also induces to practice l’alto sentire (the lofty and noble mind), fuor dalla consuetudine del profano vulgo (out of the usual, common habits).11 Even the practice of physical body contact is initiation to loftiness and beauty. Every love gesture, in this sense, is a path – an access to the elevation of souls and to the Truth: Hence a man delights to join his mouth to that of his beloved in a kiss, not in order to arouse any unseemly desire in him, but because he feels that bond to be the opening of a passage between their souls, which, being each drawn by desire for the other, pour themselves each into the other’s body by turn, and so commingle that each has two souls, and a single soul (thus composed of these two) rules as it were over two bodies.12

The last scene of the Cortegiano includes a hymn to Love, which evokes – as a topic – the turning point of the Renaissance style of erotic philosophy, also retracing Nicholas of Cusa’s idea about the existence of a sensorial trace of the divine essence: the physical remnant of a celestial contact, avidly attracting the lover chasing the loved one, in God’s footsteps:

88

three ladies, three medals

The soul (…) is conscious of a certain far-off perfume of true angelic beauty, and ravished by the splendour of that light, she begins to kindle and pursues it so eagerly that she almost becomes phrensied with desire to unite itself to that beauty, thinking that she has found God’s footstep, in the contemplation of which she seeks to rest as in her beatific end.13

These words, attributed in the text to Pietro Bembo, sound by now like the testimony of a concluded experience, with no actual grip on the present. That court exists no longer: the ghosts of Antiquity are fading away, waiting to reappear in other shapes. One of the interlocutors of the Cortegiano is Giuliano de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s youngest son, born in 1479, a year after the Pazzi conspiracy, named after Lorenzo’s brother, assassinated in the 1478 conspiracy. He is a weak, chronically ill boy: his infirmitas prevents him from living up to the events. He will not be, as he should, the recipient of The Prince, which Machiavelli intended to dedicate to him. In 1515, he will be incapable of assuming supreme command of the Pope’s army against the French, as Leo X, a Medici Pope, would have wanted. Destined to die in 1516 when only thirty-seven years of age, Giuliano, la cui bontà e nobil cortesia meritava più lungamente dal mondo esser goduta (whose kindness and noble courtesy deserved to be enjoyed longer by the world),14 in the Cortegiano plays the role of a distinguished persona dramatis: the most courteous passages of the dialogue are given to his grace and his wisdom. In Book III, Giuliano is the defender and the champion of a representation of female virtues, rejecting the misogynous ideas of Gaspare Pallavicino – supported by the Doge of Genoa, Ottaviano Fregoso – but also distancing himself from the acknowledgements of feminine physical virtues affirmed by Cesare Gonzaga. Against a long tradition stemming from naturalistic motivations of women’s inferiority adduced by Aristotle (in the text, explicitly il vostro filosofo nei suoi Problemi, i.e. “your philosopher in his Problems”),15 Giuliano affirms the precept of a fermezza e stabilità della donna (woman’s firmness and constancy), opposing man’s inconsistency, l’instabilità dell’omo.16 A chain of virtues descends from the premises of ‘natural’ order, in Giuliano’s reconstruction, which previously was attributed to the “perfect courtier man” and now seems to merge more coherently in the portrait of the “perfect courtier woman”, actually represented by Lady Elisabetta.

epilogue

89

I believe that many faculties of the mind are necessary to woman as to man; likewise gentle birth, to avoid affectation, to be naturally graceful in all her doings, to be mannerly, clever, prudent, not arrogant, not envious, not slanderous, not vain, not quarrelsome, not silly.17

“I wish this Lady to have knowledge of letters, music, painting, and to know how to dance and make merry”,18 – a Lady aware of the peculiar qualities of her Grace: And if she is conscious of possessing a bright and cheerful beauty, she ought to set it off with movements, words and dress all tending towards the cheerful; so too, another, who feels that her style is gentle and serious, ought to accompany it with fashions of that sort, in order to enhance that which is the gift of nature.19

A strong, confident woman, capable of facing any topic in the right measure of her Grace: Thus, in her wish to be thought good and pure, the Lady ought not to be so coy and seem to abhor company and talk that are a little free, or to take her leave as soon as she finds herself therein.20

III. 2 The Lady in the Palace Giuliano proposes as exempla virtutum, a series of well-read, famous, strong women: artists, writers, leaders, and queens, already well-known from istorie antiche (ancient histories) and present times, whose glory glows benché gli omini sempre siano stati parcissimi nello scrivere le laudi delle donne (albeit men have always been very frugal in writing women’s praises).21 The praise of women, which condensed the fundamental virtues of the “perfect courtier”, lies at the heart of Castiglione’s work and is discussed thoroughly. However, this female figure’s representation is not an abstract recreation of an ideal model nor a paradoxical game of sophistic overturning of common preconceptions. In Giuliano’s presence, taking in these words - and guiding the ludus of the entire dialogue - is the very real, physical figure of a real Woman: Elisabetta Gonzaga, the Duchess:

90

three ladies, three medals

For if ever in a single body there were joined wisdom, grace, beauty, capacity, tact, humanity, and every other gentle quality, – in her they are so united that they form a chain that completes and adorns her every movement with all these qualities at once.22

As Amedeo Quondam observes, the way the circle of interlocutors moves around the Dukes’absence due to his ill-health, is emblematic.23 At the empty centre of the Palace, at the heart of this posthumous gathering – the ultimate Renaissance painting – the impeccable Elisabetta, admired by Aretino and Pietro Bembo, chooses to be a vidua in vita (widow in life) of the impotent Guidobaldo, and hides in the scorpion decorating her forehead (sign of lust) the secret of her deep unhappiness.24 The game of a dialogue in the form of a “chain of love” acted out in her presence recalls a lost paradise. Bembo writes on the effect of Love: The eyes (…) receive the image of her beauty and fashion it with a thousand various ornaments. Hence the soul delights and trembles with awe and yet rejoices, and as in a stupor feels not only pleasure, but that fear and reverence which we are wont to have for sacred things and speaks of being in paradise.25

