A History of Arcadia in Art and Literature: Volume I: Earlier Renaissance (Volume 1) [1 ed.] 1912168251, 9781912168255

Table of contents :
Contents: Volume One
Introduction
Debts
One: Coming Together (Or Going Apart) to Sing
Two: The Invention of Arcadia
Three: The Polyglot and Polymorphous Constituency of Pastoral
Four: The Wilderness's Appealing Inhabitants
Five: Carmen Elegiacum Bucolicum
Six: Some Versions of Landscapes
Seven: Courteous Love
Eight: Amor Voul Fe
Nine: Only Faith and Troth
Ten: The Pastoral Vignette

Citation preview

a history of

ARCADIA



a history of

ARCADIA

in art and literature the quest for secular human happiness revealed in the pastoral Fortunato in terra Paul Holberton

volume i (revised)

AD ILISSVM

AD ILISSVM ‘By the banks of the Ilissus’, where Socrates bathed his feet in Plato’s Phaedrus, 230b, remarking: καλή γε ἡ καταγώγη (This is a beautiful place to settle)

First published in 2021 by Ad Ilissvm, an imprint of Paul Holberton Publishing 89 Borough High St, London SE1 1NL paulholberton.com isbn 978-1-912168-25-5 (vol. I) isbn 978-1-912168-26-2 (vol. II) Text © the author All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record of this publication is available from the British Library

not e to t h e rea d e r The book is divided into two volumes available separately but they interpenetrate at many points and the indices appear only in the second volume; there is no more essential division between the volumes than between the chapters. On the other hand the chapters do not need to be read in order, as I have tried to write them as if each were a self-contained essay, thematically. They are anyway connected by profuse cross-referencing and at the same time advance chronologically and consequentially, if somewhat crabwise. Chapters 1–7 of the present edition were first published in a very limited number of copies in 2013 – as a kind of trial or prototype of which this is the production version, much revised and approfondito.

ὦ μακαριστὲ Κομᾶτα, τύ θην τάδε τερπνὰ πεπόνθεις

O most happy Comatas, so you experienced these delights Theocritus, Idyll VII, 83 Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt Fortunate old man, so your lands will remain yours Virgil, Eclogue I, 46 E tu Danteo ne gli occhi, e ne la fronte De la tua bella & amorosa donna Specchiandoti, de[l] cor gli interni affetti Leggi, e ti mostri fortunato in terra And you, Danteo, in the eyes and in the face of your beautiful and loving mistress seeing yourself reflected, read the inner emotions of her heart, and show yourself fortunate on earth Alvise Pasqualigo, Gl’Intricati: Pastorale, V, vi, Venice 1581, p. 70

con t e n t s : vo lu m e on e introduction x d e b t s xiii o n e ∙ c o m i n g t o g e t h e r ( o r g o i n g a pa r t ) t o s i n g 1 On Virgil’s Eclogues; as a distanced variation on neoteric poetic concerns; allegory and the ‘metachronic’; the basis for pastoral provided by the Eclogues Anthology (A1, A2): Eclogues II, X

t w o ∙ t h e i n v e n t i o n o f a r c a d i a 63 The Natureingang and the pastourelle; Petrarch’s canzoni 125, 126; pastoral as a pastorela Anthology (A3–6): Guido Cavalcanti, ‘In un boschetto ...’; Petrarch, Canzoniere no. 126; Alberti, Tirsis; Sannazaro, L’Arcadia, opening

t h r e e ∙ t h e p o ly g l o t a n d p o ly m o r p h o u s c o n s t i t u e n c y o f pa s t o r a l 107 The early Renaissance pastoral revival; Arsochi: egloga vs frottola; Sannazaro combining sources; the nenciale, macaronic, etc.; Venetian Concerts champêtres as allegories of pastoral f o u r ∙ t h e w i l d e r n e s s ’ s a p p e a l i n g i n h a b i ta n t s 147 Wildmen; satyrs; putti with masks; crouching nudes; satyr pairs; Giorgione’s Tempest and Rape f i v e ∙ c a r m e n e l e g i a c u m b u c o l i c u m 177 Piangi, piangi; the Ages of Man (including Titian’s painting); the nymph of the spring; La Celestina; the saudades of Bernardim Ribeiro

s i x ∙ s o m e v e r s i o n s o f l a n d s c a p e 219 From poetry to landscape (not); the locus amoenus (not); ‘katagogic’; honesta voluptas and the neo-georgic; early 16th-century Venetian landscapes; pre-‘schilderachtig’ (picturesque); the ‘book of nature’; moralizable, ‘pure’ and ‘allegoresque’ landscapes Anthology (A7): Sannazaro, L’Arcadia, from prosa ii

s e v e n ∙ c o u r t e o u s l o v e 289 Boccaccio’s Ameto and the male stare (mirar fisso); epithalamia; the ‘canon of beauty’; Neoplatonic and chivalric love; Petrarchist ‘dying’; Titian’s reclining nudes; from Petrarchism to the Neoplatonic e i g h t ∙ a m o r v u o l f  343 Tasso’s Aminta, Guarini’s Pastor Fido: the lascivious and the licit; Cieco d’Adria’s Pentimento Amoroso; the demanding female and the virtuous male lover Anthology (A8): Torquato Tasso, Aminta, Act I, chorus

n i n e ∙ o n ly f a i t h a n d t r o t h 373 Pastoral romances: Montemayor’s Diana; Cervantes’s Galatea; Lope de Vega’s Arcadia and Spanish celos; Sidney’s Arcadia; Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde; Greene’s Menaphon; Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée Anthology (A9–12): Montemayor, Diana, ‘Canto de la Nimfa’; Cervantes, Galatea, ‘Theodolinda’; Cervantes, Galatea, ‘Rosaura and Grisaldo’; Honoré d’Urfé, L’Astrée, ‘La Tonne’

t e n ∙ t h e pa s t o r a l v i g n e t t e 457 Navagero’s ‘Iolas’; Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe; paintings by the young Poussin; Tasso’s and Guarini’s madrigals, ‘Nel dolce seno della bella Clori’ and ‘Tirsi morir volea’; ‘The Passionate Shepherd’; Goltzius’s Coridon and Silvia; kissing couples by Lastman Anthology (A13): attr. Christopher Marlowe, ‘The Passionate Shepherd’

con t e n t s : vo lu m e t wo e l e v e n ∙ a rc a d i a : t h e na m e 1 Occurrence of the term ‘Arcadia’ in the sixteenth century; developments on the Italian stage; Lope de Vega’s pastorals; Don Quijote’s encounter with ‘Arcadia’; Arcadia in French pastoral t w e lv e ∙ b e i n g r u r a l 51 Erminia and the Shepherd from Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, and G.B. Agucchi’s impresa; Antonio Guevara on court vs. country; turning to the land in France during the Wars of Religion; pros, cons and realities of country life; idleness Anthology (A14): Nicolas Rapin, ‘Les Plaisirs du Gentilhomme Champestre’

t h i r t e e n ∙ t h e e n g l i s h n e s s o f e n g l i s h pa s t o r a l 111 Spenser’s Eclogues; George Peele’s Araygnement of Paris; Shakespeare’s sallies into pastoral, especially As You Like It; Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess; Samuel Daniel’s Queene’s Arcadia fourte e n ∙ de pa stor alisert a n d ita lia nate pastor al 141 Theodore Rodenburgh’s translations and reworkings – ‘depastoralisering’; Hooft’s Granida in relation to Guarino’s Pastor Fido; Dutch pastoral paintings and prints – a freer happiness; Jan Krul’s plays; ‘Italianate’ pastoral; playing shepherd: Constantijn Huygens, Jacob Cats, Johan van Heemskerck; the triumph of tragi-comedy f i f t e e n ∙ l a n d s c a p e : u n a t e r c i a n at u r a l e z a 183 ‘Ideal’, ‘classic’ landscape (not); Mancini on landscape in Considerazioni della pittura; Annibale Carracci and Domenichino; the taste for small figures or ‘subject landscapes’; Poelenborch; Poussin; Claude and the pastoral (‘panchronic’); Rubens’s landscapes – ‘aiding nature’; the notion of ‘a third nature’

s i x t e e n ∙ e t i n a r c a d i a e g o 237 Guercino’s Et in Arcadia Ego and the vanitas; Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego x 2; Sébastien Bourdon’s and Castiglione’s versions; Milton’s ‘L’Allegro’; Marvell’s “green thought”; ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ in German Romanticism; Gray’s ‘Elegy’ s e v e n t e e n ∙ a n e c l o g u e b y r u b e n s 267 Rubens’s Landscape with a Rainbow (and versions) as an ‘eclogue’; Erasmus’s Convivium religiosum and the moralizing of landscape; Herman de Neyt’s series of inscribed prints after Campagnola; a rock, for itself; associative landscape Anthology (A15): Honoré d’Urfé, L’Astrée, III, ‘Préface’

e i g h t e e n ∙ m e ta c h r o n i c u l a r i t i e s 309 Renaissance ‘metachronic’ representation of royalty, e.g. in Puget de la Serre; the Stuart masque; pastorals staged by Queen Henrietta Maria; pastoral in Van Dyck; metachronics for non-royals – Puget de la Serre’s Roman de la cour de Bruxelles opposed to Heemskerck’s Batavische Arcadia n i n e t e e n ∙ n e o c l a s s i c a l pa s t o r a l 383 Pastoral deracinated; Rapin, Fontenelle and views of pastoral ‘like the golden age’; squabbles around Pope; John Gay’s satires; Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd; Watteau’s sujets galants; the vision of Salomon Gessner; the ‘katagogic’ once more; Samuel Johnson and the expiry of pastoral; Gainsborough’s “little dirty subjects”; Schiller’s distinction between ‘naive’ and ‘sentimental’; Keats’s Endymion; the modern ‘idyll’ t w e n t y ∙ a r c a d i a : t h e l a n d 437 Pastoral as nostalgia; two instances of its afterlife bibliographical index 444 index of terms, topics, phrases, neologisms etc. 453 list of anthological passages 454 index of persons 455 photographic credits 466

introduction

I would have preferred to do without an introduction, but it seems only fair to the reader to provide some intimation of what is to follow, to justify the decision any reader must take to start reading a book – to encourage the reader to start. The book was motivated not by love of ‘pastoral’, whatever that may be (nothing definite), but by a desire to re-evaluate the terrain it implicates: this may be apparent in the book’s subtitles, showing that I think something important is at stake. In early and, more patchily, later modern Europe, happiness was mostly postponed to the afterlife. Pastoral, within rather tight limits, examined the happiness to be enjoyed on earth, including the greatest human felicity, requited passion, but not only this felicity. That happiness was the main theme of early modern pastoral may surprise those whose notion of pastoral, like Dr Johnson’s, is that it had to do with the country. The countryside was more like the stage than the play itself. But this is a point that, typically, will be revealed in this book rather than having to be made. I have also, quite often, taken a view and set out to demolish other views too often unthinkingly repeated. Indeed, that human happiness was a main theme of pastoral literature and art is not something that I wish to prove: it will just turn out frequently to be the case. I conceive this book more as a journey than as a map, more a walk than a bird’s-eye view, an exploration that proceeds forward without much concern to steer it to a particular end. Originally I thought that the title ‘A History of Arcadia’ would provide a relatively identifiable thread of reference in what could otherwise be endless indeterminate boschi, but the fact is that most pastoral does not actually take place in Arcadia and the term ‘Arcadian’ is certainly a modern one. Love, eros, is the beating heart of pastoral, or most pastoral, which can be seen not only as escapist – a view taken of it by many – but equally as subversive (if that formulation makes it more interesting to the sceptical). While this is not a comprehensive survey of pastoral, it encompasses a much larger purview of pastoral than anything hitherto published, because it considers pastoral in all the European languages (unless otherwise indicated the translations from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese,

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Dutch and German are my own) and in both literature and art. It does not even begin at the beginning, as some people would see it; instead I propose that Virgil is an appropriate beginning, rather than Theocritus, because it is surely Virgil’s making Theocritus his model that defines the genre or canon, not Theocritus himself, for all that Theocritus initiated the writing of pastoral – in so far as goatherds did not. Theories of the origin of pastoral are not very useful, indeed they are all misleading. Theocritus seems to explain what pastoral meant to him in his seventh Idyll, ‘The Thalysia’, but that is quite a cryptic document. Many discussions of pastoral, while referring to Virgil, do not seriously consider what pastoral meant to him or his time, as opposed to imposing the author’s own notion. I have tried to summarize more precisely, after careful consideration of the Eclogues, what base Virgil provided for his successors. I certainly wish to avoid the astoundingly common error that pastoral is something that it has always been (synchronically); clearly it developed, in different hands (diachronically). In following the development of pastoral after Virgil – or certain parts or themes of this development (and I skip the Middle Ages) – I have tried to avoid a general interpretation, for example of the kind advanced by W.W. Greg, that pastoral was “escapist” towards the “complexities” of court life; or that of William Empson, that pastoral was “the complex in the simple” (was he correcting Greg when he made this famous claim?); or the assumption that ‘Arcadia’ was a ‘dreamworld’ or Wunschwelt; also notions of the kind advanced by Raymond Williams and his school, pre-judging pastoral because it was not concerned with – or ‘hid’ – the issues he or they thought it should have addressed. More interestingly, I discovered that the English Marxist or post-Marxist approach figureheaded by Raymond Williams derives in fact from a tradition in pastoral that is peculiarly English, which I explore in Chapter 14: only the English conflated – or attempted to conflate – the pastor of the mainstream tradition with the true shepherd who herded sheep. There is besides a great deal of incognizant flammery written about pastoral: those who attempt to define it are betrayed by their premises; those who think they know what it is are betrayed by the lack of them. As early as 1616 the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton could declare his ‘pastorals’ not to be pastorals, so I am surely right to look for other denominators. There has been belief in pastoral as an entity, as ‘pastoralism’, as a state of mind or being, which I find untenable. In particular I do not believe that pastoral depends on an opposition – of nature to art, of field to court, of country to city – even though these oppositions recur (not only in pastoral but just as often outside it). However, whether I am right or wrong in this is not important; for the

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most part the question does not intrude on what I have to say. An enormous number of scholars – I am tempted to say all hitherto – are misled by the idea that ‘pastoral’ ‘is’ something or other; I have been happy to provide a working definition but it is not one on which I need to rely. My notes are filled with attacks on misconceptions, while the main text tries to advance ideas closely relevant to the texts and objects under study and, with the aid of quotation, summary or reproduction, to derive enjoyment from them. In being narrow and perhaps pettifogging, in the sense of trying to be precise where one cannot be, I may go unacceptably far, but one needs to draw lines to define an area. Pettifogging in particular is my discussion of pastoral in art. Here, in order to penetrate to what I find to be the important characteristics of paintings, sculptures, engravings and drawings that might be, or have been, or should or should not properly be described as pastoral, I have found myself fighting through a tangle of disseminated labels which, attached by art historians, remain untested by any grounded comparison with literature or song. Much has been written on landscape, but rather too much of it depends on rather too few contributions or ideas, and therefore I have introduced, as if ex novo, some suggestions that spread a little wider than the problem whether one can properly call this or that landscape a ‘pastoral landscape’. Very little philology has been applied to the vocabulary with which landscape is discussed – not only the term ‘pastoral’, but also that other reductive, blanket term ‘locus amoenus’, which some people may be surprised to learn, since they treat it as a perennial reference point, or at least a classical category, was invented in an article of 1942. The sequence is roughly chronological. However, the chapters are thematic, and they could each stand by themselves as extended articles, but for the fact that they interlink (I have provided cross-references) and they build – though what they build to (for example, an edifice that imprisons the pastoral) I am not going to try to say, as I have said. The journey is of greater importance. It sometimes involves stepping away from pastoral in order to see what has been brought into it – Neoplatonic ideas of love, for instance. It might be compared to a computer game, picking up points – recurrent motifs, new variations – with each chapter a new level (but no deaths, as the author of the Pastor Fido insisted). One thing will emerge, I can predict – that the nature of pastoral changes as it is taken up by different hands. There is also a continuity, however, or several of them, and these I think it the job of one who pretends to being an historian to trace. Having made the journey, having researched, written and many times rewritten this book, I think it justified to claim that I

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have made inroad into themes essential to the early and later modern history of Western private life – eschewing religion (largely), eschewing politics and war, the high road of history, obviously, and theory. The book is mostly an anthology with commentary. Uncomfortably, I have not attempted to homogenize the treatment of texts, because I have usually used modern (and therefore modernized) editions where they are available and the given text where not – introducing only standard updatings such as ‘u’ for ‘v’ in printed texts. I have generally given a catalogue raisonné or an exhibition catalogue reference for works of art. I have also not been able to represent prints and drawings satisfactorily – to have searched out the best examples and to have noted or shown their condition, state or appropriate margins. I am conscious, finally, that few people will wish to read the whole of this book, because it trespasses into several terrains or periods and it explores imagery both in literature and in art history (specialists and dilettanti in which seldom meet). My knowledge in all of them will be inadequate. I am keen to claim, however, that the book has novelties for readers of all kinds, not only because it crisscrosses territories. It makes some points. If we miss the enjeu in pastoral we miss a lot. I try here to unblinker and to retrieve.

d e bt s I regard the enterprise of this book as Warburgian; its basis is my PhD at the Warburg Institute (1989), where I learnt from mentors such as Michael Baxandall, Elizabeth McGrath and my supervisor Charles Hope. Subsequently friends there have been very supportive; so have many others, whom it would be invidious to pick out, considering that this is an exercise upon which I decided to embark in August 1998 (I acknowledge specific consultations within the text). The late and lamented Peter Campbell created the book’s design template; subsequently Laura Parker refined and executed the layouts. Her participation more widely has been invaluable. I thank in particular my friend the distinguished editor Kate Bell for her also invaluable reading. To its great benefit and my corresponding gratitude, Elizabeth McGrath read and commented on the whole book in late 2020.

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3 1 Can you hear the pipe’s arpeggio in the opening line of Virgil’s Eclogues: Tityre tu recubans patulae sub tegmine fagi You Tityrus reclining under the shade of a broad beach?

It echoes down through the ages, like the image of the player (fig. 1.1), leaning against the trunk, legs lightly crossed, though he also may recline or sit. His lively fingers on the equivalent of the modern recorder articulate sweet music, this is the essence and origin of all pastoral: silvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena you practise your woodland muse on a slender reed.

fig. 1.1 Illumination fronting Eclogue 1 in ‘The Roman Virgil’, 5th century Vatican Library, lat.3867, f. 1r

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1 For an array of works on the pas­toral, one may search (also online) the Warburg Institute Library shelf NKC 1250. One of the best known books on the subject is William Empson’s Some Versions of Pastoral, London 1935, but it is hardly a study of pastoral at all (rather of the ‘high’ and the ‘low’). For an understanding of pastoral hitherto one might turn to Paul Alpers, What is Pastoral?, Chicago 1997. This is broad in scope and refers to earlier works and approaches to pastoral by critics of the last century and the century before. One might prefer, however, E. Kegel-Brinkgreve, The Echoing Woods: Bucolic and Pastoral from Theocritus to Wordsworth, Amsterdam 1990, which is better informed about other languages than English and Latin and more attentive to motif. Alpers, for example, while citing W.W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, London 1906, does not mention Enrico Carrara’s also foundational La poesia pastorale, Milan [n.d.; 1909] or Mia Irene Gerhardt’s Essai d’analyse littéraire de la pastorale dans les littératures Italienne, Espagnole et Française, Assem 1950. A rewarding little book on the subject is Laurence Lerner, The Uses of Nostalgia: Studies in Pastoral Poetry, London 1972. The edition of Virgil used is P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. F.A. Hirtzel (Scriptorum Classicorum Biblioteca Oxoniensis), Oxford [1900] 1963, on which I have relied since school, where I was fortunate to be taught by J.K. Newman, shortly before he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and initiated his scholarly publications with Augustus and the New Poetry and The Concept of ‘vates’ in Augustan Poetry, both Brussels 1967. Commentators on the Eclogues include John Martyn, Eclogae Decem.The Bucolicks of Virgil …, 2nd edn 1749; John Conington, The Works of Virgil, vol. I, 3rd edn 1872; P. Vergili Maronis – Bucolica et Georgica, ed. T.E. Page, edn London 1960; W.V. Clausen, A Commentary on Virgil, Eclogues, Oxford 1994. A recent English translation is that by Paul J. Alpers, The Singer of the Eclogues: A Study of Virgilian Pastoral, Berkeley, 1979. Account has also been taken of the interpretation of the Eclogues by Renaissance humanists, for which see below and Chapter 11 § 3. I, too, appreciate the widely cited work by Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1987. She begins her work at exactly the same point as I do, with the opening lines of Eclogue I. Her approach, however, could hardly be more different. She believes (p. 2) that “among the most pressing textual exigencies are the relationships between the pronouns … ‘tu … nos … tu’” (“nos” is Meliboeus, the speaker of these lines), a relationship she queers by insisting on the singular of one and the plural of the other, whereas generally in Latin poetry ‘nos’ and ‘ego’ are more or less interchangeable. See further below, note to §3. Entirely against her “not, I would argue, because of their graceful memorability” (ibid.), these lines resound because they are strikingly musical and exquisitely crafted poetry, presented as such. Important though her study is, it contains numbers of unjustified statements or conclusions, only some of which will be noted in due course; it is centred on the reception of the Eclogues, greatly overemphasizing one particular interpretation of the dialogue between Tityrus and Meliboeus. The piping shepherd, or shepherd at his ease, is called by E.R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern 1948; 4th edition Bern 1963, ch. X, p. 198, the “Lagerungsmotiv”; the term is not ideal, in my view: see further below Chapter 6 §4, 18. The pose of Tityrus in the ‘Roman Virgil’ presumably goes back to a source such as Lysippus’s Faun: see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven and London 1981, no. 38. The onomatopoeic reference to pipes in the opening lines of the Eclogue was noted by R.G.G. Coleman, ‘Tityrus and Meliboeus’, Greece & Rome, 1966, p. 79, cited by L.P. Wilkinson, The Georgics of Virgil: A Critical Survey, Cambridge 1969, p. 46 n. There is an excellent analysis of these opening lines by Ernst A. Schmidt, ‘Hirtenmusik’, in his collection Bukolische Leidenschaft, Frankfurt 1987, pp. 29–36.

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3 2 This is only one of the numerous motifs that recur in the Eclogues and in time will be repeated again and again. Though he took some of them from Theocritus, Virgil transmitted them, and was the first point of reference for them in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In the early modern period virtually anyone who could read would have been familiar with them. This very familiarity may blunt some of their original novelty, or meaning. For Virgil did not take everything from Theocritus (or all that Theocritus had to give): for example Meliboeus concludes his opening address to Tityrus, … resonare doces Amaryllida silvas you teach the woods to echo ‘Amaryllis’.

These woods are Virgil’s, only. Pastoral is song, the song is necessarily played and sung in a landscape, but first in Virgil the landscape listens to the pastoral’s music – specifically a woodland landscape, removed from the rest of society, whether or not the existence of a wider society is acknowledged, and specifically a woodland music (“silvae sint consule dignae”|let the woods be worthy of a consul|; IV, 3). Though they certainly feature the ‘pathetic fallacy’, Theocritus’s Idylls are not defined in this way. The woods return a refrain; refrains, whether from the woods or within the song or from fellow shepherds, or intertextual or subtextual, are vital to Theocritan, Virgilian and post-Virgilian pastoral, but in Virgil in particular they serve, over and above their particular point, to ritualize the singers’ occupations and preoccupations and embed them in a communality, and in a diurnal and seasonal cycle apparently without beginning or end (though not immune from events). By dint of repetition the shock of every experience is muted, translated into memory, re-enacted rather than enacted, filtered through the lens of dejà vu, patinated by an overarching fatalism; even pleasurable experience is drunk as if it had been laid down like a wine – codified especially in the later Eclogues: “non omnia possumus omnes”|not all of us can do everything|; “et nos cedamus amori”| let me, too, give in to love| (VIII, 63; X, 69). Virgil repeats snatches or phrases from one eclogue to another; these phrases are sometimes to be understood as the short titles of known songs, so that the shepherds – the same personages also reappear – rehearse their predecessors’ experience, just as he echoes or rehearses the experience of previous poets, Theocritus or others. These passages, shared either pointedly or more subliminally (and in any case, over two thousand years later, there will much that we have lost or cannot discern), constitute a complex but compassable mosaic composed of a large but limited number of individual tesserae, which glitter according to changing lights

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and every so often repeat and remind. For example, Virgil concludes Eclogue VII (69–70): Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsim. ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis This I remember, and that the loser, Thyrsis, competed in vain. From that time Corydon has been Corydon among us.

This Corydon is a different manifestation but necessarily the same figure as the Corydon of Eclogue II, for the “Corydon Corydon” echoes (intertextually) Eclogue II, 69, o Corydon Corydon, quae te dementia cepit O Corydon, Corydon, what madness has seized you

and the concluding line of this Eclogue (subtextually) the concluding line of Theocritus, Idyll VIII, 92, κἠκ τούτω πρᾶτος παρὰ ποιμέσι Δάφνις ἔγεντο and from that [time] Daphnis became first among shepherds;

meanwhile Eclogue II, 69, itself subtextually echoed Idyll XI, 72, and the phrase “quae te dementia cepit” recurs in VI, 47, this time following a phrase, “O virgo infelix”| O unhappy woman| echoing – assimilating – one from his elder contemporary Calvus (so Virgil’s fourth-century commentator Servius tells us ad locum; Calvus’s work is lost). Throughout, however, there is retained what Servius called pastoral’s “humilis character”|low condition|, on a level with comedy. This humility is integral to Virgil’s presentation of his poetry, ceaselessly ironizing but not diminishing its ambition. 2 On these ‘echoing woods’ see Kegel-Brinkgreve 1990, pp. 137–46. The term ‘mosaic’ has’ been applied before: see Kegel-Brinkgreve 1990, p. 134. Virgil opposes his “silvae” and the built and inhabited environment in Eclogue II, 61–62: Corydon prefers the woods to Pallas’s citadels (arces). Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. Georg Thilo and Hermann Hagen, Leipzig 1887–1902, edn 1923. The scholia to Virgil’s oeuvre, documented from the fourth century, are a study in themselves (for an example of the kind of work that can be done, see Charles Murgia, ‘The Truth about Vergil’s Commentators’, in Romane memento: Vergil in the Fourth Century, ed. Roger Rees, London 2004, pp. 189–200). For convenience I have used Commentarii in Vergilium Serviani …, II, ed. Albert Lion, Göttingen 1826. Subsequent references to Servius (or ‘Servius auctus’ or other scholiasts) are ad locum to the verses discussed unless otherwise given. The ‘fatalism’ of Virgil’s Eclogues could be described in many other ways, for example, as “suspension”, in Alpers 1979, pp. 13–23.

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3 3 As the reader can hardly fail to notice, Virgil has Greek-named personages speaking in an otherwise untransposed Italian setting. The anomaly is transmitted even in the earliest surviving illustrations to the Eclogues, in the so-called ‘Roman Virgil’ (see fig. 1.1), in which all seems straightforwardly rustic (Tityrus adopts a pose that was widely used for a piping faun) – except that the shepherds wear laurel wreaths. They are poets. Though perforce accepted, the anomaly is actually difficult. On the one hand they are real, on the other they are patently unverisimilitudinous. Clearly Servius, or the commentary tradition in general, felt the difficulty, but whether they interpreted it adequately is doubtful. Servius stated Virgil’s “intentio” or “causa” in writing the Eclogues to have been (on one level) to imitate Theocritus and (on another level) to please his patronage or to make remarks about his own condition and own time. Acknowledgement of patronage is immediately apparent in Eclogue I: “deus nobis haec otia fecit”|god made this leisure for me| (6), Tityrus replies to Meliboeus, and it would be difficult not to read this ‘god’ – at the same time a “iuvenis”|young man| (42) whom he had met, and whose face he would never forget – as Octavian. The ‘god’ was responsible for Tityrus’s manumission, his “libertas” (27); in so far as Tityrus, as will be confirmed in Eclogue VI, stands in some sense for Virgil himself, this presents some difficulty, too: Servius seems to struggle to understand what kind of freedom there might be beyond manumission; we may ask why should Virgil represent himself in the figure of an elderly slave. The other personages of the Eclogues, all being Greek, have no simple hic pro illo – in particular not the recurrent figure of Daphnis – though a source as comparatively early as Quintilian (1st century AD) stated Menalcas in Eclogue IX to stand for Virgil (with some reason: see §17). All the herdsmen in some sense represent the poet who invented them. But they do not appear to represent his patrons, friends or rivals, since these real people are invoked instead as themselves – Asinius Pollio, Alfenus Varus, Cornelius Gallus, Julius Caesar; Octavian and the new-born child of Eclogue IV (if he is anyone) are the only ones not openly declared. However, Servius and the scholastic tradition were led to suppose that behind the Greek figures there must be a further reality and other or indeed the same real people as just mentioned – that they should be the same real people seems especially unlikely. Virgil, so we are told, was at first expelled from his own land, and under the figure of Tityrus expressed his gratitude for its recovery; but that is not the situation of the first Eclogue itself – even if it were clear who Meliboeus is – nor its sufficient cause, nor even that of Eclogue IX, where the issue reappears with greater specificity, let alone of the other Eclogues.

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3 For Vatican lat. 3867 and its illuminations see D.H. Wright, The Roman Virgil and the Origins of Medieval Book Design, London 2001, pp. 13–23. On the question of Donatus’s and Servius’s – and the whole commentary tradition’s – interpretation of “allegoricõs”, see the discussion in Patterson 1987, pp. 28–42; for a summary of Renaissance belief on the question see Sukanta Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral and its English Developments, Oxford 1989, ch. 2, pp. 11–22; see also further below, §17. On Tityrus’s line “deus nobis haec otia fecit” Patterson comments (p. 3): “So oblivious is he [Tityrus] of the responsibilities of the fortunate towards the unfortunate that he misses the ethical force of Meliboeus’ pronouns, declaring … ‘a god gives us this leisure’”: the ‘responsibilities’ she imputes are not only anachronistic (Christian or Marxist), but they are not in the pronouns, either: while ‘nos’ is a real plural later in the Eclogue, it need not be in the opening lines – or equally Tityrus’s ‘nobis’ also could be (‘me and mine’). Or is Gallus’s famous “… et nos cedamus amori”|Let me, too, give in to love| (X, 69) to be supposed a real plural? It seems that ultimately Patterson's thesis is based on the view given by Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poesie (ed. Henry Morley, London 1891, §46); see her discussion, pp. 126–31: “Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometimes out of Meliboeus’ mouth can show the misery of people under hard lords or ravening soldiers? and again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest; sometimes, under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, can include the whole consideration of wrongdoing and patience”. Sidney’s view seems to have been influenced by Spenser’s allegorical Shepheard’s Calender (see Chapter 13 §1ff.); Patterson herself notes Sidney’s distance from Thomas Sébillet, L’Art poétique françoys, of 1548, on which see further J.E. Congleton, Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England, New York 1968, pp. 23–25. See, too, David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance, Cambridge 2010, pp. 65–66; he notes that Servius sees Virgil as also criticizing Octavian, even though in general he praises him, in Eclogues I and IX, though he was not generally followed by Renaissance commentators and it seems his own construction; and Virgil clearly does not attribute to Octavian Meliboeus’s predicament in I or the great crime (“scelus”) against Menalcas in IX. A notable instance of Virgil’s Eclogues being reinterpreted (not in the way Patterson would have it) to reflect the figures and events of his own time is Juan del Encina’s Translación, discussed in Marcial José Bayo, Virgilio y la pastoral española del rinacimento (1480–1550), 2nd edn, Madrid 1970, pp. 23–64, on Eclogue I pp. 26–34. The otia that Titytus has won seem clearly equivalent to the quies or rest won after exertion, typically (in the Roman state) after war. On the meanings and connotations of otium, see Brian Vickers, ‘Leisure and idleness in the Renaissance: the ambivalence of otium’, Renaissance Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, March 1990, pp. 1–37, and no. 2, June 1990, pp. 107–54, notably at pp. 8–10. In Vickers’s view otium was generally seen negatively, even before the Christian era – with the exception of peace earned; but he should not have omitted Tityrus’s otia, also because that would have given this neutral, or positive, meaning more weight in his account. It became Renaissance practice to qualify the term (as ‘good’ or similar) when using it in a positive sense. The question of idleness arises and is discussed particularly in Chapter 12 §2, 4, 9, etc., with further references; also 16 §6, 9. For Tityrus’s otia as stemming from patronage and as necessary for the poet to do his work see Wilson-Okamura 2010, pp. 60–64; it must be in part a reference of Juvenal VII, on what would be needed for a great poet – esp. 53ff., notably 57–59: “anxietate carens animus … omnis acerbi/inpatiens, cupidus siluarum aptusque bibendis/ fontibus Aonidum”|a mind lacking anxiety … suffering no pain, desirous for the woods and set for drinking the founts of the Aeonides|. Quintilian, Institutionis oratoriae libri duodecim, ed. M. Winterbottom, Oxford 1970, VIII, vi, 47.

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3 4 Why should Virgil have represented himself under the figure of the slave Tityrus? Servius recognizes only that he took the name from Theocritus and that in Theocritus Tityrus had a lowly status: Servius calls him a “mercenarius”|hireling|, perhaps introducing a class distinction weaker in Virgil’s own day. Surely it was first and foremost an act of humility, like the poet’s adoption of the herdsman genre itself (Virgil’s figures, incidentally, are as often goatherds as shepherds, and they have cows as well). Tityrus seems the lowest of them all. In Theocritus’s Idyll III, 1–5, he is asked, or begged, to look after the singer’s goats while he will serenade Amaryllis, and Virgil insistently in the Eclogues has Tityrus told by others to look after their animals as they sing (III, 20, 96; V, 12; IX, 21–25 – this last closely reproducing Idyll III, 1–5); in VIII, 55, Tityrus is represented as the worst singer in a list of adynata (absurdities): certent et cycnis ululae, sit Tityrus Orpheus| let owls contest with swans, let Tityrus become Orpheus|. Nevertheless Tityrus, in Theocritus’s Idyll VII, is imagined by Lycidas, the mentor of Simichidas (supposed to be a figure of Theocritus himself ), singing beside him a song of the death of Daphnis: αὐλησεῦντι δέ μοι δύο ποιμένες, εἶς μεν Ἀχαρνεύς, εἶς δὲ Λυκωπίτας · ὁ δὲ Τίτυρος ἐγγύθεν ᾀσεῖ ὥς ποκα τᾶς Ξενέας ἠράσσατο Δάφνις ὁ βούτας, χὼς ὄρος ἀμφεπονεῖτο, καὶ ὡς δρύες αὐτὸν ἐθρήνευν, Ἱμέρα αἵτε φύοντι παρ᾽ὄχθαισιν ποταμοῖο, εὔτε χιὼν ὥς τις κατετάκετο μακρὸν ὑφ᾽Αἷμον … Two shepherds will play the flute for me, one from Acharnae, one from Licope; and Tityrus will sing beside me how once Daphnis the cowherd was enamoured of Xenea, and the mountain grieved for him, and the oak-trees lamented him, those that grow along the banks of the river Himera, as he dissolved like snow on the long ridge of the Haemus mountain ….

So Virgil as Tityrus is the singer of Daphnis, who occurs, in various roles, in Eclogues III, V, VII, VIII, IX, and in Eclogue X impersonated by Gallus, Virgil’s dear and honoured friend Gaius Cornelius Gallus – “Gallo, cuius amor tantum mihi crescit in horas,/ quantum vere novo viridis se subicit alnus”|Gallus, for whom my love grows as much, hour by hour, as the greening elder shoots up in the early spring|(X, 73–74). This was the famous lover Gallus – though we know very little about Gallus, and virtually none of his poetry directly, we do know he was a poet, a poet specifically of love, acknowledged not only by Virgil but by Ovid and by Propertius, who especially in his first book of elegies

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frequently spars with Gallus. As a figure evidently self-presenting as suffering in love, Gallus was a good fit with Theocritus’s Daphnis: the extremities of his suffering seem to have encompassed even his death in love, as they did Daphnis’s, and therefore the visits and exhortations of various figures to him in Eclogue X expressly echoing just such visits to Daphnis in Theocritus’s Idyll I were particularly appropriate. For example, in I, x, 5–6, Propertius declares cum te complexa morientem, Galle, puella vidimus et longa ducere verba mora! when I saw you dying, Gallus, in the embrace of your girl and sobbing out your words at long intervals!

meaning by ‘saw’ more exactly that he had ‘read’ (this was long taken literally but is surely a tribute to the vividness of Gallus’s own description). Of course Propertius was writing after Virgil’s Eclogues, and in other lines written shortly (“modo”) after Gallus’s actual death he probably intended to refer not only to Gallus but to Virgil’s tribute to him (II, xxxiv, 91–92): et modo formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus mortuus inferna vulnera lavit aqua? and then how many wounds did Gallus, dead for the beautiful Lycoris, wash in the water of Hades!

echoing or deriving this unusual notion of washing in the Underworld from Theocritus on Daphnis, Idyll I, 139–41: τά γε μὰν λίνα πάντα λελοίπει ἐκ Μοιρᾶν, χὠ Δάφνις ἔβα ῥοόν. ἔκλυσε δίνα τὸν Μοίσαις φίλον ἄνδρα, τὸν οὐ Νύμφαισιν ἀπεχθῆ. But all their threads had run out from the Fates, and Daphnis approached the river [Acheron]. Its stream washed this man dear to the Muses and no enemy to the Nymphs.



In Idyll VII Tityrus sings, after Daphnis, of the supreme poet Comatas, in verses that Virgil also redeploys in Eclogue X – verses that conclude not coincidentally with the idea that, if Comatas were to be there to sing for him, he, Lycidas, himself the ideal herdsman-singer in Idyll VII, would gladly drive his goats for him on the mountains (87): “ὥς τοι ἐγὼν ἐνόμευον ἀν᾽ὢρεα τὰς

καλὰς αῖγας”.

