Abstracts 2023 – LXIII

Saggi e testimonianze

Giacomo Pirani, Fonti greche per nuovi modelli pedagogici nella laus musicae di Franchino Gaffurio (1492)

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Abstract. – Franchino Gaffurio’s introduction to his Theorica musice (1492) takes the inveterate form of an encomium of music. However, in this case, the encomium is notable for its abundant and previously unnoticed quotations drawn from Greek literature. Of particular significance are the quotations from the De musica by pseudo Plutarch, filtered through Francesco Filelfo’s Convivia Mediolanensia, and from Marsilio Ficino’s translations of the Platonic Dialogues. The paper analyses the translators’ approach to Greek sources and Gaffurio’s reception of their translations, examining both linguistic and conceptual aspects. Furthermore, it argues that the encomium of the Theorica, rather than being mere rhetoric, serves indeed as a manifesto for a pedagogical curriculum of music studies influenced by Plato’s recently rediscovered educational theories.
Irene Villarroel Fernández, El comentario de Giovan Battista Pio a Plauto (Milán 1500): la fortuna de sus variantes y conjetu ras hasta 1550 45
Abstract. – In 1500 the humanist Giovan Battista Pio published an edition of the comoediae Plauti at the Scinzezeler press in Milan. This edition, notable for its markedly programmatic nature among Pio’s works, presents an extensive commentary in which he discusses questions of a semantic, linguistic, literary and historical nature. Among these aspects, the large number of conjectures and variants stands out, essential for understanding the textual tradition of the comoediae Plauti in 16th-century printing. This article focuses on the study of Pio’s commentary and especially on the conjectures and variants it contains, and their appearance in the printed editions up to 1550.
Dario Testi, La scorporazione del quadrato di picchieri nella con quista del Messico (1519-1521): l’evoluzione dell’‘escuadrón’ ca stigliano e la cooperazione con i tiratori 79
Abstract. – The paper reconstructs how the pike square was reorganized during the Conquest of Mexico as a solution to the tactical advantages of the natives. Spanish soldiers abandoned the pike and took up the shield, to protect themselves from the volleys of shooters. This study then investigates how the cooperation with other corps, such as light cavalry, became a key factor in the war efficiency of the escuadrón. Finally, it explores how the Castilian arquebusiers and crossbowmen participated in this collaboration and were crucial in the campaigns of Cortés. There are several historiographic sources on the Conquest of Mexico but few authors entered into the details of war, and they reported information whose authenticity must be subjected to critical scrutiny. Therefore, the same type of sources, but concerning other military campaigns of the Old World, allow us to confirm or deny several details at hand.
Testi e commenti
Agnese D’Angelo, Osservazioni su un apografo della ‘farrago pucciana’ (Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense, vol. inc. 694) 111
Abstract. – This paper offers an analysis of the marginalia to Catullus’ poems contained in a Roman incunable (Biblioteca Casanatense, Vol. Inc. 694). Most of these notes can be traced back to the so called ‘farrago pucciana’, annotations to Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius by Francesco Pucci, a disciple of Poliziano. These marginalia were held in high esteem by 16th-century humanists, and over twenty copies of them survive today. In this paper the exemplar of the Casanatense incunable is identified and some hypotheses regarding the author of this copy and his connections with Piero Vettori are discussed, along with an outline of the tradition of the farrago pucciana.
Daniele Conti, Un ‘addendum’ al carteggio ‘semiufficiale’ (o ‘semiprivato’) di Niccolò Machiavelli 129
Abstract. – The article offers a critical edition of a previously unknown letter addressed by Antonio Giacomini Tebalducci to Niccolò Machiavelli (June 3th, 1504), along with an introduction and commentary.
Filippo Marchetti, Il De genere, loco, et tempore mortis Jordani Bruni Nolani di John Toland 139
Abstract. – John Toland’s De genere, loco, et tempore mortis Jordani Bruni Nolani is part of the so-called «propaganda bruniana». Nevertheless, it is also a text where Toland confronts Pierre Bayle’s historical pyrrhonism, and therefore is a chapter in the reception of Bayle’s thought. A close inspection of the extant copies reveals many differences between the manuscripts and the printed text. This essay addresses two questions: an analysis of the variants, which allows for a better contextualization of the text, and a tentative attribution of the editorial interventions. The variants show the depth of Toland’s criticism of Bayle’s historical pyrrhonism as presented both in the De genere and in the coeval Adeisidaemon. The examination of Desmaizeaux’s biographies of both Bayle and Toland reveals the editorial policy behind Desmaizeaux’s work in the Republic of Letters and his longstanding defence of Bayle’s methodology, making him a candidate for the attribution of the editorial interventions.