The image of paradise is recalled, but no longer represents Botticelli’s garden where Venus reigns and the Graces dance; it is no longer the architectural cloister of Giovanni Bellini’s Holy Allegory, where the putti play at the feet of the Lady, reviving life via Art in the fenced garden, against Nature outside. Spectral figures converse in the night about a world that cannot be brought back to life; it can only be given to memory through words – weary substitutes of ancient, strong figures. Giuliano de’ Medici is no longer Lorenzo’s brother – whose love, death, and glory had been celebrated in the Garden of Venus – but a melancholic figure of infirmitas and decay. In the Cortegiano, the discourses on grace, nonchalance, and Love take place at night, in the dark, where spectral projections summoned by Castiglione may again exist – just for a moment. It is enough to leave a trace in memory. At the end of the dialogue’s fourth night, daylight seeps in: ‘How until this evening?’ said my lady Duchess. Messer Cesare replied ‘Because it is already day’; and he showed her the light that was beginning to come in through the cracks at the windows.26

epilogue

91

When opening the windows, they see: A beautiful dawn of rosy hue was already born in the east, and that all the stars had vanished save Venus, sweet mistress of the sky, who holds the bonds of night and day.27

This is the very moment when the ghosts of the gods lose solidity, as they fade away. Soon, a preoccupied Jupiter – troubled by serious problems about his own ontological essence – will promise the Olympian gods a ‘reformist’ policy in order not to be ‘reformed’ himself: Jupiter, because of compelling necessities, greatly fears not being Jupiter. (…) He has commanded his blacksmith, Vulcan, not to work on Feast days; he has commanded Bacchus not to convene his court (…). He has ordered Cupid to cease wandering in the presence of men, heroes, and gods unclad, as is his custom.28

The alternative that Jupiter proposes to the convened gods is double-edged and, in any case, destructive. The first is to farsi bestie (become beasts), and in particular bestie del cielo (beasts of the sky): to undergo the neutralising device of catasterismus, already experienced in Late Antiquity. The other alternative, the final solution, is to retire and surrender, purged of their sinful excesses by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; in other words, to discard the power of their images and desist, dissimulate, and reduce themselves to allegorical ‘sayings’. As Giordano Bruno argued, the sixteenth century would witness the triumph of the “Foolish Metaphor, Vain Analogy, Ineffectual Anagogy, Silly Tropology and Obscure Figuration.”29 In the closing page of the Cortegiano, the friends open their windows wide to the light that finds them reasoning about Grace and Love. They see Venus become a star set against the backdrop of the rosy aurora. Except it is but an optical illusion. An instant earlier, it was the offensive white dawn of a new era.

92 1

2

3

4 5

three ladies, three medals Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, XXVII: “Spesso ancor nella pittura una linea sola non stentata, un sol colpo di pennello tirato facilmente, di modo che paia che la mano, senza esser guidata da studio o arte alcuno, vada per se stessa al suo termine secondo la intenzion del pittore, scopre chiaramente la eccellenzia dell’artefice.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, XXIX: “La scrittura non è altro che una forma di parlare che resta ancor poi che l’omo ha parlato, e quasi un’immagine o più presto vita delle parole.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, V: “Consuetudine di tutti i gentiluomini della casa era ridursi subito dopo cena alla Signora Duchessa; dove, tra le altre piacevoli feste musiche e danze che continuamente si usavano, talor si proponevano belle questioni, talor si faceano alcuni giochi ingeniosi ad arbitrio or d’uno or d’un altro, ne’ quali sotto varii velami spesso scoprivano i circostanti allegoricamente i pensieri sui a chi più loro piaceva. Qualche volta nasceano altre disputazioni di diverse materie, o vero si mordea con pronti detti; spesso si faceano imprese, come oggidì chiamiamo.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, XII. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., Dedicatory letter: “Diterminaimi di riveder subito nel libro (…) con intenzione di publicarlo (…). Così per eseguire questa deliberazione cominciai a rileggerlo; e subito nella prima fronte (…) presi non mediocre tristezza la qual ancora nel passare in avanti molto si accrebbe, ricordandomi la maggior parte di coloro che sono introdutti nei ragionamenti, esser già morti: (…) morto è il medesimo messer Alfonso Ariosto, a cui il libro è indrizzato (…). Medesimamente il duca Iuliano de’ Medici (…). Messer Bernardo [il Bibbiena] (…).

6 7

8

9 10

11

Morto è il signor Ottavian Fregoso (…). Morti sono ancora molti altri dei nominati nel libro ai quali la natura parea promettesse lunghissima vita. Ma quello che senza lacrime raccontar non si devria è che la signora Duchessa [Elisabetta Gonzaga], essa ancora è morta.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., Dedicatory letter. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, XIV: “La persona, lo aspetto, le parole e tutti i suoi movimenti sono talmente di questa grazia composti e accomodati che (…) medesimamente, nel conversare con omini e con donne d’ogni qualità, nel giocare, nel ridere e nel motteggiare tiene una certa dolcezza e così graziosi costumi, che forza è che ciascun che gli parla o pur lo vede gli resti perpetuamente affezionato. Ma (…) posson quei che non son da natura così perfettamente dotati, con studio e con fatica limare e correggere in gran parte i difetti naturali. Il Cortegiano adunque, oltre alla nobiltà, voglio che sia in questa parte fortunato, ed abbia da natura non solamente lo ingegno e bella forma di persona e di volto; ma una certa grazia e, come si dice, un sangue, che lo faccia al primo aspetto a chiunque lo vede grato e amabile.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., I, XXVI: “Per dire una nuova parola, usar in ogni cosa una certa sprezzatura, che nasconda l’arte e dimostri ciò che si fa e dice venir fatto senza fatica e quasi senza pensarvi.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, XVIII. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LII: “Parlando della bellezza che noi intendemo, che è quella solamente che appar nei corpi e massimamente nei volti umani e move questo ardente desiderio che chiamiamo amore, diremo che è un influsso della bontà divina.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LXI.