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3 5 So, too, one can see the first Eclogue not only as the first, introductory

eclogue but also as the eleventh, for it is the one that takes place last in relative time (although Eclogue X stands out of the sequence, and clearly concludes; so, better, one can see Eclogue I also as the tenth, and Eclogue X as the eleventh). Tityrus throughout the rest of the Eclogues is the humble goatkeeper; in Eclogue I he appears with his liberty: this new status is immediately proclaimed in the opening lines, which refer back to Theocritus, Idyll IV, 1–3, Κωμάσδω ποτὶ τὰν Ἀμαρυλλίδα, ταὶ δέ μοι αἶγες βόσκονται κατ᾽ὄρος, καὶ ὁ Τίτυρος αὐτὰς ἐλαύνει. Τίτυρ᾽, ἐμὶν τὸ καλὸν πεφιλημένε, βόσκε τὰς αἶγας I serenade Amaryllis, while my goats crop on the mountain, and Tityrus drives them. ‘Tityrus, my beauty, my beloved, pasture the goats’; 4 Theocritus, ed. A.S.F. Gow, Cambridge 1950; Teocrito, Idilli e epigrammi, ed. Bruna M. Palumbo Stracca, Milan 1993; Theocritus, A Selection: Idylls 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11 and 13, ed. Richard Hunter, Cambridge 1999; VII, 72–76. That Daphnis resembled Gallus and therefore the adoption of Theocritus’s Idylls was an appropriate way to honour him was appreciated by Franz Skutsch, Aus Vergils Frühzeit, Leipzig 1901 (p. 18): “Es war ein an sich vortrefflicher Gedanke, den liebeskranken Gallus in die Maske des liebeskranken Daphnis zu stecken und ihm nun, um eine Art poetischen Katalog seiner Liebesdichtung zu geben, Inhaltsangaben und Citate daraus in den Mund zu legen”|It was in itself a very apposite idea to fit the lovesick Gallus into the mask of the lovesick Daphnis and then put into his mouth motifs and phrases from his own love songs, so as to give a kind of a register of his works in poetry|, citing also Servius to X, 46, “hi autem omnes versus Galli sunt, de ipsius translati carminibus”|All these are verses by Gallus, carried across from his poems|. Following the excavation of a papyrus scrap of a few lines attributable to Gallus, see R.D. Anderson, P.J. Parsons and R.G.M. Nisbet, ‘Elegiacs by Gallus from Qasr Ibrim’, The Journal of Roman Studies, vol. 69, 1979, pp. 125–55; also Janet Fairweather, ‘The “Gallus Papyrus”: A New Interpretation’, The Classical Quarterly, new series, vol. 34, no. 1, 1984, pp. 167–74, with previous bibliography. For a survey of the sources on Gallus (with added comment on the fragment) see N.B. Crowther et al., ‘C. Cornelius Gallus. His Importance in the Development of Roman Poetry’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. II.30.3, ed. Wolfgang Haase, Berlin and New York 1983, pp. 1622–48. As regards Skutsch’s ideas and those of David O. Ross, Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus, Elegy, and Rome, Cambridge 1975, summarily dismissed as “speculative” in Crowther et al. 1983 – many scholars have swung back in favour of their attempt to reconstruct ‘Gallan’ material in later poets’ verses, particularly Propertius. See especially Francis Cairns, Sextus Propertius, Cambridge etc. 2006, with reference to the verses of Propertius quoted here specifically pp. 116–17; also Alison Keith, Propertius, Poet of Love and Leisure, London 2008, pp. 11–15; and Paola Gagliardi, Commento alla decima ecloga di Virgilio (Spudasmata 161), Hildesheim, Zurich and New York 2014, who discusses all the ideas about Gallus so far put forward. It is usually supposed that Propertius came to the idea of washing wounds in an underworld river from Euphorion (fr. 47 van Groningen, of Adonis – not then wounds of love), and of course Euphorion may have mediated it, and Gallus himself: see Cairns 2006, p. 81, n. 56, and p. 144.

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but now Tityrus, consistent with his having gained his liberty, is the singer, and Amaryllis is his girl. His freedom to sing was evidently much more than a ciphered complement to Octavian for restoring Virgil’s farm (Servius): it was a statement of Virgil’s prominent part in the wider Roman (‘Augustan’) mission to appropriate the forms of Greek poetry and create a new Latin literature. In Eclogue VI (1) Virgil claims the assimilation of Theocritan (“Syracusan”) pastoral as his achievement; but he did more with it than compose ‘bucolics’, for that was only the means to the end of his “intentio”. In this eleventh/tenth eclogue Meliboeus, too, has changed his status, since in earlier Eclogues he owned a herd (III, 1) – and, by the reader following on from Eclogue II, which contrasts the “dominus” (II, 2) with humble Corydon, he can be read naturally as a dominus whose herd in Eclogue III, 1, Damoetas might be driving. In Eclogue VII (1–17) Meliboeus pastures his animals by the banks of the Mantuan river Mincio; now, in Eclogue I, he is uprooted and evicted, echoing the emphasis in Tityrus’s words (I, 36–58) on the equivalence of one’s own land, the spirits of that land, peace (otia), the favour of fortune, and poetry: “carmina nulla canam”|I will sing no [more] songs|(I, 77), Meliboeus declares. As will again become the theme in Eclogue IX, the land and its gods stand for poetry, or the possibility of making poetry. Indeed this is more subtly apparent already in Eclogue I in the subtextual reference to Theocritus’s Idyll VII in Meliboeus’s heartfelt address to Tityrus, for “Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt”|Fortunate old man, so your lands will remain yours| (I, 46) echoes (also rhythmically) “ὦ μακαριστὲ Κομᾶτα, τύ θην τάδε τερπνὰ πεπόνθεις”| o most happy Comatas, so you experienced these delights|(VII, 83), these sweets being the flowers with which the bees nourished Comatas and the nectar that the Muse fed him, in the second song Tityrus sang in Idyll VII for Lycidas: Tityrus has become a Comatas.

5 For this metaphor of land equivalent to poetry pervading, even justifying the Eclogues, see especially Schmidt 1987. “O fortunate …” is associated with poetry once more in Eclogue V, 49.

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In the Eclogues Virgil created a community of shepherds, obviously fictive though they be, tighter and narrower than Theocritus’s, whose poems do not interlock as Virgil’s do. It is often believed, perhaps because his figures are so clearly unreal, bearing Greek names, that at the same time Virgil created a land that they could inhabit, ‘Arcadia’, but the setting of the poems, or the habitat of his personages, when given, is Mantua: in Eclogues I, VII and IX it is explicitly Mantua. Some licence is taken: Mantua, or the Po valley, is not known for its woods, or its ‘caves’ or ‘mountains’ (antra, montes; notably V, 6–8), or for the vales or declivities described in Eclogue IX (7–8); Tityrus’s ‘Hyblaean’ bees in Eclogue I have migrated from Sicily, indeed Corydon in Eclogue II boasts of having a thousand Sicilian sheep. The only exception is Gallus in Eclogue X, who lies beneath a rock (“sola sub rupe iacentem”; 14) in Arcadia, and there, patently, he is in pain, not lying pleasantly on grass or beneath trees to sing; nor is he a herdsman or part of their community, since he longs to join them (35–36). But, since Virgil’s shepherds form a community, they must all live in Mantua – exception being possible for Chromis, Mnasyllos and Aegle, the sole agonists in Eclogue VI and appearing only there, but not for Corydon, despite his Sicilian sheep in Eclogue II and his being identified, with Thyrsis, as an Arcadian in Eclogue VII. Virgil’s figures, then, are fictive, sometimes even contradictorily so (more accurately, they are equivalent not to characters in a play, but to a group of actors who may play different characters – singers singing a variety of songs), and his landscape (despite the specificity of its location) is untopographic, but otherwise his world is the real world, seen through borrowed masks or mouthpieces and with some borrowed props. This does not in any sense ‘remove’ it. Once again one can refer to the images in the fifth-century ‘Roman Virgil’ (fig. 1.1): apart from their laurels, these labourers in pose and costume are entirely realistic. One may also compare Virgil’s response to the realities of his day to those of his companion poet Horace in his Epodes, written contemporaneously with the Eclogues in the years either side of 40 BC, in the difficult period following the assassination of Caesar in 44 and the new civil wars that that engendered. In Epode XVI, also taking up from a Greek model, Archilochus, Horace in his own voice exhorts a convocation of his fellow citizens in vocabulary reflecting that of Eclogue I: as Meliboeus complains, impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit, barbarus has segetes. en quo discordia civis produxit miseros?

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An ungodly soldier will occupy these fine new-cultivated fields, a barbarian will have these crops. Alas, whither has discord brought us miserable citizens?

so Horace fears (this must echo Virgil) that “barbarus heu cineres insistet victor”|alas the victorious barbarian will tread down our [ancestors’] ashes|. In Epode VII Horace laments “quo, quo scelesti ruitis”|whither, whither are you hurtling, sinners| and that “acerba fata Romanos agunt/ scelusque fraternae necis”|bitter fates hound Romans and the curse of fraternal bloodshed|; this same loaded word ‘scelus’ is found in Virgil’s Eclogue IX, 17: “heu cadit in quemquam tantum scelus?”| Alas, can so great a crime befall anyone?| pointing equally to the disasters of war. In Epode XVI (its series of adynata further reflecting the Eclogues) the poet urges his listeners to abandon their city altogether and migrate to some other, distant, much better place “vate me”|with me your prophet|: Iuppiter illa piae secrevit litora genti, ut inquinavit aere tempus aureum, aere, dehinc ferro duravit saecula, quorum piis secunda vate me datur fuga. Jupiter kept these shores apart for the pious people, when he polluted the golden age with bronze – with bronze, then with iron he hardened the ages, from which a second flight is given to the pious of which I am the poet.

Whatever exactly Horace’s claim to lead his ‘good people’ to the shores of the Golden Age amounts to – nor is it clear how come the new-born child of Virgil’s Eclogue IV should be ushering in a golden age – both Horace and Virgil are reacting openly to contemporary events, and claiming privileges as poets. Virgil creates a comparable ‘pious’ community, whom he orchestrates. Virgil’s device, more sustained than Horace’s, has not only the advantage of humility, but also that of flexibility: in an arena of singers there to sing, it is easy to introduce any subject, and either to comment or to make poetry virtuoso for its own sake, to pen now an epigram or then an epyllion. The humility, however, is also important to the poetry itself, because if the Eclogues have a message, that is to say, if in the Eclogues there is anything the poet says he particularly wants, it is an ideal that can be found in herdsmanhood, and certainly in Theocritus – the ideal of “ἁσυχία”|hesychia, peace|, which seems essential to Theocritus’s Idyll VII (126) and for which Tityrus’s “otia“ can be seen as a translation; it may be

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equivalent to the Stoic avoidance of ‘agitation’. It is an ideal to which Virgil returns at the conclusion of the Eclogues, in the lines immediately preceding his apostrophe to Gallus quoted above – Haec sat erit, diuae, uestrum cecinisse poetam, dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco These will be enough, divine [Muses], for your poet to have sung, while he sits and weaves his basket with a slender osier.

So, too, Eclogue I, after rehearsing Tityrus’s ‘liberty’ and Meliboeus’s contrasting predicament, concludes in peace: Tityrus gently reproves the complaining Meliboeus: Hic tamen hanc mecum poteras requiescere noctem fronde super viridi. sunt nobis mitia poma, castaneae molles et pressi copia lactis, et iam summa procul villarum culmina fumant maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae. But here this night you are able after all [so to translate poteras] to rest on green foliage. Here I have sweet apples, soft chestnuts and an abundance of cheese, and already the chimneys of the houses far off are smoking and the shadows are falling ever greater from the high mountains.

Virgil’s Eclogues should therefore be accepted as “mitia poma” (as themselves the sweet apples) and as ‘gracile’ rather than weighty or bearing responsibility. Like Horace he offers a refuge, but not a distant one – or no more distant than the refuge of the famous Epode II, ‘Beatus ille’ (also featuring “mitia poma”; 17). This, too, is the view his contemporary Propertius seems to have taken in paying tribute to the Eclogues (II, xxxiv, 67–76; see below §8).

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If Eclogue I can be seen also as the eleventh (tenth), Eclogue II (A1) can simultaneously be regarded as the first eclogue; it is regarded generally as the first written. Its theme is love, which is the essential pastoral theme, certainly in Theocritus, though he sets it in a series of different frames. The opening of Eclogue II is taken from Idyll XXIII, “Ἀνήρ τις πολύφιλτρος ἀπηνέος ἤρατ᾽ἐφάβω”|A man of passion loved an unfeeling youth|, and its following lines echo the sometimes comic laments of the suitor of Amaryllis in Idyll III and of Polyphemus the Cyclops over Galatea in Idylls VI and XI. At the same time this is a love lament taking up – with this ingenious twist – an entirely modern contemporary Roman fashion for first-person love laments, prevalent

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6 On the costumes in the Roman Virgil see again Wright 2001, pp. 13–23. For the analysis of these Epodes I rely upon Eduard Fraenkel, Horace, Oxford [1957] 1963, pp. 42–56. For chronology and relationship to the Eclogues see also Schmidt 1987, ‘Virgils Späten Eklogen …’, pp. 218–20. On the meaning and associations of “ἡσυχία” and otium much more could be said: it is a fundamental classical ideal – the avoidance of trouble and sufficiency in oneself. There is a discussion in Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and European Pastoral Poetry, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1969. An approach that reads the Eclogues primarily as ‘allegories’ of the evils of Virgil’s time could not in my view be more inimical to their tone. Recent scholars indeed reject many things that Servius says, but often do not reject the idea of allegory or ciphering outright. On the other hand the idea that the Eclogues are remote, set in an ‘Arcadia’, is also a considerable distortion: while this is not really the place to discuss the issue of ‘Arcadia’ – that will come later – I would like to obviate anachronistic ideas entering in at this stage. Argument is also frequently distorted similarly by supposing a genre ‘pastoral’ which is somehow already established in Virgil’s time and can serve as a sorting or discriminatory category. Thus not seemingly absurd, but I believe profoundly muddled, is the kind of interpretation that finds a “divided tendency” in the Eclogues, read as an imaginary Arcadia – ‘pastoral’ – in conflict with facts on the ground – ‘reality’: I quote the term from Charles Segal, ‘Tamen Cantabitis Arcades – Exile and Arcadia in Eclogues One and Nine’, Arion, vol. 4, no. 2, 1965, pp. 237–66, reprinted in the collection Poetry and Myth in Ancient Pastoral: Essays on Theocritus and Virgil, Princeton nj 1981, pp. 271–300, at p. 286. He refers to Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes [1945], revised edn Göttingen 1975, whose views were shared notably by Erwin Panofsky, ‘Et in Arcadia ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition’, in Panofsky’s collection Meaning in the Visual Arts, 1955, edn used Harmondsworth 1983, pp. 340–67, re-publishing an article first presented in Philosophy and History. Essays presented to E. Cassirer, London 1936, pp. 223ff. Bruno Luiselli, Studi sulla poesia bucolica, Cagliari 1967, was the first, as far as I know, to have criticized Snell’s misreading, which was definitively dismantled and philologically analysed by Ernst A. Schmidt, ‘Arkadien’, Antike und Abendland, xxi, 1975, pp. 36–57, reprinted with alterations in Schmidt 1987, pp. 239–64, but was widely accepted by scholars of his time and still has not been debunked. Another misleading term or association is ‘locus amoenus’. I give as an example Walter S. Gibson, Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to Ruisdael, Berkeley etc. 2000, p. 61: “For many of Visscher’s contemporaries, the words Plaisante Plaetsen [pleasant places] would have brought to mind the Latin locus amoenus, the pleasant place associated with the shady groves, cool streams, and verdant meadows celebrated by Theocritus, Virgil, and other poets of classical antiquity”; and Ernst Curtius himself, who coined the term in an article of 1942, unfortunately regarded it as a topos embracing pastoral, though without mentioning Virgil. For Theocritus and Virgil and the ‘locus amoenus’ see Schmidt, ‘Hirtenmusik’, in Schmidt 1987, at p. 30, referring to the opening lines of Idyll I: “Landschaftsbeschreibung ist von beiden Hirten nicht intendiert, und es liegt eine solche auch nicht vor. Weder um den einen noch um den anderen Hirten schließt sich ein locus amoenus; noch entsteht gar ein ideales Landschaft”.|Landscape description is not the intention of either goatherd, and there is no suggestion of such. No locus amoenus surrounds either herdsman; nor does any ideal landscape emerge.| In Virgil, he goes on to say, there is even less notion of it. I dedicate Chapter 6 §4ff. to a discussion of this term and of landscape description generally.

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VIRGIL, ECLOGA II Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexim, delicias domini; nec quid speraret habebat. tantum inter densas, umbrosa cacumina, fagos adsidue veniebat. ibi haec incondita solus montibus et silvis studio iactabat inani: ‘O crudelis Alexi, nihil mea carmina curas? nil nostri miserere? mori me denique cogis? nunc etiam pecudes umbras et frigora captant, nunc virides etiam occultant spineta lacertos, Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus aestu alia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentis. at mecum raucis, tua dum vestigia lustro, sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis. nonne fuit satius tristis Amaryllidis iras atque superba pati fastidia? nonne Menalcan, quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses? o formose puer, nimium ne crede colori; alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur. despectus tibi sum, nec qui sim quaeris, Alexi, quam dives pecoris, nivei quam lactis abundans. mille meae Siculis errant in montibus agnae; lac mihi non aestate novum, non frigore defit. canto quae solitus, si quando armenta vocabat, Amphion Dircaeus in Actaeo Aracyntho. nec sum adeo informis: nuper me in litore vidi, cum placidum ventis staret mare. non ego Daphnim iudice te metuam, si numquam fallit imago. o tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura atque humilis habitare casas et figere cervos, haedorumque gregem viridi compellere hibisco! mecum una in silvis imitabere Pana canendo (Pan primum calamos cera coniungere pluris instituit, Pan curat ovis oviumque magistros), nec te paeniteat calamo trivisse labellum: haec eadem ut sciret, quid non faciebat Amyntas? est mihi disparibus septem compacta cicutis fistula, Damoetas dono mihi quam dedit olim et dixit moriens: ‘te nunc habet ista secundum’: dixit Damoetas, invidit stultus Amyntas. praeterea duo nec tuta mihi valle reperti capreoli, sparsis etiam nunc pellibus albo,

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The shepherd Corydon burnt for the beautiful Alexis, the love of his master; but he could not have what he hoped for. Meanwhile the thick beeches with their shady tops he would constantly revisit, and there, alone, these coarse verses he would shout out in vain endeavour to the trees and hills. “O cruel Alexis, do you care nothing for my songs? Will you take no pity on me? Will you then force me to die?” Now the sheep, too, seek out the shade and coolth, now even green lizards hide among the thorns, and Thestylis, for the mowers worn out by the blasting heat, pounds garlic and thyme, aromatic herbs. But with me strepitous cicadas, as I pursue your traces, make the shrubbery resound beneath the burning sun. Surely it was more than enough to have suffered the sulky rage and haughty disdain of Amaryllis? or Menalcas, although he was dark, although you were fair? o beautiful boy, don’t trust colour too far: white privets fall, black blueberries are picked. I am beneath you, Alexis, and you care not who I am, how rich in flocks, how overflowing with snowy milk. A thousand sheep of mine roam the Sicilian hills; I do not lack for fresh milk in heat or frost. I sing the songs that Amphion son of Dirce sang to call his cattle home on Actaean Aracynthus. I am not so ugly: I saw myself recently on the shore, when the sea stood untrammelled by the winds. Not even Daphnis let me fear in contest before you, if sight is never deceived. O take pleasure with me to live in the lowly countryside and dwell in humble huts and shoot deer, and to drive a herd of goats with a switch of mallow! With me you will be like Pan, singing in the woods (Pan first taught how to join reeds with wax; Pan protects the sheep and those who drive them), and you will be glad to rub your lip with his reed. If he could know how to do as much, what would Amyntas not do? I have a pipe made of seven different lengths of hemlock which once upon a time Damoetas gave me as a gift, saying as he died: ‘Now this has you for its second owner’. So said Damoetas, and stupid Amyntas was full of envy. What is more, two kids I found in a dangerous ravine, still with their dappled white coats,

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bina die siccant ovis ubera: quos tibi servo. iam pridem a me illos abducere Thestylis orat; et faciet, quoniam sordent tibi munera nostra. huc ades, o formose puer, tibi lilia plenis ecce ferunt Nymphae calathis; tibi candida Nais, pallentis violas et summa papavera carpens, narcissum et florem iungit bene olentis anethi; tum casia atque aliis intexens suavibus herbis mollia luteola pingit vaccinia calta. ipse ego cana legam tenera lanugine mala castaneasque nuces, mea quas Amaryllis amabat; addam cerea pruna (honos erit huic quoque pomo) et vos, o lauri, carpam et te, proxime myrte, sic positae quoniam suavis miscetis odores. Rusticus es, Corydon; nec munera curat Alexis nec, si muneribus certes, concedat Iollas. heu heu, quid volui misero mihi? floribus Austrum perditus et liquidis inmissi fontibus apros. quem fugis, a, demens? habitarunt di quoque silvas Dardaniusque Paris. Pallas quas condidit arces ipsa colat; nobis placeant ante omnia silvae. torva leaena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam, florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella, te Corydon, o Alexi; trahit sua quemque voluptas. aspice, aratra iugo referunt suspensa iuvenci et sol crescentis decedens duplicat umbras: me tamen urit amor: quis enim modus adsit amori? a, Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit! semiputata tibi frondosa vitis in ulmo est: quin tu aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus, viminibus mollique paras detexere iunco? invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin.” P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. F.A. Hertzel (Scriptorum Classicorum Biblioteca Oxoniensis), Oxford 1963

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that are suckling heartily from a sheep: I am keeping them for you. Thestylis has already begged me to let her have them; and so she shall, since my gifts are too low for you. Come, beautiful boy; for you baskets full of lilies the nymphs bring up, and for you white-skinned Nais, plucking pale violets and the heads of poppies, joins with them narcissus and the scented flower of fennel, then binding them with cassia and other fragrant herbs tinges the tender hyacinth with yellow marigold. I myself will gather quinces, hoary with tender down, and chestnuts, which my Amaryllis used to love; I will add waxen plums (honour also to this fruit), and I will pluck you, too, laurels, and you, myrtle here to hand, because so arranged you mingle your odours sweetly. You are rustic, Corydon, and Alexis has no interest in your gifts, and if you would vie with gifts, Iollas is not going to yield. Agh! agh! What have I brought upon my miserable self ? I have let the wind into my flowers – I am lost – and let pigs into my clear springs. [Alexis,] who do you run from, out of your mind? The gods once lived in the woods, and Trojan Paris. The citadels she founded let Pallas frequent; I find the woods preferable to all else. The fierce lioness pursues the wolf, the wolf the kid, the wanton kid pursues the flowering cytisus and Corydon follows you, Alexis; each is drawn by his own ­delight. Look! The oxen return with the plough pulled up, and the sinking sun doubles its extending shadows: but love enflames me – what temperance is there to love? Ah! Corydon, Corydon, what senseless fit has seized you? Your vine is half-pruned under the bushy elm; Why do you not make ready to weave with osiers and the pliant rush something rather at least that is useful? You will find another Alexis, if there is no pleasing this one.”

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from Catullus, the ‘neoterics’ and especially Gallus. Although for later times Corydon was the classic figure of the thwarted rustic, who always will be ousted by a rival of superior class or status – “pastor Corydon”|the shepherd Corydon| “studio … inani”|with useless effort| “formosum … ardebat Alexim”|burnt for the beautiful Alexis|, “delicias domini”|the darling of the landlord|– and for all his echoing of the oafish Polyphemus, Corydon’s love song spoke the language and took its place among contemporary elegy. Admittedly his claim to own a thousand sheep (echoing Polyphemus, who might have done) is a vain boast. Admittedly he is naive: for example, he remarks: non sum adeo informis: nuper me in litore vidi, cum placidum ventis staret mare. non ego Daphnim iudice te metuam, si numquam fallit imago. I am not so ugly: I saw myself recently on the shore, when the sea stood untrammelled by the winds. Not even Daphnis will I fear in contest before you, if sight is never deceived –

but since the discovery of fragments of his poetry in an Egyptian papyrus that “non ego Daphnim/ iudice te metuam” can be seen to echo Gallus, “non ego, Visce ... iudice te vereor”|I do not fear ... with you as judge, Viscus|. This passage is a good instance of what one might call the ‘Flintstone’ trope, where, as in the twentieth-century cartoon, figures are made to perform current civilized actions with primitive substitutions for the civilized tools – pursuing what will be called the pastoral decorum, not permitting the appearance within the shepherd world depicted of any object foreign to it (Servius’s “sed ex re rustica sunt omnia negotia, comparationes et si qua sint alia”| still everything dealt with comes from rustic life, including the similes and anything else|) but with a wide eye to contemporary concerns, obviously. Inscribing names on trees is another instance (see §12). Thus, though they voice our concerns, such as Corydon are supposed to lead an ­archaic, inurbane, unsophisticated and “unconceiving” life; sexually they may be clumsy and unknowing, too (or what was called at my school ‘innocent’): all Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, written probably in the second century AD, turns on the simplicity of Chloe and especially Daphnis. Also within the text of this work usually entitled ‘Longus’s Pastoral relating to Daphnis and Chloe’ (ΛΟΓΓΟΥ ΠΟΙΜΕΝΙΚΟΝ ΤΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΔΑΦΝΙΝ ΚΑΙ ΚΛΟΗΝ) the narrator uses the word ‘ποιμενικός’|poimenikos/bucolic|to describe Daphnis’s naïvety; and even the Daphnis of Theocritus’s Idyll I is accused (85) of being “δύσερώς τις ἄγαν καί ἀμήχανος”|dyseros, a somebody loving with too much difficulty and inept|. There is another aspect of this ignorance, that of not knowing

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evil: hence Donatus, in his Life of Virgil, concluded his discussion of the Eclogues with the remark that they went back to “ea vita, quae prima in terris fuit”|the first life that there was on earth|, even “velut aurei saeculi speciem in huiusmodi personarum simplicitate”|an image like to be of the golden age in the simplicity of figures of this kind|. Meanwhile Virgil, if ever he was ‘Virgilian’, introduced conscious irony in having Corydon claim “if sight is never deceived”. On the other hand Corydon’s dream of bringing Alexis down to join him in his country pursuits is strongly resonant in later pastoral: o tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura atque humilis habitare casas … O take pleasure with me to live in the lowly countryside and to dwell in humble huts ….

Comically again, though he threatens to ignore the sunset, because “me tamen urit amor”|love continues to burn me|, in the end he breaks off to return to his neglected country tasks, abandoning Alexis; but the “me tamen urit amor” is deadly serious.

3 8 Within this caricature, as one might call it (pastoral being a subgenre of comedy), there are many subtleties, as one expects of this poet. They arise from the network of subtexts and intertexts, for some of which undoubtedly the reference is lost; Corydon is not in fact simply a rustic, but a device through which Virgil may introduce in his own formulation sentiments of the kind favoured by his contemporaries, that is, the erotic topoi of the ‘neoteric’ school of his day. Pastoral was a means by which, behind the stalking-horse of humility – or stalking-horses, his shepherd mouthpieces – he could versify love. Corydon’s soliloquy breaks up into a series of gnomic or epigrammatic statements or lover’s sentiments, patently rather disconnected, their disconnection usually justified in modern criticism 7 For the Gallus fragment see Anderson, Parsons and Nisbet 1979. See R.L. Hunter, A Study of Daphnis & Chloe, Cambridge 1983; www.loebclassics.com/(LCL508) longus-story_daphnis_chloe. On Daphnis and Chloe see further Chapter 10. On δύσερως see Hunter 1999, p. 92. The term “unconceiving” is borrowed from Samuel Daniel, The Queen’s Arcadia; see The Complete Works … of Samuel Daniel, ed. Alexander E. Grosart, 4 vols, privately printed, 1885, III, pp. 211–300; see Chapter 14 §3. The text of Donatus is available (October 2020) at www.forumromanum.org/literature/donatus_ eclogae.html; I give the full quotation in Chapter 19 §2.

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as a naturalistic reproduction of Corydon’s state of mind; but they are not generally intended to be original, for example in the lines (63–65): torva leaena lupum sequitur, lupus ipse capellam, florentem cytisum sequitur lasciva capella, te Corydon, o Alexi; trahit sua quemque voluptas The fierce lioness pursues the wolf, the wolf the kid, the wanton kid pursues the flowering cytisus and Corydon follows you, Alexis; each is drawn by his own ­delight:

the first two lines recast Theocritus (X, 30–31) and behind Theocritus Plato’s Phaedrus 241. Virgil, however, not only finds a felicitous, elegant rendering but also caps the citation with his own moralization; and this little axiom contributes to the overarching fatalism mentioned above. Eclogue II is a kind of compendium of previous expression on the theme of the spurned lover. Thus Virgil could excel in the neoteric school, for which the love elegy was the medium par excellence: the phrase “nec quid speraret habebat” might be regarded as their Leitmotif. Subtly, the change to homosexual love from the heterosexual love of his rivals (and largely of his sources) deepened this theme, as already suggested in that “nec quid speraret habebat”: it should otherwise have been nec [id] quod sperabat habebat|he did not have what he hoped for| in the indicative. The subjunctive (besides sounding better) shifts it into|what ever he hoped for|, compliant with the slight but significant elevation that male for male love implied in antiquity over male for female love – that the love might be as much for beauty itself, embodied in the boy whose cheeks felt the first bloom of puberty, as for a body offering sensual pleasure; even that the subject of the poem, reading behind Corydon, might be the pursuit of beauty in poetry. This might also be detected in the interest in flowers, directly or by reference to aesthetics; and even the comic final lines of the poem, “invenies alium … Alexim”|you will find another Alexis|, could be read, neoplatonically, as meaning another reflection of the beautiful, ulterior to one example. There are also other references to Gallus, the most ‘avantgarde’ of the neoteric school, because, for example, the lines “… incondita … iactabat” and “nihil mea carmina curas” recall attitudes expressed by him in the surviving fragment “… tandem fecerunt carmina Musae/ quae possem domina dicere digna mea”|… at last the Muses made poetry that I could utter as worthy of my mistress|; and the line “Amphion Dircaeus in Actaeo Aracyntho” is learned and contrived in the manner of Euphorion of Chalcis, a leading neoteric model (or certainly Gallus’s), and entirely “περισσός”|extraordinary/ egregious/ striking/ amazing|, a word

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applied to Euphorion in ancient criticism and introduced by the Greek writer Parthenius in his dedication to Gallus of his collection of ἐρωτικά παθήματα|erotic vicissitudes|. That the poem was successful as neoteric we find recognized soon afterwards by Propertius (II, xxxiv, 67–74): tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus, utque decem possint corrumpere mala puellas missus et impressis haedus ab uberibus. felix, qui vilis pomis mercaris amores! huic licet ingratae Tityrus ipse canat. felix intactum Corydon qui temptat Alexin agricolae domini carpere delicias! Beneath the pines of the shaded Galaesus you sing of Thyrsis and Daphnis with reeds to your lips and that girls can be seduced with ten apples and a kid fresh from the suckled udder. Happy you, that can barter apples for cheap love! If this girl is being unappreciative let it be Tityrus who sings to her. Happy the Corydon who attempts to pluck the unmoved Alexis, the beloved of his farmer master.

Corydon himself cannot be happy: Propertius’s idea must be that the conception of Corydon is happy, just as Virgil’s choice of bucolic as his medium was happy – the ten apples with which he seduces girls, the eclogues in which he masterfully makes erotic poetry – surpassing Gallus. Propertius slants the purpose of the Eclogues towards the erotic perhaps more than the modern reader might expect, and Propertius clearly had his own perspective. His words prove, though, that Virgil shared the elegists’ territory, even if he could attempt other things as well. Another instance is more tenuous: the lines “heu heu, quid volui misero mihi?”|Agh! agh! What have I brought upon my miserable self ?| to some extent resemble Catullus’s reworking, in Carmen 51 (‘Ille mi par esse deo videtur’), of a famous love declaration by Sappho, with a line of the same words: “misero quod omnis/ eripit sensus mihi”|which tears from my miserable self all my senses|. To his close adaptation of Sappho Catullus adds a meditation on otium – “otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est;/ otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:/ otium et reges prius et beatas/ perdidit urbes”|idleness, Catullus, is bad for you; in freedom you exult and joy excessively:/ idleness in the past destroyed kings and happy cities|. Corydon, analogously, in the final strophe, though

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deliberately bathetically, asks himself: “quin tu aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus,/ viminibus mollique paras detexere iunco?|Why do you not make ready to weave with osiers and the pliant rush something rather at least that is useful?| And this anticipates the conclusion of the Eclogues (X, 70–71) already quoted, “Haec sat erit, divae, vestrum cecinisse poetam,/ dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco”|This will be enough, Muses, for your poet to have sung,while he sits and weaves his basket of pliant mallow|; all this seems to indicate in sum that Virgil, while roaming into elegists’ territory – the territory of unmanly sensuality, or “dementia” – by proxy, had maintained his sanity and established an otium that was resoundingly felix.

39

The opening interchange of Eclogue III neatly refers back so as to move on from Eclogue I: Dic mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus? an Meliboei? Non, verum Aegonis; nuper mihi tradidit Aegon Tell me, Damoetas, whose flock is that? Is it Meliboeus’s? No, Aegon’s; Aegon has just entrusted it to me,

8 For these ideas about Eclogue II see Ernst A. Schmidt, ‘Vergils frühestes Hirtengedicht: Die Grundlegung seiner Bukolik in Ekloge 2’, in Schmidt 1987, pp. 139–58; on Pallas opposed to Paris see also in the same collection ‘Bukolische Leidenschaft bei Virgil’, pp. 166–70. Sometimes Alexis is said to be from the city, but his ‘lord’ was a farmer (“agricola”), according to Propertius as quoted here. Some regard its contrast with the city as essential to pastoral: see, for example, Greg 1906, ‘The Origin of Pastoral’, pp. 4–5 and 7. Greg supposes pastoral to be the expression of a nostalgia for the countryside seen from the city; but this view can be a distortion, when supposed to eliminate pastoral’s self-sufficiency. It may be a motivation but it is by no means the only one or the most important (see further §26 below; also Chapters 12 §4, 20 §2). Parthenius, dedication to Cornelius Gallus, “… διὰ τὸ μὴ παρεῖναι τὸ περιττὸν αὐτοῖς, ὃ δὴ σὺ μετέρχῃ |… through their not being extraordinary, which you pursue|(www.loebclassics. com/(LCL508) parthenius_nicaea-sufferings_love (p. 550); Euphorion, epitaph, “Εὐφορίων, ὃ περισσὸν ἐπιστάμενος τι ποῆσαι”|Euphorion, you who understood how to compose the extraordinary|(www.loebclassics.com/(LCL508) Euphorion_chalcis-testimonia (p. 208; no. 7, Palatine Anthology 7.406). Dictionaries give a wide variety of translations for περισσόν/περιττόν, which can also have a derogatory sense, ‘excessive, affected’; the Loeb translator renders “a special turn of phrase”; Ross 1975, p. 102, renders “extravagant nicety”. Regarding Propertius’s lines I have followed S.J. Heyworth, Cynthia: A Companion to the Text of Propertius, Oxford 2007, pp. 276–77, who, following Rebbeck – supposing the repeated initial ‘tu canis’ to have led to the confusion – transposes lines 77–80 to before line 67, producing 66, 77–80, 67–76, 81–82. On otium in this passage of Catullus see Vickers 1990, p. 22 – a vicious otium differing from the ‘good’ otia enjoyed by Tityrus in Eclogue I, 6.

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these lines exactly echoing the opening of Theocritus’s Idyll IV, including the name Aegon; but Meliboeus is a substitution for Theocritus’s personage in the first line. Since Meliboeus is implicitly a dominus, still resident, and Tityrus implicitly a slave (lines 20, 96), the eclogue is set in a time before Eclogue I, before the civil wars and their outcome. Its matter is strictly rural, its motifs strictly Theocritan – a rustic contest, initially an insult match, which is then resolved by a trial by song. A song contest, referred to already in Eclogue II, is a feature essential to pastoral: “amant alterna Camenae”|the Muses love antiphony (see also §12 below)|. One herdsman sets the metre and form, the other has to follow, responding to the notions expressed. A third judges the outcome, and awards the better of the two the prize. Of course many variations on this develop, including the herdsmen singing together, not in opposition. The prize will normally be the stake the other has wagered – the agreement on the prize or prizes may itself involve discussion forming part of the poem. The discussion lends itself not only to a complacent round-up of the herdsman’s material culture and diet, but to description of particular objects, to an ecphrasis, here, for instance, of the figurative decoration of a cup – indeed of three cups (following the precedent of Theocritus, Idyll I, where, however, there is no contest, only the cup offered in return for the song). Virgil names the maker – offering his own precedent for Renaissance pastoral to introduce contemporary artists, as Sannazaro in his Arcadia brings in a vase by Mantegna.

3 10 In the second half of the poem Virgil changes the mood, as Palaemon, invoked to judge the sparring herdsmen, declares: Dicite, quandoquidem in molli consedimus herba. et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbos, nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus. incipe, Damoeta ... Sing, then, since we are seated on the soft grass. And now all the fields, all the trees are in bud, the woods are in leaf, this is the most beautiful time of the year. Damoetas, begin …

The herdsmen compete without ill temper, taking pleasure in their verses. Damoetas, singing hexameter couplets, must introduce a new subject each time, and so Virgil is able to range widely; after pious invocation of the gods, the herdsmen turn immediately to girls, or boys, anyway to love, with some beautifully turned lines of the type of “… trahit sua quemque voluptas” in

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Eclogue II, and then to poetry, and patronage, then again to flocks or herds, ending with a riddle each. Palaemon pronounces (grandly; for Virgil and the reader ironically, inverting the grandeur to humility): Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites: et vitula tu dignus et hic et quisquis amores aut metuet dulcis aut experietur amaros. claudite iam rivos, pueri; sat prata biberunt. It is more than I can do to resolve such mighty quarrels: both you should have the calf and he, and whoever fears for his sweet loves or experiences bitter ones. Close the channels, slaves; the fields have drunk enough.

His reference to sweet and bitter loves show Virgil once again in neoteric territory – he might almost have written this in elegiacs – even though occupying it by proxy and not entering as a speaker. In his commentary on this Eclogue Servius speaks of allegory twice: he describes the last line, of the meadows drinking, as ‘allegorical’, which we would simply equate to ‘metaphorical’; he describes lines 92–95 similarly, in a way that we would indeed call ‘allegorical’, and in this case he reduces the lines to allusions to Virgil’s civic affairs. Renaissance commentary on the Eclogues followed Servius in this direction; when not concerned with the technical, it is dominated by prosopography. In this eclogue, too, the herdsmen refer by name to poets of Virgil’s milieu; this is very common in both later vernacular and neo-Latin pastoral. This Eclogue, though he begins it with an opening taken from Eclogue VII, was the main model for Leon Battista Alberti’s Tirsis, the first humanist egloga; it remains a classic model of the form (see Chapter 2 §10, A5).

3 11 In the fourth Eclogue, opening Sicelides Musae, paulo maiora canamus! Sicilian Muses [i.e. those of Theocritus], let us sing a little more ambitiously!