Note e varietà
Clementina Marsico, Interventi d’autore nella tradizione mano scritta delle lettere ‘ad familiares’ di Poggio Bracciolini 169
Abstract. – For the first time, this article shows that manuscripts Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, 804 and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottob. Lat. 2251 are copies (corrected by Poggio Bracciolini himself) of his letter collections ad familiares. On these copies produced by two scribes who had already worked for Poggio, the author carefully revised his text and added marginal notes (in some cases even inserting the same notes in both manuscripts). In addition to the description of the manuscripts, the article offers a complete analysis of all of Bracciolini’s interventions (corrections, additions, and variants).
Florian Schaffenrath, Isotta degli Atti nell’Hesperis di Basinio da Parma 189
Abstract. – Basinio da Parma (1425-1457) is known as the author of the Liber Isottaeus, a collection of poetic letters praising the love between Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, and Isotta degli Atti. He also wrote the first large scale Neo-Latin epic after Petrarch’s Africa. His Hesperis stands at the beginning of a long tradition. Basinio takes up all the features of epic poetry except for the great love story (as present, for example, in the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid). While two figures in the Hesperis show a close connection to Isotta degli Atti, none of them becomes the protagonist of a great love story. In this paper, Isotta in Book 6 and Psycheia/Isothea in Books 7-10 are seen as two independent figures, each of which establishes references to other epic predecessors.
Susanne K Beiweis – Lauri Ockenström, Aged Scholars, Screech Owls, ‘Sagae’, and (the Power of) Human Blood in Ficino’s De vita longa 205
Abstract. – In the second book of his De vita, De vita longa (On a Long Life, 1489) Marsilio Ficino introduces antidotes to aging, including drinking gold and human blood. He recommends that scholars suck the blood of a youth from an open vein, as prophetic old women called «screech-owls» had done according to ancient beliefs. This passage has been interpreted within the frameworks of witchcraft and folkloric tradition. In this article we approach Ficino’s passage on blood-drinking in the contexts of classical literature, natural philosophy, medicine and alchemy and as related to the general agenda of De vita (including, spiritus, Saturn, and melancholy). While offering a new analysis of the terms strix and saga as denoting «screech-owls», the entire passage is given an alchemistic-cosmological interpretation, arguing that Ficino intended to present blood-sucking as an acceptable remedy based on medical and cosmological knowledge and appropriate for scholars.
Francesco Rustici, La storia ‘invisibile’. La dimensione dell’irrealtà nelle Storie fiorentine di Francesco Guicciardini 241
Abstract. – The Storie fiorentine by Francesco Guicciardini are not only the first proof of historical writing by the future author of Storia d’Italia, but are also a significant testimony to his focus on a pivotal moment in the evolution of Florentine vernacular historiography. The article traces the emergence of new historiographical instances relating to the expression of political interpretative thought, identifying in the hypothetical period a privileged textual place from which to observe its treatment from a narrative point of view.
Variazioni
Francesco Saracino, Il Messia del Rinascimento. Argomenti per il Salvator mundi di Leonardo 275
Abstract. – The enormous interest aroused by the rediscovery of Leo nardo’s Salvator mundi has not yet concerned the place of this image within the theology of the humanists. Leonardo’s masterpiece, beyond the problems it has raised so far in relation to autography, patronage, chronology and tech nique, in fact deserves an accurate definition of its Christological themes since it is probably the most perfect portrait of Jesus painted during the Renaissance.
Nicola Panichi, Cornucopia. Intorno all’Umanesimo italiano di Shakespeare 311
Abstract. – Before Shakespeare, beyond Shakespeare. Regarding Michele Ciliberto’s latest work, dedicated to the Bard, one of its major achievements is the open and dynamic definition of a shared theoretical space of affinities and distinctions, where fundamental concepts (evil, power, and magic) are measured concepts sometimes radical and inescapable, of which Italian Humanism constitutes the genetic point, the privileged place for the inventio of arguments. In the great Shakespearean tragedies that appropriate the core rhetorical baggage of loci communes from the Italian repertoire, alongside conceptual harmonies, the author necessarily highlights several deviations on crucial points, such as the lack of the salvific dimension of praxis, which fails to put an end to the overturning of orders, values, and action–a dimension instead present in Machiavelli, Bruno, and Campanella.
Archivio
Anthony Molho, Hans Baron in 1938 327
Hans Baron, Lo Sfondo Storico del Rinascimento Fiorentino 339
Indice dei manoscritti 365
Indice dei nomi 367