epilogue 12

13

14 15 16 17

18

19

Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LXIV: “Perciò si diletta d’unir la sua bocca con quella della donna amata con bascio, non per moversi a desiderio alcuno disonesto, ma perché sente che quello legame è un aprir l’adito alle anime, che tratte dal desiderio l’una dell’altra si transfundano alternamente ancor l’una nel corpo dell’altra e talmente si mescolino insieme, che ognun di loro abbia due anime, ed una sola di quelle due così composta regga quasi dui corpi.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LXVIII: “L’anima (…) sente un certo odor nascosto della vera bellezza angelica, e rapita dallo splendor di quella luce, comincia ad infiammarsi, e tanto avidamente la segue che quasi diviene ebria e fuor di se stessa, per desiderio d’unirsi con quella, parendole aver trovato l’orma di Dio, nella contemplazion del quale, come nel suo beato fine, cerca di riposarsi.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., Dedicatory letter. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, XVI. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, XVI. Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, IV: “Perché molte virtù dell’animo estimo io che siano alla donna necessarie così come all’omo; medesimamente la nobiltà, il fuggire l’affettazione, l’essere aggraziata da natura in tutte le operazioni sue, l’esser di boni costumi, ingeniosa, prudente, non superba, non invidiosa, non malèdica, non vana, non contenziosa, non inetta.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, IX.: “(…) che questa donna abbia notizie di lettere, di musica e di pittura e sappia danzar e festeggiare.” Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, VIII: “e conoscendo in sé una bellezza vaga ed allegra, deve aiutarla coi movimenti, con le parole e con gli abiti,

93

che tutti tendano allo allegro; così come un’altra, che si senta di avere maniera mansueta e grave, deve ancor accompagnarla con modi di quella sorte, per accrescer quello che è dono della natura.” 20 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, V: “Non deve adunque questa donna, per volersi far estimar bona ed onesta, esser tanto ritrosa e mostrar tanto da aborrire e le compagnie e i ragionamenti ancora un poco lascivi, che ritrovandovisi se ne levi.” 21 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., III, XIII. 22 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, II: “Ché se mai furono in uno corpo solo congiunti sapere, grazia, bellezza, ingegno, manere accorte, umanità ed ogni altro gentil costume, in questa tanto sono uniti, che ne risulta una catena, che ogni suo movimento di tutte queste condizioni insieme compone e adorna.” 23 On the frame in which the conversations occur, the Palace of Urbino: Quondam, o.c. 24 On Elisabetta’s pendant-device: Bonoldi & Centanni, Catena d’amore, o.c. 25 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LXV: “Gli occhi (…) ricevono la immagine della bellezza e la formano con mille varii ornamenti: onde l’anima si diletta e con una certa maraviglia si spaventa e pur gode e, quasi stupefatta, insieme col piacere sente quel timore e riverenzia che alle cose sacre aver si sòle e parle d’esser nel suo paradiso.” 26 Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LXXIII: “– E come a questa sera? disse la signora Duchessa. Rispose messer Cesare: – Perché già è di giorno. E mostrolle la luce che incominciava ad entrar per le fissure delle finestre.” 27 Castiglione. Il Libro del Cortegiano, o.c., IV, LXXIII: “Una bella aurora di colore di rose e tutte le stelle sparite, fuor che la dolce governatrice del ciel di Venere, che della notte e del giorno tiene i confini.”

94 28

three ladies, three medals Giordano Bruno, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio della Bestia trionfante), ed. & trans. Arthur D. Imerti, New Brunswick, 1964, I, 1: “Giove per le instante necessitadi sommamente teme di non essere Giove. (…) Ha ordinato al suo fabro Vulcano che non lavore de giorni di festa; ha comandato a Bacco

che non faccia comparir la sua corte (…). Ha vietato a Cupido d’andar più vagando, in presenza de gli uomini, eroi e dei, cossì sbracato, come ha di costume.” 29 Bruno, The Expulsion, o.c.: “Il trionfo della stolta Metafora, vana Analogia, caduca Anagogia, sciocca Tropologia e cieca Figuratura”.

Bibliography Editions of Humanist Writers ALBERTI, Leon Battista, De pictura, ed. Cecil Grayson, Rome-Bari, 1975. BEMBO, Pietro, Volgarizzamento des Dialogs De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini ducibus, ed. Maria Lutz, Geneva, 1980. BRUNO, Giordano, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio della Bestia trionfante), ed. & trans. Arthur D. Imerti, New Brunswick, 1964. CASTIGLIONE, Baldesar, The Book of the Courtier (Il Libro del Cortegiano), ed. & trans. Leonard Eckstein Opdyke, New York, 1901. CORRER, Gregorio, De fugiendo saeculo, 15, in Gregorio Correr. Opere II, ed. Aldo Onorato, Messina, 1994. DECEMBRIO, Angelo Camillo, De Politia Litteraria, Munich-Leipzig, 2002. FILARETE, Antonio di Pietro Averlino detto il, Treatise on Architecture (De Architectura), ed. & trans. John Richard Spencer, New Haven-London, 1965. GIUSTINIAN, Antonio, Dispacci II, 17; I, 96 and 110, in Mantova e Urbino. Isabella d’Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle relazioni famigliari, Alessandro Luzio & Rodolfo Renier, Turin-Rome, 1893. GIUSTINIAN, Antonio, Dispacci III, in Mantova e Urbino. Isabella d’Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle relazioni famigliari, Alessandro Luzio & Rodolfo Renier, Turin-Rome, 1893. GIOVIO, Paolo, Dialogo dell’imprese militari e amorose, In Roma appresso Antonio Barrè, 1555. GIOVIO, Paolo, Ragionamenti sopra i motti et disegni d’arme et d’amore che communemente chiamano Imprese, Venice, 1556.