Virgil seemed to have breached decorum (Servius says, “nam licet haec ecloga discedat a bucolico carmine”|although this eclogue departs from bucolic song|) – transgressing the bounds that kept distinct things apart, in particular high from low, matters of state from country matters. Through this supposed breach countless other writers would happily enter, extending the range and reach of pastoral, which could now subsume any ‘slightly bigger’ subject,

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even a greatly bigger one. The birth of a godlike boy that Virgil celebrates, who will bring a Golden Age, was often taken to be the Christ Child’s in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and even into the Enlightenment – how indeed not, since it is as likely that Virgil divined the coming of Christ as that he came at all. His divination was only about forty years out. What the poem really alluded to, the identity of the boy who was born, remains unclear; Servius relates the poem to a son of Virgil’s patron Pollio, already invoked in Eclogue III and here again, but Virgil does not call Pollio the father of the new-born boy. Rather he claims that the new Golden Age that greets the boy’s birth will begin in Pollio’s consulship. Pollio’s role is important: te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, inrita perpetua solvent formidine terras! under your leadership, if by any chance traces remain of our crime, absolved they will release our land eternally from fear

the crime recalling that of Eclogues I and IX (see above): Pollio’s consulship, in which this boy is born, will annul the discord of the civil wars and the crime of Romulus on Remus that they wrote large. We are close to the common territory of Virgil’s Eclogue I and Horace’s Epode XVI. Virgil’s Golden Age can be compared with Horace’s Fortunate Isles (Epode XVI probably following Eclogue IV). Virgil, too, is implicitly vates|poet prophet|, even if he does not declare it; but such is the import of the child he celebrates that it propels him to greater poetry than Orpheus or Linus, or their respective parents Calliope and Apollo, ever achieved, and to victory over Pan: “Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum”|Pan will declare himself beaten while Arcadia judges|. In fact Virgil does not exactly ‘break’ pastoral decorum, for in line 3 he declares: si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae if we sing of the woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul:

rather the ‘woods’ are to be elevated (though remaining themselves).

11 This belief, or supposition, arising with Lactantius in the reign of Constantine, was persistent, though it had complexities – was it Virgil’s own prophecy, or the Sibyl’s? Did Virgil know what he was saying? – for example, Lope de Vega accepts it in the ‘Prologo’ to his Arcadia of 1598; see Martyn 1749, 5.20, who rationalizes but essentially accepts it. The very considerable afterlife of Eclogue IV is fully documented in L.B.T. Houghton, Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in the Italian Renaissance, Cambridge 2019. More generally, interest in Virgil in later periods, and especially in the Renaissance, was concentrated, naturally, on his greater poems.

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3 12 Eclogue V deepens the book’s roots into the continuum of the ancestral past. It follows very directly on Eclogues II and III (making reference to them in verses 86–87), even more directly on III, since one (present) herdsman, Menalcas, asks another, “cur non, Mopse … consedimus”|why do we not, Mopsus, sit?|, in one p­ leasant place or a­ n­other, just as Palaemon, the judge in Eclogue III, had insisted with the two rivals, “in molli consedimus herba”|we sit on the soft grass| – in order to play and sing. It turns out they sit close by the spot where earlier Mopsus had carved his verses in the bark of a tree: the motif is typical both in presenting more primitive versions of more civilized instruments, namely pen and parchment or paper, and in its adolescent gaucherie; it exemplifies literally Virgil’s habitual déjà vu; still more importantly, it introduces a hint of endless succession (see §15). Indeed, continuing the peace set by Palaemon, with mutual admiration and friendship Mopsus politely defers to Menalcas’s greater age and Menalcas prophesies Mopsus’s reception as a master (“tu nunc eris alter ab illo”| you will be another in his line|; at the end they exchange gifts rather than compete for them. The lowly Tityrus is called upon to watch the goats while they perform. In Theocritus, this setting of the scene, sometimes dilating into a description of their surroundings, appears to be associated with a tradition of instituting a musical contest (βουκολιάζεσθαι |‘bucolicize’|); in Virgil and after, though the contest is remembered, the emphasis is more on the coming together – or going apart – in a sheltered, pleasant place to sing (making music or poetry), usually about love (or, to put it scholastically, cantandum convenire – vel sese auferre – in loco amoeno, maxime de amore), and that may now be regarded as what is essential to pastoral. Of course the sitting in a pleasant spot is not in itself pastoral: Socrates sits in a very pleasant spot in Plato’s Phaedrus (230b). Here Mopsus sings of the death of Daphnis, which Theocritus had celebrated in his most important Idylls, I and VII, although, as in Theocritus (Idyll VI), so also in Virgil (Eclogues VII and VIII) Daphnis may equally be a herdsman like many another, and a present character. He appears here for the first time in the Eclogues, as an archetypal, ancestral shepherd singer, “hinc usque ad sidera notus/ formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse”|known from here to the stars, the herdsman of a beautiful flock, still more beautiful himself|, now departed and elevated to godhead. In Theocritus a succession of deities, as well as mortals, come personally to visit him as he dies, but in Virgil’s Eclogue not only do the nymphs and the n ­ atural world mourn him (in Mopsus’s song) but Menalcas imagines him on the threshold of Olympus. He died, of course, of love. He was buried, too, in a tomb to which Eclogue V attaches the following epitaph: 

f one  §12 v

Daphnis ego in silvis …. I, Daphnis, in the woods …,

echoing Theocritus, Idyll I, 115–20. This Daphnis might be supposed to have inspired the ‘I’ of et in Arcadia ego, standing for the whole ­previous ancestry and fate and future of shepherdhood; the phrase, however, is not in Virgil and emerged only in the seven­teenth century, with quite different meaning (see Chapter 16 §1). As emphasized by the reference to them (the Eclogue concludes with Menalcas’s gift to Mopsus of a pipe that “has taught” him these songs – represented by their opening phrases), Eclogue V returns to the scenery and community of Eclogues II and III; both the practised poems that the two herdsmen ‘alternate’ have been composed beforehand, and so, subtly, Eclogues II and III as well as these are displaced into the past, into the mulch of present poetry. This movement is concluded by the ending of Eclogue VII, in which Corydon is judged to have overcome Thyrsis (the name of the singer of the death of Daphnis in Idyll I) in song: “Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis”| From that time Corydon was our Corydon|: even as in this line he echoes Theocritus (Idyll VIII, 92) Virgil presents the herdsmen he has created as ‘vatic’, poets whose poetry has won them that reserved place in society. Certainly it is poetry about poetry; but the poetry is consummate. Fortunate are those capable of reading it!

12 On the Phaedrus passage and on ‘katagoge’ see further Chapter 6 §5. On ‘bucolizing’ see Hunter 1999, pp. 5–7. For a definition of pastoral consider J.C. Scaliger, Poetices libri septem, I, iv, ‘Pastoralia’, 6b: “… altera cum singuli ... canerent amores (monoprosopos haec); altera cum … convenissent ii, quos inter vel amor odium excitatum fuisset ....” (ed. Luc Deitz, Stuttgart and Bad Cannstadt 1994). Panofsky (1936) did not connect the phrase ‘et in Arcadia ego’ with this one in Virgil, for which he has been criticized: see Reinhard Brandt, Arkadien in Kunst, Philosophie und Dichtung, Berlin 2006, pp. 28ff., p. 45. Brandt himself fails to recognize the echo of Theocritus, which vitiates his argument that Daphnis’s cry is only about Virgil’s own claim to fame through his poetry.

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3 13

Rather like Eclogue IV, Eclogue VI is another strophe outwards from the sequence of Theocritan shepherds ‘alternating’ in peaceful poetrymaking on the grass that will be taken up again in Eclogue VII. This time Virgil himself appears: Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu nostra neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalia First my Muse deigned to play in Syracusan [i.e. Theocritan] verse, and did not blush to dwell in the woods.

This is simply a claim by Virgil to have been the first poet to have tried pastoral verse in Latin, and it is not surprising that he should interrupt his pastoral to do so. And yet the ‘narrator’ momentarily takes on the guise of a herdsman: Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit: ‘pastorem, Tityre, pinguis pascere oportet ovis, deductum dicere carmen’ When I would sing of kings and battles, Apollo plucked my ear, and warned me: ‘A shepherd, Tityrus, should graze his sheep so they become fat, but sing a thin yarn’.

Even if he reverts in the next line to his own ‘I’, the speaking poet, this putting on of a mask has important implications, justifying to a large degree the ‘allegory’ that Donatus and Servius and a whole history of commentators consequently took the eclogues to be. One might ask whether Apollo plucked Tityrus’s ear before or after his enfranchisement. One would have to answer, before: this is Tityrus put back in his place as the man who looks after the animals while the better people sing. In stating this, however, in entering the pastoral fiction and becoming ‘Tityrus’, Virgil makes a kind of joke – in retrospect it is a serious matter, but for Virgil and his audience I think it might have been a joke, for the joke is signalled, too, by the exaggerated alliterations and the strength of the antithesis, ps to ds, fat to thin, the equal epic metric weight and position in the line of pastorem and deductum (the use of a dactyl in the fourth foot was meant to distinguish the pastoral hexameter from the epic one). The joke is, of course, ­literally Apollo’s, it is Apollo who sings a pastoral line, and this, I think, makes it clearer that it is a paradox. ‘Tityrus’ both is and is not the poet himself: autobiographically, he is not, since Tityrus in Eclogue I is addressed as “fortunate senex”|favoured old man| and Virgil is as yet young (and not a slave); but on another level this is the name by which Apollo addresses none other than the author, and, equally important, “Tityre”

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is the first word of the first line of the first Eclogue, standing therefore for that and the whole set of Eclogues: accordingly, when Virgil reverts to his ‘own’ self in the next line, he echoes Eclogue I, line 2, nunc ego (namque …) agrestem tenui meditabor harundine Musam now I [for there are lots of other people who want to make encomia to you, Varus, and sing about war] will practise the country Muse on my slender reed,

a consummately smooth line that is a textbook ideal of a (pastoral, dactylic) hexameter in the subtle balance of its assonances and rhythms (and its ‘feminine’ caesura in the fourth foot). Thus from his own self, too, he adopts this shepherd persona and ‘alternates’ in shepherd mode. We find all this reinforced and tied in no less subtly in the concluding Eclogue X. Meanwhile, “te nemus omne canet”|the whole grove sings of you|, Virgil’s p­ atron Varus; that is, the pastoral song (or the wood where it echoes) is ­dedi­cated to you (echoes you). Varus gets his encomium in any case. Now the narrator vanishes, and the third-person ­fiction ­continues.

3 14

Meanwhile any contemporary reader (though not Servius, or indeed the humanists of the Renaissance, so this is a modern insight) would recognize here the best-known topos in Alexandrian and thence ‘neoteric’ poetry, the recusatio|refusal|to take on epic, mythological, heroic or history themes, that is to say ‘big’ themes, or “maiora”. The topos had been epitomized by Callimachus in his Aetia in a metaphor Virgil has adapted: Callimachus was told to make his sacrificial animals fat and keep his verse thin. This Callimachan stance has been present from the beginning of the Eclogues, implicit in the “tenui”|slender|reed on which Tityrus was playing in Eclogue I, 2, and repeated here in line 8. Here in line 3 “deductum” is another such sign word, meaning specifically, in this ‘allegorical’ context, the action of drawing out the wool from the spindle in a thin thread (so Servius). Varus, too, is happy that Vergil should sing for him in this way, Varus and anyone taken in love (neoterics, for instance) who reads the poem – “si quis/ captus amore leget” (9–10). Now Virgil narrates that Chromus and

13 See W.V. Clausen, ‘Theocritus and Virgil’, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, II, Latin Literature, Cambridge 1982, pp. 303ff. Some translators fail to recognize that Virgil claims primacy, and give it to Gallus; but see further below, §20.

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Mnasyllus, and the nymph Aegle, approached Silenus and bound him in his own fillets in order that he should sing for them, which he duly does, to magical and exceedingly beautiful effect (as the poet gives us to understand). His song begins with the creation of the world and ends with all that Phoebus sang by the laurelled Eurotas (which rises in Arcadia). Thus, by the device of having Silenus sing it to rustic figures and by preterition (telling what he is not going to tell) Virgil manages, despite the recusatio, to embrace virtually everything, except contemporary history; in so doing, and this seems in fact his prime intention, he embraces his own poetic milieu by allusively quoting contemporary Roman poets, as Servius notes – Lucretius; Catullus’s friend Calvus (“o virgo infelix” was his), Virgil’s own friend Gallus (named in the Eclogue) and probably others we cannot recognize. The sources of the cosmology Virgil outlines in Silenus’s song seem unimportant, since the cosmology so rapidly disperses into the episodic, from the general to almost arbitrary detail; this is a concertinaed epyllion, or even several epyllia, in which Virgil echoes or pastiches the poetic products of his time, in homage or in emulation.

3 15 Especially from the highly present reality of Eclogue I, but also from the apparently more ordinary base of Corydon in Eclogue II and of the contest in Eclogue III, then from the extension further back into the past of Eclogue V, Eclogue VI regresses the scenario still further, into the mythic (it was noted that Mnasyllus, Chromus and Aegle reappear nowhere else in the Eclogues and are not joined by any who do). So, too, nature itself takes part in Silenus’s song to an unpredecented degree: the valleys echo to the stars and the evening itself falls unwillingly to end his song. Eclogue VII, opening “Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis”|By chance Daphnis had sat down under a rustling ilex-tree|, though returning to the strictly Theocritean (as was evident also to Servius), nevertheless retains the magical, as Daphnis restores his lost ram to Meliboeus (we are back with the core community) and urges him to listen to the song contest about to take place, between two Arcadians – two figures from another country. Though there is much, by contrast, that is deliberately pedestrian about Meliboeus – he worries about breaking off work to hear the contest, since he does not have his helpers that day – and Daphnis is not specifically characterized as divine or semidivine, still he features in Eclogue VII suggestively like an apparition, one of the “praesentia numina” materialized (and after all in Eclogue V he had died and gone to heaven). “Forte” Daphnis was sitting there, Meliboeus may have supposed, but it was not by mere chance. The contesting singers, moreover, 

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are one of them familiar – Corydon – the other, Thyrsis, not so, but Thyrsis is the name of the singer of Theocritus’s Idyll I, so the stakes are high. … Arcades ambo et cantare pares et respondere parati … Arcadians both, and equally ready to sing and to respond,

echoes Theocritus, Idyll VIII (3–4): ἄμφω τώγ᾽ἤστην πυρροτρίχω, ἄμφω ἀνάβω ἄμφω συρίσδεν δεδαημένω, ἄμφω ἀείδεν.

Both were fair-headed, both adolescent, both practised in playing the pipe, both in singing.

Their being Arcadian (as they are nowhere in Theocritus) will be no surprise to those who believe Virgil’s Eclogues are set in Arcadia, but there is a surprise for them – that the setting (line 13) is the river Mincio, the river of Virgil’s native Mantua. It seems clear in fact that all the Eclogues are implicitly set in Italy, specifically around Mantua – where Virgil’s ‘community’ reside – despite the references to mountains (elsewhere and here line 56) and the description in Eclogue IX (7–10) of hills and dales. That they should be Arcadians might or might not have been surprising to Virgil’s original readers: we have comparatively little record of the musical reputation of the Arcadians, though it is clear from an often quoted passage in Polybius that they had been recognized before Virgil as, as a nation, skilled in music. Servius explains the meaning as “non re vera Arcades: nam apud Mantuam res agitur: sed sic periti, ut eos Arcades putares”|not really Arcadians, for the event takes place at Mantua; but so skilled, that you would think them Arcadian| – which, however, is only to borrow Virgil’s own description of them in Eclogue X, 32–33; he is not referring to a tradition. Though there must have been some such, it is possible that Virgil more or less invented the notion of ‘Arcadian’ meaning ‘musical follower of Pan’. However that may be, the event is set in the past: Meliboeus concludes “haec memini”|these [verses] I remember| – evidently not the distant past, but a past partly, or seamlessly, mythologized by the presence of Daphnis and by the semi-invested status of the singers. Simplified, it is a contest between the Latin poet (Corydon standing for Virgil) and the Greek one (Thyrsis, the singer of Idyll I, standing for Theocritus’s oeuvre), which Corydon wins; allowed to linger like a mirage come into being beside the Mincio, it extends the historic community not simply into the past but into myth, an effect I term ‘panchronic’.

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3 16 Eclogue VIII has an introduction, a dedication and then two halves, first Damon’s song, then Alphesiboeus’s. The address to Octavian in the introduction indicates that this eclogue has been undertaken at his command, although the poet longs to sing further songs in a higher, “Sophoclean” or epic style that is the only one suitable for his deeds. This urge towards higher matters seems to continue a pattern – he has stepped outside the bucolic in every other eclogue, as in IV and VI – but, after the initial ironically bombastic lines recalling Eclogue VI (to hear their song the animals stop feeding, wild cats are mesmerized, the rivers stop in their courses), the pattern is not fulfilled in the verses that follow, which, rather, are remarkably quotidian. Damon’s song recalls a thwarted love (his Nysa has married Mopsus): he sings his song at night, so something must be wrong, ill-omened, and indeed he cries … extremum hoc munus morientis habeto receive this last gift of a dying man,

as he hurls himself from a cliff. However, that their unrequited or thwarted love should keep shepherds awake at night (the only thing that does) and that they should kill themselves for it will become a fundamental convention of Renaissance pastoral; and the ‘love fall’ – “ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error”|as I saw [her], so I perished, so an evil madness carried me off!|(41) states the essence of all its drama (and the marriage to another one of its mechanisms). Alphesiboeus’s song constitutes the spell in the magical ceremony a woman performs, which is to call her beloved back. Finally there is a good omen on the altar, and the dog is barking: Daphnis has returned. This is a new kind of ‘alternation’ – a good result (slightly equivocated: VIII, 108) with a bad result. Both Damon and Alphesiboeus are part of the

15 Eclogue VII is a closer imitation of Theocritus (Idyll VIII) than others; it was also, with V, the model for the ‘first humanist eclogue’, Leon Battista Alberti’s Tirsis (see Chapter 2 §10). In his Histories (IV, 20, 21) Polybius, writing about a century and a half before Virgil, had stated it to be a well-known fact that all Arcadians were trained in music and, though otherwise primitive, would be ashamed not to be able to sing. This reputation, rather than a Greek model like Theocritus, seems to be the basis of Virgil’s “cantare … et respondere parati”, relatively neutral in Eclogue VII but in Eclogue X, as we shall see, differently inflected. The scholiast Phylargyrius’s comment is to the point: “Arcades autem ideo, quod agrestis carminis fistula sit instrumentum, cuius inventor Pan”|Arcadian, however, for this reason, that the pipe would be the instrument of rustic love, and Pan [the god of Arcadia] invented it|(Servius/Thilo and Hagen 1923). For the ancient sources on Arcadia see Schmidt 1987, ch. 1, ‘Bukolik und Utopia’, esp. pp. 18–20, and again ch. 12, ‘Arkadien: Abendland und Antike’, pp. 239–64.

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‘community’: Damon is mentioned in Eclogue III, Alphesiboeus dances like a satyr in Eclogue V. Two other members, of higher symbolic value, Amaryllis and Daphnis, are re-integrated into the community – Daphnis an errant husband and Amaryllis a serving girl assisting in the ceremony. Damon’s song is not Theocritan, and Amphesiboeus’s is modelled on Idyll II, a piece that today we would not regard as pastoral at all. Also Theocritan is the refrain (usually) at every fourth line (as also in Idyll I), but the words themselves in Damon’s refrain revert to Arcadia – “incipe Maenalios mecum mea tibia versus”|Begin, my flute, with me my Maenalian verses|, Maenalus being a mountain in Arcadia, and Arcadia now, as the realm of Pan and the haunt also of Apollo, becoming the sign of the Eclogues’ quality of poetry – superseding Sicily, as it were.

3 17

Eclogue IX returns to Mantua and the Roman Troubles, rather unexpectedly, since we had their resolution in Eclogue I; but we must still be in an earlier time since Tityrus features in his former state, looking after others’ goats. A younger man, Lycidas, parleys with an older man, Moeris, referring to another, more authoritative figure, Menalcas, who is absent. Moeris has not appeared before but Menalcas has sung in Eclogues III and, most significantly, of Daphnis’s avatar in V; Lycidas has not appeared before, either, but he is the main figure, with whom Simichides ‘bucolizes’, in Theocritus’s Idyll VII. Thus both Eclogue I and Eclogue IX refer to Idyll VII, and both introduce contemporary reality. Indeed Servius makes it clear, and Renaissance commentators were glad to follow him, that at the heart of IX is an upset wherein Virgil had won, thanks to his patron Varus, the reprieve of his lands but then found that in reality the centurion Arrius had taken them over, requiring further intervention by still higher patronage – the situation achieved in Eclogue I. Though it is not yet achieved in Eclogue IX, Moeris expresses confidence that Menalcas will prevail, and will enable them to sing their songs, some of which they had exchanged in the middle part of the poem. It is difficult not to accept Menalcas as standing in some way for Virgil, when not only Servius but also Quintilian, within the first century AD, believed it, and when Menalcas has undertaken praises of Varus, even though “necdum

16 For the address to Octavian see G.W. Bowersock, ‘A date in the eighth Eclogue’, Harvard Studies, lxxv, 1971, pp. 73–80; and Ernst A. Schmidt, ‘Virgils Späte Eklogen’, in Schmidt 1987, pp. 197–237. Lerner 1972, pp. 61, 85–86, discusses these lines, 37–41, as if they were nostalgic: in fact they do not point back towards childhood, Damon has an entirely present malady that began at adolescence.

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perfecta”|not yet completed|. When, in the poem, Lycidas hears the news of the ­danger to Moeris and Menalcas and exclaims, “Heu, cadit in quemquam ­tantum scelus? heu, tua nobis paene simul tecum solacia rapta, Menalca?”|Agh, what a crime to be committed on anyone! What, the solace you bring in us in your songs, and you yourself almost taken from us, Menalcas, at the same time?| it is here that the attempt of Arrius to drown Vergil in the river Mincio that Servius reports and suggests implausibly to be “allegorically” represented in the ram that wets its fleece in Eclogue III (95) should be found represented, if anywhere. The line (IX, 28) “Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae”|Ah Mantua, alas too close to miserable Cremona!|refers unmistakably to an intricate detail of Roman politics, namely that because Cremona had supported the losing side (Brutus), local land – which always belonged to the state – was reallocated to veterans of the winning side (Octavian and Antony), but was found to be insufficient, and some was taken from Mantua as well, now encompassing Virgil’s land. Moeris’s lines in praise of Caesar (IX, 46–50) had achieved reassurance – “Insere, Daphni, piros: carpent tua poma nepotes”| Plant, Daphnis, your pears; your heirs will gather the fruit| – that had clearly been betrayed, since one finds almost the same line spat in sarcasm by the evicted Meliboeus in Eclogue I (73), “insere nunc, Meliboee, piros, pone ordine vites”|Plant your pears now, Meliboeus, set your vines in lines|. Otherwise the poem starts and ends with quotidiana, the language used being perhaps also colloquial: Lycidas meets Moeris, asks him where he is going, they exchange news, they discuss poetry, and they continue on their way, Lycidas helping Moeris carry his kids. He is going into the city, and I remark once more on the absence of any contrast expressed or felt with the countryside – modern presuppositions not prevailing. The relationship of the poem to Idyll VII is, however, complicated, certainly changed around: in Idyll VII they leave the city to go to the feast, in Eclogue IX they travel towards it; in Idyll VII they pass the tomb of Brasilas as they go out, in Eclogue IX they reach the tomb of Bianoris towards the end of the poem. In Idyll VII Lycidas is the very model and paragon of the herdsman poet, in Eclogue IX he is something rather less, since the respectful words Simichides, the alter ego of Theocritus, delivers to Lycidas are here, rendered in Latin, delivered by Lycidas. Neither Lycidas nor Moeris in Eclogue IX seem capable in themselves – indeed Moeris the wolves have seen first, depriving him of his voice. The problem of the wolves is a popular motif in later pastoral; still more popular is that of eavesdropping (21: “uel quae sublegi tacitus tibi carmina nuper”|or those of your songs I recently silently gathered up|; the whole eclogue is about listening to songs): it is taken up early by Arsochi and is a recurrent device in pastoral romance (see

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Chapter 9, passim). Moeris insists at the end that they will not delay by sitting in the shade and singing, they will not even sing as they go along, ending (66–67): desine plura, puer, et quod nunc instat agamus; carmina tum melius, cum venerit ipse, canemus. no more of this now, lad, let us get on with what we have to do; we shall sing better afterwards, when the one we need is with us.

It has been supposed that what is really meant is that Virgil had already begun the Georgics and was abandoning bucolics.

3 18

When Virgil opens Eclogue X (A2) in his own voice, “Extremum hunc, Arethusa, mihi concede l­aborem”|grant me this last task, Arethusa| he conveniently unites the two halves of his Eclogues, Arethusa being a spring rising at Syracuse, in other words the Theocritan Muse, but supposed to arrive there by travelling under sea from Arcadia, location of the music of Pan, which Virgil has taken up directly. The task is a song for Gallus – and for his beloved Lycoris, who may stand for his poetry, and who in any case will read it. He is Virgil himself, but also ‘Tityrus’ or equally ‘Menalcas’, since he pretends to be set in his pastoral environment: … sollicitos Galli dicamus amores, dum tenera attondent simae virgulta capellae. non canimus surdis, respondent omnia silvae. … let us tell of the troubled loves of Gallus, while the snub-nosed goats nibble the tender shrubs. We do not sing to the deaf, the woods echo all.

Then Virgil apparently ‘translates’, in Servius’s term, what must have been the well known lines of Theocritus’s Idyll I (echoed as well by the poets Moschus and Bion). Where were the nymphs when Gallus (Gallus, instead of Daphnis) was dying of love? – nymphs, of course, but also here called girls, “puellae”, for evidently Gallus was known (through his now lost poetry) for pursuing different girls, ‘flighty’ ones even, or “vagis ... puellis”, as Propertius will call them in his I, v, 7. The answer as to ‘where’ is not quite as in Theocritus; in Theocritus they should have been present, but were not, to aid Daphnis; 17 Quintilian/Winterbottom, VIII, vi, 47 (as cited above, §3). There is a detailed exposition of Eclogue IX by Ernst A. Schmidt, ‘Virgils Weg nach Rom’, in Schmidt 1987, pp. 179–96; for Varius and Cinna see p. 188.

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A2

VIRGIL, ECLOGA X Extremum hunc, Arethusa, mihi concede laborem: pauca meo Gallo, sed quae legat ipsa Lycoris, carmina sunt dicenda: neget quis carmina Gallo? sic tibi, cum fluctus subterlabere Sicanos, Doris amara suam non intermisceat undam; incipe; sollicitos Galli dicamus amores, dum tenera attondent simae virgulta capellae. non canimus surdis: respondent omnia silvae. Quae nemora aut qui vos saltus habuere, puellae Naiades, indigno cum Gallus amore peribat? nam neque Parnasi vobis iuga, nam neque Pindi ulla moram fecere, neque Aonie Aganippe. illum etiam lauri, etiam flevere myricae; pinifer illum etiam sola sub rupe iacentem Maenalus et gelidi fleverunt saxa Lycaei. Stant et oves circum (nostri nec paenitet illas, nec te paeniteat pecoris, divine poeta: et formosus ovis ad flumina pavit Adonis); venit et opilio, tardi venere subulci, uvidus hiberna venit de glande Menalcas. Omnes “unde amor iste” rogant “tibi?” venit Apollo: “Galle, quid insanis?” inquit “tua cura Lycoris perque nives alium perque horrida castra secuta est.” venit et agresti capitis Silvanus honore, florentis ferulas et grandia lilia quassans. Pan deus Arcadiae venit, quem vidimus ipsi sanguineis ebuli bacis minioque rubentem: “ecquis erit modus?” inquit “Amor non talia curat, nec lacrimis crudelis Amor nec gramina rivis nec cytiso saturantur apes nec fronde capellae.” tristis at ille “tamen cantabitis, Arcades” inquit, “montibus haec vestris, soli cantare periti Arcades. O mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant, vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores! Atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrisque fuissem aut custos gregis aut maturae vinitor uvae! certe sive mihi Phyllis sive esset Amyntas, seu quicumque furor (quid tum, si fuscus Amyntas? et nigrae violae sunt et vaccinia nigra), mecum inter salices lenta sub vite iaceret: serta mihi Phyllis legeret, cantaret Amyntas.

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This last task now, [fountain of] Arethusa, grant me: a few verses (also for Lycoris to read) have to be told for Gallus, my friend: who would refuse verses for Gallus? And, since your spring slips away into Sicilian waves, no Doris may intermix her bitter water. Begin: let us tell of the troubled loves of Gallus, even while the snub-nosed goats trim the shoots of the scrub. We do not sing unheard: the woods reply to every verse. What woods or what vales held you, young Naiads, while Gallus was dying for a love unworthy of him? For the hills of Parnassus did not detain you, nor even those of Pindus, nor even Aonian Aganippe. For Gallus even the laurels wept, even the tamarisks wept; even, as he lay on a solitary rock, pine-bearing Maenalus wept, and the stones of chilly Lycaeus. The sheep gathered, too (they are not embarrassed by us, nor should you be embarrassed by them, gifted poet: the beautiful Adonis, too, grazed his flock by the streams); a shepherd came, the slow swineherds came, Menalcas came, dripping from the winter acorns. All demand, “Whence this passion of yours?” Apollo came: “Gallus, what madness is this?” he says. “Your beloved Lycoris through the snows and harsh army camps has followed another.” Silvanus came, wreathed in rustic fashion, shaking flowery reeds and huge lilies. Pan the god of Arcadia came, whom we ourselves saw crimsoned with red elderberries and vermilion. “Is there no limit to this?”, he cried. “Love is not moved in this way, Cruel love is not surfeited with tears, no more than grass with banks or bees with pollen or goats with shoots.” But bleak Gallus replies, “Notwithstanding you will sing, Arcadians, of these things to your mountains, you Arcadians who alone know how to sing. Oh then how softly will my marrow ease, if but once your pipes sing of my loves! If only I could be one from among you and of you, whether a herder of sheep or a cropper of ripe grapes! I am sure that if Phyllis were with me, or if Amyntas were, or whoever my passion might be (what if Amyntas is swarthy? Violets, too, are black, hyacinths, too, are black), he or she would lie with me among the willows under the creeping vine; Phyllis would cull garlands for me, Amyntas would sing.

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hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori, hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo. nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostis. tu procul a patria (nec sit mihi credere tantum) Alpinas, a, dura, nives et frigora Rheni me sine sola vides. a, te ne frigora laedant! a, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas! Ibo et Chalcidico quae sunt mihi condita versu carmina pastoris Siculi modulabor avena. certum est in silvis inter spelaea ferarum malle pati tenerisque meos incidere amores arboribus: crescent illae, crescetis, amores. interea mixtis lustrabo Maenala Nymphis, aut acris venabor apros; non me ulla vetabunt frigora Parthenios canibus circumdare saltus. iam mihi per rupes videor lucosque sonantis ire, libet Partho torquere Cydonia cornu spicula – tamquam haec sit nostri medicina furoris, aut deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat. iam neque Hamadryades rursus nec carmina nobis ipsa placent; ipsae rursus concedite, silvae. non illum nostri possunt mutare labores, nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus, Sithoniasque nives hiemis subeamus aquosae, nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo, Aethiopum versemus ovis sub sidere Cancri. Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori.” Haec sat erit, divae, vestrum cecinisse poetam, dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco, Pierides: vos haec facietis maxima Gallo, Gallo, cuius amor tantum mihi crescit in horas, quantum vere novo viridis se subicit alnus. surgamus: solet esse gravis cantantibus umbra, iuniperi gravis umbra; nocent et frugibus umbrae. ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite, capellae. P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. F.A. Hertzel (Scriptorum Classicorum Biblioteca Oxoniensis), Oxford 1963

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Here there are chill springs, here there are soft meadows, Lycoris, here is a wood; here I would be spent with you by time itself. As it is an insane love holds me in hard Mars’s armour at the front in the midst of weapons. You far from your country (I should not find it so hard to believe) visit Alpine snows, unyielding, and the ice of the Rhine alone and without me. Ah, may the cold not hurt you! The harsh ice must not cut your tender feet! I will go and the verses I had composed in Chalcidian style I will modulate to the Sicilian shepherd’s reed. I have determined to endure my loves in the woods, among the caves of the beasts, and to carve them on [the bark of] young trees: as they grow, you will grow, my loves. I will range meanwhile across Maenalus [in Arcadia] in amongst the nymphs, or I will hunt fierce boar; the cold will not deter me from circling the ranges of Parthenus with my dogs. I seem even now to be roving among the rocks and the echoing groves, I rejoice to fire Cydonian [Cretan] arrows from Parthian horn – as if this could be the cure of my fever, as if that infamous god would learn to soften men’s sufferings. Now in turn the Hamadryads and singing itself have no pleasure for me: you, too, yield in your turn, woods. Our efforts cannot alter him, not if we drink the river Hebrus in its chilly deeps or immerse ourselves in the snows of the wet Sithonian winter, or if, as the bark shrivels high on the trees, we drive Ethiopian sheep in the Tropics. Love overcomes all things; so let me, too, yield to Love.” This will be enough, Pierian Muses, for your poet to have sung, while he sits and weaves his basket of pliant mallow, Muses, who shall make these verses great for Gallus’s sake; for Gallus, for whom, as time passes, my love grows as the alder shoots up green in the new spring. Let us rise: falling shadows generally are not good for singers; the shade of the juniper is harmful; shadows do ill even to crops. Off you go home, goats, you are fed; it is evening; off you go.

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in Virgil by contrast they are, implicitly, present, because they were not in their usual haunts. Therefore (I believe) they must have been where Gallus was, among the trees and shrubs and the mountains Maenalus and Lycaeum, who “etiam”|also|wept for him – in Arcadia. These lines (13–15), with the idea that trees and mountains wept for him, come from Idyll VII (74), from the short description that Lycidas makes of Tityrus singing of the death of Daphnis, rather than from Idyll I, and Virgil returns to Theocritus’s ‘poets on poetry and life’ Idyll VII, to which he has already referred in Eclogues I and IX, in a number of following lines as well. The nymphs wept for Gallus as he lay, or reclined, beneath a solitary rock (“sola sub rupe iacentem”; 14): this recalls Idyll VII, 88–89, “τὺ δ᾽ὑπὸ δρυσὶν ἢ ὑπὸ πεύκαις/ ἀδὺ μελισδόμενος κατεκέκλισο, θεῖε Κομᾶτα”|but you beneath the oaks or beneath the pines singing sweetly recline, divine Komatas|; the “θεῖε Κομᾶτα” is echoed by Virgil’s “divine poeta”, in the same rhythm in the same place in the line, in X, 17. Gallus is beneath a solitary rock – a suffering Prometheus – by contrast to Tityrus, in Virgil’s opening (I, 1–2), “Tityre tu recubans …” – referring to the same two lines – who reclines unexposed. Gallus therefore is not simply Daphnis, sung of, but also Komatas, singer, the singer to whom Theocritus’s Lycidas pays homage in Idyll VII as the greatest herdsman poet, and whose goats Lycidas would have wished to tend while he sang – as Tityrus has tended others’; Virgil implicitly honours Gallus as his mentor but, not unlike Simichides to Lycidas, does not hesitate to challenge him. (Comatas is the singer also in Idyll V, so in this Theocritan figure one might find the germ of Virgil’s ‘community’.) Theocritus stressed Lycidas’s herdsmanly appearance (13–19); Virgil stresses the rusticity of his own poetry, for Gallus’s successive visitors, in the refraining manner of Idyll I – venit et opilio, tardi venere subulci, uvidus hiberna venit de glande Menalcas a shepherd came, the slow swineherds came, Menalcas came, dripping from the winter acorns

– are Virgil’s ‘community’, revealed now as Roman by the Latin terms “opilio” and “subulci”, prime among them Menalcas, whom we may read, following on from Eclogue IX, as himself; and Virgil calls on Gallus not to be embarrassed – “nec poeniteat (17)” – by the flock that stands looking on, because they, too, have their place in poetry. Mutatis mutandis, one may also think of Gallus as he reclines and receives rather as the ancients conceived the ‘theoxenia’ or divine visit of Dionysus and his train to a poet, with Gallus making just such a histrionic gesture and a puella at his feet or groin (in a

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fig. 1.2 Dionysus and his train visit a poet Roman/Hellenistic relief, c. 1st century ad, marble, 80 × 136 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

composition found in numerous representations; fig. 1.2). But let me break off to admit that the following discussion is for its own sake: the early modern interpretation of the Eclogue rested, in accordance with the prosopographic approach usual among the commentators, with the personalities involved, among whom was Antony – it was to Antony in Gaul that Gallus’s beloved Lycoris was supposed by Servius to have run off. Eclogue X was not highly influential, since later ages preferred to turn directly to Theocritus, Idyll I, and to Moschus’s still more emotional lament for Bion (see Chapter 13 §1); but the Arethusa story was crucial again for Sannazaro (see Chapter 3 §17) and Guarino (see Chapter 11 §14) and the ending of the poem (70–71) was also taken up by Sannazaro and again by Tasso in his episode of Erminia and the Shepherd in Gerusalemme Liberata (see Chapter 12 §1).

18 See the detailed analysis and discussion of all aspects of the Eclogue by Gagliardi 2014. However, she does not mention the evidence of Gallus’s promiscuity, which was surely part of his poetic persona – not simply limited to a devotion to Lycoris, like Propertius to Cynthia. For this relief, of which there are several versions extant, see the British Museum website under the inventory no. 1805,0703.123, with extensive bibliography; C. Watzinger, ‘Theoxenia des Dionysos’, Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Institut, lxi, 1946, pp. 76–87, at p. 83, remarks that the woman at the poet’s feet must be, by analogy with other imagery, his sexual partner (‘hetaira’ or other). On Antony and Lycoris see Wilson-Okamura 2010, p. 51; also here Chapter 19 §2n.

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3 19 Gallus now responds to these rustics: the great lover poet will seek comfort in herdsmen’s verse: tristis at ille ‘tamen cantabitis Arcades’ inquit ‘montibus haec vestris, soli cantare periti Arcades. o mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant, vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores! atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem aut custos gregis aut maturae uinitor uuae!’ But he sadly spoke: ‘But you will sing, Arcadians, this to your own mountains, you Arcadians who alone know how to sing. Oh then how gently would my bones be stilled [the ancients perceived love as burning the marrow], if your pipe were to tell of my loves! Oh I wish I were one from among you and of you whether a herder of sheep or a cropper of ripe grapes!