Ovide Moralisé, ed. Cornelis de Boer, I-II, Amsterdam, 1920. PICINELLI, Filippo, Mondo simbolico, o sia Università d’Imprese, Milan, 1653. SANUDO, Marino, I Diarii, eds. Federico Stefani et al., Venice, 1879-1903. Secondary Literature BAERT, Barbara, Oculi! Danaë and the Uncanny Space, in La Rivista di Engramma, 178, December 2020/January 2021, p. 179-201. BALBI DE CARO, Silvana (ed.), I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua, September-December 1995), Milan, 1995. BASTIANELLO, Elisa, Una costellazione di fonti antiche e di disegni architettonici. Pellegrino Prisciani sotto il segno di Vitruvio, in Pellegrino Prisciani. Spectacula, ed. Elisa Bastianello, Rimini, 2015, p. 7-26. BATTILOTTI, Donata, Regesto documentario, in Pisanello. Una poetica dell’inatteso, ed. Lionello Puppi, Cinisello Balsamo, 1996, p. 236-249. BAXANDALL, Michael, A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d’Este. Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria pars LXVIII, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XXVI, 1963, p. 304-326. BAXANDALL, Michael, Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition. 13501450, Oxford, 1971. BELLONCI, Maria, Isabella d’Este a cinquecento anni dalla sua nascita, in Mantova e i Gonzaga nella civiltà del Rinascimento, Proceedings of the Conference (Mantua, October 1974), Mantua, 1978, p. 47-56. BERTOZZI, Marco, “Caput Draconis”. I consigli astrologici di Pellegrino Prisciani alle princi-

96

three ladies, three medals

pesse d’Este, in La parola e l’immagine. Scritti in onore di Gianni Venturi, eds. Marco Ariani et al., Florence, 2001, p. 245-251. BLASS SIMMEN, Brigit, Pisanellos Tätigkeit in Rom, in Pisanello und Bono da Ferrara, eds. Bernhard Degenhart & Annegrit Schmitt, Munich, 1995, p. 81-116, p. 279-280. BOER, Cornelis de (ed.), Ovide Moralisé, I-II, Amsterdam, 1920. BONOLDI, Lorenzo, Isabella d’Este: A Renaissance Woman, Rimini, 2015. BONOLDI, Lorenzo & Monica CENTANNI, Catena d’onore, catena d’amore: Baldassarre Castiglione, Elisabetta Gonzaga e il gioco della ‘S’, in La Rivista di Engramma, 86, December 2000, p. 24-38. BONOLDI, Lorenzo & Monica CENTANNI, La medaglia di Isabella d’Este: Nemesi e le sue stelle [already in: La Rivista di Engramma, 1, September 2000, p. 17-30], now in, Isabella d’Este: A Renaissance Woman, Rimini, 2015, p. 55-72. BROWN, Clifford Michael & Anna Maria Lorenzoni, Gleanings from the Gonzaga Documents in Mantua, Gian Cristoforo Romano and Andrea Mantegna, in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 17, 1, 1973, p. 153-159. CAVALLARO, Anna & Enrico PARLATO (eds.), Da Pisanello alla nasciata dei Musei Capitolini. L’Antico a Roma alla vigilia del Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue (Rome 1988), Milan-Rome, 1988. CENTANNI, Monica, Per una cronologia (warburghiana) del Rinascimento, in I molti Rinascimenti di Aby Warburg, Proceedings of the Conference (Ferrara, February 2012), ed. Marco Bertozzi, in Schifanoia, 42-43, Pisa-Rome, 2013, p. 133-150. CHÉVEZ GOBIO CASALI, M. Patrizia, I salottini di Isabella ed un pizzico di astrologia, in Per Mantova una vita. Studi in memoria di Rita Castagna, eds. Anna Maria Lorenzoni &

Roberto Navarrini, Mantua, 1991, p. 25-51, p.83-91. CIERI VIA, Claudia, Cultura antiquariale e linguaggio simbolico in alcune medaglie del Pisanello, in Da Pisanello alla nascita dei Musei Capitolini. L’antico a Roma alla vigilia del Rinascimento, eds. Anna Cavallaro & Enrico Parlato, exhibition catalogue (Rome 1988), Milan-Rome 1988, p. 109-113. CORDELLIER, Dominique & Bernadette PY (eds.), Pisanello. Actes du colloque (Musée du Louvre, 26, 27 et 28 juin 1996), Paris, 1998. CORRADINI, Elena, Le immagini dei Signori: gli Estensi e le altre signorie dell’Italia settentrionale, in Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue (Milan, September-December 1991), eds. Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale, Modena, 1991, p. 58-176. CORRADINI, Elena, Per una storia delle collezioni di antichità dei duchi d’Este, in Da Borso a Cesare d’Este. La Scuola di Ferrara: 14501628, ed. Anna Rossi Guzzetti, Ferrara, 1985, p. 179-187. D’ARCO, Carlo, Notizie di Isabella Estense moglie a Francesco Gonzaga. Aggiuntivi molti documenti inediti che si riferiscono alla stessa Signora, all’istoria di Mantova, ed a quella generale d’Italia, in Archivio Storico Italiano, Appendix, II, Florence, 1845, p. 203-326. DEGENHART, Bernhard, Ludovico II Gonzaga in einer Miniatur Pisanellos, in Pantheon, 30, 25, 1972, p. 193-210. DEGENHART, Bernhard, Pisanello, Vienna, 1941. DEGENHART, Bernhard & Annegrit SCHMITT (eds.), Pisanello und Bono da Ferrara, Munich, 1995. ĐURIĆ, Ivan, Sumrak Vizantije: Vreme Jovana VIII Paleologa 1392-1448, Belgrade, 1984 [Italian trans.: DJURIC, Ivan, Il crepuscolo di Bisanzio. I tempi di Giovanni VIII Paleologo (1392-1448), Rome, 2009].

bibliography DONATO, Maria Monica (ed.), Forme e significati della ‘firma’ d’artista. Contributi sul Medioevo, fra premesse classiche e prospettive moderne, in Opera Nomina Historiae. Giornale di cultura artistica, 1, 2009. ECKSTEIN OPDYKE, Leonard (ed. & trans.), Baldesar Castiglione. Il Libro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), New York, 1901. FAEDO, Lucia, Le immagini dal testo, in Luciano di Samosata, Descrizione di opera d’arte, ed. Sonia Maffei, Torino, 1994, p. 129-142. FÉNYES, Gabriella, A Terracotta Mould from Aquincum depictitng the story of Danaë, in La Rivista di Engramma, 178, December 2020/January 2021, p. 117-128. FERINO-PAGDEN, Sylvia, “La prima donna del mondo”. Isabella d’Este Fürstin und Mäzenatin der Renaissance, Vienna, 1994. FRIEDLÄNDER, Julius, Die Italienischen Schaumünzen des fünfzehnten Jahrunderts (14301530): ein Beitrag zur Kunstgeschichte, Berlin, 1882. GASPAROTTO, Davide, Medaglia ritratto di Elisabetta Gonzaga duchessa di Urbino, in Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue (Padua, February-May 2013), eds. Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto & Adolfo Tura, Venice, 2013, p. 200-201. GASPAROTTO, Davide, Pisanello e le origini della medaglia rinascimentale, in Pisanello, exhibition catalogue, ed. Paola Marini, Milan, 1996, p. 325-330. GOMBRICH, Ernst Hans, The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London, 1976. GORINI, Giovanni, Monete antiche a Padova, Padova, 1972. GRAYSON, Cecil (ed.), Leon Battista Alberti. De pictura, Rome-Bari, 1975. HABICH, Georg, Die Medaillen der italienischen Renaissance, Berlin, 1922.

97

HILL, George Francis, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, I-II, London, 1930. HILL, George Francis, Pisanello, London, 1905. HOFMANN, Heinz, Literary Culture at the Court of Urbino during the Reign of Federico da Montefeltro, in Humanistica Lovaniensia, 57, 2008, p. 5-59. IMERTI, Arthur D. (ed. & trans.), Giordano Bruno. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Spaccio della Bestia trionfante), New Brunswick, 1964. JONES, Tanja L., Classical Chastity and Chivalric Tradition: Pisanello’s portrait medal of Cecilia Gonzaga, in Athanor, 23, 2005, p. 15-23. JONES, Tanja L., The Renaissance Portrait Medal and the Court Context: on the Origins and Political Function of Pisanello’s Invention, Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor in Philosophy, Florida State University, College of Visual Arts, Theatre and Dance, 2011. KAHIL, Lilly & Noëlle ICARD, Artemis / Diana, in LIMC - Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, II, Zurich-Munich, 1984, p. 618-753. KARANASTASSI, Pavlina, Nemesis, in LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, VI, Zurich-Munich, 1992, p. 733-762. KRIS, Ernst & Otto KURZ, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment, New Haven, 1979. LAZZARINI, Isabella, Gonzaga, Cecilia, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, LVII, 2001, p. 680-682. LOLLINI, Fabrizio, “Exegi monumente aere perennius”. Topoi scritti (e visivi) di celebrazione, in Monumento e memoria. Dall’antichità al contemporaneo, Proceedings of the Conference (Bologna, 11-13 October 2006), eds. Sandro de Maria & Vita Fortunati, Bologna, 2010, p. 41-55. LOLLINI, Fabrizio, Production littéraire et circulation artistique dans le cours de Rimini et

98

three ladies, three medals

Cesena vers 1450: un essai de lecture parallèle, in Pisanello. Actes du colloque (Musée du Louvre, 26, 27 et 28 juin 1996), eds. Dominique Cordellier & Bernadette Py, Paris, 1998, p. 461-498. LUTZ, Maria (ed.), Pietro Bembo, Volgarizzamento des Dialogs De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini ducibus, Geneva, 1980. LUZIO, Alessandro & Rodolfo RENIER, Mantova e Urbino. Isabella d’Este ed Elisabetta Gonzaga nelle relazioni famigliari, TurinRome, 1893. LUZIO, Alessandro & Rodolfo RENIER, La coltura e le relazioni letterarie d’Isabella d’Este Gonzaga, in Giornale storico della letteratura Italiana, XXXV, 1900, p. 193-257. MAFFRE, Jean-Jacques, Danae, in LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, III, Zurich-Munich, 1986, p. 325-357. MATTINGLY, Harold & Edward Allen SYDENHAM, The Roman Imperial Coinage, London, 1972. MAZZA, Barbara, Pisanello: itinerario critico, in Pisanello. Una poetica dell’inatteso, ed. Lionello Puppi, Cinisello Balsamo, 1996, p. 225-235. MERKELBACH, Reinhold, Die Hirten des Dionysos. Die Dionysos-Mysterien der römischen Kaiserzeit und der bukolische Roman des Longus, Stuttgart, 1988. MOTTOLA MOLFINO, Alessandra & Mauro NATALE (eds.), Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue (Milan, September-December 1991), Modena, 1991. NORRIS, Andrea S., Costanzo de Moysis, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XXX, 1984. ONORATO, Aldo (ed.), Gregorio Correr. De fugiendo saeculo, in Gregorio Correr. Opere II, Messina, 1994, p. 529-554. PADE, Marianne, Guarino and Caesar at the Court of the Este, in La corte di Ferrara e il suo