Comatas is again recalled, for “atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem”, ‘translates’ Idyll VII, 86, “αἴθ᾽ἐπ᾽ἐμεῦ ζωοῖς ἐναρίθμιος ὤφελες ἦμεν”|oh would that you were with me numbered among the living!| (and if you had been, Comatas, I would be tending your goats). Having received homage, Gallus returns the compliment. Gallus dwells for a moment in this (or “your”) ‘Arcadia’, still explicitly low and rustic, before being pulled out of it into his own reality: “nunc”|now| he is back in “insane” love and campaigning, pursuing Lycoris and her lover; according to Servius “hi autem omnes Galli versus sunt, de ipsius translati carminibus”|all these are lines by Gallus, carried over from his own poems|. It is from these evident quotations (as I read it) that Gallus is next made by Virgil to turn to pastoral, Ibo et Chalcidico quae sunt mihi condita uersu carmina pastoris Siculi modulabor auena. I will go and the verses I had composed in Chalcidian style I will modulate to the Sicilian shepherd’s reed.

as if the first of these lines were by Gallus (imitating the poet Euphorion from Chalcis in Eubaea) and the second by Virgil, much as elsewhere he juxtaposes one by Theocritus with another of his own. Indeed the ‘harshness’ of the elision in the first foot and of the whole line stands in obvious contrast to Virgil’s following non-pentameter (Quintilian characterized Gallus’s poetry as “durior” than that of other elegists, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid), and

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the construction ‘ibo et’ recalls a passage in Propertius I, i, 12, that has been argued on other grounds to reflect a lost passage in Gallus, “ibat et hirsutas ille videre feras”|he went to find also shaggy boars|. Gallus’s poetry is surely echoed in the immediately preceding lines, as he fears for Lycoris’s tender feet, for Propertius also echoes this, and again in the following three involving carving names on trees (52–54) – this particular trope, though it is almost a synecdoche for pastoral, need not have originated with Virgil – and especially in the following six or seven in which he hunts in order to escape the pains of love (55–60/61) – presumably the same passage again that Propertius’s “ibat et hirsutas ille videre feras” recalls. But this initiative by Gallus proves inefficacious, bucolic poetry also proves ineffective: “rursus concedite silvae”|you, too, yield in your turn, woods|. Finally a reference to the extremes of cold and heat, Hebron and Ethiopia (X, 65–68), which, even these, still would not enable Gallus to escape the torments of love, recalls once again Idyll VII, in Simichides’s reply to Lycidas (VII, 111–13), describing the punishments due to Pan if he does not intervene to make a lover yield. It seems indeed that Gallus’s pain has been due to resistance to love, for at the end he gives way: “Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori”|Love conquers everything; so let me yield to love too|. Despite its apparent fatalism, however, this does not mean he will be put out of his pain: he will continue to die, like Daphnis. Lycoris will be glad of this, for so Virgil has already claimed in saying she will read this; here there must be reference too to Gallus’s angry line in the papyrus fragment, [the Muses] tandem fecerunt domina carmina digna mea|have at last created songs that are worthy of my mistress|, which brings the further consequence that Virgil has achieved this feat as well. And now it is Virgil in person to provide the concluding lines of the ten books of Eclogues, not directly referring to Idyll VII but in other terms claiming for himself the otium/“ἁσυχία”|peace|(Idyll VII, 126) that Simichides (Theocritus) sought at the end of the poem that he sang in response to Lycidas – a poem in which he sang of the difficult loves of others, and urged his friend Aratus that they should turn away from them and to others leave their pain. Consistently – from Eclogue II (the first) to Eclogue X (the last) – while entering the territory of the neoterics Virgil has shown himself also to stand apart from their personal amorous subjugation; Gallus, the greatest of them (at least in Virgil’s own generation), is left to continue on his own way while also having endorsed Virgil’s enterprise – for in making him Daphnis or finding him to be a Daphnis (this was surely Virgil’s, not Gallus’s idea) Virgil has perfectly epitomized Gallus’s poetry – and Virgil’s expression of love for his friend in final conclusion itself endorses that endorsement.

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3 20 Though it was noted Gallus in Eclogue X has little to do with the subsequent history of pastoral, the Eclogue properly centralizes the figure of Daphnis, dying of love, in pastoral: literally or metaphorically the dying or ‘dying’ lover – and at the same time a very great lover – is its most typical protagonist. In itself Gallus’s figure is engrossing, even if perplexing, and one can be almost certain that any conclusion we come to with our so limited evidence will be wrongfooted if any more came to light. It has been supposed, for instance, that Gallus invented Latin pastoral before Virgil – whatever one may presume ‘pastoral’ may have meant before Virgil. However, Gallus clearly did not imitate Theocritus before Virgil, witness Eclogue VI, 1 (see §13), while “Ibo et …” in Eclogue X, 50, expresses an intention for the future which is immediately followed – 51 – and fulfilled by a version of I, 2, which obviously Gallus had not written. Again, the lines “soli cantare periti/Arcades” (X, 32–33) are crucial, because they echo the lines “Arcades ambo,/ et cantare pares et respondere parati” of Eclogue VII, 4–5, which ‘translate’ the openings, conflated, of Idylls VI and VIII; and similarly in the rest of Gallus’s speech he subtexts Theocritus, which stems from Virgil. So Virgil invented pastoral first of all in fact by establishing a model, the (selected) work of Theocritus, secondly by validating ‘goatherd song’ and thirdly by creating a fictive community. He did not, however, necessarily invent such motifs as carving names on trees, or singing in deserted places, or the details of countryside life and activity – even though in turning to these he anticipated (only to some degree) other poets, for example Horace’s Epode ii, ‘Beatus ille’, or Tibullus, II, i. Virgil cannot by himself have invented the notion that Arcadians were gifted singers or gifted singers were Arcadians; furthermore it is possible, even probable, that he took over from Gallus’s poetry some idea or use of Arcadia – if only because certain myths that Gallus used or referred to were located in Arcadia. In Eclogue X we find Gallus already in Arcadia: although he is 19 For a summary of what is known about Gallus, see Keith 2008, pp. 11–15, and the further references in §4 above; and again Gagliardi 2014, who stresses the ‘failure’ both of Gallus’s own poetry and of the pastoral to which he turns to provide a “φάρμακον” or “medicina” for love. For Propertius on Gallus see also next note. Quintilian/Winterbottom, X, i, 93: “Ovidius utroque [Tibullus, Propertius] lascivior, sicut durior Gallus”. See Rensselaer W. Lee, Names on Trees: Ariosto into Art, Princeton nj [1977]. Gagliardi 2014 argues the nature of Gallus’s surrender well; she also suggests that Gallus may in fact have given poetry up by this point, since it failed to ‘work’, and also as his political career advanced and he became too old and too dignified for lovesick elegy. In my opinion, however, she rather underplays Virgil’s own – indeed not Gallus’s – achievement of otium/“ἁσυχία”, asserted in lines 70–72, and his own stability and distance from his characters, essential to his pastoral project.

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not there in any pastoral way, but ‘lying beneath a solitary rock’ on Mount Maenalus, and hunting, while he was in Arcadia he may also have invoked Pan, who on Mount Maenalus had not left the reeds untouched (Eclogue VIII, 22–24). Pan, too, was “δύσερως”|unlucky in love|, as well as Daphnis; so was Melanion (also known as Meleager), in Arcadia. It may be again that Gallus helped the development of the idea of the ‘vatic’ poet; certainly surviving fragments of his verses take making poetry as their subject – this is a topic scholars have claimed as subtextual in other poets (Propertius above all) and for which Virgil’s Eclogue VI, 64–71, is evidence: there he is said to have invoked Linus and been inspired in the pattern of Hesiod. On the one hand Gallus was capable of indulging in recondite mythological references such as the aetiological poem to Apollo’s grove in Gryneum mentioned in Eclogue VI, of which we have scant other information; secondly a surviving collection of recondite and unusual mythological tales was dedicated to him specifically for his use by the Greek author Parthenius; and these ‘Aonie Aganippe’-like snippets would have been one way in which Gallus achieved his aim of being perissos. On the other hand another way might well have been his vividness (Virgil’s phrase, 26, “quem vidimus ipsi”, strikingly recalls Propertius’s lines quoted in §4, “cum te complexa morientem, Galle, puella/vidimus et longa ducere verba mora!”, and again in I, xiii, Propertius insists on his seeing, “ego vidi” being repeated twice, 14, 15): this vividness presumably was reinforced by the carnal specificity of his verse: one may deduce from Propertius I, xiii, 18, that he described cunnilingus and Ovid, too, accused him of having a tongue insufficiently dilute – too strong (no wonder his work did not survive the Christian conversion).

3 21

Discussion of Gallus also affects the notion of Arcadia. Gallus is the first visitor to Arcadia, the first stranger who can say, ‘et in Arcadia ego’. However, even though he is ‘lying’ on Mount Maenalus, he cannot, it seems, reach the Arcadians: even “montibus in vestris”|in your own mountains| he cannot be one of the Arcadians – not only because they reside, in fact, in Mantua but because the torments of his love and what they drive him to do not permit it. He has a vision of a lover’s paradise, briefly sketched:

20 Ovid, Tristia, II, 446–47 “Non fuit opprobrio celebrasse Lycorida Gallo,/sed linguam nimio non tenuisse mero”|Gallus was not to be blamed for having celebrated Lycoris, but for not having restrained his tongue from the excessively strong|(sc. as of neat wine, usually drunk with water in those times). The evidence of Gallus’s poetry that can be reconstructed by a close reading of Propertius has been investigated by Ross 1975 and Cairns 2006 (see above §4ff.; also Gagliardi 2014 and

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20 (cont.) her references), following Hermann Tränkle, Die Sprachkunst des Properz und die Tradition der Lateinischer Dichtersprache, Stuttgart 1960. In his so-called ‘Monobiblios’, first published by itself, later Book I of four, Propertius refers to Gallus directly in poems v, x, xiii and xx. In v, Propertius explicitly sets himself as the equal of his rival, who, he implies, is known (7) for pursuing ‘flighty’ girls, “vagis ... puellis” to whom his own Cynthia is not similar; instead she lays on her faithful lover a heavy servitude, even reducing him to a nobody, a nothing (“nullus”; 9–22). He concludes: non ego tum potero solacia ferre roganti, cum mihi nulla mei sit medicina mali; sed pariter miseri socio cogemur amore alter in alterius mutua flere sinu. quare, quid possit mea Cynthia, desine, Galle, quaerere: non impune illa rogata venit” I will not then be able to bring relief if you ask me since I have no remedy for my own malady; but we are driven similarly by a common love, the one to weep in the breast of the other. Therefore cease to question, Gallus, what my Cynthia is capable of: once asked, she does not come without there being consequences. Obviously we cannot plausibly suppose that Gallus was pestering Propertius (we have no reason to believe even that they were socially acquainted); and when he says he has no remedy (medicina) and they have to weep together he is competing to be an equally tormented, if not sicker lover. In x, Propertius apparently more generously acknowledges Gallus’s priority, thanking Gallus for (as he puts it) letting him witness his lovemaking: O iucunda quies, primo cum testis amori affueram vestris conscius in lacrimis! o noctem meminisse mihi iucunda voluptas o quotiens votis illa vocanda meis cum te complexa morientem, Galle, puella vidimus et longa ducere verba mora! O sweet peace, when I was witness to your first love and was knowingly present at your tears! o sweet pleasure for me to remember that night! o how often to be called upon in my prayers! when I saw you dying, Gallus, in the embrace of your girl and sobbing out your words at long intervals! But then he claims that now he can repay Gallus not only for sharing his so tender feelings but by relieving him of the pains that followed:

possum ego diversos iterum coniungere amantis, et dominae tardas possum aperire fores; et possum alterius curas sanare recentis, nec levis in verbis est medicina meis I can reunite separated lovers, and I can open the reluctant doors of a mistress; and I can heal the fresh wounds of another [lover], and the medicine in my words is not superficial.

Now he regards himself as the more experienced in love’s trials. In xiii we learn still more of Gallus, a Don Juan who meets his match:

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f one  §20 note v

Tu, quod saepe soles, nostro laetabere casu, Galle, quod abrepto solus vacem. at non ipse tuas imitabor, perfide, voces: fallere te numquam, Galle, puella velit. dum tibi deceptis augetur fama puellis, certus et in nullo quaeris amore moram perditus in quadam tardis pallescere curis incipis ... As you like to do, you will rejoice at my condition, Gallus, because deprived of my love I am alone and idle. But I will not try the sort of thing you say, you cheat; never may a girl want to deceive you. While your reputation grows for letting girls down and you determinedly avoid dwelling in any one affair there is one in whom you are already lost, in whom you begin to grow pale with cares that are hard to shrug off …. How does Propertius know? Once more he has seen him: … vidi ego: me quaeso teste negare potes? vidi ego te toto vinctum languescere collo et flere iniectis, Galle, diu manibus et cupere optatis animam deponere labris, et quae deinde meus celat, amice, pudor. non ego complexus potui diducere vestros: tantus erat demens inter utrosque furor …. tu vero quoniam semel es periturus amore, utere: non alio limine dignus eras. I saw you: how can you deny it when I witnessed it? I saw you languishing locked in complete neck[ing], and weeping long, Gallus, with your hands fastened [upon her], and desiring to lay down your soul on those longed-for lips, and next what decorum, my friend, would have me veil [presumably cunnilingus] I was not capable of drawing you apart as you embraced, so great was the mad fury between the two of you …. But since you are about to perish from love once and for all, don’t miss [the opportunity]: you were worthy of no other’s threshold. Propertius’s last address to Gallus, xx, consists mostly of an epyllion of Hercules’s loss of Hylas to the nymphs, told as a warning that he should not be so unguarded with a lover of his own. The profile of Gallus’s persona that emerges from these confrontations is of a vigorous and forceful lover and love-maker, and indeed a promiscuous one, for all his subjection to a mistress (domina): his poetry had after all made him the leading model of a modern Roman lover, which was not at all an un-masculine one, for all the scope and intensity of its pains and complaints.

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hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori, hic nemus; hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo. Here there are chill springs, here there are soft meadows, Lycoris, here is a wood; here I would be spent with you by time itself,

but one not given to Gallus to enter. Similarly shut out, Meliboeus regards Tityrus – without envy, as he says himself – as fortunate, unlike him, as at peace (I, 50ff.); but Tityrus’s land is not particularly good land (46–47), and in both cases one may say soft meadows and a grove and a spring are no more, in themselves, than a norm when seen other than from the point of view of the dispossessed. Virgil’s “consumerer aevo” is a poignant phrase: it was usual in Latin actively to ‘consume’, to take up or spend time, but not to be spent by it (this appears to be a unique usage), and requires some explanation: one may be that the verb ‘to be consumed’ is at the same time a translation of Greek τάκεσθαι, the verb Theocritus uses in Idylls I and VII and elsewhere for Daphnis’s (and others’) ‘consumption’ by love, meaning more ­literally ‘to be melted’ or ‘dissolved’, by love, disease or grief. “Aevo” may suggest that Gallus would remain there until his every sun had set and even in the afterlife (like Daphnis in Idyll I, 102). But the idea must come from Gallus, rather than the image that Virgil might have wished to form of ‘Arcadia’: two passages from Propertius about Gallus refer to the stretching out of time, weeping, uttering “flere … diu”; “longa … mora”, besides his reference to Gallus washing his wounds in Hades already mentioned – certainly a long operation; relevant also is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, IV, 276–78 (Alcithoe is narrating): Vulgatos taceo, dixit, pastoris amores Daphnidis Idaei, quem nymphae paelicis ira contulit in saxum; tantus dolor urit amantes I pass over, she said, the widely known loves of the shepherd Daphnis of [Mount] Ida, whom the scorn of his paramour nymph turned into rock; so great is the pain that burns lovers,

which it is difficult to assess. Becoming rock is obviously perennial; Ovid may as well be referring to the image of Gallus as Daphnis created by Virgil as to some myth of him that we do not otherwise know: his “paelex”|mistress|seems a reference to Lycoris, his ‘turning into rock’ (saxum) might recall Gallus beneath his solitary rock (rupes); and “tantus dolor urit amantes” seems a knowing reference to Eclogues II and X. (Did Petrarch take from this passage his own idea of turning into rock – “pietra

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morta in pietra viva” – in canzone xxx? It would be a fitting continuity.) However that may be, it is certainly a presumptuous error to read these passages as idealizing Arcadia or as presenting Virgil’s herdsmen’s habitat as an unrealistic, idealized or ‘imaginary’ environment.

3 22 Rather, Virgil’s identification Gallus-Daphnis epitomizes the point that pastoral represented primarily an alternative or, even, a more suitable form than those ad­opted by Gallus or Catullus or others before him, for his pastoral was capable of singing of love, indeed was c­ entred on love, though flexibly could include r­e­ fer­ ences to contemporaries and contemporary events and higher matters of a mythical or cosmic kind. That Virgil in his Eclogues proved himself as a ‘neoteric’ lover poet seems the clear message of Propertius’s comments on the Eclogues in his II, xxxiv, of which the last four lines, 73–76, run: quamvis ille sua lassus requiescat avena laudatur facilis inter Hamadryadas. non tamen haec ulli venient ingrata legenti, sive in amore rudis sive peritus erit. Even if the poet now rests from the pipe he made his own he continues to be praised by the willing Hamadryads. These verses will be not fail to be appreciated by any reader, whether he is untried in love or whether he is expert.

These are especially appreciative words from Propertius because in his first book he ‘fights’ with Gallus as to who is the superior kind of lover (sc. lover poet); and they are a significant confirmation that pastoral was primarily a mode of love poetry: the last line not only recalls Eclogue III, 110 (quoted above) but is directly comparable to the declaration of its purpose in the prologue (Proem 3) of Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe (of some two centuries later): … ἀνάθημα μεν Ἔρωτι καὶ Νύμφαις καὶ Πανί, κτῆμα δε τερπνὸν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, ὃ καὶ νοσοῦντα ἰάσεται καὶ λυπούμενον παραμυθήσεται, τὸν ἐρασθέντα ἀναμνήσει, τὸν οὐκ ἐρασθέντα προπαιδεύσει

… [his story] an offering to Love and the nymphs and Pan, a pleasant thing to have for all men, that will heal the sick and encourage the grieving, remind those who have loved and instruct those who have not.

22 Longus/LCL508.

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3 23 The goats with which Virgil ends Eclogue X, “ite capellae” – depart, it is time, the sun is setting – are simply goats. They are not accompanied, for example, by goat-footed creatures such as fauns; and in no sense do they inhabit an ‘Arcadia’ or locus amoenus on a different level from the norm. While Virgil invokes nymphs as denizens of the forest, mountains and streams, these forests, mountains and streams are not special in this, since these are their home in any case – also in the Georgics, for instance. Indeed at Georgics (II, 10) Virgil quotes – as he rarely does – from the Eclogues, et vos, agrestum praesentia numina, Fauni and you Fauns, visible divinities for the countryfolk,

recalling Eclogue X (42), “praesentes ... cognoscere divos”. So there is no difference here between pastoral and any other representation of country life; there is no process of idealization. Indeed one should argue the opposite: Virgil’s evocation at the end of Georgics II of the joy of country living, untroubled by war, power, luxury, poverty and all such karma associated with the city, which in today’s looser usage might be called ‘Arcadian’, … o qui me gelidis convallibus Haemi sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra! o that one should set me down in the chill valleys of Haemus and shield me with the ample shade of its branches!

has no parallel in the Eclogues, except (to prove the rule) in Gallus’s vision. There is nothing in the Eclogues like the conclusion of this passage of the Georgics: hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini, hanc Remus et frater …. this is the life that the ancient Sabines led, and Remus and Romulus ….

or indeed like the almost contemporary Epode II, 2 (‘Beatus ille’) by Horace, “ut prisca gens mortalium”|like the old race of mortals|. Nevertheless it is true that already Virgil’s earliest known commentator Donatus tended towards that equation, concluding his discussion of the Eclogues following his Life of Virgil with the notion that it was with these that Virgil began his poetic career because bucolic was the oldest kind of poetry, and by virtue of that revealed “ea vita, quae prima in terris fuit”|the life that was the first in the world|; this view became gradually prevalent (as the predominant ‘allegorical’ reading waned) and was applied, a fortiori, to Theocritus as well.

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Donatus anticipates what will be enshrined in Jean de Garlande’s ‘wheel of Virgil’ (see Chapter 2 §5), a role for Virgil encompassing the whole range of literature, removing the Eclogues from their more specific context. In truth, it is the poet himself who in the work enjoys a state of peace, not necessarily accorded to his characters (X, 70–71): Haec sat erit, divae, vestrum cecinisse poetam, dum sedet et gracili fiscellam texit hibisco This will be enough, Pierian Muses, for your poet to have sung, while he sits and weaves his basket of pliant mallow.

His shepherds must fit back into the georgic order, reverting to shepherdhood as one profession among others of the countryside population; of course it remains the case that, within the georgic context, they have a special, and historic, role: as Scaliger noted, unlike other workers they have their hands free to make music (see Chapter 11 §12).

3 24

Again, the contact with divinity (I, IX) of Vergil’s herdsmen was integral to their ordinary lives. The presence of the gods or demigods would be felt particularly in the remote countryside: Horace, as if he himself had undergone an encounter like that of Eclogue VI, claims to have experienced an epiphany of Bacchus “in remotis rupibus” (Odes, II, XIX): Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus vidi docentem – credite posteri – Nymphasque discentis et auris capripedum Satyrorum acutas” Amid remote rocks I saw Bacchus teaching songs – believe me, future generations – and the Nymphs learning and the sharp ears of the goatfooted Satyrs.

Nor, on the other hand, does Virgil disguise the reality of the countryside: there is the fussing of Meliboeus afraid to leave his work in Eclogue VII, 23 Donatus quoted from www.forumromanum.org/literature/donatus_eclogae.html: this view of the figures of the Eclogues as ‘primitive’ had importance not so much in the Renaissance and Baroque periods as in the eighteenth century: see Chapter 19 §2. This making activity has been regarded as a metaphor for poetic making when found in Hellenistic verse: see further Harriet Edquist, ‘The Nature of Theocritean Otium’, in Ancient Pastoral: Ramus essays on Greek and Roman pastoral poetry, ed. A.J. Boyle, Berwick, Victoria, 1975, pp. 19–32, at p. 24.

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fig. 1.3 Illumination fronting Georgics III in ‘The Roman Virgil’, 5th century Vatican Library, lat. 3867, f. 44v

Corydon’s horror that by wasting his time lamenting he has left his work unfinished, and in particular what may be an acknowledgement of the presence of slaves: Pascite ut ante boves”, says Virgil (Eclogue I, 46), “pueri, summittite tauros”|Pasture the cattle as before, boys, yoke the oxen|; these ‘boys’ will not have been minors. We return to the situation as laid out above in §3, as represented in the fifth-century Roman Virgil manuscript (see fig. 1.3): these figures wear the ­exomis that labourers wore (one shoulder was left bare for the practical reason that the arm was freer for labour), but also wreaths.

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3 25 In order to avoid the very real difficulty that Virgil’s Eclogues present in this regard, and the false suppositions they have generated, I think it worthwhile to coin a word, ‘metachronic’, to describe this fictive projection from a real base. Virgil projects himself as a shepherd, for example, in which role he stands ‘beyond’ the temporal while also located in it. It is a pretty obvious coinage and does not need close definition, but it should be useful, because those existing, like ‘allegorical’, are inadequate or incorrect. Servius uses the term ‘allegory’ both in the sense of ‘metaphor’, comprehensible in itself – for example, “sat prata biberunt”|the meadows have drunk enough: our song is over| – and in the modern meaning of a scheme representing another reality, as at Eclogue III, 95, “ipse aries etiam nunc vellera siccat”|the ram himself is even now drying his fleece|, which he says refers to Virgil having escaped death at the hands of the centurion Arrius. Neither is useful to describe a pretence, a performance: the first is inbuilt into language far too generally and the second, a crude hic pro hoc, is too blunt an instrument. The setting down of Arcadians and other apparent Greeks in a real Mantua is not allegorizing in the latter sense because there is no geared transmission to reality. Eclogue I can be read as allegorical because reference to the real redistribution of land by the Roman state can be read into it; Eclogue II can be read as allegorical because Corydon can be taken to reflect the poet’s own love life, and so on (more or less plausibly – including even Eclogue VI, in the Renaissance), but Eclogue VII not so: there is no other temporal reality to which the presence or situation of the Arcadians may be said to refer (though it would be suggested they were immigrants looking for work: 24 This receptivity continues even into later antiquity, for instance in Seneca’s 91st Epistle. Possibly Leon Battista Alberti recalled these lines in his Tirsis (see Chapter 2), and for this reason ‘Phauni’ witness his shepherds’ song. See Corrado Barberis, Le campagne italiane da Roma antica al Settecento, Bari 1998; in particular Part I, Chapter 4, note 64; Part II, Chapter 1, p. 132; he quotes Sidonius Apollinaris, IV, 24 (“[Dum] pueri clientesque governabant animales …| [While] the slaves and retainers looked after the animals …|.. The georgic is considered in Chapter 6 §9, 19 and recurrently in Chapters 11, 12. Obviously there are differences between the pastoral and the georgic, but they are not always correctly made: for instance, the idea of “a happy people, wanting little because desiring not much” (Philip Sidney, Arcadia; see Chapter 11 §11), is generally regarded as pastoral, but in origin it is actually georgic. A harder distinction between georgic and pastoral is introduced with regard to the eighteenth century by a critic such as John Barrell in The Dark Side of the Landscape, Cambridge 1980 (for example, p. 48) for whom pastoral is “idle” and georgic “working”, perpetuating malgré soi a nineteenth-century distinction between the ‘deserving’ (working) and ‘undeserving’ (idle) poor – even if in his book it is the rich who are undeserving. It would be even more inappropriate to project it as far back as Virgil. See further Chapter 12, passim.

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see Chapter 11 §3). Instead they enact, rather than encode, the transfer of Greek poetry to Roman soil, and designate ‘poetry’ here rather than denote such a quality over there. This might be seen as a charade, but it is more similar to a masque – and even if one might shrug at the notion of attaching a label to this aspect of the Eclogues themselves, one could usefully describe Stuart masques, for example, as ‘metachronic’, for there royalty and court appear in a fiction but at the same time as themselves. One might simply say that metachronic stands to allegorical as masque stands to drama. The term would apply to performances where there is no allegory to be seen through but that instead project an interpretation of reality; the receiver’s task is not to decode reductively, from cipher to fact (this is precisely what Renaissance commentators did not grasp, hence their perennial confusion as to who was who), but to acknowledge the illusion as a kind of reality, to recognize the mask as a portrayal of the person. In the passage early in Book II in which he introduces the notion of sprezzatura (translated by Thomas Hoby as “recklessness”) Castiglione talks of the courtier’s going travestito or disguised, in a way suggesting not merely doing but being; this could be seen as the reverse of reading the identity beneath the allegory, as creating an allegorical or at least ‘other’ presentation. Recurrent ‘self-fashioning’ of ths kind – though the emphasis is not on the ‘self ’ – can be discovered as a trait of Renaissance and Baroque court behaviour (see Chapter 18 for particularities). The metachronic is not necessarily limited to what is fictive, for it may invest or become inseparable from the reality: thus in the Eclogues themselves silvae|the woods| – even though real trees – take on a supplementary role in which they endorse the poetry, almost like a chorus.

25 See the discussion in Kegel-Brinkgreve 1990, pp. 125–46, with other references; and, for example, pp. 135–36: “The herdsman-poet sings about herdsmen-singers who are to some extent a reflection of himself. This equation or mirroring between the two has interesting aspects which go beyond mere masquerading or allegorizing”; also on the woods, from which she takes her subtitle. The allegorical in neo-Latin pastoral is discussed in Chapter 3 §3, 4. I have benefited from attending the conference ‘Rethinking Allegory’ held at the Warburg Institute, London, 30 October 2015, organized by Karen Lang, Peter Mack and Vladimir Brljak. Michael Silk gave a paper illustrating the changing and sometimes contradictory uses of the term ‘allegory’ from antiquity to the Romantics. For a definition of the Stuart masque, see Ben Jonson, ed. Stephen Orgel, The Complete Masques, New Haven and London 1969, Introduction, p. 1: “The drama is properly a form of entertainment, and involves its audience vicariously. The masque is a form of play, and includes its audience directly.” See the fuller discussion in Chapter 12 § 11ff. Baldassare Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortigiano, edn used ed. Ettore Bonora, Milan 1984, II, ix.

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3 26

A related point is the question where the Eclogues are, or were, situated. In making the (un-Theocritean) woods the backdrop to his poems Virgil moved the poetry out of socio-political reality at the same time literally, since the woods are wild places. Although the setting of the Eclogues is specifically or ultimately Mantua, it is not Mantua topographically identified – paradoxically the specificity of Eclogue IX, 7–8, is not locatable (see §6) – but a place regarded as the hinterland of Mantua that is not any further specific than that, beside the Mincio somewhere and in the woods somewhere. The setting is beside a riverbank and ‘the’ woods – and so it will always remain in early modern pastoral. This riverbank and woods are often specifically set regionally but within the region not exactly located, or, rather, they are always defined as being in an undefined area, in a hinterland between organized life and the wild, whence implicitly you could go further back into the woods and consort with the bears, boars and wolves, or could return to your hut, plot, village or town. In Virgil, following Theocritus’s Polyphemus, but perhaps not only this, this space/non-space is sometimes called “antrum”, meaning primarily ‘cave’, but also, on study of the word’s usage, the area in front of the cave, an enclosure not necessarily or only partly covered. This unique, ‘pastoral’ kind of spot is both sheltered and natural, both habitable and remote, in time and timeless, on the cusp between the civilized and the wild. One might even hazard that pastoral died at the same time that this kind of space, in the early Enlightenment, became too mapped, too classified, subject to enclosure, no longer undefined: it was forced into patent fantasy. That it was this kind of space in Virgil is perhaps important to emphasize, because oppositions later made between urbs and rus, for all they may have a point of departure in Eclogue I, opposing Rome and the provincial place that Tityrus inhabits, are identified with ‘city’ and ‘country’ or ‘countryside’ in the modern sense only at the risk of highly misleading anachronism, restating this opposition in terms that did not apply earlier, quite apart from the fact that the opposition in Eclogue I is actually between Rome and Mantua – including its symbiotic hinterland – not between the ‘city’ (which for me would mean recalling, among many other inappropriate things, the smokestacks depicted on the cover of my paperback of Raymond Williams’s book The City and the Country) and the ‘countryside’, which is both

26 For antra see Ross 1975, p. 63, and Cairns 2006, pp. 131–36; see also here Chapter 2 §2. For the idea that knowledge has a political dimension, certainly once the Enlightenment sets in, that repression accompanies representation, see Michel Foucault, L’Histoire de la sexualité, vol. 1, La volonté de savoir, Paris 1976.

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a modern notion (at least in the sense of a non-urban space that has value as such, including an aesthetic and recreational, even ideological investment) and highly conflicted, embodying all sorts of previously unimagined and unimaginable concerns.

3 27 This intermediate, indeterminate space, as pastoral develops in the

modern era, takes on a corresponding dimension in time. Cities may change and the wilderness may be mined or colonized or traded across but the pastoral remains constant, unencroached upon, and immune to technological innovation. Subsequent pastoral self-consciously fits into the pattern of previous pastoral as if it were identical with it, which frequently it claims to be – as if its shepherds through the generations were all still nonetheless part of one isocephalous community, with an effect for which I have suggested (§15) the term ‘panchronic’. This quality emerges more clearly when we are self-consciously modern and detached from a ‘long’ past (as we have been since the later eighteenth century; I have taken – see Chapter 19 §22 – as a marker of the watershed Schiller’s 1795–1800 Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung|On naïve and sentimental poetry|, which epochally distinguished the past, as naive, from the present present, denatured and locked into progressing further. Herewith the panchronic (and with it indeed all pastoral: see Chapter 19 §22) actually came to an end; and conversely it seems that up to these modern times or even beyond the life of shepherds had indeed continued effectively unchanged (witness W.H. Hudson’s book A Shepherd’s Life of 1910, reflecting the deep roots in an unchanging pattern of life of an old shepherd called Caleb Bawcombe; with which one may compare James Rebanks’s autobiographical The Shepherd’s Life of 2016, no less rooted in the same job description, still passed on from father to son, but entirely modern in outlook and context – it is all done on quad-bikes today). The fact that it is no longer practised has profoundly coloured today’s perceptions of early modern pastoral, in so far it is forgotten that when it was written there was no profound sense of discontinuity, detachment or of any great distance from the past or from nature. But in a point of view that became increasingly important in the eighteenth century, when propagated in René Rapin’s essay on pastoral (1657), Donatus’s association of the Eclogues with “priscis temporibus”|ancient times| and a corresponding “personarum simplicitate”|simplicity of character| “velut aurei saeculi speciem”|like a kind of golden age|effectually increased and emphasized the distance between the modern and the past (see Chapter 19 §4, 5, for example). Pastoral stood accused of selecting or fabricating only the idealized, extending to the accusation, in

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the mid twentieth century, of repression – repressing the reality of country life. This view has no purchase on early modern pastoral, of which the prime purpose was to create a setting in which to pursue love. The Eclogues for their part provided a model not so much for this pursuit as for its setting and for its society. Virgil provided primarily a repertoire of motifs, original or not – from sitting beneath trees and writing in their bark to looking in water as in a mirror, from fear of wolves to eavesdropping – but also a characterology for the pastoral ‘community’ – such as Corydon (or Damon) the unsuccessful or innocent lover, Mopsus the unworthy but successful rival, Galatea unattainable, Phyllis fleeing but wanting to be caught, and so on – which later writers repeated, in different terms, but in the same principle of a diverse group or ‘gang’ consisting of stock types and having certain habits. Actual attitudes to the country and its people were provided by the particular age: Sidney is extremely cutting in his Arcadia on the figure with the Virgilian name of Dametas (Eclogues II, III and V), suggesting that these low-born creatures conform to type; see also Greene’s ‘sequel’, Menaphon, for rigid class distinction (Chapter 9 §30). In the neo-feudal middle or later sixteenth-century Italy peasants might be reviled as stronzi|turds| and were still more clearly set apart (as caprai, for instance, rather than pastori) from the pastoral play’s prime actors. On the other hand other writers tried to take the pastoral form rather literally, or at least attempted to have their noble characters conform to Servian prescription of pastoral decorum. Here we find conflict (see especially Chapter 14), negotiated in the eighteenth century by the application of ‘taste’ (see Chapter 19 §3, 17, 22).

27 I refer, for instance, to Raymond Williams’s landmark analysis of Ben Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’, cited in full in Chapter 11 §17 note. See Donatus quoted in full and the discussion in Chapter 19 §2. Contempt for peasants was particularly strong in Italy: it is there already in the passage just noted in Castiglione (II, x); more broadly see Barberis 1998, Part III, ‘Terra e contadini nella lingua e nella letteratura italiana’, and notably there p. 293, quoting Merlini, Saggio di ricerche sulle satire contro il villano, Turin 1894, p. 31, quoting Teofilo Folengo, Orlandino, V, cantos 57–58: peasants as ‘created’ from asses’ turds.

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3 28

Much pastoral, once the form is revived along Virgilian lines in the Renaissance, is properly allegorical – ciphered – not metachronic, corresponding to the way the Eclogues were read; one can claim by contrast that the ‘metachronic’ nature of Stuart masque arises from a new consciousness, a new facility, which one could call the creation of ‘worlds’. Sannazaro’s Arcadia was not conceived as a ‘world’ in the sense that Shakespeare used it in As You Like It, which deliberately employs a different optic on the same actors, who enter into pastoral and go out of it, who play on and with a tension between one ‘world’ and another – each likened to a stage. Sannazaro’s Arcadia is more exactly a far (non-)place – and Thomas More shortly after with his, in Greek, ‘not-place’ did not create a ‘world’ either, but a far place somewhere temperate and austral as it were a mirror to our part of the hemisphere – not one that alternates with this one in the same place. This conception emerges only at the end of the sixteenth century, as I see it, and accompanies a culture dominated by the metachronic (see especially Chapter 18). For the pastoral of the earlier Renaissance and Sannazaro most important rather was the community of poet-shepherds that Virgil offered: there was an explicit “studio e accademia di buccoici” around Lorenzo the Magnificent; Sannazaro’s own circle is mirrored in L’Arcadia. As a group ‘shepherds’ could ‘sing’ about poetry and love; their poetry was a medium of triage, of allusion and intertextuality, of friendship as well as rivalry. Sannazaro’s readers could in their turn form their own community: witness the group including Filenio around Giovanni Badoer in Venice, and then Zuanantonio Venier in the same city inscribing his manuscript containing both Sannazaro and Badoer’s pastorals “Infausti et amicorum”|[belonging to] Ill-starred and his friends| – and so on in many contemporary and later groups. This is only to cite the vernacular: in neo-Latin, allegorically, humanists over two centuries would use the medium or genre as their own confessional. Pastoral was like a club whose members had or enjoyed a common goal – their otium or hesychia, commonly understood as the freedom to compose – and characterized above all by its foregathering: “atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem”. Such core communities, sometimes (only sometimes) through the influence of Sannazaro designated ‘Arcadian’, continue right through, through the English ‘Spenserians’(Chapter 13 §21) or Huysmans in Holland (see 14 §14) into the ‘Accademia degli Arcadi’ in Rome (involved in the ‘reform’ of poetry; Chapter 19 §5) and to the re-Greeked neoclassicism of Salomon Gessner in the time of Rousseau (Chapter 16 §11). But the content of later vernacular pastoral, beyond these Virgilian trappings, was not derived from classical precedent or the past.

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28 This ‘optic’ is also called ‘perspectivism’: see Rosalie L. Colie, Shakespeare’s Living Art, Princeton nj 1974, pp. 253–61. Luca Pulci, Il Driadeo, Florence 1479, III, line 84; see further Chapter 2 §11. M.A. Grignani, ‘Badoer, Filenio, Pizio: Un trio bucolico a Venezia’, in Studi di filologia e di letteratura italiana offerta a Carlo Dionisotti, ed. Istituto di Letteratura e Filologia italiana dell’Università di Pavia, Milan and Naples 1973, pp. 77–115. Paul Holberton, ‘La bibliotechina e la raccolta d’arte di Zuanantonio Venier’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, cxliv, 1985–86, Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, pp. 173ff. On the way the Eclogues were actually read in the Renaissance, by commentators or imitators, see my occasional remarks and references subsequently, as appropriate, notably in Chapter 11; but I am not concerned in this book primarily with the tradition stemming from Virgil or Theocritus, except (to repeat) where this is relevant. On Virgil's reception see further, for example, Craig Kallendorf, Printing Virgil: The Transformation of the Classics in the Renaissance (Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 23), Leiden 2019. Regarding the ‘space’ that pastoral occupies, see Louise George Clubb, ‘Pastoral Elasticity on the Italian Stage and Page’, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 36 (Symposium Papers XX: The Pastoral Landscape), 1992, pp. 10–27.

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Chapter 2 2 THE INVENTION OF ARCADIA

f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

3 1 In the classical opposition between urbs and rus, ‘city’ and ’­country’ as we might wish to translate them, the rus was frequently exalted, almost always as the abode of the traditional, ‘ancestral’, smallholder, whose aims would be modest. But in this opposition, in the work of Juvenal, for instance, the focus is usually the city, and the reality of the countryside is little explored – large estates or slave-manned latifundia are not mentioned; and the city is Rome, the capital of empire. Alfius, who, it turns out in the final s­ trophe, is the speaker celebrating the countryside in Horace’s Epode II, Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, ut prisca gens mortalium, paterna rura bobus exercet suis … Blessed is he who, far from business, like the ancient race of men, works his father’s lands with his own oxen …

is an entirely urban creature, a faenerator or usurer, of the kind to whom in more modern times farmers were likely to be indebted. After the fall of empire, and the diminish­ment of Rome, the opposition no longer made sense: in the Middle Ages, when courts were peripatetic, cities were small and dependant economically on their local hinterland and politically for the most part on their castle or cathedral, then city and country were a unity, there was no contrast to be made.

1 There is a summary of classical urbs–rus oppositions in James S. Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses, Princeton nj 1990, pp. 35–42. For the reality of the Italian countryside in Roman times (and later) – and the subjection of countryside to city – see Barberis 1998, Part I. Jacques Le Goff (La Civilisation de l’Occident Médiéval, Paris, 1964, p. 138) takes Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco of Good and Bad Government (Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, 1337–39) as emblematic: “Les fresques … à la gloire des citadins … ne séparent pas la ville, pourtant dotée de murs, hérissée de tours et de monuments, de sa campagne, de son indispensable contado”|The frescos … to the glory of the citizens … do not separate the town, though it is endowed with walls, [and] bristling with towers and monuments, from its countryside, from its indispensable contado|. In her Florentine Villas in the Fifteenth Century: An Architectural and Social History, Cambridge 2005, revised 2011, Amanda Lillie demonstrates that, for the extended Strozzi family – in a manner that was very plausibly more widespread – the country estates, or in particular the core country estate, were a vital component of the economic and general life of the family, however rich or however otherwise urbanized – and had been in the past, and would continue to be subsequently: see especially pp. 24–25, 147–51. See further to similar effect remarks on Guevara’s Menosprecio in Chapter 12 §4.

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f t wo  §1–§2 v

fig. 2.1 Anonymous, Scene of pagan life (Bacchus riding a panther?), unknown date, stone relief set into the north outside wall of San Marco, Venice

32

Accordingly, the urbs–rus ­opposition shifted to become one between civilized society on the one hand and the primitive on the other. Country­men were serfs or peasants and no longer represented even any notional value. The old country (‘pagan’) gods were deprecated or exiled, though they could still be supposed to exist in the wilderness. The contrast became that between civitas (a term one might use even, for example, for a party of Cistercians planting a monastery out in the forests) and desertum. Nonetheless holy men and hermits might make their life in the ‘desert’ – in antra (see Chapter 1 §26) – as early on St Antony did and St Paul the Hermit, who was directed to St Antony, according to his life written by St Jerome, by a “satyr”; or as St Columba did in the ‘desert’ country of Ireland. And the kindliness that the satyr had shown towards St Paul was reflected more widely in a symbiosis ­ ature – whether fierce, that holy men might achieve with the creatures of n like the lion whom St Jerome did not fear and tamed, or simply wild, like the raven that fed Antony and Paul, like the birds to whom St Francis spoke. Yet also pagan forces, embodying the Devil, acted on St Antony. In the ‘desert’, all kinds of extra-civic things might go on, as represented for example in a roundel of unknown origin decorating a wall of St Mark’s in Venice (fig. 2.1). The wilderness became a site of erotic fantasy – for example Tristan and Isolde escape to the ‘Cave of Lovers’ somewhere outside civilization; and the twelfth-century troubador Bernart Marti has this little dream:

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f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

En boscermita m. vol faire Per zo qe ma domma ab me.s n’an Lai de fueill’aurem cobertor Aqui vol viurë e murir Tot autre afar guerpis e lais I want to be a hermit in the woods so long as my woman comes with me. There we will have leaves as shelter, There I want to live and die, I leave and abandon every other care.

This medieval bosc-, Latin boscum, Italian boschi – English ‘bush’ has the same root, but not the same sense, except as ‘the bush’ in South Africa, which is a back-formation from the Dutch bosch – these boschi correspond well enough to Virgil’s silvae, but he had not conceived of them as an erotic destination; they will be the site of all Renaissance pastoral. Boschi had a different character both from the ancient rus and from the modern ‘countryside’: they were not properly a dwelling area or one containing settlement but were beyond the fields or off the path (see Chapter 1 § 26) – but within reach of settlement. In northern Europe the equivalent of boschi was the ‘desert’, as uninhabited, but also the ‘forest’, as silva forestis, a game reserve wood.

33

Rather as illicit jollities animate the margins of medieval manuscripts otherwise devoted to godly matters, ‘country matters’ in Western medieval culture are represented on the borders of civitas. It was the task of the knight, who in his armour carried civilization with him, to confront sirens as well as dragons at the limits – typically he meets an enchantress in a forest clearing, typically also by a spring or well, a gelidus fons – one thirst suggests another, one hospitality another, and his armour is liable to come off. In the Ponzela Gaia (an offshoot of the Arthurian ‘matter of Britain’) Breus is “alla boscaia”

2 To explore the notion of civitas, which changed its meaning over time, and the antithesis desertum– civitas, see Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert A City, Oxford 1961. St Jerome’s Vita S. Pauli primi eremitae is PL 23, 27C. The story of the lion is found in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (see further Herbert Friedmann, A Bestiary for Saint Jerome, Washington, DC, 1980, pp. 20ff.). Les poésies de Bernart Marti, ed. Ernest Hoeppfner, Paris 1929, nos. 9, 38ff.; quoted Jacques Le Goff, L’Imagination médiévale, Paris 1985, pp. 59–75, ‘Le désert-forêt’; for the Cave of Lovers see p. 70 (also in English, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago 1988, pp. 47–59, ‘The Wilderness in the Medieval West’).

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f t wo  §2–§4 v

and by a “fonte” when he comes across the fairy Ponzela. To cite a more modern instance drawing on these sources, in Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata the knight Rinaldo succumbs to the enchantress Armida in her garden and dallies with her till his companions bring him back on mission. In medieval poetry the moment of enchantment is orches­trated by foliage and fl ­ owers, by the outburst of spring, by the kind of description of pleasing nature that has been christened a Natureingang|entrance into nature|. The knight did not need to venture very far to leave c­ ivility behind him, indeed he had to ­travel out only so far as to find himself alone.

34

The situation in which a lone male wanderer in the countryside comes across a girl and approaches her (or is approached by her) is that of the ­medi­eval pastourelle, exemplified in compositions by Marcabru, Gavaudan, Giu d’Ussel and o ­ ther Provençal poets that show distinct common characteristics, above all a certain kind of opening. The male poet, in the first person, narrates to his audience his earlier encounter and conversation with a girl, whose origin or status is unclear – she is sometimes far too courtly or sophisticated to be an ordinary country lass – and who usually comes off best; the tale is told by the narrator against himself. Such an outcome is not what one would expect from the standard preamble, which invites the anticipation (and it does happen, too) that they will make love – the Natureingang, the season, the solitude (‘The other day, I was out riding, the birds were singing, I met a fresh girl’). In the feudal countryside, under his dominion, the girl should yield to his droit de seigneur, and she might well expect to, and herself take pleasure in doing so; or, in a place that is off limits, far more private than anywhere in a c­ om­munity, the knight should make free or be seduced. One might reasonably expect a s­ exual fantasy, for

3 See Erich Köhler, L’Aventure chevaleresque (translated from the German), Paris 1974. Ponzela Gaia, ed. G. Varanini, Bologna 1957, stanza 4. Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata, ed. Lanfranco Caretti, Turin (1971) 1993, Cantos XIV–XVI. For the Natureingang, see Dimitri Scheludko, ‘Zur Geschichte des Natureingangs bei den Trobadors’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, lx, 1936, pp. 257–344. Some might regard this space as a ‘locus amoenus’. However, Ernst Robert Curtius, in the article in which he first introduced and illustrated this term, distinguished it from the Natureingang: “der locus amoenus von dem Natureingang zu trennen ist”|the locus amoenus is not to be confused with the Natureingang |(‘Rhetorische Naturschilderung im Mittelalter’, Romanische Forschungen, vol. 56, 1942, pp. 219–56, reprinted in Landschaft und Raum in der Erzählkunst, ed. Alexander Ritter, Darmstadt, 1975, pp. 69–111, at p. 103). See further discussion of the term in Curtius in Chapter 6 §4, 5.

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f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

evi­dently the story is made up, the girl has no identity, and the nature of the conversation is flirtatious: he often explicitly invites her to make love, while she gives playful, enigmatic or critical a­ nswers. Instead, the form as it is known from surviving examples deliberately, in many cases, disappoints the opening anticipation in this context that apparently imposes no inhibition, ­examining rather the troublesome nature and consequences of that s­ exual desire itself. The pastorela or bergère often has more sense and savvy than the man, and through time, in French literature, grows into an embodiment of an ideal, close to nature, close to God (the bergère in Marguerite de Navarre’s Comédie de Mont-de-Marsan, for example).

35

The pastourelle proper is a twelfth- and thirteenth-century troubadour form, but its basic situation – feeling desire for a woman in the countryside – recurs in other literatures, usually in cruder (more d­ irectly sexual) and less inflected form, and continues to do so in so-called ‘popular’ forms into the Renaissance period. One well-known example is Guido Cavalcanti’s ‘In un boschetto trova’ pasturella’ (A3). This is pretty purely a sexual fantasy: their encounter, or act, takes place away from society; these conditions are conducive to sex or, to view it structuralistically, sex (intrinsically ‘low’) cannot become the subject-matter except in these conditions. A contemporary instance is found in John of Garland’s scholastic treatise on poetry, Parisiana poetria, dating from about 1220–35. The ­cement holding together John’s classification of literary forms is decorum, appropriateness, or “verba cognata materie”|words congruent to their subject-matter|. An example of such congruence is his own “carmen elegiacum, amabeum, ­bucolicum”, which is “elegiacum quia de miseria contexitur amoris”|elegiac because it is woven around the misery of love|; “amabeum quia representat proprietates amantium”|amabeum because it represents the properties of lovers|; “bucolicum apo tou boucolicou”| bucolic from the word ‘bucolon’|, “quod est custodia boum”|which means the care of cattle|. This last shaft of wisdom is taken from Servius’s commentary on Virgil, as is the ­other bit of borrowed Greek, amabeum, meaning antiphonal, from Greek ἀμοιβαία, exchanges. The song that John comes up with opens in springtime, the season of the Natureingang. A rustic wench, Phillis, sits singing a song about Daphnis. Approached by a knight, she spurns her rustic swain, Coridon. Rather as he has borrowed plumage from Servius, so John apparently borrows a few names from the Eclogues for his ­composition, relying more on their cognate material, the low-life peasantry, than on any imitation or recreation of Virgil beyond ‘­alter­nation’ and the use of refrain, indicators of

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f t wo  §4–§5 v

music and song. Indeed he does not call his composition an eclogue (though Gidino da Sommacompagna introduces the word in his Italian translation of the Poetria), even if in his overall scheme Virgil’s Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid emblematize low, ­middle and high (the so-called ‘wheel of Virgil’). On closer inspection, however, he has reproduced what he might have regarded as the essentials of Virgil’s Eclogues: he has Daphnis, and indeed the misery of love; Phillis (otherwise Phyllis) is the sole female character to sit down beside shepherds in the Eclogues (Eclogue X, in Gallus-Daphnis’s vision); there is Corydon, the rejected lover, the traditional object of scorn, identified as a peasant. It is a reasonable summary, and at the same time a reasonable ­reconciliation with the contemporary pastourelle; arguably it sets a path down which pastoral will travel.

4 These are some beginnings (taken from Jean Audiau, La Pastourelle dans la poésie occitane du MoyenÂge, Paris 1923): Marcabru, ‘L’autr’ier jost’una sebissa’ (The other day, beside a hedge); Giraut de Bornelh, ‘L’autrier, lo primier jorn d’aost’ (The other day, the first day of August); ‘Lo dous chan d’un auzel’ (The sweet song of a bird); Gavaudan, ‘Desamparatz, ses companho’ (Distraught, without companion); ‘L’autre dia per un mati’ (The other day, in the morning); Cadenet, ‘L’autrier lonc un bosc folhos’ (The other day, by a wood in leaf ); Gui d’Ussel, ‘L’autre jorn cost’una via’ (The other day, by the side of the road); ‘L’autr’ier cavalcava’ (The other day I was riding); ‘L’autre jorn per aventura’ (The other day, by chance); Guiraut Riquier, ‘L’autre jorn m’anava/ Per una ribeira’ (The other day I was going beside a riverside); ‘L’autr’ier trobei la bergeira (The other day I came across the shepherdess); ‘Gaia pastorela/ trobey l’autre dia’ (A fresh shepherdess I came across the other day); Johan Esteve, ‘L’autrier, el gay temps de Pascor’ (The other day, in the happy season of Easter); Joyos de Tholoza, ‘L’autrier, el dous temp de Pascor’ (The other day, in the sweet time of Easter); Guillem d’Autpolh, ‘L’autrier, a l’intrada d’Abril’ (The other day, at the beginning of April). Curtius ([1942] 1975, pp. 102–03) identifies thirty-one Natureingangs among the Carmina Burana. On the pastourelle see W.P. Jones, The Pastourelle: A Study of the Origins and Tradition of a Lyric Type, reprint New York 1973; Michel Zink, La Pastourelle, Paris 1972; The Medieval Pastourelle, trans. and ed. William D. Paden, New York 1987 (this is a collection, including also pastourelle-like things); also Helen Cooper, Pastoral: Medieval into Renaissance, Ipswich 1977, especially pp. 62–65; and, for some of the subleties and difficulties of the poetry, Simon Gaunt, Troubadours and Irony, Cambridge 1989. Zink 1972, p. 26, quotes Raimon de Vidal’s Razos de Trobar (I follow his translation): “Pastora: si vols far pastora, deus parlar d’amor en aytal semblan come eu ensenyaray, co es a saber, si t’acostes a pastora o la vols saludar, o enquerar o manar o corteiar”|Pastourelle: if you want to make a pastourelle, you must speak of love in such fashion as I will instruct you, that is, you accost a shepherdess and you wish to greet her or to ask her for love or tell her something or court her|. There is a report (see Edmond Faral, ‘La Pastourelle’, Romania, xlix, 1923, pp. 204ff.) that the twelfthcentury troubadour poet Cercamon “… trobet vers e pastoretas a la usanza antiga …”,|composed verses and pastoutelles in the ancient fashion|; and his pupil Marcabrun is the author of the earliest known pastourelle. Might Cercamon have made a conscious link between ancient eclogues and his modern work? Gerhardt 1950, pp. 33–35, thinks not, but it is clear that on some level the link was made.

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f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

A3

GUIDO CAVALCANTI, ‘In un boschetto …’ In un boschetto trova’ pasturella più che una stella – bella, al mi’ parere Cavelli avea biondetti e ricciutelli, e gli occhi pien d’amor, cera rosata; con sua verghetta pasturav’agnelli; scalza, di rugiada era bagnata; cantava come fosse ’namorata: er’adornata – di tutto piacere. D’amor la saluta’ imantenente e domandai s’avesse compagnia; ed ella mi rispose dolzemente che sola sola per lo bosco gia, e disse: “Sacci, quando l’augel pia, allor disïa – ’l me’ cor drudo avere”. Po’ che mi disse di sua condizione e per lo bosco augelli audío cantare, fra me stesso diss’i’: “Or è stagione di questa pasturella gio’ pigliare”. Merzé le chiesi sol che di basciare ed abbracciar – se le fosse ‘n volere. Per man mi prese, d’amorosa voglia, e disse che donato m’avea ‘l core; menòmmi sott’una freschetta foglia, là dov’i’ vidi fior’ d’ogni colore; e tanto vi sentío gioia e dolzore, che ’l dio d’amore – mi parea vedere. Ed. Giulio Cattaneo, Guido Cavalcanti, Rime, Turin 1967

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f a 3 : c a va l c a n t i , i n u n b o s c h e t t o v

In a wood I found a shepherdess more beautiful than a star, I thought. She had hair that was blonde and curly and eyes full of love, her face flushed; with her crook she pastured her sheep; with bare feet, wet with dew; she sang as if she were in love; she was richly endowed with every delight. Immediately I greeted her with love and asked if she had anyone with her; she replied sweetly that she went through the wood all alone and said: “You know, when the bird sings, then it desires that my heart should be kind”. When she told me of her condition and I heard birds singing through the wood I said to myself: “Now is the moment to take my joy of this shepherdess”. The kindness I asked her was only to kiss and embrace, if she should be in the mood. She took me by the hand, in amorous want, and told me she had given me her heart; she led me beneath a cool bower, where I saw flowers of every colour; and felt such joy and sweetness there, that I thought I saw the god of love.

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f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

36

Steeping medieval low life in the countryside with the colours of Virgilian pastoral is something that Petrarch also does, a century later. Two particularly famous canzoni, nos. 125 and 126, ‘Se ‘l pensier che mi strugge’ and ‘Chiare fresche e dolci acque’ (A4), adapt the form and situation of pastourelle to the predicament of the narrator of the Canzoniere and at the same time echo Virgilian pastoral. The narrator is tormented – usually, even if he has his joys – by the almost invariably unrequited love of Laura; Laura, for all that she may have been historical, is a shifting symbol, as much, or much more, a reflection of the poet’s desire or aspiration than a personality he had encountered. From the beginning the poet, as a distraught lover, is driven to seek solitude, which he can find best of all in the countryside, and in this he is ­already a Corydon. In the very first ­sonnet of the collection he places himself fra le van speranze e ’l van dolore among vain hopes and vain torment

like Corydon in Eclogue II, who sang alone to the woods “studio … inani”. Petrarch frequently refers to the woods or fields or hills where he ­sup­posedly wanders, and to their ‘knowledge’ of his love, as in sonnet no. 35, ‘Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi’ |Alone and pensive [I traverse] the most deserted places|. The echo is so obvious that it hardly even seems a reference, ­g iven “verba cognata materie”. But the references may cluster and compound, as in the latter especially of these two canzoni, which also, later, prove to be influential on the Renaissance’s declared imitation of classical pastoral.

5 Also Aegle in Eclogue VI is “socia” to Chromis and Mnasylus. A late instance of a pastourelle is to be found in Opera nova, dove si contengono alcune Bustachine alla Bolognese …, Urbino 1588 (British Library 1071.c.63 (7)), ‘Pastorella bellissima’, of which the essence is, ‘take her and leave her, like a true knight’; its rapid or ‘broken’ verse form is notable (see Chapter 3 §10); others undoubtedly could be found. There is some discussion of the continuation of the pastourelle in Italy in Giuseppe Gerbino, Music and the Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy, Cambridge 2009, pp. 85–98, but Italian ‘popular’ (i.e. anonymous) verses with the word pastorella are similar only in certain respects, for all their sexual innuendo or directness. The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garland, ed. Traugott Lawler, New Haven 1974. In Gidino da Sommacampagna's translation of the Poetria the examples are different, but called ‘eclogues’ (ed. G.B.C. Giuliari, Trattato dei Ritmi Volgari, Bologna 1870, p. 132). 6 Petrarch, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Canzoniere), ed. Piero Cudini, Milan 1974.

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f t wo  §6–§7 v

3 7

One important sign of the ‘rustic’ nature of the two canzoni is the unusual occurrence of ‘rough’ words, words with ‘heavy’ grouped consonants. In his treatise De vulgari eloquentia|About writing well in the verna­cular| Dante had stigmatized such words as uncouth (pexum), specifically mentioning as most ungroomed among double consonants -zz- (still deprecated among Tuscan speakers of today, I am told). Petrarch employed a similar aesthetic: for example, in his canzone no. 50, comparing the hard lot of life in the countryside, from which there is at least some rest, to his own unceasing torment, there is a description of the zappador or ‘digger’ who … con alpestre note ogni gravezza del suo petto sgombra … with rugged notes discharges from his chest every burden –

lines in which alpestre, gravezza and sgombra score particularly high in ‘roughness’ (= low). In canzone 125 the poet says of himself: Però ch’Amor mi sforza e di saver mi spoglia parlo in rime aspre e di dolcezza ignude … Since Love drives me and strips me of knowing I speak in rhymes rough and bereft of sweetness

which scores similarly. He means his inability to ‘cloak’ his expression in suitable rhetorical colour; but of course Corydon had also belted out “incondita”|crude stuff|. The narrator soon moves to ‘elegy’, wanting her to ­listen to him ‘before I die’ or, if not, then the “verde riva”|the green bank|will listen, and echo, as the woods did for Virgil’s singers. At the end, he comforts himself with the idea that the flowers he may gather (“Qualunque erba o fior colgo”) grew from the earth she trod, and then, in the envoi, he exclaims: O poverella mia, come se’ rozza! credo che tel conoschi: rimanti in questi boschi O little poor girl, how clownish you are! I think that you know it: stay here in the woods.

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f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

In the envoi, standard to the form of the canzone, the poet, addressing his own song, sends it off to its hearer; but this one is not suitable for polite ­soci­ety, so must remain in the woods. At the same time the end echoes the end of Eclogue II: Corydon, too, has been gathering flowers, and he says et vos, o lauri, carpam, et te proxime myrte: sic positae quoniam suavis miscetis odores. rusticus es, Corydon; nec munera curat Alexis and I will pluck you, too, laurels, and you, myrtle here to hand, because so arranged you mingle your odours sweetly. You are rustic, Corydon, and Alexis has no interest in your gifts.

The strophe “come se’ rozza” exactly echoes ­“rusticus es”; “poverella” echoes pastorella. The two accompanying words rozzo and boschi will become markers for pastoral. Either Petrarch or one among those who later echoed his envoi had read Quintilian, in whose compendious survey of rhetoric and literature there is but a single comment on pastoral poetry: “Admirabilis in suo genere Theocritus, sed musa illa rustica et pastoralis non f­orum modo verum ipsam etiam urbem reformidat”|Theocritus is admirable in his genre; but that rustic and pastoral muse is terrified, not merely of the forum [politics; the site of rhetoric], but even of the city at all|.

3 8 Canzone no. 125 was voiced by the poet alone in the countryside (lines 7–9); canzone no. 126 opens with an invocation of the countryside, enriched, however, not merely by the former presence of his beloved, but by her evidently nudity: Chiare fresche e dolci acque ove le belle membra pose colei che sola a me par donna Clear, fresh and sweet waters, where she placed her sweet limbs who alone seems to me lady. 7 See W.T. Elwert, ‘Rima e figure retoriche nelle “canzoni sorelle” del Petrarca …’, Lettere Italiane, xxxiv, no. 3, 1982, pp. 309ff. Edd. P.V. Mengaldo et al., Opere minori di Dante, Milan and Naples 1979, II, vii, 5. See Barberis 1998, Part III, ‘Terra e contadini nella lingua e letteratura italiana, i, La Lingua, 3’, pp. 282–84: he notes that Dante particularly stigmatizes peasant vocabulary; ‘rozzo’ is a standard epithet for a peasant. I translate it as ‘clownish’ recalling early usage of the word ‘clown’. Quintilian/Winterbottom, X, lv. Fear of the city, by the Muse, should not be taken too literally.



f t wo  §7–§8 v

Another vision, later on in the poem, is also definitely, if not by current standards explicitly, sexual: Da’ be’ rami scendea (dolce ne la memoria) … – Qui regna Amore From the fair branches descended (sweet in the memory) – Here Love rules,

for it develops the precedent in Cavalcanti’s ‘In un boschetto trova’ pasturella’, “là dov’i’ vidi fior’ d’ogni colore; e tanto vi sentìo gioia e dolzore, che ’l dio d’amore mi parea vedere”|where I saw flowers of every colour, and so much did I feel joy and sweetness that the god of love I seemed to see|. Canzone no. 126 concludes: Se tu avessi ornamenti quant’hai voglia poresti arditamente uscir del bosco e gir infra le genti If you had ornaments as you have desire you could boldly leave the woods and go amongst people –

those ‘ornaments’ or rhetorical ‘colour’ in which the former canzone was also deficient. One could go back, too, to no. 125 and pick out the sexual re­ferences there – notably where the poet says he has an image in his heart of her beautiful eyes, where Love sits in the shade, “ove si siede a l’ombra”, in the ‘bower’ (see further Chapter 19, passim). Petrarch, compared to Cavalcanti, describes specifically a vision (he names it a memory) rather than an experience, putting him, now, on a par with Gallus, who would be in the bower but cannot be. Sexual fantasy is acquiring a tradition of its own, a development onwards from the Natureingang. It is not, however, or not yet, Arcadia, although in a reprise by Petrarch himself of the situation here described, in sonnet no. 281: Or in forma di ninfa o d’altra diva che del più chiaro fondo di Sorga esca e pongasi a sedere su la riva, or l’ho veduto su per l’erba fresca calcare i fior’ com’una donna viva, mostrando in viso che di me le ’ncresca



f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

A4

PETRARCH, CANZONIERE, no. 126

Chiare, fresche et dolci acque, ove le belle membra pose colei che sola a me par donna; gentil ramo ove piacque (con sospir’ mi rimembra) a lei di fare al bel fiancho colonna; herba et fior’ che la gonna leggiadra ricoverse co l’angelico seno; aere sacro, sereno, ove Amor co’ begli occhi il cor m’aperse: date udïenza insieme a le dolenti mie parole extreme. S’egli è pur mio destino e ’l cielo in ciò s’adopra, ch’Amor quest’occhi lagrimando chiuda, qualche gratia il meschino corpo fra voi ricopra, et torni l’alma al proprio albergo ignuda. La morte fia men cruda se questa spene porto a quel dubbioso passo: ché lo spirito lasso non poria mai in piú riposato porto né in piú tranquilla fossa fuggir la carne travagliata et l’ossa. Tempo verrà anchor forse ch’a l’usato soggiorno torni la fera bella et mansüeta, et là ’v’ella mi scorse nel benedetto giorno, volga la vista disïosa et lieta, cercandomi; et, o pietà!, già terra in fra le pietre vedendo, Amor l’inspiri



f a4: petr arch, canzone 126 v

Clear, fresh and sweet waters where she laid her lovely limbs, she who for me seems the only woman; courteous branch on which she chose (with sighs I remember) to make a seat for her lovely thigh; grass and flowers which her pretty dress covered, with her angelic breast; holy, tranquil air, where Love opened my heart using her lovely eyes: listen, all of you, to my pained last words. If that is my fate and heaven has so engaged, that Love close these eyes weeping, some grace among you may my wretched body retain, stripped of which my soul may return to its rightful lodging. May Death be made less cruel if I bear this hope at that perilous passage: because my weak spirit could never to a more restful haven or to a more peaceful grave quit its troubled flesh and bones. The time perhaps still may come when to her favoured haunt the predator returns, lovely and gentle, and there, where she saw me on that blessed day turns her face happy and desirous, looking for me: and, o mercy, finally seeing earth between the stones [a metaphor of siegecraft?], Love may breathe into her



f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

in guisa che sospiri sí dolcemente che mercé m’impetre, et faccia forza al cielo, asciugandosi gli occhi col bel velo. Da’ be’ rami scendea (dolce ne la memoria) una pioggia di fior’ sovra ’l suo grembo; et ella si sedea humile in tanta gloria, coverta già de l’amoroso nembo. Qual fior cadea sul lembo, qual su le treccie bionde, ch’oro forbito et perle eran quel dí a vederle; qual si posava in terra, et qual su l’onde; qual con un vago errore girando parea dir: - Qui regna Amore. Quante volte diss’io allor pien di spavento: Costei per fermo nacque in paradiso. Cosí carco d’oblio il divin portamento e ’l volto e le parole e ’l dolce riso m’aveano, et sí diviso da l’imagine vera, ch’i’ dicea sospirando: Qui come venn’io, o quando?; credendo d’esser in ciel, non là dov’era. Da indi in qua mi piace questa herba sí, ch’altrove non ò pace. Se tu avessi ornamenti quant’ài voglia, poresti arditamente uscir del boscho, et gir in fra la gente. Ed. Piero Cudini, Petrarca, Canzoniere, Milan 1974



f a4: petr arch, canzone 126 v

so that she sighs so sweetly that she demands surrender for me and storms heaven, drying her eyes with her lovely veil. From the lovely branches there fell (sweet in the memory) a rain of flowers over her lap; and she sat humble in so much glory, shaded now by an amorous cloud. Flowers fell on her dress, others on her blonde tresses, which were like burnished gold and pearls to see that day; others fell to earth, others in the river; others, whirling in a dizzy trance, seemed to say: ‘This is the kingdom of Love’. How many times did I say, then, full of awe: ‘This woman for certain was born in Paradise’. So far had she loaded me with forgetfulness – her divine comportment and her face and her words and her soft laugh – and so removed me from what I truly saw that I said as I sighed: ‘How did I come here, or when?’ believing I was in heaven, not where I was. From that time forward I have been so fond of this meadow that I have no peace anywhere else. If you [my canzone] had ornament as you have desire you could boldly leave the woods, and go into the world.



f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

Sometimes [I have seen her] in the form of a nymph or other goddess who may rise from the clearest depths of the Sorga [the river addressed in no. 126] and set herself to sit on the bank, sometimes I have seen her on the fresh grass tread the flowers like a living woman showing in her face that she feels pity for me.

39

Sorrow, or elegy, features large in pastoral verse that follows Petrarch, and notably in the collection La bella mano (The beautiful hand) of the late fourteenth/early fi ­ fteenth-century poet Giusto de’ Conti. He includes four so-called capitoli in eclogue-like vein, of which the first begins: Udite monti alpestri i miei versi; fiumi correnti, e rive, udite quanto per Amor soffersi, udite i miei lamenti, anime dive … Hear my verses you rugged mountains; running rivers, and you banks, hear how much I have suffered for Love, hear my laments, divine souls [nymphs]

and has the refrain Piangiamo insieme gli angosciosi versi spiriti gentili e ’gnudi udite quanto per Amor soffersi … Let us lament together the anguished verses gentle spirits, naked spirits [fauns?], hear how much I have suffered for Love.

8 For the epithalamial association of the flowers see, for example, François Quiviger, The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art, London 2010, pp. 129–30. 9 Editions used Giusto de’ Conti, La bella mano. Libro di messere Giusto de Conti, romano senatore. Per m. Iacopo de Corbinelli, gentilhuomo fiorentino ristorato, Paris 1595 (reprint Brussels and Rome 1983); La Bella Mano di Giusto de’ Conti ..., Florence 1715. For coverage of Italian pastoral see Carrara [1909]; on Giusto de’ Conti p. 165. For his considerable influence on fifteenth-century pastoral see Italo Pantani, ‘Il polimetro pastorale di Giusto de’Conti’, in La poesia pastorale nel rinascimento, ed. Stefano Carrai, Padua 1998, pp. 1–55, at pp. 45ff.



f t wo  §8–§10 v

3 10 These much looser – compared to Petrarch’s – less wrought, more

musical – and more Maenalian – songs strike an attitude that becomes almost dominant in the late fifteenth century: “piange, piange”, cries Sannazaro emblematically in the Arcadia, weep, weep; weep, weep, urges the music of such as Tromboncino as well as a great deal of verse. Like Petrarch, subsequent poets become Corydons; eclogues become elegies – John of Garland had already ­equated the two, and the “elegie” and “egloghe” of Leon Battista Alberti, who was regarded by a later contemporary, Vincenzo Calmeta, as “Il primo che in questo stile abbia alcuna perfectione dimostrato”| the first [modern] who in this style [pastoral] has demonstrated any perfection|, are inter­distinguishable chiefly by the few consciously rustic touches introduced into the egloghe. We witness the revival of the classical, Virgilian, genre of pastoral – one more Renaissance ‘first’ claimed by the universal genius Alberti. Actually his first ‘elegy’, ‘Mirtia’, is a reworking of Giusto de’ Conti’s first capitolo. A younger contemporary, Cristoforo Landino, summed up Alberti’s achievement as follows: Ha scritto Battista Alberti egloghe e elegie, tale che in quelle molto bene osserva e’ pastorali costumi, e in queste è maraviglioso in esprimere, anzi quasi dipingere tutti gl’affetti e perturbazioni amatorie Battista Alberti wrote eclogues and elegies, such that in the former he very well observes pastoral modes, and in the latter he is marvellous in ­expressing, indeed almost painting, all the affects and upsets of love.

The demonstration of the perfection of his observation of pastoral ‘decorum’ is evident from the opening lines of his Tirsis (A5), deliberately reworking the opening of Eclogue VII: Tirsis et Floro, giovaneti amanti, richi pastori, l’uno e l’altro bello, usi fra loro racantar suoi canti, infra quell’Alpe, cerca ’l Mugello, givan cacciando le loro tormiciole Thyrsis and Florus, youthful ardents, rich shepherds, one and the other handsome, accustomed to sing over together their songs, beneath that mountain, around the Mugello [north of Florence] went a-driving their flocks –



f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

tormiciole being a diminuitive of torma – almost ‘their darling little flocks’ – and no doubt a deliberate ‘countryism’ (see further Chapter 3 §7). Other such are the guatato|ogled|and occhiazzi|big eyes|of Tirsis’s first long stanza’: ch’hai quelli occhiazzi più bei che ’l mio toro né son sì liete in un fiorito prato le ape inzuccarate a uscir di schiera, quanto son io poi che m’hai guatato; with your big eyes brighter than my bull’s, not so happy are the bees in a flowery meadow loaded with sugar when they issue in a swarm as am I, when you have given me an ogle;

these are ‘nencial’ words (for which see Chapter 3 §19) avant la lettre.

3 11 The ‘perfect’ revived vernacular classical pastoral arrives definitively in 1482, with Le Bucoliche Elegantissime|The very e­legant bucolics| – a printed collection of the work of four poets, Bernardo Pulci, Francesco Arsocchi, Jacopo Fiorino de’ Buoninsegni and Girolamo Benivieni, of wide influence, notably on Boiardo in Ferrara and the humanist poets around Pontano in Naples. Among these, Bernardo Pulci’s contribution to the Bucoliche Elegantissime is ­simply a rather tedious translation of Virgil’s Eclogues, one after another. In his introduction he states that he wanted to see if it were possible to translate into his mother tongue “l’artificiosa elegantia”| the wrought ele­gance|of the classical pastoral, or to emulate Theocritus’s “immensa suavità”|infinite sweetness|. Not unreasonably, he is more conscious of the courtier he sees through pastoral in Virgil than of the protocol of pastoral decorum, which his translation fails to observe more than once (he has Tityrus not piping, but writing!). But the introductions, and attitudes, of the o ­ ther contributors differ: not only is their verse their own (therefore conveying something they want to say), but in varying senses they regard their productions as rustic, or at least rusticate. So much is evident in Benivieni’s and Buoninsegni’s descriptions of their own poems in their 10 Vincenzo Calmeta, Prose e Lettere, ed. Cecil Grayson, Bologna 1959, p. 13. Cristoforo Landino, Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Roberto Cardini, Rome 1974, I, pp. 36, 138. See further Cecil Grayson, ‘Alberti and the Vernacular Eclogue in the Quattrocento’, Italian Studies, xi, 1956, p. 16. It seems possible that not all of Alberti’s poetry in this mode has survived. Leon Battista Alberti, Rime, ed. Guglielmo Gorni, Milan and Naples 1975, xv.a.

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f t wo  §10–§11 v

individual prefaces, which both take up from the envois of Petrarch’s canzoni nos. 125 and 126. Into the presence of their patron Lorenzo the Magnificent Benivieni’s work dares not enter, questa mia prima et per sè roza et poveretta figliola così inculta, quasi ­rustica et salvaticha contadinella … temendo forse non la sua rusticata e deforme figura dovessi a e perspicaci occhi della tua Signoria essere di tanta molestia che dagli ­excelsi e già lungamente desiderati palazzi, quasi vile monstro, avanti che c­ onos­ ciuta exclusa, constrecta fusse tornare alle sua sordide case et paterno tigurio this my first and in herself boorish and little poor little daughter, so uncouth, almost a rustic and wild peasant girl … fearing that perhaps her rusticated and misshapen figure should not, before the eyes of Your Lordship, be of such annoyance that, like a vile monster, shut out before she is known, she should be compelled to return from the exalted palaces she has long desired to her own sordid housing and family hovel;

Buoninsegni pleads (in a separate dedication to Lorenzo of his fifth eclogue) that his Muse, con grande faticha de’ boschi uscita, con quelli panni ad te viene quali da le spine et sterpi si traggono: la quale, se da te sia rivestita, porrà e boschi et le caverne lassando con più fiducia in fra li homini apparire with great effort leaving the woods, comes to you with those garments that one may drag from the thorns and thickets; who, if she is re-dressed by you, will be able to appear among men, leaving the woods and the caves, with more confidence.

Both had precedent in picking up Petrarch’s envois from Bernardo Pulci’s brother Luca, who described his Driadeo, a story of nymphs and satyrs, as il mio Driadeo … rozo e poveretto, vestito d’herba, e senza ornamento di porpora my Driadeo … clownish and poor little thing, dressed in grass, and without ornament of purple,

and concluded its stanzas with Driadeo meo, tu se’ nato nel monte fra queste quercie et non conosce el lauro: esci del bosco et va cerca quel monte gentile e pulcro over fiorisce el Lauro



f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

A5

LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI, TIRSIS

Tirsis e Floro giovinetti amanti, ricchi pastori, l’uno e l’altro bello, usi fra loro raccontar suoi canti, in fra quell’Alpe su cerca ’l Mugello givan cantando le lor tormiciole. Così dissero, gionti a un praticello:



Floro

O Tirsis, ben ti godi quinci al sole, tu ti trastrulli e strizzi con la Mea. Felice è chi amando non si duole.

Tirsis

Floro, non ha queste Alpi una più rea di lei. Sta qui doppo e vederai, la non mi digna più qual mi solea.

Floro

La Niera mia mi fugge, né fu mai più sventurato amante. Aimé! piangiamo! E’ mi giova saziarla di mie guai.

Tirsis

Floro, non far così, non far. Io amo, anche io amo, anzi ardo, i’ moro, e pur sto lieto. Fa come io. Cantiamo. Mea mia dolce dai capei dell’oro, o saporita dal viso rosato, ch’hai quelli occhiazzi più bei che ’l mio toro né son sì liete in un fiorito prato le ape inzuccarate a uscir di schiera, quanto son io poi che m’hai guatato.

Floro

Or provi quel che è Amor, fanciulla altiera. Sì solevo sonar, cantar, ballare, e motteggiar ridendo volentiera. Come un giovenco mal uso ad arare superbo or si rimpreme, or fugge inanti, così la Niera. O che tormento è amare!

f a 5 : a l b e rt i , t i r s i s v



Thyrsis and Florus, youthful ardents, rich shepherds, one and the other handsome, accustomed to sing over together their songs, beneath that mountain, around the Mugello went a-driving their flocks. This is what they said, when they reached a meadow:

Floro

O Tirsis, so you enjoy yourself in the sun And you have fun and a squeeze with Mea. Happy the lover who has no pain.

Tirsis

Floro, there is no girl in these hills worse than she. Stay on for a while and you will see: she no longer treats me as she used to.

Floro

My own Niera shuns me, and there never was a more unfortunate lover. Alas, let us weep, for I like to surfeit her with my pains.