mecenatismo, 1441-1598. The Court of Ferrara and its Patronage, eds. Marianne Pade, Lene Waage Petersen & Daniela Quarta, Copenaghen-Modena, 1990, p. 71-91. PANVINI ROSATI, Francesco, Ispirazione Classica nella medaglia italiana del Rinascimento, in La medaglia d’arte, Proceedings of I International Conference (Udine, October 1970), Udine, 1973, p. 95-105. POLLARD, Graham, Le medaglie dei Gonzaga, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 383-393. PUPPI, Lionello, Il trittico di Andrea Mantegna per la Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore in Verona, Verona, 1972. PUPPI, Lionello (ed.), Pisanello. Una poetica dell’inatteso, Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), 1996. QUONDAM, Amedeo, Introduzione, in Baldesar Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano, Milan, 1981, p. V-XCIX. RAUSA, Federico, Nemesis, in LIMC - Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, VI, Zurich-Munich, 1984, p. 762-770. ROSENBERG, Charles, Arte e politica alle corti di Leonello e Borso d’Este, in Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue, eds. Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale, Modena, 1991, p. 39-52. ROSSI, Massimo, Le medaglie dei Gonzaga, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 394-446. RUGOLO, Ruggero, Il classicismo gotico del Pisanello medaglista, in Pisanello. Una poetica dell’inatteso, ed. Lionello Puppi, Cinisello Balsamo, 1996, p. 132-193. SAXL, Fritz, A Spiritual Encyclopaedia of the Later Middles Ages, in Journal of Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, V, 1942, p. 82-142. SCALABRONI, Luisa, Il sarcofago bacchico di S. Maria Maggiore, in Da Pisanello alla

bibliography nasciata dei Musei Capitolini. L’Antico a Roma alla vigilia del Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue (Rome 1988), eds. Anna Cavallaro & Enrico Parlato, Milan-Rome, 1988, p. 161-163. SCHER, Stephen K., Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, London, 1999. SCHULZ, Karl, Le medaglie di Isabella d’Este, in I Gonzaga. Monete Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 447. SEMINARIO MNEMOSYNE, coordinated by Giulia Bordignon et al. (eds.), Fortuna during the Renaissance. A reading of Panel 48 of Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, in La Rivista di Engramma, 137, August 2016, p. 23-58. SETTIS, Salvatore, Danae verso il 1495, in I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance, I, 1985, p. 207-237. SPENCER, John Richard (ed.), Antonio di Pietro Averlino (Filarete), Treatise on Architecture, New Haven-London, 1965. STEFANI, Federico et al. (eds), Marino Sanudo. I Diarii, Venice, 1879-1903. SYSON, Luke, OPUS PISANI PICTORIS: les medailles de Pisanello et son atelier, in Pisanello. Actes du colloque (Musée du Louvre, 26, 27 et 28 juin 1996), eds. Dominique Cordellier & Bernadette Py, Paris, 1998, p. 377-426. SYSON, Luke & Dillian GORDON, Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court, London, 2001. SYSON, Luke & Stephen K. SCHER (eds.), The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance, catalogue of the exposition (Washington-New York 1994), New York, 1994.

99

TELLINI PERINA, Chiara, Monete, medaglie, decorazioni pittoriche e plastiche: intersezioni, in I Gonzaga. Moneta Arte Storia, exhibition catalogue (Mantua 1995), ed. Silvana Balbi de Caro, Milan, 1995, p. 363-382. TRENTI ANTONELLI, Maria Grazia, Il ruolo della medaglia nella cultura umanistica, in Le Muse e il Principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano, exhibition catalogue, eds. Alessandra Mottola Molfino & Mauro Natale, Modena, 1991, p. 25-35. VENTURA, Leandro, Isabella d’Este, committenza e collezionismo, in Isabella d’Este, i luoghi del collezionismo, in Civiltà Mantovana, 14-15, March-June, 1995, p. 47-69. VENTURI, Adolfo, Giancristoforo Romano, in Archivio Storico dell’Arte, I, 1888, p. 49-59, 107-118, 148-158. VESCOVO, Piermario, “Ella si siede sola sopra un scanno; io mi vo’ tramutare in pioggia d’oro”. Note sulla Comedia de Danae di Baldassarre Taccone, in La Rivista di Engramma, 178, December 2020/January 2021, p. 159-178. WEISS, Roberto, Petrarch the Antiquarian, in Classical, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies in Honour of Berthold Louis Ullman, II, ed. Charles Henderson Jr., Rome, 1964, p. 199209. WEISS, Roberto, The Study of Ancient Numismatics During the Renaissance (1313-1517), in Numismatic Chronicles, 8, 1968, p. 177-187. WITTEN, Norbert (ed.), Angelo Camillo Decembrio. De Politia Litteraria, Munich-Leipzig, 2002. WOODS MARSDEN, Joanna, Art and Political Identity in Fifteenth Century Naples, in Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy: 1250-1500, London-Notre Dame, 1990, p. 11-37.

Index nominum A Abas, 57 Accolti, Bernardo d’Arezzo, 47, 67, 90 Acrisius, 56, 57, 61, 69 Adriano Fiorentino (= Adriano di Giovanni dei Maestri), 35, 36, 67, 69, 77, 79 Alberti, Leon Battista, 8, 9, 13 Alciato, Giovanni Andrea, 61 Alessandro VI, Pope (= Rodrigo Borgia [de Borja]), 66, 67 Alexander the Great, 10 Alfonso I in Naples, 11 Antoninus Pius, Emperor, 40, 43, 53 Apelles, 10, 11 Apollo, 10 Apollodorus, 56 Aragon, Eleonora of, 42 Aretino (= Accolti, Bernardo, see also Unico Aretino), 47, 67, 90 Ariosto, Alfonso, 85 Aristotle, 88 Asclepius, 38 Astraea, 39, 46 Athena, 56 Augustine, 57, 58, 69 Augustus, Emperor, 5 B Bacchus, 8, 57, 91 Barbo, Pietro, 6 Basinio da Parma (= Basinio Basini), 12 Baxandall, Michael, 8 Bellini, Giovanni, 90 Bellini, Jacopo, 3, 7 Bembo, Pietro, 65-67, 69, 87, 88, 90 Boniperti, Matteo, Bishop of Mantua, 26 Bonoldi, Lorenzo, 42, 43, 53 Borgia, Cesare, 65, 66 Borgia, Lucrezia (see also Este, Lucrezia de), 42