Tirsis

Floro, don’t do it, do not do it. I love, I too am in love, indeed I burn, I die, and yet I am happy. Do as I do. Let us sing. My sweet Mea with your golden hair, o delicious girl with your rosy cheeks, with your big eyes brighter than my bull’s, not so happy are the bees in a flowery meadow loaded with sugar when they issue in a swarm as am I, when you have given me an ogle.

Floro

Now you try what love is, proud girl. I used to make music, sing and dance, and banter with a willing smile. Like a young ox unused to the plough, who proudly now resists, now rushes ahead, so is Niera. Oh what a torment it is to love!

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f t wo  the invention of arcadia v



Tirsis

El bisogna per certo che tu canti, che prima staria el ciel senza le stelle che la donna non strazi gli suo amanti. Or su, diciàn delle fanciulle belle, qual sanno amare e d’ognun son lodate. Qui son duo can; lassa ir le pecorelle.

Floro

Non direi a te no. Diciàn. Cantate, silve, con nui, fiere ed umbre triste. Laude anzi fie più aver che Amor pietate. La Niera spesso mie lacrime ha viste. E quante volte sofferto hai ch’io mora, Niera crudele, con tue false viste!

Tirsis

Ninfe, cantate, e risonate ancora, aure, con nui, rivi, fronde, augelli. Audissi Amor chi lui cantando onora. La Mea con quei soi ditaggi belli di fiori scelti mi fa ghirlandette, poi me le asconde doppo gli arboscelli.

Floro

Se Amor è iusto e pio, com’el permette che chi servendo el prega ogni or più stenti? Son per me spinte sue face e saette.

Tirsis

Non senza pioggia e furiosi venti porge suo fior l’aliegra primavera, né Amor suo don senza pianti e tormenti.

Floro

Vidi io già unda ruinosa e fiera gir mormorando ed urteggiando sassi. Ancora è più superba la mia Niera.

Tirsis

Dura, ostinata è chi non amassi. Soglionsi cantar li augelletti amando; aman le fiere, gli orsi, lupi e tassi.

Floro

Duro, ostinato chi pur consumando siegue suo inzegno, pensier, passi e giorni, ogni or con meno speme disiando.

f a 5 : a l b e rt i , t i r s i s v

Tirsis

Clearly it is necessary that you sing Because rather would the sky have no stars Than a woman not put her lover on the rack Now come, let us talk of lovely girls the kind who know of love and are the toast of all. There are two dogs here: let your sheep wander.

Floro

To you I would not say no. Let us talk. Sing, you woods, with us, you frowning and gloomy shades. Love has made there to be had more praise than kindness. Niera has often seen my tears. And how many times have you left me to die, Cruel Niera, with your false looks!

Tirsis

Nymphs, sing, and echo again you breeezes, banks, leaves and birds, with us. Let Love hear those who honour him in song. My Mea with those beautiful fat fingers of hers Makes me little garlands of choice flowers, then hides them from me behind the bushes.

Floro

If Love is just and righteous, how come he allows it that his devoted servant suffers more every moment? At me his torches and arrows are hurled.

Tirsis

Not without rain and furious winds does joyful spring bestow her flowers, or without tears and torments Love his gift.

Floro

I saw one day a fierce crashing wave go murmuring and hurling against rocks. Yet still more high and mighty is my Niera.

Tirsis

Hard and obstinate is the woman who does not love. Birds when they love like to sing; Wild beasts love, bears, wolves and badgers

Floro

Hard and obstinate is the man who pursues even while consuming his mind, thoughts, walks and days desiring with ever diminishing hope 

f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

Tirsis

Và. Io aspetto che la Mea ritorni. Lieto io, lieta lei, quando mi vede. Amor ha in odio i tuo’ sguardi musorni.

Floro

Serà costei che sì tieco si siede, prima d’un occhio che d’un uom contenta? Tu corri e’ lepri ed altri ai lazzi siede.

Tirsis

Avrà il sole la sua luce spenta, quando la Niera ti cominci amare. Non è superba chi d’amor mai senta.

Floro

Seranno i pesci in cielo e stelle in mare, quando la Mea tua non ti deleggi, o dispiaccia alla Niera el mio cantare.

Tirsis

Chi ti amaria, te che sempre aspreggi? Schifano el giogo in aspro campo i buoi. Priegia Amor lieti e risi e motteggi.

Floro

Ove se’, Niera? Ed or che più? Che vuoi? Ma non iscusa te benché me incusi. La nostra asprezza vien dagli amor tuoi. O giovanetti in amar poco usi: tu, Tirsis, che oggi vivi in gioco e festa, già lieti più di te qui vidi esclusi. Né mai fu in donna fronte tanto mesta che di riso talor non si adornasse, né fu amata mai chi non amasse; ma tiensi troppo chi troppo è richiesta.

Phauni

Ed. Guglielmo Gorni, Leon Battista Alberti, Rime, Milan and Naples 1975, xv



f a 5 : a l b e rt i , t i r s i s v

Tirsis

You go. I will wait until Mea returns. Happy am I, happy is she when she sees me. Love detests your sulking looks.

Floro

Will that be the one who sits down beside you, happier to take the eye than to take a man? You run after the hares and she sits at the reins.

Tirsis

The sun will have burnt out by the time Niera starts to love you. A woman who feels love is not proud.

Floro

Fish will be in heaven and stars in the sea when your Mea does not tease you, or Niera dislikes my singing.

Tirsis

Who would love you, who are always so bitter? Oxen buck the yoke on hard ground. Love prefers happy laughs and banter.

Floro

Where are you, Niera? What more now? What do you want? You can accuse me, but it does not excuse you. The bitterness I feel comes from your love.

Fauns

O you young boys so little used to loving! You, Tirsis, who today live in joy and merriment, I have seen rejected some who were happier than you. There never was in woman a face so grim that did not sometimes light up in smiles; there never was one loved who did not herself love, though one too sought-after herself too much withholds.



f t wo  the invention of arcadia v

Driadeo mine, you were born on the hill among these oaks and do not know the laurel: leave the wood and go over that hill, gentle and fair, where the Laurel [Lorenzo] flourishes.

Pulci set a model for Sannazaro notably in his stated intention of “ritrovar gli antichi dei”|rediscovering the ancient gods|and in its mournfulness, commemorating the death of Lisabetta, the author’s own beloved. The Driadeo went through many editions before the end of the century.

3 12

The precedents of the Bucoliche Elegantissime were in their turn d­ eve­loped by Filippo Galli, known as Filenio (his ‘shepherd name’), in the dedication to his Safira, which had been drafted by 1484: he described ­“questa rurale e pastorica mia ­opereta”|this my rural and pastorical little work|as a “villana”|a peasant girl|, one who offers her sorb-apples in a l­ittle basket. ‘Pastoral’ is becoming an ever more inviting, ever more appealing pastorella, especially as Filenio suggests, adding another curve to her figure, that, given “la variabilità degli insatiabili appetiti umani”|the variability of insatiable human ­appetites|, his aristocratic patron may prefer … … essendo certo quella [la sua Signoria] di cibi urbani substanzievoli e buoni essere abbundante, per rimovere di queli el fastidio, di solitarii, rustici e boscatilli in scambio d’insalata per aguzarti l’apetito farti ­participe since certainly [Your Excellency] is overflowing with substantial and good city foods, to remove the tedium of those, to have a share of solitary, rustic and woodlandishy ones, in a change of salad, to sharpen the appetite;

and that this patron may prefer to his palace, to his “murati e pomposi ­giardini”|his walled and stately gardens|, Filenio’s poem’s setting, “apresso una naturale e sbrillante fontanella di chiarissime e fresche acque abundante”|beside a natural and sparkling little spring bubbling with the ­freshest and clearest water|. He may prefer to come outside and play rather than, like Lorenzo, be

11 Le Bucoliche Elegantissime, Florence 1482; reprinted 1494. On the Pulci and the context of the Bucoliche see Salvatore S. Nigro, Pulci e la cultura medicea, Bari 1972; and further Angelo Gianni, Pulci uno e due, Florence 1967; Stefano Carrai, Le muse dei Pulci: Studi su Luca e Luigi Pulci, Naples 1985. Pulci 1479; see Stefano Ugo Baldassari, ‘Lodi medicee in un dimenticato bestseller del Quattrocento fiorentino: Il Driadeo di Luca Pulci’, Forum Italicum, 3, no. 2, 1998, pp. 375–404.

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so gracious as to grant admittance; his villana brings with her an environment, a nature newly appreciated for nothing more than its naturalness. But this is another shepherd wishing to wail rather than to wassail, and particularly noteworthy for his reference to ‘faith’: Cognoscerai … pel cordiale e lacrimoso lamento del grosso pastore … q­ uanto sia mancata la fede, suprema virtù a chi laudabilmente viver vuole You will learn … through the heartfelt and tearful lament of the gross shepherd to what degree there is lacking faith, that greatest virtue for whoever would live honourably.

3 13 This is one significant thread in the background to Sannazaro’s work entitled L’Arcadia, ­finished (though he subsequently added chapters) before 1490, which opens (A6): Sogliono il più de le volte gli alti e spaziosi alberi negli orridi monti da la natura produtti, più che le ­coltivate piante da dotte mane espurgate negli adorni giardini, a’ riguardanti aggradare … e le incerate canne de’ pastori porgano per le fiorite ­valli forse più piacevole suono, che li tersi e pregiati bossi de’ musici per le pompose camere non fanno. E chi d­ ubita, che più non sia a le umane menti aggradevole una fontana che naturalmente esca da le vive pietre, attorniata di verdi erbette, che tutte le altre ad arte ­fatte di bianchissimi marmi, risplendenti per molto oro? … Dunque … potrò ben io fra queste deserte piagge, agli ­ascol­tanti alberi et a quei pochi pastori che vi saranno, racontare le rozze ecloghe da naturale vena uscite, così di ornamento ignude esprimendole come sotto le dilettevoli ombre, al mormorio de’ liquidissimi fonti da’ pastori d’Arcadia le udii cantare It happens most of the time that the tall and ample trees in the rugged mountains, products of nature, more than the cultivated plants, cleansed by learned hands in the ornamental gardens, are pleasing to their viewers … [and] the waxed reeds of the shepherds send through the flowery vales perhaps more pleasing sound, than do the polished, precious woodwinds of the musicians through the stately rooms. And who doubts, but that more pleasant to the human mind is one spring, that issues naturally from the living rocks, surrounded by green grasslets, than all the other fountains made by art of the whitest marbles, resplendent with much gold? … Therefore … may I well, among these deserted hills to the

12 For Filenio Galli see Maria Corti, ‘Per un fantasma di meno’, in her collection Metodi e fantasmi, 2nd edn Milan 1977, pp. 327–67; Filippo Galli, Rime, ed. M.A. Grignani, Florence 1973.

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listening trees, and to those few shepherds who are there, tell over the clownish eclogues, issued from a natural source; reciting them, thus nude of ornament, as under the delightful shade, to the murmur of the most liquid fountains, I heard them sung by the shepherds of Arcadia.

The phrase “d’ornamento ignude” – it is as if he were combining the opening “di dolcezza ignude” of canzone 125 with the closing “se tu avessi ornamenti” of canzone 126. Intrinsic to this extremely artificial, mesmerically musical and elegantissimo style is the persistent habit, first, of introducing an adjective for ­ rder of noun + adjective to every noun and then of inverting the normal o article + adjective + noun: albori alti becomes gli alti albori. This has the effect of making all these things sound known – the trees we know, our tall trees. These familiarizing pre­dicatives, compounded by the recurrent endearment diminutives, the dulcet zithers of the verses’ sdrucciole|slippery|rhymes (see Chapter 3 §9, 10), and the lullingly fatalistic hexameter rhythms of the sentence endings (see again below) mediate every description and narrative, sentimentalizing them. This also can only compound the sense of a community – imitating that of Virgil’s Eclogues – among his shepherds. Sannazaro meanwhile drops the identification of his poetry with the pastorella but leaves it as equivalent to the place where she comes out to play: whereas Filenio’s work had been entitled A Saphira Sannazaro’s is Il Libro Pastorale nominato L’Arcadia. The land, with her gone, is newly revealed as nature, recovered, and – might one claim? – eroticized: “da naturale vena uscite … ignude”! This natural vein and implicitly erotic purity are integral to his Virgilian eclogues, which, however, “udii cantare”|I heard sung| – both like the chevalier reporting his expedition in a pastourelle and equally like Gallus yearning to join Virgil’s Arcadians beside that highly charged gelidus fons. Lest the reader should doubt the latter, when Sannazaro says Arcadia he says he means the mountains “di Menalo e di Liceo”, echoing their pairing in Eclogue X, 15.

13 On the genesis of the Arcadia see Maria Corti, ‘Le tre redazioni della Pastorale di P.J. De Jennaro con un excursus sulle tre redazioni dell’Arcadia’, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, cxxxi, 1954, pp. 305–51; on its language more fully her ‘Il codice bucolico e l’“Arcadia” di Jaobo Sannazaro’, in Corti 1977, pp. 283–304, at pp. 292–96. [Sannazaro] Arcadia = L’Arcadie, ed. Francesco Esparmer and Gérard Marino, Paris 2004; I have also used Opere volgari, ed. Alfredo Mauro, Bari 1961; L’Arcadia, ed. Enrico Carrara, Turin 1952. For further discussion of Sannazaro and references to the literature on L’Arcadia see Chapter 3 §15.

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3 14 Sannazaro’s Arcadia, in its first finished form, which circulated in manuscript in the 1490s, consisted of ten verse eclogues alternating with ten pieces of prose – the earlier proses resembling titoli, the rubrics preceding eclogues, extended descriptively or pictorially, the later ones incorporating events or moving the setting or story on. Subsequently, for publication in 1504, ­after the manuscript had appeared in print in Venice in 1502, Sannazaro added three more proses, two more eclogues and an epilogue. He had begun, like the Bucoliche Elegantissime poets, like Filenio, like others again, with eclogues alone – egloghe 1, 2 and 6 in the final Arcadia. He seems then to have written egloga 10, undoubtedly with an eye to Virgil’s Eclogue X, intending it to be ­ana­logously the tenth and final apple in his own collection, for which he would need an introduction … and so, especially from Filenio’s introduction to the Safira, and from Virgil’s invocation of Arcadia from a position outside it, he made the shift to setting his own eclogues in a community not simply of singing shepherds but of shepherds ­all’antica, ‘Arcadians’ because so Sannazaro’s-Sincero’s antecedent ‘dying’ lover Gallus-Daphnis had invoked them, calling them “soli cantare periti”|uniquely accomplished in singing|. His shepherds are introduced in one and the same breath as “pastori di Arcadia” and as singing; he takes over their ‘stamp’ of excellence in poetry. 3 15 In setting his shepherds in a distant place, not home, Sannazaro was

not following Virgil, obviously, since his Arcadians are beside the Mincio or else invoked by Gallus from his reality. In fact Sannazaro’s opening to the book proper, “Giace nella sommità di Parthenio …”|There lies on the summit of Parthenio …| (see A6), recalls Petrarch’s description of the isle of Cythera in the Trionfi (I, iv, 99ff.): Giace oltra ove l’Egeo sospira e piagne un’isoletta delicata e molle più d’altra che ’l sol scalde o che ’l mar bagne; nel mezzo è un ombroso e chiuso colle con sì soavi odor, con sì dolci acque, ch’ogni maschio pensier de l’alma tolle. Questa è la terra che cotanto piacque a Venere …. There lies, beyond where the Aegean sighs and cries, /a little island more soft and dainty /than any other that the sun burns or the sea laps; /in its heart is a closed and shady hill /with such suave odours, with such sweet waters, /that it removes every masculine thought from the soul. This is the land that so greatly pleased /Venus … 

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and both Sannazaro and Petrarch take their cue from the ancient and medieval formula ‘est locus …’|There is a place …|, a standard opening. (Curtius characterized the topic as a ‘locus amoenus’, but, for reasons given in Chapter 6 §4, this term of his is best discarded.) Having set up for a landscape or garden description, Sannazaro then remains strangely reticent, unwilling to be specific, or rather making the place ungraspable – are his trees tall or not? how many were there, twelve or fifteen? “if I am not mistaken” – is he? He resorts quickly to allusion rather description – not poplars but those trees associated with Hercules and with the Heliades. In this beautiful place – hardly more characterized than that – the shepherds play their games and sing their songs; now we come to Ergasto and to something more familiar, an eclogue-‘madrigal’ hybrid in the mode of Arsocchi’s Eclogue I (published in the Bucoliche Elegantissime; see further Chapter 3 §8–9). Sannazaro continues with other verses, between prose pieces that inevitably become narrative, and in becoming narrative become lengthier, changing the balance between the poetry and the prose (which sometimes includes notifications of surroundings), but never amounting to a story: Arcadia when the idea is taken up remains no more than an extensive katagoge (see further Chapter 6 §5), a beautiful grove in which poets (shepherds) wander and sing.

15 See the examples of ‘locus amoenus’ descriptions given in Curtius [1942] 1975, nos. 6, 8, 16; for classical precedent Curtius refers notably to Aeneid, I, 530 (repeated III, 163; it is a quotation from Ennius) and Metamorphoses I, 568, and II, 195 (“est nemus”). Another example is Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina, I, 18, ‘De Bissonno Villa’. See Chapter 6 §1 for its application to classical pastoral being inappropriate. For the possibility that in the opening sentence Sannazaro was referencing Theocritus, see 10 §1. Patterson 1987, pp. 49–84, has an equivalent of katagoge she calls “umbra”: this, however, is a purely metaphorical idea, that the patron is a tree casting the ‘shade’ under which the ‘poet’ reclines.

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3 16 Leon Battista Alberti, in the Tirsis, had achieved the first h­ umanist vernacular eclogue, finding a language about love that at the same time echoed classical models. Sannazaro, drawing on the work of a number of like-minded contemporaries as well as the ­models of Boccaccio and Petrarch, deve­loped such language further. His content, however stylized, remains his own experience, specifically his experience in love – and this will be the motivation of all pastoral that follows on from Alberti and from L’Arcadia. That love was certainly the basis of Alberti’s pastorals, Alberti himself attests in another work, the d­ ia­logue Sofrona, a diatribe against love, in which Sofrona remarks to him (appearing in his own person): E tu, fra loro el primo, so che amasti: ben sentiamo delle trame tue, e bene intendiamo le tue egloghe: sì, amasti una trecca tignosa And you, first among them, I know that you have loved: we have heard about your affairs, and we well understand your eclogues: yes, you loved a louse-ridden flower-girl,

whom he met, no doubt, going out one morning into the countryside. The humanist vernacular eclogue is therefore not simply a revival of Virgil’s Eclogues reworked or developed – by contrast to neo-Latin eclogues, for which the Eclogues – and Theocritus – are the starting-point; it incorporates the experience of the troubadour pastorela and its influence. This is confirmed by Arsocchi’s early Eclogue I (see Chapter 3 §8–9), but also by the ending of the Tirsis, in which the fauns do not award a prize according to classical precedent on the basis of the quality of the singers’ poetry but remark that neither the one (rejoicing) nor the other shepherd (gloomy) knows enough about love, both are foolish; its discourse has been from the beginning to end a tenzone about the experience of love.

16 Leon Battista Alberti, ed. Cecil Grayson, Opere volgari, Bari 1973, III, p. 269

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A6

JACOPO SANNAZARO, L’ARCADIA, proemio, prosa 1, ecloga 1

[proemio] Sogliono il più de le volte gli alti e spaziosi alberi negli orridi monti da la natura produtti, più che le ­coltivate piante da dotte mane espurgate negli adorni giardini, a’ riguardanti aggradare; e molto più per i soli boschi i selvatichi ucelli, sovra i ­verdi rami cantando, a chi gli ascolta piacere, che per le piene cittadi, dentro le vezzose et ornate gabbie, non piacciono gli ammaistrati. Per la qual cosa ancora, sì come io stimo, addiviene che le silvestre canzoni vergate ne li ruvidi cortecci de’ faggi dilettino non meno a chi legge che li colti versi scritti ne le rase carte degli indorati ­libri; e le incerate canne de’ pastori porgano per le fiorite v­ alli forse più piacevole suono che li tersi e pregiati bossi de’ musici per le pompose camere non fanno. E chi ­dubita che più non sia a le umane menti aggradevole una fontana che naturalmente esca da le vive pietre, attorniata di verdi erbette, che tutte le altre ad arte ­fatte di bianchissimi marmi, risplendenti per molto oro? Certo che io creda nessuno. Dunque in ciò fidandomi, potrò ben io fra queste deserte piagge agli ­ascol­tanti alberi, et a quei pochi pastori che vi saranno, racontare le rozze ecloghe da naturale vena uscite, così di ornamento ignude esprimendole come sotto le dilettevoli ombre, al mormorio de’ liquidissimi fonti da’ pastori d’Arcadia le udii cantare; a le quali non una volta, ma mille i montani idii da dolcezza vinti prestarono intente orecchie, e le tenere ninfe, dimenticate di perseguire i vaghi animali, lasciarono le faretre e gli archi appiè degli alti pini di Menalo e di Liceo. Onde io, se licito mi fusse, più mi terrei a gloria di porre la mia bocca a la umile fistula di Coridone, datagli per adietro da Dameta in caro dono, che a la sonora tibia di Pallade, per la quale il male insuperbito satiro provocò Apollo a li suoi danni. Che certo egli è migliore il poco terreno ben coltivare, che ’l molto lasciare per mal ­governo miseramente imboschire. [prosa 1] Giace nella sommità di Partenio, non umile monte de la pastorale Arcadia, un dilettevole piano, di ampiezza non molto spazioso però che il sito del luogo nol consente, ma di minuta e verdissima erbetta sì ripieno, che se le lascive pecorelle con gli avidi morsi non vi pascesseno, vi si potrebbe di ogni tempo ritrovare verdura.Ove, se io non mi inganno, son forse dodici o quindici alberi, di tanto strana et eccessiva

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It happens most of the time that the tall and ample trees in the rugged mountains, products of nature, more than the cultivated plants, cleansed by learned hands in the ornamental gardens, are pleasing to their viewers; and wild birds on the green branches singing through the lonely woodlands are more pleasing to their listener than those, in their pretty decorated cages in the populous cities, that have been trained. For which reason, I believe, it also happens that the woodland songs written out on the rough bark of the beeches bring no less delight to their readers than the learned verses penned on the smooth paper of gilt volumes; and the waxed reeds of the shepherds send through the flowery vales perhaps more aimiable sound than do the polished, precious woodwinds of the musicians through the stately rooms. And who doubts, but that more pleasant to the human mind is one spring, that issues naturally from the living rocks, surrounded by green grasslets, than all the other fountains made by art of the whitest marbles, resplendent with much gold? Surely, as I believe, no one. Therefore putting my faith in that, may I well, among these deserted hills to the listening trees, and to those few shepherds who are there, tell over clumsy eclogues issued from a natural source; reciting them, thus nude of ornament, as beneath the delightful shade, to the murmur of the very liquid springs I heard them sung by the shepherds of Arcadia; at which not once but a thousand times the mountain gods, vanquished by sweetness, lent intent ears, and the tender nymphs, forgetting their pursuit of the errant animals, left their quivers and bows at the foot of the high pines of Maenalus and Lycaeum. So I, if I were permitted, I would hold more closely to the glory of putting my mouth to the humble pipe of Corydon, given him once upon a time in loving gift by Dametas, than to the sonorous flute of Pallas with which to his own downfall the upstart satyr [Marsyas] provoked Apollo. For certainly it is better to tend a small piece of ground well than to let a large one though lack of control miserably revert to wilderness. There lies on the summit of Parthenius, no small hill of pastoral Arcadia, a delightful plain, in size not very spacious since the situation of the place does not permit it, but so covered with such a delicate and very green grass that, had not the frolicsome flocks with their greedy munching grazed on it, one would have been able to find it every time green anew. Here, if I am not mistaken, there are some twelve or fifteen trees, of a striking and abnormal

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bellezza che chiunque li vedesse giudicarebbe che la maestra Natura vi si fusse con sommo diletto studiata in formarli. Li quali, alquanto distanti et in ordine non artificioso disposti, con la loro rarità la naturale bellezza del luogo oltra misura annobiliscono. Quivi senza nodo veruno si vede il dirittissimo abete, nato a sustinere i pericoli del mare, e con più aperti rami la robusta quercia e l’alto frassino, e lo amenissimo platano vi si distendono con le loro ombre, non picciola parte del bello e copioso prato occupando. Et èvi con più breve fronda l’albero di che Ercule coronar si solea, nel cui pedale le misere figliuole di Climene furono trasformate. Et in un de’ lati si scerne il noderoso castagno, il fronzuto bosso e con puntate foglie lo eccelso pino carico di durissimi frutti; ne l’altro lo ombroso faggio, la incorruttibile tiglia e ’l fragile tamarisco, insieme con la orientale palma, dolce et onorato premio de’ vincitori. Ma fra tutti nel mezzo, presso un chiaro fonte, sorge verso il cielo un dritto cipresso, veracissimo imitatore de le alte mete, nel quale non che Ciparisso ma, se dir conviensi, esso Apollo non si sdegnarebbe essere transfigurato. Né sono le dette piante sì discortesi che del tutto con le loro ombre vietono i raggi del sole entrare nel dilettoso boschetto; anzi per diverse parti sì graziosamente gli ricevono, che rara è quella erbetta che da quelli non prenda grandissima recreatione. E come che di ogni tempo piacevole stanza vi sia, ne la fiorita primavera più che in tutto il restante anno piacevolissima vi si ritruova. In questo così fatto luogo sogliono sovente i pastori con li loro greggi dagli vicini monti convenire, e quivi in diverse e non leggiere pruove exercitarse: sì come in lanciare il grave palo, in trare con gli archi al versaglio, et in adestrarse nei lievi salti e ne le forti lotte, piene di rusticane insidie; e ’l più de le volte in cantare et in sonare le sampogne a pruova l’un de l’altro, non senza pregio e lode del vincitore. Ma essendo una fiata tra l’altre quasi tutti i convicini pastori con le loro mandre quivi ragunati, e ciascuno, varie maniere cercando di sollacciare, si dava maravigliosa festa, Ergasto solo, senza alcuna cosa dire or fare, appiè di un albero, dimenticato di sé e de’ suoi greggi, giaceva, non altrimente che se una pietra or tronco stato fusse, quantunque per adietro solesse oltra gli altri pastori essere dilettevole e grazioso. Del cui misero stato Selvaggio mosso a compassione, per dargli alcun conforto così amichevol­mente ad alta voce cantando gli incominciò a parlare.

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beauty, which any observer would judge nature with masterly hand to have taken great delight in studying how to form them. Some distance apart, and arranged without contrived order, these with their rarity ennoble the natural beauty of the place beyond measure. Here appears the very straight spruce, free of any knot, born to sustain the dangers of the sea; and the robust oak with its more open canopy, the tall ash and the ever attractive plane spread out with their shade, occupying no small part of the beautiful and ample meadow. There is also the tree, with its shorter leaf, with which Hercules liked to crown himself [poplar], and into which the unfortunate daughters of Clymene were transformed [bewailing the fall of Phaethon]. And on one side one can pick out the knotty chestnut, the leafy box, and with its needle leaves the high pine loaded with its hard cones; on another the shady beech, the durable lime and the fragile tamarisk, together with the eastern palm, sweet and respected prize of victors. But in the midst of all these, beside a clear spring, there rises towards heaven an erect cypress, the ever faithful imitator of the high meta [race post], into which not only Cyparissus but even Apollo, might it be said, would not object to being transformed. Nor are the trees mentioned so discourteous as to prevent with all their shade the rays of the sun entering into the delightful bower; rather, they let them in in various places so indulgently that rarely is the tuft of grass that does not take very great refreshment from them; and since at all times of year it is a pleasant place to be, in the blooming of spring more than at any other season it turns out extremely pleasant. To this place so endowed shepherds often like to come with their flocks from the neighbouring mountains to meet, and here in various rigorous sports to try themselves, for example in throwing the heavy pole, in shooting with the bow at the target, and in exercising themselves in flying jumps and in strong wrestling, employing all their rustic cunning; and for the most part in singing and in playing the bagpipe in rivalry with one another, with prizes and praise for the victor. But on one particular occasion when almost all the neighbouring shepherds had gathered with their flocks, and all in their various ways were seeking entertainment, everyone had a marvellous time. Only Ergasto lay at the foot of a tree, without saying or doing anything, forgetful of himself and of his flocks, just as he were a stone or a log, even though he had hitherto normally been more amusing and gracious than any other shepherd. Moved by compassion for his pitiful state, Selvaggio, to give him some comfort, thus began in friendly fashion to speak to him in a full voice:

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SELVAGGIO: Ergasto mio, perché solingo e tacito pensar ti veggo? Ohimé, che mal si lassano le pecorelle andare a lor ben placito! Vedi quelle che ’l rio varcando passano; vedi quei duo monton che ’nsieme correno come in un tempo per urtar s’abassano. Vedi ch’al vincitor tutte soccorreno e vannogli da tergo, e ’l vitto scacciano e con sembianti schivi ognor l’aborreno. E sai ben tu che i lupi, ancor che tacciono, fan le gran prede, e i can dormendo stannosi però che i lor pastor non vi s’impacciono. Già per li boschi i vaghi ucelli fannosi i dolci nidi, e d’alti monti cascano le nevi, che pel sole tutte disfannosi. E par che i fiori per le valli nascano et ogni ramo abbia le foglia tenere e i puri agnelli per l’erbette pascano. L’arco ripiglia il fanciullin di Venere, che di ferir non è mai stanco, o sazio di far de le medolle arida cenere. Progne ritorna a noi per tanto spazio con la sorella sua dolce Cecropia a lamentarsi de l’antico strazio. A dire il vero oggi è tanta l’inopia di pastor che cantando all’ombra seggiano, che par che stiamo in Scithia o Etiopia. Or, poi che o nulli o pochi ti pareggiano a cantar versi sì leggiadri e frottole, deh canta ormai, che par che i tempi il cheggiano. ERGASTO: Selvaggio mio, per queste oscure grottole Filomena né Progne vi si vedono; ma meste strigi et importune nottole. Primavera e soi dì per me non riedono, né truovo erbe o fioretti che mi gioveno; ma solo pruni e stecchi che ’l cor ledono. Nubbi mai da quest’aria non si moveno, e veggio, quando i dì son chiari e tepidi, notti di verno, che tonando pioveno. 

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SELVAGGIO: Dear Ergasto, why do I see you solitary and silent in thought? Ah me, you are leaving your sheep to go off as they please. Look at those that have forded the stream and gone beyond; look at the way those two rams that are running together are both now lowering their heads to charge. See how all the sheep run up to the victor and get behind him, and drive off the loser, and with grimacing faces now they abhor him. And you know very well that the wolves, moving silently, make great slaughter, and the dogs remain sleeping because their masters do not concern themselves. Now through the woods the pretty birds are building their sweet nests, and from the high mountains the snows are falling, all dissolved by the sun. It is evident that through the valleys the flowers are springing up, and every branch has its tender leaves and the pure lambs graze through the new grass. Venus’s little boy takes up his bow again, with which he never tires of shooting, or has enough of turning [bone] marrow to dry ash. Procne [the nightingale] returns among us for this period with her sweet Athenian sister [Philomela, the swallow] to lament for the ancient murder [of Itys by Tereus]. To tell the truth there is such dearth today of shepherds who sit in the shade and sing that it seems we are in Scythia or Ethiopia. Now, since none, or very few, are your equal in singing gay verses and frottole, come, sing now, for it seems the times demand it. ERGASTO: Dear Selvaggio, through these obscure little caves neither swallow nor nightingale is to be seen; but gloomy screech-owls and obtrusive bats. The spring and its days for me do not smile, nor do I find plant or flowers that cheer me; but only weeds and dry sticks that hurt the heart. Clouds do not move on from this air, and I see, when the days are clear and warm, winter nights which rain and thunder. 

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Perisca il mondo, e non pensar ch’io trepidi, ma attendo la sua ruina, e già considero che ’l cor s’adempia di pensier più lepidi; Caggian baleni e tuon, quanti ne videro i fier Giganti in Flegra; e poi sommergasi la terra e ’l ciel, ch’io già per me il desidero. Come vuoi che ’l prostrato mio cor ergasi a poner cura in gregge umile e povero, ch’io spero che fra lupi anzi dispergasi? Non truovo tra gli affanni altro ricovero, che di sedermi solo appiè d’un acero, d’un faggio, d’un abete o ver d’un sovero; ché pensando a colei che ’l cor m’ha lacero divento un ghiaccio e di null’altra curomi, né sento il duol ond’io mi struggo e macero. SELVAGGIO: Per maraviglia più che un sasso induromi, udendoti parlar sì malinconico; e ’n dimandarti alquanto rassicuromi. Qual’è colei c’ha ’l petto tanto erronico che t’ha fatto cangiar volto e costume? Dimel, che con altrui mai nol commonico. ERGASTO: Menando un giorno gli agni presso un fiume, vidi un bel lume, · in mezzo di quell’onde, che con due bionde · treccie allor mi strinse, e mi dipinse · un volto in mezzo al core, che di colore · avanza latte e rose; poi si nascose · in modo dentro all’alma che d’altra salma · non mi aggrava il peso. Così fui preso; · onde ho tal giogo al collo, ch’il pruovo, e sollo · più ch’uom mai di carne; tal che a pensarne · è vinta ogni alta stima. Io vidi prima · l’uno e poi l’altro occhio fin al ginocchio · alzata, al parer mio, in mezzo al rio · si stava al caldo cielo; lavava un velo, · in alta voce cantando. Ohimé, che quando · ella mi vide, in fretta la canzonetta · sua spezzando, tacque, e mi dispiacque · che, per più mie’ affanni, si scinse i panni, · e tutta si coverse;

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Let the world go to ruin, and do not think that I am afraid; I am waiting for its end, and in fact I believe that my heart will [then] be filled with blither thoughts. Let lightning and thunder fall, as much was seen by the fierce giants in Phlegra; and then let heaven and earth be submerged, because that is what I long for. How can you want that my crushed heart should rise to taking care in my poor and lowly flock, which instead I hope will be dispersed among wolves. I see no other relief among my pains than to sit alone at the foot of a maple, a beech, a pine or a cork; because thinking on her who has torn my heart I become a lump of ice, and I care for nothing else, nor do I feel the pain by which I am strained and mortified. SELVAGGIO: I stiffen harder than a rock in amazement, hearing you talk with such dismay; and by asking you I take comfort to some extent. Who is she who has such a perverse heart that has made you change your demeanour and your ways. Tell me, and I will not tell anyone else. ERGASTO: Leading my lambs one day beside the river, I saw a bright light · in the middle of the waves, which with two blond · tresses then bound me and painted me · a face in the middle of my heart one that in colour · surpasses milk and roses; then she hid herself · inside my soul in such a way that of no other burden · do I feel the weight. That was how I was taken; · hence I have such a yoke at my neck that I feel it, and I know it · more than any man of flesh; so that in thinking of it · every other consideration is vanquished. I saw first · the one eye and then the other up to the knee · standing up, so I thought, in the middle of the stream · she stood under the hot sky; she was washing a cloth · singing in full voice. Ah me, for when · she saw me, she quickly [from] her song · breaking off, fell silent: and that displeased me, · because to my greater pain she drew her garments to, · and entirely covered herself:

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poi si sommerse · ivi entro insino al cinto; tal che per vinto · io caddi in terra smorto. E per conforto · darmi, ella già corse, e mi soccorse, · sì piangendo a gridi, ch’a li suo’ stridi · corsero i pastori che eran di fuori · intorno a le contrade, e per pietade · ritentâr mill’arti. Ma i spirti sparti · al fin mi ritornaro, e fen riparo · a la dubbiosa vita. Ella, pentita, · poi ch’io mi riscossi allor tornossi · indietro (e ’l cor più m’arse) sol per mostrarse · in un pietosa e fella. La pastorella mia spietata e rigida, che notte e giorno al mio soccorso chiamola, e sta superba e più che ghiaccio frigida; ben sanno questi boschi quanto io amola, sannolo fiumi, monti, fiere et omini, ch’ognor piangendo e sospirando bramola. Sallo, quante fiate il dì la nomini, il gregge mio, che già a tutt’ore ascoltami, o ch’egli in selva pasca o in mandra romini. Eco rimbomba, e spesso indietro voltami le voci, che sì dolci in aria sonano, e nell’orecchie il bel nome risoltami. Quest’alberi di lei sempre ragionano e ne le scorze scritta la dimostrano, ch’a pianger spesso et a cantar mi spronano. Per lei i tori e gli arieti giostrano.

Sannazaro, Arcadia = L’Arcadie, ed. Francesco Esparmer and Gérard Marino, Paris 2004

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then she sank · down up to the waist; so that, overcome, · I fell to earth deathly pale; and to comfort · me she ran and helped me, · shouting and wailing so much that at her cries · the shepherds ran up that were outside · around in the district and for pity · tried and tried again a thousand remedies. But my scattered spirits · at last returned to me, and put up a defense · of my life in doubt. She having relented, · after I had shaken myself I turned then · back, and my heart burned the more just through her showing herself · both kind and cruel. My shepherdess · unpitying and unbending, whom I call upon night and day to help me, remains both proud and colder than ice; these woods know well how much I love her, rivers, mountains, beasts and men know it, that still, weeping and sighing, I desire her. They know how many times a day I call her name, my flock, who listen to me at all times, whether they graze in the wood or feed in the fold. Echo makes sounds, and often throws me back my words, which so sweetly resound in the air, and in my ears her beautiful name quivers. These trees are always talking of her and on their bark display her name written, and urge me often to weep and to sing. It is for her sake that the bulls and the rams joust.

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Chapter 3 2 THE POLYGLOT AND POLYMORPHOUS CONSTITUENCY OF PASTORAL

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A constant defining property of bucolic or pastoral in antiquity and almost for ever since has been its lowliness, its “humilis character”, as Servius explained opening his commentary on Virgil, … in bucolico humilem pro qualitate negotiorum et personarum: nam personae his rusticae sunt, simplicitate gaudentes, a quibus nihil altum debet requiri low, in the bucolic, on account of the quality of the goings-on and the characters: for the characters here are rustic, rejoicing in simplicity, from whom nothing high should be required.

Low, then as now, embraced a wide range of humanity, but the main characters, at least, remain based in the country, though they may have dealings with all sorts of other folk, and they remain simple – though the simplicity in which they rejoice may seem contrived. The ‘Flintstone’ trope (see Chapter 1 §7) is part of this, and the pastoral habit of writing on the bark of trees an example of the trope.

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However, Servius also remarks that, in places, Virgil was speaking “allegoricos”, saying something else (ἄλλα ἀγορεύειν, alla agoreuein) than the apparent matter. Servius gives a few examples of his ‘allegories’ and subsequent tradition elaborated more (such as Eclogue IV announcing the birth of Christ). There was no turning back from Virgil’s device of writing deliberately in the ‘low’ style without himself being low, and introducing expressly or tacitly things “paullum maiora”|a little greater|. Calpurnius Siculus, the next writer of eclogues we have, living probably three or four generations after Virgil, consolidated the inclusion of political reference and the author’s distance. When the eclogue came to be ‘revived’, in the fourteenth century, Dante, Giovanni del Virgilio and Petrarch (in Latin) treated the form as a kind of code, reducing the rustic setting to an outer shell, a husk that had no interest (or, at very best, was incidental). For example, when one reads Giovanni del Virgilio’s line, Si caudam negrescit ovis mea candida frontem If my sheep, white in the face, grows black in the tail,

one does not imagine a living sheep, for his ‘sheep’ is his poem, and all he means is that his poem begins happily but ends sadly. There is no question of where his sheep may be. However, Giovanni would not have introduced

1 Servius/Thilo and Hagen 1923, proemium, p. 1.

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blue sheep, or pigs that fly, or anything into the code that was not natural; he followed out Servius’s insistence that, even if there were allegories in Virgil’s lines, sed ex re rustica sunt omnia negotia, comparationes et si qua sint alia still everything dealt with comes from rustic life, including the similes and anything else.

We find these “comparationes” in Alberti’s Tirsis, anticipating ‘nencial’ language (see §19 below). Even in these early Latin eclogues that are mere ciphers this decorum had to be observed.

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One could gather that Giovanni del Virgilio’s ‘sheep’ was actually his poem, but without a key the ten eclogues of Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen (many of them philippics, attacking the corruption of the Church) are impossible to penetrate. There is no means by which one can draw the allegory out of the pastoral apparatus by guesswork or deduction, as, however, after Petrarch, one could do – in Boccaccio and in others. Petrarch and the earlier ecloguists codified what they had to say by providing particular names for their protagonists, or made a point in a particular, individual sentence (like Giovanni del Virgilio’s above), rather than by presenting an integral situation which could be compared as a whole to the reality that concerned them. In this Petrarch and these early ecloguers were being true to tradition, Servius having given as examples of Virgil’s allegorization not whole poems and their general matter but individual sentences within them (this remained the standard approach into the Renaissance, for example in Cristoforo Landino’s allegorical exegesis of Virgil’s Aeneid, in his Camaldulensian Disputations of around 1480). Boccaccio, nonetheless, apparently in reaction to Petrarch’s obscurity, rendered the allegory less opaque, less abstruse, closer to the ordinary language of metaphor. For example, of his Eclogue IX he wrote:

2 Servius/Thilo and Hagen, p. 4, lines 8–13. There are some seven instances in his commentary on the Eclogues where he uses the Greek term ‘allegoricos’. Ed. Giuseppe Albini, revised Giovanni Batttista Pighi, La corrispondenza poetica di Dante e Giovanni del ­Virgilio e l’ecloga di Giovanni al Mussato, Bologna 1965, Giovanni to Mussato, line 275. For early humanist pastoral see Konrad Krautter, Die Renaissance der Bukolik in der lateinischen Literatur des XIV. Jahrhundert: von Dante bis Petrarca, Munich 1983, and, more widely (including such medieval writers as Theodulus), Cooper 1977 and Kegel-Brinkgreve 1990, pp. 239–313. For the idea that the countryside, though it is not central, has some interest for writers of allegorical eclogues – what is called their ‘pastoralism’ – see, for example, Chaudhuri 1989, pp. 151–56. But this is not credible (see §28 below and Chapter 13 §2) .

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Pro Batracos ego intelligo florentinum morem: loquacissimi enim sumus, verum in bellicis nil valemus, et ideo Batracos, quia grece batracos latine rana sonat; sunt enim loquaces plurimum rane et timidissimi For ‘Batracos’ I intend the Florentine character: for we are extremely talkative, but useless in war, and so Batracos, because ‘batracos’ in Greek means ‘rana’ [frog] in Latin; for frogs are ­generally talkative and very timid.

In his Eclogue V Boccaccio comes close to conceiving the pastoral world as a model of the real one: … quam civitatem more pastorali loquens silvam voco, nam uti in silvis animalia habitant bruta, sic in civitatibus homines, quos more predicto oves, edos et boves aliquando nuncupamus … which city, speaking in pastoral fashion, I call a wood; for as brutish animals live in the woods, so in cities do men, whom in the same manner we sometimes call sheep or goats or cows.

3 4 The ‘revival’ in the fourteenth century of the Latin eclogue, otherwise defunct, had a purpose. Dante was engaged in a tenzone, a kind of poetical contest or dialogue, with Giovanni del Virgilio, who had written him an epistula metrica, in Latin hexa­meters; Dante replied in kind, but added lustre to his own work by becoming a Virgilian shepherd replying in an eclogue: he could justifiably call it an eclogue not only because he was commenting on contemporary and poetic matters as had Virgil but also because his hexameter poem was a reply, Servius and other commentators having emphasized as a defining aspect of the form that it was an exchange, an amebeum. In the hands of Petrarch and Boccaccio the dialogue was included, in more Virgilian fashion, within the eclogue, but, like the tenzone, each eclogue had its topic, its particular lament or elegy, whether directed at contemporary politics, poetry itself or, only sometimes in Petrarch and Boccaccio, the trials of love. As a matter of policy, Boccaccio set a titulus or 3 Ed. Antonio Avena, Petrarca, Bucolicum Carmen, Padua 1904. Giovanni Boccaccio, Opere, IX, ed. A.F. Masserà, Bari 1928, pp. 216, 218–19. As an example of Petrarch’s procedure, one may take his choice of the name ­Pamphilus – one discussed by Servius (Thilo and Hagen 1923, p. 4, lines 8–13) – to r­ epresent St Peter (he is discussing the Church), because ‘all-loving’. ‘All-loving’ is merely one property among many of St Peter’s, and not one that would lead one to him very easily. For St Peter B ­ occaccio used the name Glaucus, because he, like St Peter, was a fisherman – an identification one has a chance of guessing – and Pamphilus he used, much more ­literally, for a figure who had the quality of loving all men.

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argumentum at the head of each of his eclogues. The titulus expounded what he called the sensus, as opposed to the cortex, the shell or husk, which was the pastoral apparatus used as the code.

3 5 Because his Eclogues had been Virgil’s first essay into poetry, a young

poet would commonly first try his pen in pastoral, whether or not writing to an elder poet in a kind of tenzone. Only Mantuan, as the Camaldulensian friar Battista Spagnuoli is known, owes all his fame to his eclogues, in Latin (which he not only wrote as a young man but entitled Adulescentia); after their publication at the end of the fifteenth century, they became a classic school textbook, not only no doubt for their moralizing but also perhaps because they are sprinkled with lame jokes. For example, Mantuan borrows from Virgil (Eclogue II, 56) the same phrase, “rusticus es” that Petrarch had transmuted into “come se’ rozza”, although with quite different, schoolmasterly tenor: – Opus est persolvere crates – Rusticus es, ‘crates’ etenim pro ‘gratibus’ inquis – We need to pay wickerwork – You are rustic, saying ‘wickerwork’ instead of ‘thanks’.

Mantuan nevertheless, having written his eclogues (according to the preface of the editio princeps of 1498) by 1466, was on the crest of the first wave of pastoral in early Renaissance Italy, beside Arsochi and Alberti, who were writing, however, in the vernacular. Furthermore, Mantuan’s Eclogues I–IV, at least, differ significantly from Boccaccio’s – their most immediate outstanding precedent – but resemble contemporary vernacular pastoral in turning back to Virgil’s Eclogues themselves, not only in such deliberate echoes but in their setting in a described countryside inhabited by country folk. In Mantuan Boccaccio’s duality of cortex and sensus has shifted still more towards naturalism, Mantuan’s eclogues coming to resemble parables. From them one draws (or Mantuan underlines) not so much an allegorical sensus as a moralized ethicum, like the ethicum that John of Garland had drawn out from his Latin pastourelles (the one cited in the previous chapter was his first, but not his only example). 5 The Eclogues of Baptista Mantuan, ed. Wilfred P. Mustard, Baltimore 1911; Vladimiro Zabughin, Un beato poeta (Battista Mantuan), Rome 1917; Baptista (Spagnoli) Mantuanus, Adulescentia: The Eclogues of Mantuan, ed. and trans. Lee Piepho, New York 1989. A good example of Mantuan’s ethicum is cited in Chaudhuri 1989, pp. 26–27, namely IX, 133–39: five different country metaphors all make the same point.

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3 6 Dealing with “honest” and “insane” love respectively, as their tituli

announce, Mantuan’s Latin Eclogues I–IV share subject-matter with contemporary so-called ‘popular’ songs, both anonymous and authored: in Eclogue I a boy falls in love with a girl at the harvest, in Eclogue II another is struck when he sees a girl bathing. In the Sienese Francesco Arsochi’s first eclogue, which according to the evidence of a manuscript containing his work written by another poet, Giovanni Francesco Suardi, was written before 1458, not long after Alberti’s, a boy falls in love with a girl at a vintage. In yet another centre, Verona, in the early 1460s, Giorgio Sommaripa was also tackling country subjects, including one sonnet versifying a peasant girl’s report to her mother of being propositioned by a city boy to do it right there, behind a dyke. Sommaripa specifically places the dialect as that of a village near Verona. He begins his collection with a description of Cupid, very common in pastoral poetry, Cugnò Frison, a ciò ch’el bel rengare tu impari di boari, che è agugiè dal putel orbo, che va sempre me nuo, con gli aluoti, e sa sì ben sitare … questo me scartabel, con tu verè, me ve ho desliberà voler mandare. Cousin Frison, so you can learn from cowherds that fine manner of speaking that is stimulated by the blind boy who always goes naked, with wings, and knows well how to shoot … this scrapbook of mine, as you will see, I have decided to send to you.

If, the poet concludes, it does not satisfy you, fa ch’el lo armende el to afitel Zancan: l’è ben un vermocan con tu se’ an ti; elo sarà ben fare; perchè l’ha gran piaser de petrognare then get it amended by your faithful Zancan: he is certainly an apothecary [?], as you know yourself; he will know how to do it, because he takes great pleasure in petrarchizing.

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Sommaripa’s sonnets in general, though exceptional in form, align closely in theme with other Early Renaissance vernacular pastoral, and to my mind this petrognare, which I gloss as ‘Petrarchizing’, holds the key to it. It is not driven by interest in the countryside – for that it was more appropriate to imitate georgic – but by the search for a suitable medium for poetry about love and desire and other ‘low’ matters. Not surprisingly, Petrarch’s rich and beautiful Canzoniere was a lodestone to which all these splintered attempts were inevitably attracted. This movement would eventually, in the sixteenth century, consolidate into a maniera, a more explicit and rigid Petrarchism, dominated by the sonnet, but between 1460 and 1500 it was widely accepted that such modern poetry should be bucolic, because ‘humble’ in its matter (love or personal matters), in its medium (the volgare, common parlance) and in its ambitions (this was certainly not epic). These poets set out to do again what Virgil had done in his day, launching their own new language and style. They began writing vernacular ‘eclogues’, variously conceived – as Virgil’s eclogues directly imitated, as allegorical in the manner derived from their immediate predecessors, and as the existing vernacular repertoire of popular song recast into Virgilian idiom. All this is found not simply convergent in Arsochi’s Eclogue I, but on a collision course.

6 Giorgio Sommariva, ed. Giovanni Fabris, Sonetti villaneschi, Udine 1907. Fabris, in his notes, suggests that “petrognare” means to play the Petronius – but that would have been extremely abstruse. The ‘-ognare’ seems a suitably gross distortion of (the admittedly non-existent word) ‘Petrarcare’. For Sommariva or Sommaripa see Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, Il Quattrocento s­ettentrionale, Bari 1972, pp. 19ff.; Armando Balduino, ‘Le esperienze della poesia volgare’, in La storia della cultura veneta, III, i, Venice 1980, pp. 345ff.; Marisa Milani, ‘Le origini della poesia pavana e l’immagine della cultura e della vita contadina’, ibid., pp. 369ff.; Ivano Paccagnella, ‘Letteratura nel veneto fra Quattro e Cinquecento: Monolinguismo, dialetto, sperimentalismo’, in La letteratura, la rappresentazione, la musica al tempo e nei luoghi di Giorgione, ed. Michelangelo Muraro, Rome 1986, pp. 77–99, at pp. 80–81; he also discusses Bartolomeo Cavassico of Belluno. For fourteenth-century ‘popular’ songs see Francesco Flamini, ‘Per la storia d’alcune antiche forme poetiche italiane e romanze’, in Studi di storia letteraria italiana e straniera, Leghorn 1895, pp. 107ff., esp. pp. 156–82; Ettore Li Gotti, ‘Il madrigale nel Trecento’, Poesia, iii–iv, 1946, pp. 44ff., reprinted in La metrica, ed. Renzo Cremante and Mario Pazzaglia, Bologna 1972, pp. 319ff. Greg 1906, pp. 30–37, also brings in such material; and see further Chapter 10 §11.

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3 8 Arsochi’s eclogue is found in Suardi’s manuscript with the following titulus, using a vernacular as well as Latinate word for ‘shepherd’ and referring to so-called ‘slippery’ rhymes (of words with the stress falling on the antepenultimate syllable): Tyrinto e Grisaldo pastori e madriali con sue rime isdruzole dimostrano l’età presente esser gionta in somma inopia et miseria et più non si extimar virtute et come la corte di santa chiesia è piena di vicii e s­ cellarigine Tyrinto and Grisaldo, pastori [shepherds] and madriali [shepherds] with their slippery verses demonstrate the present age to have fallen into the greatest distress and misery, and virtue to be respected no longer, and how the court of the Holy Church is full of vice and wickedness.

So this poem is presented as in the neo-Latin tradition (specifically Petrarchan, since he criticized the Church), though now versified in Italian, and Suardi follows it with one of his own, based on Virgil’s Eclogue I, which indeed has a coded sensus. However, Arsochi’s eclogue was not about the Church, or the morality of the present age, but about poetry – about the difficulty of writing poetry, specifically pastoral or love poetry, in the present age, compared to that of former ages, the great days of Rome. Its first half (the only part that Suardi’s manuscript contains, and therefore he misses the point) opens: Dimmi, Terintho, che hai zampogna e cetera, truovans’egli hoggi de’ pastori che cantino come facevan quei dell’età vetera? Tell me, Tyrinto [says Grisaldo], having pipe and lyre, are there found today shepherds who can sing as did those of that ancient age?

to which the answer comes, no, ch’omai ne’ nostri boschi più non pulula un altro Melibeo, che pasci? o Corido … because in our woods there no longer pullulates another Meliboeus, what do you graze? [sc. cuium pecus? an Meliboei?] or Corydon –

in other words, Virgil’s Eclogues III and II. Come on, though, says Grisaldo, De, dimmi quella pur Come la noctola che tu l’altrieri cantavi sotto un suvaro

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Come on, tell me that ‘Like the owl’ that you were singing the other day under a cork-tree,

thereby echoing, pointedly, Virgil’s Eclogue IX, lines 44–45, Quid, quae te pura solum sub nocte canentem audieram? Come on, what did I hear you singing alone in the clear night?

and now Tyrinto delivers, in the second half of the poem, what he calls a frottola, which is very different in tone, rhyme and metre: Venga qualunque · il fren d’amor amorsa a questa corsa · con la sua palestra dove balestra · mal · chi a segno porta …. Let it come anyway · bite the bit of love in this gallop · with his sports ground where he shoots · ill · who aims at the mark ….

3 9 Arsochi deliberately juxtaposed the traditional vernacular of his frottola and the translated Latinizing eclogue-elegy – susceptible to a cortex and sensus reading, at least – although the ‘Latin’ eclogue was also rendered not simply into Italian but into a specific vernacular equivalent involving rime sdrucciole (proparoxytonic rhymes). Tyrinto (Arsochi) and Grisaldo (friend or stooge of Arsochi) put on shepherd garb in order to discuss and write their poetry. If Tyrinto needs a great deal of encouragement from Grisaldo before he is willing to sing his song (“farò come colui che a dir si sforsa|I will do as one does who forces himself to speak|) that is because he is boldly, at this point in history, trailing a vernacular form as being equivalent to Virgilianizing; but also he is echoing the tradition embodied in Petrarch’s words, “Però ch’Amor mi sforza … parlo in rime aspre”|Because Love constrains me … I speak in harsh verse|(Canzoniere no. 125). Arsochi’s intention seems to be signalled by the planting in the titulus of both words, pastori and madriali – code shepherds like Virgil’s and cod shepherds like today’s. 8 See Franca Brambilla Ageno, ‘La prima egloga di Francesco Arsochi e un’imitazione di Giovan Francesco Suardi’, Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, cliii, 1976, pp. 523ff. A similar, but not identical titulus is found with the poem in a Fioretto di cose nobilissime e degne, de diversi autori stampate cioe Sonetti, Egloghe, Barzeletti, Capitoli, Disperate, Epistole, Strambotti e una contra disperata … ,Venice, 1510, namely: … pastori e mandriali ove tocano in questa terza rima sdruzzole come el mondo è pieno de vitii e scelerita e maxime de l’avaritia. The awkward specification ‘cork tree’ is due to the need to find a sdrucciola kind of tree, súvaro.

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3 10 Poets of the second half of the fifteenth century following on Arsochi were necessarily aware not of one, unilinear pastoral tradition, stemming from Theocritus and Virgil, but of two, the second of these being homegrown. One cannot properly put the latter under the heading pastourelle, which was a Provençal form, scarcely found as such in Italy, but one might call it the mandrialis tradition, mandrialis being the Latin term for madrigal and derived, it was said, from the (Greek) root mandra, a flock. The fourteenthcentury grammarian Antonio da Tempo had explained: Dicitur autem mandrialis a mandra pecudum et pastorum …. Nam pastores tamquam rustici et homines grossi primo coeperunt amoris venerei causa compilare verba grossa et ipsa cantare et in suis tibiis sonare modo grosso, sed tamen naturaliter, licet hodie subtilius et pulchrius per rithimatores mandriales huiusmodi compilentur. Mandrialis namque in rithimis debet constare ex verbis valde vulgaribus et intelligibilibus et rudibus quasi cum prolationibus et idiomatibus rusticalibus …. It is called a madrigal from mandra or flock of sheep and shepherds …. For shepherds, being rustic and gross, first began, under the urge of carnal love, to put together gross words and to sing them and to play them on their pipes in a gross way, but from nature, even if today madrigals of this kind are composed more subtly and finely by poets. For a madrigal in verse should be made up of words that are truly vulgar and plain and rough, as if with rustic terminations and expressions ….

Quite what these rustic terminations and idioms may have been does not emerge plainly from Antonio da Tempo’s examples, but clearly they can be related to Dante’s non-pexa or uncouth words, of which rozza was a prime example, to Alberti’s diminuitives and ‘deformed’ expressions, and to Arsochi’s sdrucciole rhymes. Many of the verse forms that can be grouped under the mandrialis heading, such as the early madrigal itself, the frottola, the ballata, the caccia and indeed the canzone, share with the pastourelle its “noel so plazen e gay … un petit curson’ e vivacier”| novel tone, pleasant and gay … somewhat rapid and lively|– this being manifested in short or broken lines (versi rotti), internal rhymes (rimalmezzo), rhyming plays on words (bisticci) and refrains. Not so much poetry, these are rather songs of carnal love, amoris venerei causa, earthy country material.

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3 11 It is because poets worked it along these lines that modern pastoral became polyglot and polymorphous: it was polyglot because it might be pastoral if it did what Virgil did either by direct imitation (in Latin, or, again, in the vernacular) or indirectly, by going back to the equivalent of his ‘source’, shepherds and country life. The two strands might be merged or be contrasted, not least to raise a laugh – there are jokes in neo-Latin pastoral, not exclusively in Mantuan but also, for example, at the beginning and end of Battista Guarini the Elder’s third eclogue (a particularly lame one at the end – Battus gets a thorn in his foot – a humanist joke, since the clowning is taken from Idyll IV of Theocritus, who became a source for Renaissance pastoral definitively in a printing of around 1480). Or, if there are no jokes, there are frequent touches of realism, their close equivalent. As in Arsochi’s early experiment, poets could, frequently did, mingle the various elements, echoing Virgil in one line, Petrarch in another, or, should one attain the mastery of a Sannazaro, echoing both Dante and Virgil in the same phrase. Alternatively, in his 1518 play La Pastoral Angelo Beolco, known as Ruzante, confronted a pastor or gentleman playing the shepherd with a contadino being a peasant: the pastor swoons under the pressure of love and the peasant takes the opportunity to steal his clothes. The pastor might have resembled the two friends Damone and Tirsi in an eclogue by Antonio Tebaldeo illustrated by Andrea Previtali in four furniture pictures in the National Gallery London (fig. 3.1), wearing long white lawn shirts needing to be stored in quantity (for regular changing) in the kind of chest that a peasant could hardly afford. Another such pastor rather than a true shepherd, despite the accompanying flock, is similarly dressed in a picture in the Johnson Museum in Cornell University (fig. 3.2): given his full-length figure and his direct stare at the viewer, this painting might celebrate an actor’s performance. These works date to just after 1500; later in the century the costumes evidently became richer and more fantastic, as celebrated enthusiastically by Sebastiano Serlio in his discussion of the Vitruvian ‘satyric’ stage in Book II of his treatise on architecture; see further Chapters 11 §11; 14 §4) and as perhaps represented in the costume of 10 Antonio da Tempo, ed. Richard Andrews, Summa artis rithimici vulgaris dictaminis, Bologna 1977, li. See also Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, Princeton nj 1949, I, pp. 116–19. On Alberti’s country touches see further Gorni in his edition (1975) ad locum. For the nature of the pastourelle, see Zink 1972, p. 26, citing Guillaume Molinier (I follow his translation): “Pastorela requier tostemps noel so plazen e gay, no pero ta lone cum vers o chansons, ans deu haver so un petit curson e vivacier” |The pastourelle always requires a novel melody that is pleasant and gay, less ample than that of the vers or the chanson, but that should have an air somewhat quick and lively|.

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fig. 3.1 Andrea Previtali, Scenes from an eclogue by Tebaldeo: Tirsi asks Damon the cause of his sorrow/ Tirsi finds the body of Damon, c. 1510, oil on wood, 45.2 × 19.9 cm, National Gallery, London

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fig. 3.2 Northern Italian artist, An actor in a pastoral(?), oil on canvas, 66 × 50 cm, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca

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the main figure of a ‘concert champêtre’ by Giovanni Cariani in private hands (fig. 3.3). The greatest diversity of country types (though the work is not a designated pastoral) is to be found in Politian’s ‘festa’ Orfeo of about 1480: the prologue by a god, Mercury, is echoed by a “pastore schiavone”|Croat shepherd| bidding the audience attend in gross dialect; then comes the dialogue of Mopso, “pastore vecchio”|old shepherd|, and Aristeo, “pastore giovane”|young shepherd|, who speak ‘normally’ (in verse) – though Mopso also breaks into an octave of sducciole rhymes, and Aristeo into a “canzona” that invokes the woods in a refrain. These two despatch their servant cowherd, Tirsi, to seek the calf that Aristeo has lost; Tirsi speaks an octave in the ‘nencial’ (see §19) language of peasant vocabulary and then in one of ordinary ‘Petrarchan’. Orfeo himself speaks in Latin, then alternates, in the central drama around Euridice, between the ‘Petrarchan’ vernacular and four lines in Latin repeated from Ovid; finally the Bacchantes who have torn Orfeo’s head off go metrically and linguistically completely ‘irregular’ in a drunken moresco dance. Quite commonly pastoral shepherds retain caprai|goatherds| or the equivalent, who call them ‘padron’; these are often risible; besides these villeins there are also villainous satyrs or savages; either may be involved in the plot, driven by lust for a nymph to attempted rape. Later pastoral society may mirror court hierarchy, nymphs ranking higher than shepherdesses, though the pastori match the nymphs. The reappearance in conventional pastoral, as it had become, of native or true shepherds, to comic or not so simply comic effect, is largely an English development, notably in Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, deployed still further in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (see Chapter 13 §12); in Italy there was a consolidated stylization and abstraction in Italy of the pastor, who comes moreover to inhabit a nonexistent place, Arcadia – or, alternatively, the outright rejection of pastoral pretence, notably in Holland (see Chapter 14 §3; see also 11 §12).

11 B.G. [Battista Guarini the Elder], Poema divo Herculi Ferrariensium duci dicatum, Modena 1496, ‘Carmen Bucolicum’, following Book IV. On his eclogues see Tissoni Benevenuti 1979, pp. 118–19 (by Marina Lazzari). On Theocritus in fifteenth-century humanism see Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, ‘Schede per una storia della poesia pastorale nel secolo XV: la scuola Guariniana a Ferrara’, in In ricordo di Cesare Angelini. Studi di letteratura e filologia, Milan 1979, pp. 96–131, at pp. 100–01, and Carlo Vecce, ‘Un codice di Teocrito posseduto da Sannazaro’, in Le Antiche e le moderne carte: Studi in memoria di Giuseppe Billanovich, ed. Antonia Manfredi and Carla Maria Monti, Padua 2007, pp. 597–616. I am indebted to Sarah Ferrari for the second reference.

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fig. 3.3 Giovanni Cariani, Concert champêtre, c. 1520, oil on canvas, 100 × 162 cm, art market 1974

11 (cont.) On Sannazaro’s virtuosity, see Domenico de’ Robertis, ‘Aspects de la formation du genre pastoral en Italie au XVe siècle’, in Le Genre pastoral en Europe du XVe au XVIIIe siècle: Acts du colloque international tenu à Saint-Etienne du 28.9 au 1.10.1978, St-Etienne 1980, pp. 8ff. The question of Sannazaro’s use also of Theocritus is considered below, in Chapter 10. Angelo Beolco il Ruzante, La Pastoral, ed. Giorgio Padoan, Padua 1978. Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. I, Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona, London 2004, pp. 291–99; Antonio Mazzotta, Andrea Previtali, Bergamo 2009, pp. 13, 56; Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento, exh. cat., Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, Padua, 2013, nos. 3.7–3.8 (Antonio Mazzotta). Tiziano e la nascita del paesaggio moderno, exh. cat., Palazzo Reale, Milan, 2012, no. 18. Tutte l’opere d’Architettura et Prospettiva di Sebastiano Serlio Bolognese ... facsimile of the edition of Venice 1619 in possession of RIBA London, Ridgewood nj 1964, Book II, f. 44r, ‘Trattato sopra le Scene’. Rodolfo Pallucchini and Franco Rossi, Giovanni Cariani, Bergamo 1983, no. 65. Agnolo Poliziano, Stanze per la Giostra – Orfeo – Rime, ed. Bruno Maier, Novara 1969; see Nino Pirrotta, ‘Orpheus, singer of strambotti’, in Nino Pirrotta and Elena Povoledo, Li due Orfei [Turin 1969], revised English edn Cambridge 1982, ch. 1, pp. 3–36; also ch. 2, pp. 42–44. Also Rolf Lohse, Renaissancedrama und humanistische Poetik in Italien, Paderborn 2015, pp. 558–59, gives a summary.

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3 12 The sdrucciole used in the first half of Arsochi’s Eclogue I were widely taken up, becoming a leading characteristic of an eclogue, until Sannazaro in L’Arcadia exhausted virtually all possible rhyme schemes, and they largely disappeared (but were retained selectively in drama and deliberately revived, under looser rules, notably in the plays of Cieco d’Adria in the 1560s and later; see Chapter 8 §4). The humanist Vincenzo Calmeta, reviewing the history of pastoral before his own early sixteenth century, advanced the theory that the sdrucciola was elected as a vernacular equivalent to the dactylic fourth foot that Servius stated to be characteristic of bucolic as opposed to other hexameters. Calmeta’s ingenious suggestion seems typical of the way Renaissance humanists covered their medieval tracks. It is more likely that rime sdrucciole were a convenient codification of the “prolationes et idiomata rusticales” that Antonio da Tempo said were characteristic of the madrigal, especially since he also remarked that they were not so easy to find as other words (“non est ita facile invenire quemadmodum alia verba”). Antonio noted that sometimes educated poets had used these forms, and we may say these eclogues were not intended to be truly rustic, but instead very well contrived on an originally rustic pattern. 3 13 The publication of

the Bucoliche Elegantissime in Florence in 1482 brought together for the first time various different efforts by Tuscan poets to write pastoral and immediately stimulated other poets in other places to produce their own, notably Matteo Maria Boiardo in Ferrara and Pietro Jacopo De Jennaro and Sannazaro in Naples; meanwhile the Sienese Filippo Galli, known by his ‘pastoral’ name of Filenio, probably knew Arsochi in Siena, then met De Jennaro perhaps in 1484, through him influencing Sannazaro, and finally also spreading the pastoral word in Venice when he moved up there. The Bucoliche Elegantissime, though proclaiming the form fashionable,

12 Sannazaro was remarkably skilful and inventive in handling sdrucciole, even if he took many from other poets; one can find more struggling attempts, making one believe they were not easy to find, in, for example, Nicolò da Correggio’s ‘letters’ written by Fauno to Florida and by Florida to Fauno, which are stilted and forced (Opera, ed. Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti, Bari 1969, nos. 364 and 365). For Virgil contrasting the spondee and dactylic fourth foot see Chapter 9 §9, 10. See Arnaldo di Benedetto, ‘Due note sulla Nencia da Barberino’, and Umberto Bosco, ­‘Rinascimento non-classicistico’, in La poesia rusticana del Rinascimento, papers given 10–13 October 1968, ed. Accademia nazionale dei lincei, Rome 1969, pp. 36ff. and pp. 18ff. Calmeta/Grayson, p. 14. Antonio da Tempo/Andrews, p. 14.

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and implicitly Petrarchizing (since Petrarch was by far the most elegant vernacular poet), by no means presented eclogues that were consistent in style, but it temporarily established the eclogue as a modern form that everyone had to try – temporarily: this first phase of literary pastoral, initiated in the 1460s, consolidated in 1482, fashionable through the 1490s, fell largely out of favour after 1504, following the publication in print of Sannazaro’s revised and expanded Arcadia. True, eclogues continued to be composed incidentally, and were published by their author alongside poems predominantly of other kinds; many were also performed as short plays (see §21 and Chapter 8 §1).

3 14 In the work of Filenio the Petrarchizing becomes that much more

evident, since in both his works, Lilia and Safira, the prose introduction, the single long opening egloga and a series of sonnets, strambotti and canzoni constitute in effect a canzoniere. Both canzonieri are auto­biographical like Petrarch’s, except that lover and respective beloveds are converted into pastor, pastorella and ninfa (the two latter representing respectively the sexual and inspirational facets of Petrarch’s Laura). The Safira, asserts Filenio, is a true story, “non fabuloso parlare, ma verissima e moralizata storia sotto velame pastorico descritta”|not a fabulous discourse, but a very true and moralized history described under a pastoral veil|. Here, then, is the Petrarchan lover ‘under pastoral guise’, claiming in Petrarchist fashion that there is a moral: both ninfe, Safira and Lilia, admonish the sexually suffering poet towards higher things. One could claim for Filenio (once forgotten, his work having never been printed, and then long regarded as an imitator of Sannazaro rather than 13 Boiardo wrote eclogues in Latin and then in the vernacular: S. Carrai, Pastoralia/ Matteo Maria Boiardo: testo critico, commento e traduzione, Padua 1996; Opere volgari: Amorum libri, Pastoral, Lettere, ed. P.V. Mengaldo, Bari 1962. On Benivieni and Buoninsegni see Dizionario nazionale biografico italiano [DNBI], s.v. Arsochi’s Eclogue II recalls Giusto de’ Conti’s laments; his Eclogue III is more or less a caccia d’amore, more or less literally a ‘love chase’, of which there are several examples in earlier and later song; his Eclogue IV, a reworking of a work by an earlier Sienese poet, is an elegy for someone deceased. Of Buoninsegni’s five eclogues in the Bucoliche Elegantissime, four were written before 1468, the fifth in 1481. These, too, are ‘Latin’ eclogues in Italian, bearing tituli, of which the first two are elegies and the third a “confabulazione d’amor” – mostly a recital by Phylleuro of a number of love affairs he had before his present relationship. His fourth eclogue is a “pronostico”, prognosticating the punishment of some w ­ ickedness. In the fifth the poet has a vision of a figure evidently ­representing virtue, though he calls her a pastorella. By comparison with earlier Latin eclogues, and in common with Mantuan, all these poets introduce rusticisms; by contrast to Bernardo Pulci, they observe pastoral decorum with exactitude, and they are often sentimental – for ­example Buoninsegni in his first eclogue envisions life as extremely sweet “ne la ­chapanna”|in the hut| (echoing Eclogue II, 28–29).

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an influence on him) the basis of a lasting synthesis between the two pastoral traditions, the coded, allegorical eclogue and the low, ‘simple’ eclogue amoris venerei causa. (It will follow that eclogues claiming allegorical status will often involve little more than an exchange of names.) In the finished version of Sannazaro’s Arcadia several more characters are introduced, sometimes under their own names, sometimes ‘allegorically’ – following Servius’s reading of Virgil – but the narrator’s ‘I’ remains. The narrator’s story, when finally it emerges, is recognizably Petrarchan – falling in love, torment, death of the beloved; its forms, too, are recognizably Petrarchan, including conspicuously a sestina delivered by ‘Sannazaro’ himself in the text; and, just as Sannazaro likes to quote Virgil’s lines in his prose passages (actually more obviously and prominently there than he does in his ecloghe), so he does Petrarch as well (“Io non veggio né monte né selva alcuna, che tuttavia non mi persuada di doverlavi ritrovare, quantunque a pensarlo mi paia impossibile. Niuna fiera né ucello né ramo vi sento movere, che io non mi gire paventoso per mirare se fusse dessa in queste parti venuta ad intendere la misera vita ch’io sostegno per lei|I never see hill nor wood but I am persuaded that I should find her there, even though when I think about it it seems impossible. I hear neither animal nor branch move but I do not spin round in fear to see whether it should be her, come into these parts to hear of the miserable life that I sustain for her sake|). The Petrarchism is presented, of course, beneath what it seems right to call Virgilianism, especially through the strongly dactylic (stress) rhythm of the prose (usually, however, increasing the number of shorts) and the consistent ending of sentences as if they were the fourth, fifth and sixth feet of a hexameter. Not yet a pastoral romance, more a baggy canzoniere, the Arcadia presents a series of different moods or situations; it has no plot and closely resembles an anthology or collection.

3 15 Notwithstanding its homogenizing tone, there is considerable variety – a number of svolte or shifts – within L’Arcadia, for instance in its narrator’s stance. It opens as a text recounted (A6); then abruptly (prosa ii), we are “noi”|we|, and from the “noi” also emerges an “io”|I|. This “io” then meets Montano, and offers him a cup, carved by the Barcelona artist Cariteo (1450– 1514), if he will sing: here it emerges that Arcadia (for all the blind repetitions of later commentators) has not escaped the problem of evil: the depredation of wolves that Montano laments “avviene per le nostre invidie”|is a consequence 14 Maria Corti, ‘Per un fantasma di meno’, in Corti 1977, pp. 327–67; Galli/Grignani 1973. Sannazaro/Esparmer and Marino.

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of our recurring envy|. The problem of evil is signalled, though often with subtlety, repeatedly during L’Arcadia (see further Chapter 4 §8). Montano then wakes the sleeping Uranio (a narrative development taking place within the verse and not in the prosa; this will not recur). When Montano would end because the evening is coming on, in another svolta Uranio declares he has bread and wine and the other shepherds do not care about him, he is staying put. “Noi” move on (prosa iii) to the next day and the feast of Pales, whose temple and its imagery are described, again subtly introducing problematics (see Chapter 6 §24, referring to A7); what is more, in the prayers led by the priest the shepherds ask for “perdono”|pardon| and are urged to purge themselves “per espiare le colpe commesse nei tempi passati”|to expiate the faults committed in times past|, knowingly or unknowingly. At the opening of prosa vi, corresponding perhaps to the opening of Virgil’s Eclogue VI, “io” is declared as one “al quale e per la allontananza de la cara patria e per altri giusti accidenti, ogni allegrezza era cagione di infinito dolore”|for whom both owing to the distance from my dear native country and on account of other deserved misfortunes every joy was the occasion for infinite sorrow|. Carino, however, appears, looking for a lost calf, which inspires Serrano to sing a lament, and it is only in prosa vii that Sannazaro expands upon his predicament, shifting now to address Carino and the other Arcadians as “voi”, “in queste vostre selve”|in these woods of yours|, “in queste solitudini”|in these deserted places|so inferior to the thriving city of Naples. Henceforward Arcadia remains an equivocal place, declared (in a way more explicit than earlier had been hinted) to reflect the mood of its shepherds – therefore not a refuge, not a secular paradise, but a mental landscape: when Carino wastes for love, so too do his cattle, so too does his environment, and the shepherds and cowherds who run to him (in an often verbatim prose reiteration of Virgil’s Eclogue X reiterating Theocritus’s Idyll I) are impotent to help. There is indeed melancholy in Sannazaro’s Arcadia (continuing the tradition established in Pulci’s Driadeo: see Chapters 2 §11 and 5 §3; and extended in figurative art of the period: see Chapter 5 passim), but by no means simply that, despite the book’s ringing conclusion, ‘Alla sampogna’, exhorting his pipe to weep, weep (“Piangi … piangi”). 15 On the changing nature of Sannazaro’s format as he progresses and on his language see again Corti, ‘Il codice bucolico’, in Corti 1977. For melancholy, see Panofsky 1983, p. 349, quoting Fritz Saxl quoting Augusto Sainati, La lirica italiana del Rinascimento, Pisa 1919, p. 184: “La musa vera del Sannazaro è la malinconia”; and here Chapter 5, ‘Carmen elegiacum bucolicum’.