Borgia, Pope (see also Alessandro VI), 66, 67 Botticelli, Sandro, 90 Bruno, Giordano, 91 C Cadmus, 57 Capilupi, Benedetto, 55, 61-63 Carrara, Francesco II da, 3 Cartari, Vincenzo, 61 Castiglione, Baldesar, 47, 56, 63, 64, 66, 83-86, 89, 90 Chabouillet, Anatole, 41 Chiron, 38 Cicero, 25 Claudius, Emperor, 39, 40, 46, 53, 79 Correggio (= Antonio Allegri), 69 Correr, Gregorio, 24-26 Cupid, 91 D Danaë, 56-61, 67, 69, 77 Dati, Leonardo, 11 Decembrio, Angelo, 4, 6-11, 13, 84 Decembrio, Pier Candido, 6 Diana, 27-29, 55, 63, 79 Dictys, 56 Dike, 39 Dovizi, Bernardo (= Il Bibbiena), 85 Dürer, Albrecht, 61, 77 E Este, Alfonso de, 42 Este, Beatrice de, 35, 42 Este, Ercole I de, 42 Este, Ferrante de, 42 Este, Ippolito de, 42, 86 Este, Isabella de (see also Gonzaga, Isabella), 35-48, 53, 55, 63, 67, 68, 79 Este, Leonello de, 4-9, 13, 14, 23

102

three ladies, three medals

Este, Lorenzo de, 42 Este, Lucrezia de (see also Borgia, Lucrezia), 42 F Faella, Giacomo Filippo, 36, 47 Fanti, Ginevra de’, 62 Filarete (= Antonio di Pietro Averlino), 9 Fortune, 43-47, 59-61, 67, 68, 79 Franciscus of Retza, 58, 77 Fregoso, Ottaviano, Doge of Genoa, 85, 88 G Gasparotto, Davide, 59 Gentile da Fabriano, 3 Giovio, Paolo, 46, 79, 80 Giustinian, Antonio, 66 Gonzaga, Alessandro, 26 Gonzaga, Cecilia, 23-29, 33, 79 Gonzaga, Cesare, 64, 66, 85, 88, 90 Gonzaga, Elisabetta, 26, 35, 36, 46-48, 55, 56, 58-69, 79, 85, 88-90 Gonzaga, Federico, 35 Gonzaga, Francesco, 33, 36, 41, 45, 46, 55, 61, 62, 67 Gonzaga, Gianfrancesco, 23-26 Gonzaga, Isabella (see also Este, Isabella de), 35-48, 53, 55, 63, 67, 68, 79 Gonzaga, Leonora, 47, 48, 68, 69 Gonzaga, Lodovico, 26-28, 33 Gonzaga, Maddalena, 55 Gonzaga, Margherita, 4, 23 Graces, 90 Guarino da Verona, 4, 6 H Hesychius, 60 Hyginus, 38, 56 I Innocenzo VIII, Pope (= Giovanni Battista Cybo), 55 J Jesus, 58 Julius Caesar, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13

Julius II, Pope (= Giuliano della Rovere), 68 Juno, 55, 63 Jupiter / Jove, 38, 42-46, 53, 55, 57, 58, 91 Justice, 39, 40, 45, 46, 48, 60 L Leone X, Pope (= Giovanni Lorenzo de’ Medici), 88 Louis XII, King of France, 66 Love (see also Cupid), 87, 90, 91 Lucian of Samosata, 12 Ludovico il Moro (see also Sforza, Lodovico), 35 Luzio, Alessandro, 68 M Mabuse (= Jan Gossaert), 58 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 88 Malatesta, Paola, 24-26 Mantegna, Andrea, 48 Manuzio, Aldo, 47 Mars, 43 Mary, The Virgin, 58, 69 Medici, Carlo de’, 6 Medici, Cosimo de’, 6 Medici, Giovanni de’, 6 Medici, Giovanni Lorenzo de’ (see also Leone X), 88 Medici, Giuliano di Lorenzo de’, 85, 88-90 Medici, Giuliano di Piero de’, 88-90 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 88, 90 Medici, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’, 47 Medusa, 57 Minerva, 37, 38, 48 Montefeltro, Agnese da, 26 Montefeltro, Elisabetta da (see also Gonzaga, Elisabetta), 26, 35, 36, 46-48, 55, 56, 58-69, 79, 85, 88-90 Montefeltro, Guidobaldo da, 26, 55, 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 90 Montefeltro, Oddantonio da, 26 Muses, 10 N Nemesis, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45-48, 60, 61, 79

index Niccolò da Correggio, 36, 44 Nicholas of Cusa, 87 Nike (see also Victory), 40, 46 O Orsini, Giovanni Battista, Cardinal, 11 Ovid, 57 P Palaeologus, John VIII, Emperor, 3, 12 Pallavicino, Gaspare, 85, 88 Pausanias, 61 Pazzi, 88 Perseus, 56, 57, 61 Petrarca, 5 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (see also Pio II), 27 Picenardi, Alessandro, 63 Picinelli, Filippo, 59, 60 Pignoria, Lorenzo, 61 Pio II, Pope (see also Piccolomini, Enea Silvio), 27 Pisanello (= Antonio di Puccio Pisano), 3-7, 11-14, 23, 24, 26-28, 33, 79 Plato, 6, 84, 86 Pliny, 10, 12, 13 Poliphilo (= Francesco Colonna), 58, 60, 77 Pollard, Graham, 38, 41, 45 Polydectes, 56, 57 Porcellio (= Porcelio Pandone), 5, 11 Prisciani, Pellegrino, 38, 45, 46 Procne, 25 Prometheus, 11 Protogenes, 10 Pyrgoteles, 10 Q Quintilian, 13 Quondam, Amedeo, 90 R Roberto da Bari, 85 Romano, Giancristoforo, 35, 40, 53, 79

103

Rovere, Francesco Maria della, 48, 68, 69 Rovere, Giovanni della, 66 S Salus, 37-39 Sanudo, Marin, 64, 66 Sanzio, Raffaello, 55, 67, 77 Settis, Salvatore, 57, 59 Sforza, Lodovico, 35 Sibyl, 80 Simonides of Ceus, 56 Sostratus, 12 Stivini, Odoardo, 37, 38, 40 Strozzi, Nicolò, 5 Suetonius, 5 Syson, Luke, 40 T Tebaldeo (= Antonio Tebaldi), 47 Themis, 39 Titian (= Tiziano Vecellio), 69 Traversari, Ambrogio, 24 Tyche (see also Fortune), 60 U Ubaldini della Carda, Ottaviano, 61, 62, 65 Unico Aretino (see also Aretino), 47, 67, 90 V Valentino (see, Borgia, Cesare), 66 Venturi, Adolfo, 35, 41, 42 Venus, 48, 90, 91 Victory (see also Nike), 37-41 Virgil, 25 Vittorino da Feltre (= Vittorino de’ Rambaldoni), 24, 25, 27 Vulcan, 91 Z Zeus, 56 Zohanne de Santo (= Giovanni Santi, father of Raffaello), 55

Colophon Studies in Iconology accepts original and interdisciplinary contributions in the broader field of art theory and art history. The series addresses an audience that seeks to understand any aspect and any deeper meaning of the visual medium along the history of mankind in the fields of philosophy, art history, theology and cultural anthropology. Parts of this book have been published in Italian in: Cecilia Gonzaga come Diana nella medaglia/impresa di Pisanello (1447), in Il mondo e la storia. Studi in onore di Claudia Villa, eds. Francesco Lo Monaco e Luca Carlo Rossi, Florence, 2014, p. 129-153; Elisabetta Gonzaga come Danae nella medaglia di Adriano Fiorentino (1495), in La Rivista di Engramma, 106, May 2013, p. 107-125; La medaglia di Isabella d’Este: Nemesi e le sue stelle, in La Rivista di Engramma, 1, September 2000, p. 17-30; and in Lorenzo Bonoldi, Isabella d’Este. A Renaissance Woman, Rimini, 2015, p. 55-71. Furthermore, some parts are included in Fantasmi dell’antico, Rimini, 2017, chapters Felix medietas and Tre signore, tre medaglie. Translation by Agnese Gesiot, with a special thanks to Elisa Bizzotto and Elizabeth E. Thomson.

Studies in Iconology

 1. Barbara Baert, Nymph. Motif, Phantom, Affect. A Contribution to the Study of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), 2014, viii-134 p. 2. Barbara Baert, Late Medieval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries. Contributions to Gender and Artistic Expression, 2015, viii-112 p. 3. Barbara Baert, Locus Amoenus and the Sleeping Nymph. Ekphrasis, Silence and Genius Loci, 2016, VIII-118 p. 4. Barbara Baert, Nymph. Motif, Phantom, Affect. Part II. Aby Warburg’s (1866-1929) Butterflies as Art Historical Paradigms, 2016, X-105 p. 5. Barbara Baert, Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium “Nachleben”, Iconography, Hermeneutics, 2016, VIII-133 p. 6. Barbara Baert, In Response to Echo. Beyond Mimesis or Dissolution as Scopic Regime (With Special Attention to Camouflage), 2016, VIII- 104 p. 7. Barbara Baert, Revisiting Salome’s Dance in Medieval and Early Modern Iconology, 2016, VIII-92 p. 8. Joseph IMORDE, Carlo Dolci. A Refreshment, 2016, VIII-108 p. 9. Adi EFAL-LAUTENSCHLÄGER, Habitus as Method. Revisiting a Scholastic Theory of Art, 2017, VI-110 p. 10. Barbara BAERT, About Stains or the Image as Residue, 2017, X-118 p. 11. Larry SILVER, Rembrandt and the Divine, 2018, XIII-106 p. 12. Dominique BAUER, Place – Text – Trace. The Fragility of the Spatial Image, 2018, VIII-109 p. 13. Barbara BAERT, What about Enthusiasm? A Rehabilitation. Pentecost, Pygmalion, “Pathosformel”, 2019, X-139 p. 14. Barbara BAERT, Fragments, 2018, X-402 p. 15. Han LAMERS, Afterlife of Antiquity. Anton Springer (1825-1891) on the Classical Tradition, 2019, XII-130 p. 16. Laura TACK, The Fortune of Gertrud Bing (1892-1964). A Fragmented Memoir of a Phantomlike Muse, 2020, XVI-109 p. 17. Barbara BAERT, The Weeping Rock. Revisiting Niobe through “Paragone”, “Pathosformel” and Petrification, 2020, VIII-117 p. 18. Barbara BAERT, Signed PAN. Erwin Panofsky’s (1892-1968) “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (Princeton, 1938), 2020, VIII-83 p. 19. Barbara BAERT, Petrifying Gazes. Danaë and the Uncanny Space, 2021, VIII-109 p. 20. Barbara BAERT, The Right Moment. Essays Offered to Barbara Baert, Laureate of the 2016 Francqui Prize in Human Sciences, on the Occasion of the Celebratory Symposium at the Francqui Foundation, Brussels, 18-19 October 2018, 2021, XXXII-577 p. 21. Monica CENTANNI, Three Ladies, Three Medals, 2023, VI-105 p. 22. Laura TACK, The Knife. Temporal Ruptures in Revelation and Transformation, 2022, VIII-197 p.