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3 16 The appearance of

two doves gives Carino hope, and his beloved appears: Sannazaro should also hope. However, as Carino departs Clonico arrives, another distraught lover, who is engaged immediately by Eugenio in song. Clonico in his distress also envisages a happy future (which has elements that correspond to the Golden Age); but then again it is lost to him: Questa vita mortale al dì somigliasi, il qual, poi che si vede giunto al termine, pieno di scorno all’occaso rinvermigliasi This mortal life is like unto the day, which, when it is seen to reach its end, full of scorn at sunset blushes red –

a stinging rejection of Virgil’s “ite capellae”, in so far as the return of the goats at sunset in the Eclogues signifies peace and resolution; and there is worse to come, because Clonico also finds Quante fiate del tuo error sorrisero i monti e i fiumi? e se ’l tuo duol compunseli, quei corser per pietà, questi affisero How many times did they smile at your losing your way, the mountains and the rivers? And if your pain affected them, the former ran for pity, the latter were fixed,

which is to say, obviously, that the mountains and the rivers being affected by your pain is an impossibility, but also to say it in a very harshly wry use of the typically bucolic figure of the adynaton, in which the landscape from pathetically sympathetic – the classic instance in Idyll I, carrying through into the Eclogues – has become imperviously hostile. Thus Sannazaro, while observing bucolic language and decorum, also bends expectation to say something not only not reiterative but rebarbative. Not so surprisingly, then, Clonico, when he sees two doves (like Carino), instead takes it as a sign that “a me solo è il ciel tanto contrario”|against me alone is heaven turned|. Worse still, he gets no sympathy from Eugenio, who declares that lovers “senza alcun dolor sempre si dogliono”| endlessly complain without actually having pain|. Eugenio’s solution takes Clonico and the reader out of the pastoral altogether: he should dig his patch and plant it, and hunting is also a good way “per non marcir ne l’ocio”|not to rot in idleness|. To be cured Clonico visits Enareto, whose knowledge and powers are described; he understands the language of the plants that thank God at dawn for their existence (see again Chapter 6 §16). Meanwhile they hear a singer, and there is a return to

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standard bucolic territory with an altercation resolved by a contest, even if one of the participants has a lyre and the judge declares Pan to have lost and Apollo to be the victor – another overturning of the codice bucolico within the codice bucolico. The theme of poetry today, essential to Renaissance pastoral, is stronger again at the end of L’Arcadia, though the mood oscillates, one voice asserting present proficiency, another deploring failure. Arcadia itself is left behind when one of its shepherds, Selvaggio, recalls to another a song by Sannazaro’s elder contemporary Giovan Francesco Caracciolo.

3 17 Coming then to the addition to L’Arcadia written for the authorized printed edition – the narrator sets off in high spirits, feeling that Fronimo and Selvaggio have made good poetry, thinking of Naples, but Ergasto’s rites at his mother Massilia’s tomb (this is ‘allegorical’: Sannazaro’s mother’s name was Massella) return him and us to Arcadia (though the games Ergasto organizes recall Aeneid V) – which, however, Sannazaro then leaves, guided by a nymph under the sea, returning finally, if not happily, to his native land, to the bank of the little river Sebeto (rather than to Ortygia, where Arethusa had been pursued by the Arcadian Alpheus, as Virgil recalled in the opening of Eclogue X). The last ecloga in Sannazaro’s book is yet another lament, for yet another deceased, and in the epilogue, addressed ‘A la sampogna’|to his pipe|, we learn Sannazaro’s beloved, too, is dead, and he exhorts us to mourn. His last words, however, are devoted to justification of his poetry (his ‘real’ poetry, not L’Arcadia). 3 18 To the svolte in the narration which prevent L’Arcadia being read univocally Sannazaro adds shifts in language and tone. One has been mentioned, when in prosa vii the narrator momentarily reviles Arcadia. In prosa 1 Ergasto, sitting alone in melancholy while all about him others make sport (see Chapter 2, A6), is asked by Selvaggio to sing the “versi sì leggiadri e frottole” in which he excels, and so he relates that when he came across a girl bathing he had passed out: Io vidi prima · l’uno e poi l’altro occhio; fin al ginocchio · alzata al parer mio in mezzo al rio · si stava … I saw first the one and then the other eye; up to the knee standing up, so I thought, in the middle of the stream she stood …

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That “al parer mio”|so I thought| is a joke against Ergasto, who did not know quite what he saw – two eyes, only one of which we may suppose was in the girl’s head. Shortly afterwards the line “e tutta si coverse”|and she covered herself completely|occurs, a line that had figured in an example of a frottola given by Antonio da Tempo; Sannazaro certainly does not eliminate the coarse or ‘popular’ element from his humanist enterprise. He is also capable, very nearly, of parodying his own style: in prosa x he enters a valley “cinta d’intorno di solinghe selve e risonanti di non udita selvatichezza sì bella, si maravagliosa e strana”|girt around with solitary woods and echoing with unheard-of wildness so beautiful, so marvellous and strange|. Again, he relaxes the solemnity of Barcinio and Summonzio’s concluding dirge commemorating the admired humanist Pontano under the name of Melisseo with a bit of comic foolery in which one has to stand on the other’s shoulders in order to read out what Melisseo has written rather too high up in the tree for them to see from the ground (this may also be allegorical, of course). Finally, as emerges in the epilogue, he urges his sampogna to ‘stay in the woods’ (“rimanti in questo boschi”), humbly; he admits not having always ploughed straight; but he claims he was the first to wake the woods (this must mean the invention of ‘Arcadia’ as a setting); and he reminds us that he has written this work “non come rustico pastore ma come coltissimo giovene”|not like a rustic shepherd but as a highly cultivated young man|.

3 19 Shifts in language and tone are still more evident within the broader pullulation (to use Arsochi’s word) of ‘country’ song. One example is the Nencia di Barberino, a fictional beauty from the real village of this name in the Mugello who had made her appearance before 1470 and became for some time the toast of literary Florence, thanks to her lover Vallera, whom more than one author took as a mouthpiece. These ‘nencial’ verses are a comic parody of traditional love poetry, above all of Petrarch or Petrarchizing, translated into rustic vocabulary. One of the main means by which this is done is to introduce rustic prolationes, and Nencia herself frequently becomes ‘Nenciozza’. E’ fu d’aprile quando m’inamorasti, quando ti vidi coglier l’insalata; i’ te ne chiesi, e tu mi rimbrottasti, tanto che se ne adette una brigata; i’ dissi bene allora, “dove n’andasti?” ch’i’ ti perdetti a manco d’una occhiata; d’allora inanzi i’ no fu ma’ più desso, per modo tale che m’ai messo nel cesso.

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It was April when you made me fall in love, when I saw you gathering lettuces; I asked you for one, and you beshrewed me, so much that lots of people noticed; I said just then, ‘Where have you gone?’, because I had lost you in a flash of an eye; from that time on I was never the same so much so that you’ve dropped me in the shit.

There is delight in the ‘peasant’ coarseness of the second-person pastdefinite ending, -asti, especially the fishwife-like rimbrottasti, in words such as occhiata, a form particularly stigmatized by Dante, in the double-consonant desso, messo and cesso. At the same time the format is that of the Petrarchan lover recalling the day of his enamourment (Canzoniere 3; on Good Friday) and bemoaning his subsequent situation; for example, in the last lines, the sentiment “d’allora inanzi i’ no fu ma’ più desso” recalls line 4 of the opening sonnet of the Canzoniere “quand’era in parte altr’uom da quel ch’i’ sono”|when I was in part a different man from the one I am| or again 123, 12–14: In tal paura e ’n sì perpetua guerra vivo ch’i’ non son più quel che già fui, qual chi per via dubbiosa teme et erra In such fear and in such perpetual war do I live, that I am no longer the man I once was, like one who on a doubtful path worries and wanders,

brought down rather drastically.

3 20 After the turn of

the century eclogues still appeared, but not as collections in themselves; they became an element among other verse forms presented in aspiring poets’ collections, for instance the now obscure Antonio Ricco’s 1508 collection entitled Sonetti Capitoli Epistole Disperata Eglogha Barzellette Strambotti Farse, although Pietro Aretino’s now equally unread first publication of 1513, Opera Nova del Fecundissimo Pietro Pictore Aretino, zoè Strambotti Sonetti Capitoli Epistole Barzellette & una Desperata, did 18 On Ergasto’s incident see also Nicholas J. Perella, Midday in Italian Literature, Princeton nj 1979, pp. 50–53. 19 La Nencia di Barberino, ed. Rossella Bessi, Rome 1982; the stanza quoted is 8M/ 18V. See further La poesia rusticana 1969; Domenico de’ Robertis, Il Quattrocento e Ariosto (Storia della letteratura italiana Garzanti), edn Milan 1977, p. 493.

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not include an eclogue. The rumbustious Baldassare Olimpo da Sassoferrato published a number of verses in his 1521 Linguaccio |A thick tongue| that recall pastoral models without his imposing a pastoral veneer: his “pastorella” has something of Nencia about her: Geva cogliendo la mia pastorella per un fiorito prato l’insalata … She went, my shepherdess, gathering lettuces in the flowery meadow,

and something also of Ergasto’s vision senza portare in capo la capella et per fina al ginocchio era insaccata without wearing her cap on her head, and wearing her dress up as far as the knee.

Other ‘takes’ on rusticity included the macaronics of Teofilo Folengo, which he defined so: Ars ista poetica nuncupatur ars macaronica a macaronibus derivata, qui macarones sunt quoddam pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude et rusticanum; ideo macarones nil nisi grassedinem, ruditatem et vocabulazzos debet continere This kind of poetry is called macaronic after maccaroni, these maccaroni being a kind of food mixed together from wheat, cheese and butter, gross, rude and rustic; thus macaronics should consist of nothing if not fattiness, crudeness and uncouth words.

One of Folengo’s early macaronic works was the Zanitonella of 1517, which might indeed be called a ‘fat, cheesy, rustic’ version of elegant pastoral. 20 For Ricco see Giovan Maria Crescimbeni, Comentarij … intorno alla … istoria della volgar poesia, Rome 1702–11, I, pp. 129, 187, 197, 328; IV, p. 59; Giorgio Padoan, La commedia rinascimentale veneta, Vicenza 1982, p. 35. Some of these verses formed part of performances: see further Chapter 8 §2. For Aretino see Alessandro Luzio, I primi anni di Pietro Aretino …, Turin 1888. For Olimpo see Silvia Venezian, Olimpo da Sassoferrato: Poesia popolaresca marchigiana nel secolo XVI, Bologna 1921. For Folengo see Opere di Teofilo Folengo, ed. Carlo Cordié, Milan and Naples 1977; Ivano Paccagnella, Le macaronee padovane, Padua 1979. For his pastoral parody see Massimo Scalabrini and Davide Stimilli, ‘Pastoral Postures: Some Renaissance Versions of Pastoral’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, lxxi, no. 1, 2009, pp. 35–60, notably pp. 39–41, 48–49, 58. See also Gerbino 2009, pp. 87–96.

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3 21 All that sort of thing appears to die away as the sixteenth century progresses – or it becomes either institutionalized or marginalized: mostly it becomes ‘popular’ literature, excluded from the mainstream or from the record. It led a largely unrecorded life on the stage and in live performance, as “comedia alla villotta” – though the productions of the once famous Congrega dei Rozzi, or Peasants’ Academy, of Siena are documented. For example, the rustic dialect of Bergamo, bergamasco, regularly raised a laugh, especially in the mouth of the Venetian Zuan Polo. But these were representations of country bumpkins rough and simple, unburdened with the further connotations of pastoral, and the acerbic figures of Ruzante’s other rustic plays no more so. Two rather later (published 1553) collections of poems, one of them entitled eclogues, by the Venetian Andrea Calmo, resemble ‘nencial’ poetry, in so far as the Petrarchan base is clearly enough discernible, but the expressions, the references – Servius’s “negotia, comparationes et si qua sint alia” – are enriched, exaggerated and coarsened, often in sensu osceno. He himself claimed in the title to one collection that it was “bizarre, copious and ingenious”, deliberately placing himself outside literature by writing in Venetian dialect; he had justification in calling it ‘piscatory’. Meanwhile poets writing ‘Augustan’ Latin pastoral, such as Andrea Navagero in certain poems in the collection known as Lusus|Jeux|(see Chapter 10 §1), might also Petrarchize, perhaps almost involuntarily, but did not clown or slum. The association with Virgilian shepherds of mandrialis verse forms was not denied, but was not pursued, either. For example, discussing the madrigal in his definitive, 1532, Prose della Volgar Lingua|Vernacular prose| Pietro Bembo followed Antonio da Tempo so far as to note its parallel to Latin and Greek pastoral and to derive its name from mandra|flock| but he conspicuously failed to make any further link between the antique and the new, characterizing the madrigal as essentially lacking any rule or form; the link to mandria is not made at all in Tasso’s Cavaletta (1587), even while the madrigal remains a ‘humble’ form. 21 See Padoan 1982; Marzia Pieri, La scena boschereccia, Padua 1983. Curzio Mazzi, La congrega dei Rozzi di Siena, Florence 1882; see further Pieri 1983, pp. 121–39. Pietro Bembo, Prose e rime: Prose della Volgar Lingua, ed. Carlo Dionisotti, Turin 1966, II, xi. Andrea Calmo, Le bizzarre, faconde et ingeniose rime pescatorie … in antiqua materna lingua, and Le giocose moderne et facetissime egloghe pastorali, both Venice 1553. See a selction and discussion in Il fiore della lirica veneziana, ed. Manlio Dazzi, Venice 1956, pp. 215ff. Torquato Tasso, Dialoghi …, ed. Bruno Basile, Milan 1991, §73. The basics and origins of the madrigal are discussed in Einstein 1949, I, pp. 116–19; later scholarship has introduced some modifications of emphasis. See further Chapter 10 §9.

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3 22 Elsewhere than in Italy, there were also, naturally, traditions of

country music and song. In France there was a long tradition of bergerie |shepherdery|, for example, which continued into the sixteenth century. There was observation or evocation of country life, interest in the things of nature, in horticulture, in all sorts of growing things, enjoyment of good weather, etc. – witness once again Leon Battista Alberti, in the third book of the Della famiglia – but this is the sphere of georgic literature, not pastoral (discussed with regard to landscape in Chapter 6). Pastoral in Italy – and one might say in the fifteenth century there was vernacular pastoral only in Italy – was tied up with language, with the questione della lingua, the search, or struggle, during the later years of the fifteenth century for a suitable language for prosody and poetry. As already noted (§7) the point of the eclogues that were written in the second half of the fifteenth century was not simply to imitate Virgil, but to do as Virgil was deemed to have done when starting out, shaping his own poetry in his own language elegantissime in a mould that had a clear outline and decorum. Sannazaro did precisely this to the applause of his contemporaries. However, he concluded his preface to L’Arcadia with a disturbing equivocation, Che certo egli è migliore il poco terreno bene coltivare, che ’l molto lasciare per mal governo miseramente imboschire For certainly it is better to cultivate the little patch well than to let the great one, through bad handling, miserably turn to shrub,

since it is not among the boschi that he wishes to dwell, and he would if he could eradicate them; Sannazaro chose pastoral but not out of choice. Then, once he had demonstrated how to use it, the game no longer had a prize; he turned to neo-Latin, the De partu virginis and his piscatory eclogues, which are very different in conception (see below, §28). When pastoral, for other reasons, after an interval, came once again to be a prime means of the expression of love, the influence of the Arcadia was actually rather limited. Sannazaro’s work cannot be said to have constituted a significant model for the later sixteenth century; even the idea of ‘Arcadia’ that he had devised had no terribly great importance, for it became established only after it had been introduced on stage and Guarino had taken it up in his Pastor Fido. And even though Guarino set the Pastor Fido in Arcadia on the basis solely of Sannazaro’s (ultimate) precedent, in Guarino Arcadia has a quite different meaning, since the fundamental Virgilian element, the “soli cantare periti”, now goes missing. In the interim there is occasional reference to Arcadia, which is invariably to Sannazaro’s Arcadia, but primarily if not exclusively to the description

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of his opening prosa (see Chapter 11 §3, 4). Indeed until the appearance of Sannazaro’s work there was no obvious model to which to turn for a natural (rather than cultivated) paradise outside the context of the Golden Age or the erotic realm of Venus – or Eden. Sannazaro himself had contrived his opening from a number of sources; he presumably did not have available to him at this earlier stage the celebratory passage from Theocritus’s Idyll VII in which Simichides, having heard and sung to Lycidas, rejoins his friends to relax for the festival (131–46); he came to it only later, incorporating this description of a ‘perfect day’ almost verbatim into his prosa x. Although Sannazaro’s Arcadia was translated into French, eventually (1544), its influence there was overshadowed by Tasso’s and Guarino’s and by its most direct successor, Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana (in Castilian, 1554), which, however, had followed the translation of Sannazaro’s Arcadia into Spanish in 1549. (Though Montemayor undoubtedly knew and used L’Arcadia, the Diana is not set in Arcadia but beside the hills of Leon.) The Arcadia was first translated into English by Ralph Nash of the University of Wisconsin in 1966.

22 On the questione della lingua see, for example, Carlo Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, Turin 1967. On Virgil’s elegance, see Wilson-Okamura 2010, p. 131, quoting Quintilian and Aulus Gellius. There is to date no definitive modern edition of Sannazaro’s Arcadia – that promised by Maria Corti never appeared – which seems to be a consequence in large degree of the difficulty of establishing its original linguistic forms, which seem to have been ‘Tuscanized’ over time by Sannazaro himself and unreliably transmitted in manuscript by others. The edition used here, Sannazaro/Esparmer and Marino, 2004, is based on the ‘Summontine’ edition of 1504, with largely modernized spellings. Studies of the Arcadia include Eduardo Saccone, ‘L’Arcadia: storia e delineamento d’una struttura’, Modern Language Notes, lxxxiv, 1969, pp. 46ff.; Corti (1969) 1977, as mentioned above; Vittorio Gajetti, Edipo in Arcadia: Miti e simboli nell’Arcadia del Sannazaro, Naples 1977; Marco Santagata, La lirica aragonese: Studi sulla poesia napoletana del secondo Quattrocento, Padua 1979, ch. 5; William J. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of ­Pastoral, Hanover nh 1983; Gianni Villani, Per l’edizione dell’Arcadia del Sannazaro, Rome 1989; Augusta Charis Marconi, La nascita di una vulgata: L’Arcadia del 1504, Rome 1997; Marina Riccucci, Il neghittoso e il fier connubio: storia e filosofia nell’Arcadia di J­ acopo Sannazaro, Naples 2001. No account of Renaissance pastoral will fail to mention L’Arcadia; see Chaudhuri 1989, pp. 60–64; Kegel-Brinkgreve 1990, pp. 317–40; Gerbino 2009, pp. 48–52. For Theocritus in Sannazaro see Carlo Vecce, ‘Sannazaro e la lettura di Teocrito’, in La Serenissima e il Regno: nel V centenario dell’Arcadia di Iacopo Sannazaro, ed. Davide Canfora and Angela Caracciolo Aricò, Bari 2006, pp. 685–96. He remarks that it is the later parts of L’Arcadia that show more references to Theocritus. I am indebted to Sarah Ferrari for reference to this article.

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3 23 So, pastoral in this period (1460–1510) was the vehicle of considerable

enthusiasm, a strong desire to make poetry. The success (or goal) of such a ‘shepherd’ (aspiring poet) is depicted in a number of paintings of the very early sixteenth century, produced in Venice in the immediate wake of the circulation of L’Arcadia (in manuscript it had circulated among young Venetian patricians and it was in Venice that the 1502 ‘pirate’ edition was published). While it surely does not portray any two particular characters from L’Arcadia – two or more generic musicians were certainly represented before and after (see fig. 3.5) – the Concert champêtre in the Louvre (fig. 3.4) depends on L’Arcadia in so far as it depicts a ‘pagan’ countryside space which the poetic lover could inhabit – the space being marked as ‘pagan’ and as ‘pastoral’ by the presence of nymphs. (Otherwise ‘pagan’ is not a formal characterization: bushes are bushes, sheep are sheep, the landscape is a landscape, not Arcadian; see further Chapter 6 §20, 21.) In an earlier concert champêtre in Warsaw (fig. 3.5) there is a nymph once again with a poet, before two amorous figures (one clearly not a nymph) behind. A third concert champêtre, already mentioned (§11; fig. 3.3), shows a Cupid fluttering in the sky to indicate the nature of the musician’s song; here the single musician has gained the rapt attention of the nymphs, who have both laid aside their instruments, the foreground nymph her pipe to the ground, the nymph behind her still holding her lute but not playing it (he plays the viol, or lira da braccia). The nymphs in these pictures are symbols; what they symbolize by their presence, by their attendance (though in the picture in Warsaw the poet more exactly attends on the nymph), is the success of the poetry, the charm of the music, to which they listen, in which they join. In a fourth picture, in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the male musician is not merely dreamy but asleep – a sign (in this context) of harmony, inspiration, rapture, surely recalling Virgil’s Eclogue V, 45–46: “Tale tuum carmen nobis, diuine poeta, quale sopor fessis in gramine …”|Your song for us, divine poet, is like sleep for the tired in the grass …|. One is reminded of a comment by Antonio Cornazano in his Libro dell’arte del danzare: “Chi vole passare da un mondo all’altro odi sonare Pierobono”|If you want to pass from one world to the other listen to Pierobono play|, and there are many other such attestations regarding music, for example in a well-known letter by Politian.

3 24 In the Louvre Concert, by their act of making music the two protagonists have made the nymphs emerge; they have successfully invoked the woods: their poetry is valid, and harmonious (even if one protagonist remains melancholy, his tangled hair indicating his upset, music still feeds his 

fig. 3.4 Titian, Le Concert Champêtre, perhaps 1508–10, oil on canvas, 105 × 136 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

love). Presumably, as in a great number of eclogues, including Virgil’s, the tousled figure has asked his companion to accompany him in the song he is about to sing; and that song may well be in the way of disperata, a song of despairing love. The picture can be read as an allegory, an allegory of song, even if the figures do not have identities or labels and are scarcely abstract. There are, however, texts that correspond quite closely, and the common sentiment is clear, from Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Pastorale of the early 1480s,

23 See also Holberton 1985–86, with further references. On the pictures in general I reprise Paul Holberton, ‘The Pastorale or Fête Champêtre in the Early ­Sixteenth Century’, in Titian 500 (Studies in the History of Art 45), Washington, DC, 1993, pp. 245–64, with earlier bibliography. See Pallucchini and Rossi 1983, nos. 79 and 65. Cornazano is quoted in Einstein 1949, I, p. 6; Politian’s letter in Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, p. 36.

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Cantando e doi pastori in tal desire de amor sì caldi e voci tanto vive, le ninfe e’ fauni venero ad udire: venero e fiumi e seco le sue rive, e veder si potea ne lo ascoltare piegar il capo pampini ed olive The two shepherds singing in such desire so warm with love and so lively in voice, the nymphs and the fauns came to listen; there came the rivers and with them their banks, and in the act of listening you could see the grapes and the olives bend their heads;

to Pomponius Gauricus’s eclogue in the collection of Latin pastoral published by Giunta in Florence in 1504, … dulciaque alterno modulari carmina cantu. Tum demum faciles per florida prata Nepaeae, tum pariter montis, fluvii, nemorisque puellae advenere omnes, arrectis auribus omnes … graminea sibi quisque torum componit in herba. … [they began] to modulate their sweet poetry in alternate song. Just then the easy Nepaean [nymphs] arrived through the flowery meadows, at that moment too the girls of the mountain, river and wood all came, their ears pricked up … each one makes a bed for themselves on the green grass;

to the very prologue to Sannazaro’s Arcadia: … [ecloghe], come sotto le dilettevoli ombre, al mormorio de’ l­iquidissimi fonti da’ pastori d’Arcadia le udii cantare; a le quali non una volta, ma mille i montani idii da dolcezza vinti prestarono intente orecchie, e le tenere ninfe, dimenticate di perseguire i vaghi animali, lasciarono le faretre e gli archi appiè degli alti pini di Menalo e di Liceo. … [eclogues], as beneath the delightful shade, at the murmur of the very liquid springs I heard them sung by the shepherds of Arcadia; at which not once but a thousand times the mountain gods, vanquished by sweetness, lent intent ears, and the tender nymphs, forgetting their pursuit of the errant animals, left their quivers and bows at the foot of the high pines of Maenalus and Lycaeum.

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fig. 3.5 Giovanni Cariani, Concert champêtre, c. 1508, oil on canvas, 88 × 163 cm, Narodowe Museum, Warsaw

It is the basic dynamic of pastoral, joining together (or going apart) to make music: for the successful aspirants, the nymphs – representatives equally of the Virgilian ‘woods’ – come out to listen. This at least is the convention of Renaissance pastoral – obviously pure convention, since the pagan gods are mere figments. The participants are thereby ‘Arcadized’, or designated “soli cantare periti”, even though they themselves are intent solely on their music.

24 On what is actually shown in the Concert champêtre see Philipp Fehl, ‘The Hidden Genre: A Study of the Concert Champêtre in the Louvre’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 16, no. 2, 1957, pp. 153–68. I can agree with Fehl that the nymphs and the shepherds are of two different orders of reality – but the point is that they have just appeared. They may be unseen to the musicians, but patently visible to the spectator or audience. Gabriele Frings, Giorgiones Ländliches Konzert: Darstellung der Musik als künstlerisches Programm in der venezianischen Malerei der Renaissance, Berlin [1999], argues that the lutenist is depicted in a transitory moment (p. 40), just starting his arpeggio. Augusto Gentili, Da Tiziano a Tiziano: Mito e allegoria nella cultura veneziana del Cinquecento, Milan 1980, p. 17, advances the idea that the non-player is an intruder; Gerbino 2009, pp. 140–41, suggests he is a disruptive peasant; in a lengthy discussion Frings 1999 claims that, while the lutenist is from the city, “Dabei tritt uns der barfüssige Hirt, der zudem den Mittelpunkt der Dreifigurengruppe im Konzert bildet, als ein idealisierter Naturmensch entgegen”|The barefoot shepherd, who is the middle one

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24 (cont.) of the trio, appears before us as an idealized creature of nature|. I do not believe it is plausible that there can be any significant difference in nature or character between the two figures, joined together in making music. If the singer appears so different from his companion, this is most likely to be because he is a harrowed lover. Thomas Lodge remarks in Rosalynde that the shepherd Montanus “came in apparalled all in tawny, to signify that he was forsaken” (ed. W.W. Greg, Lodge’s ‘Rosalynde’, Being the Original of Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, London 1931, p. 151), and the notion of dressing to reflect one’s state of mind was not uncommon in sixteenth-century theatre, especially for those melancholic for one reason or another. Two books have been devoted to the Concert champêtre, Françoise Bardon, Le Concert champêtre, Paris [1995 or 1996] and Frings 1999; only what Frings has to say bears upon the interpretation of the painting, or at least its interpretation as given here. Frings hardly considers Holberton 1993, noting only that I claim the painting should be understood as a “konkrete Umsetzung der zeitgenossischen literarischen Pastorale”|actual conversion of contemporary literary pastoral| (p. 82, note 196), a notion she does not think to include in her summary of previous interpretations (pp. 30–38): it follows that she has certain ‘iconological’ premises about its interpretation into which my own does not fit. What in my eyes particularly undermines her generally abstract interpretation of the painting (“Der Städter sucht offenbar in der Natur eine für ihn neue musikalische Kategorie, welche die überfeinerte, dekadente Stadtkultur nicht zu vermitteln vermochte”|the city-dweller [the lutenist] clearly seeks in nature what is for him a new musical category, which the over-refined decadent city culture is in no state to provide|; see this entirely modern idea in a text by George Sand and its context in Chapter 19 §26) is the precedent for the Concert in the Warsaw painting by Cariani (which she does not once mention), discussed below: nothing of this opposition can be present in this closely related composition. However, her close discussion of the action of the pouring nymph seems to me reasonable (assuming that the painter was meticulous rather than a little uncertain himself of the meaning the nymph might have), except in so far as it requires the figure to be a Muse (rather than a nymph). At the exhibition in London in 2016 (The Age of Giorgione, exh. cat. ed. Arturo Galansino and Simone Facchinetti, Royal Academy of Arts) I was disappointed by the quality of the Lendinara Virgin and Child signed by Domenico Mancini (no. 35) and would withdraw the idea in Holberton 1993 (but first advanced by Charles Hope in ‘Tempest over Titian’, a review of the Louvre exhibition Le Siècle de Titien, New York Review of Books, 10 June 1993, pp. 22–26) that the Louvre Concert champêtre might be by the same hand. However, the grouping of the Prado Virgin with Saints Francis and Roche (no. 32) with the Concert champêtre and the Glasgow Christ and the Adulteress (no. 34) to my mind remains good, and the Glasgow Adulteress to be definitely by Titian. In ‘A Proposal for the Concert Champêtre: Sebastiano’, in Venetian Painting Matters 1450–1750, ed. Jodi Cranston, Turnhout 2015, pp. 35–56, Jonathan Unglaub advances cogent arguments for the attribution of the Concert champêtre to Sebastiano, but he does not discuss this grouping, with which the Concert seems nonetheless closely to belong. Unglaub, by contrast to previous scholars, applies the dialectic stressed by Annabel Patterson (1987; see Chapter 1 §3) to these Venetian pastorals, but I see no justification for that in the imagery itself. See further also Christophe Brouard, ‘Le Concert champêtre du L ­ ouvre, Fortune et interprétation’, in “Di là dal fiume e tra gli ­alberi”: Il paesaggio del ­Rinascimento a Venezia, ed. Laura de Fuccia and Christophe Brouard, Ravenna 2012, pp. 99–122; and an essay by Katherine McIver, ‘Pastoral Pleasures, Sensual Sounds’, in Music, Sensation, and Sensuality, ed. Linda Phyllis Austern, New York and London 2002, pp. 285–98.

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f three  §24–§25 v

3 25 One can find precedent for Giovanni Cariani’s Warsaw picture (fig. 3.5), the earliest among these Concerts champêtres, in Giorgione’s so-called Three Ages of Man (or Three singers: bass, tenor and alto) in the Pitti Palace in Florence. This in turn shares with an earlier representation of singers such as Lorenzo Costa’s Concert in the National Gallery, London, an interest in portraying the momentary – the open mouths, hands making a chord on the strings, the girl’s hand on the lutenist’s shoulder; it is marked in Giorgione’s picture by the raised finger of the tenor, beating time, and, most effectively, by the turn of the bass towards the spectator, creating the illusion that the figure has turned in response to the viewer's intrusion. Cariani’s painting presents a similar illusionistic momentaneity in the hand of the wimpled woman in the background on the shoulder of the second piping boy and in the confrontational gaze of the leading piping figure – and this picture is large: he is life-size. The half-length ‘music-makers’ format has been expanded to a kind of full-length – they are sitting on the grass, in full – and recessed spatially, the figures forming three layers. The turning figure bears both pipes and a laurel wreath (now turned very brown), so must be identified as a shepherd poet; the nymph opposite him is not exactly part of the musical party, though clearly she listens, presumably charmed, to the music (the sleeping figure in Cariani’s later Bergamo work represents a similar conception). One has to read it that he is serenading her, since the serenade was such an established practice (going back to antiquity); at the same time, given her nudity, she must be an otherworldly figure, one more like the nudes to be found in allegorical prints by Raimondi, Robetta, Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, Nicoletto da Modena, Benedetto Montagna and so on, representing the subject of his poetry or song, namely his desire for her. By contrast the later work, the Louvre Fête champêtre, is not apparently a serenade; rather, the two musicians, seated on the grass, have attracted to them the two nymphs, draped classicistically, and so allegorical: they are more manifestations, witnesses, to the power of the music or song. Both figures are likely to have been formal borrowings: the standing nude turning at the fountain closely recalls or combines prints by Marcantonio (themselves borrowing their characteristics from recovered classical statuary) such as ‘Grammatica’ (B. 383), Mars and Venus (B. 345) and Kneeling Venus (B. 313), and the fluteplaying nymph depends on an original (very possibly by Giorgione, since he is recorded as ‘inventing’ female nudes) adopted by Titian in a drawing of a serenade in the British Museum (fig. 7.16), this presumably dating not very much later than the Louvre Concert and again consciously pastoral, given the serenader’s attendant sheep, and also in a unique print in Chicago in the 

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style of Giulio Campagnola. In such a context the unclothed nymphs of the Louvre Concert inevitably convey the erotic basis to the song of the two men; they are not only indicators of the music’s charm, they are also female bodies representing the imagined object of the men’s desire, in the same way as the parallel nude in Titian’s drawing (see further Chapter 7 §22).

3 26 Not in any allegorical way, Sannazaro’s resonant phrase, “[egloghe]

da naturale vena uscite”|issued from a natural source|, can nevertheless be matched to certain other imagery that appearing at the turn of the century, notably in a print by Nicoletto da Modena (fig. 3.6) representing no more than panpipes and fauns – rough music, but also amorous, if one may cite a further print, by Zoan Andrea (see fig. 7.12), in which lovers copulate against a backdrop recalling that of the famous Bacchic sarcophagus of fauns assaulting nymphs engraved by Marcantonio; beneath them there

25 For Giorgione’s Three Ages of Man see London 2016, no. 38 (but not exhibited); Paul Holberton, ‘Giorgione’s sfumato’, in Giorgione Entmythisiert, ed. Sylvia Ferino Pagden, Turnhout 2008, pp. 55–70; Mauro Lucco, Le tre età dell’uomo della Galleria Palatina, exh. cat., Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 1989. Among other musicmaking pictures of this kind consider an anonymous Bellinesque group of singers in the British Royal Collection; Titian’s Concert in the Galleria Palatina in Florence; and several more. In the catalogues to the exhibitions in which it has appeared and elsewhere (for example, Mauro Zanchi and Simonetta Cavalleri, Giovanni Cariani: Il giorgionesco dal realismo terragno, Ferrara [2001]) the Warsaw Cariani has been dated to c.1513 on the grounds of its dependance on Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (now Washington, DC) for Alfonso d’Este, dated 1513. However, this dependance is quite unjustified and a better dating would be to c. 1508, when Cariani first appears in the records. This new dating seemed acceptable when I proposed it in a paper given at a conference at the Courtauld Institute during the Royal Academy exhibition in 2016. By 1513 Cariani has developed a Sebastianesque style (see the entries to his work appearing in London 2016); the Warsaw picture remains closer to Giorgione and to such works as the Budapest Anonymous Woman (London 2016, no. 44). The second Concert by Cariani, in a private collection in Paris, is clearly later still, perhaps later even than the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, variation (exhibited in Milan 2012, no. 20), in which the nymph plays, while the man has been sent dreaming by the music. The Bergamo picture seems closer to the Warsaw one, with the nymph replacing the Warsaw poet and with the lyre-holding man, holding a very similar posture, replacing the Warsaw nymph. On sleep as positive see Véronique ­Dalmasso, ‘Paysages de rêves’, in de Fuccia and Brouard 2012, pp. 35–52. Marcantonio Michiel (Notizia d’opere di disegno, ed. Gustavo Frizzoni, Bologna 1884) reports Giorgione nudes, beside the Dresden Venus, copied or autograph, in the collections of Pietro Bembo, of Michiel Contarini and of himself. The Chicago print, of St John Chrysostom, was republished in Holberton 1993, p. 251, fig. 8, note 38.

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fig. 3.6 Nicoletto da Modena, Decorative grotesque (VICTORIA AUGUSTA), c. 1500–10, engraving, 263 × 131 mm

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are panpipes. There was much more pastoral imagery in this ‘natural vein’, but more commonly it was tinged, or characterized, by an elegiac note (see further Chapter 5). A dying fall was intrinsic to it. In the Renaissance the bird of pastoral is the nightingale rather than Virgil’s cooing doves (which even become nightingales in a contemporary translation of the Eclogues: see Chapter 5 §7).

3 27 Something remains to be said of Petrarchism. Often pastoral and

Petrarchism are opposed (‘Petrarchism supersedes pastoral as the sixteenth century progresses’), but it has been seen that late fifteenth-century pastoral was, among other things, a quest for more elegant language, using Petrarch, and that Petrarch had already made pastoral language and setting a part of the Canzoniere. The importance of the ‘canzoni sorelle’ may be emphasized once more: not only does Sannazaro adapt canzoni 125 and 126 for his egloghe 3 and 5 (as well as adopt the conspicuously Petrarchan form of sestine for his egloga 4), but also these are the models on which Bembo (discarding pastoral convention) drew for the most important poems in his Asolani, those sung by Lavinello at the beginning of Book III. These canzoni epitomize the convention of the longing lover alone in the countryside. With Bembo, one senses a deliberate rejection of pastoral (I have already suggested that Sannazaro had developed the form to a peak that could not be surmounted). Again we find canzone 126, or at least its situation, as the basis for the suitably ‘remembered’ cancion in Montemayor’s Diana (his parting told back to the lover by another who was told it by another who had witnessed him singing it at the time of parting; see below, Chapter 9 §5; A9). Therefore, yes, ‘Petrarchism supersedes pastoral as the century progresses’, but both Petrarchism and pastoral are developments of the same language of love. Secondly, this itself is not necessarily static, especially as Petrarchism merges with or becomes equated with Neoplatonism, and when pastoral waxes again in new forms in the later years of the century it, too, turns out to have developed, incorporating, indeed making clearly manifest, changes to the language of love that have taken place in the meantime.

26 A.M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, 7 vols., London 1938–48, V, ‘Nicoletto da Modena’, no. 106.II; copied by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, ‘Giovanni Antonio da Brescia’, no. 45. For Marcantonio’s print see James Grantham Turner, ‘Marcantonio Raimondi’s Bacchanals: New Findings’, Print Quarterly, xxxiv, no. 3, September 2017, pp. 259–69, with bibliography

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f three  §26–§28 v

3 28 Something also should be said of neo-Latin eclogues, or rather it

should be explained why nothing much further will be said: it is because they contribute little or nothing to this further development of pastoral, which takes place in vernacular love poetry and prose. To the degree that they are ‘allegorical’ – two shepherds discussing a topic that has nothing to do with shepherds – neo-Latin eclogues, and for that matter strictly allegorical vernacular eclogues, tend to fall outside the lines of inquiry pursued here; for this is not a history of Virgil’s Renaissance legacy, but of the ‘pseudomorphosis’ (see Chapter 7 §24) that is pastoral. To the degree that I have sampled them – and I include such notable works as Sannazaro’s piscatory eclogues – neo-Latin eclogues appear inescapably as an exercise, directed towards readers who would appreciate them as such, rather than as works of direct inspiration or expression – rather in the same way that in a drawing by a copyist or pupil there is no sense of the line going before the form or of the artist sketching with the head up, from the life. Not all are exercises in the way of J.J. Scaliger’s virtuoso translation of Virgil’s Eclogues ‘back’ into Doric (Theocritean) Greek, but they are exercises in so far as they are compelled ultimately to work with classical precedent and language. Incidentally, since they tend to develop their adopted or adapted motifs at greater length, one can find what appears to be a greater engagement with the natural world, which might even be taken as a ‘pastoralism’ (see Chapter 13 §2). They may have a significant subject – allegorized sometimes very thinly – but where the subject was erotic it had nothing particularly influential or innovative that affected the vernacular tradition, so far as I have seen. Indeed those neo-Latin writers who wished to write in Latin about love, especially physical love, tended to use other forms than the eclogue – for example Pontano, Sannazaro himself or notably Andrea Navagero, whose collection of short neo-Latin poems that he called “lusus”|games|and not eclogues include wholly or partly pastoral themes (see Chapter 10 §1) – not surprisingly, since there were other ancient models that would have been regarded as

27 See notably Gerbino 2009, ch. 9, ‘Musical eclipses’, pp. 68–100, in which he traces ­poetry and music that did not conform to Petrarchism. However, he rightly r­emarks, “We also run the risk of missing the vertically intertextual nature of this tradition” (p. 98). He notes (p. 50) Sannazaro’s use of Petrarch’s ‘canzoni sorelle’; he does not note their use by Pietro Bembo in Book III of Gli Asolani. At p. 94 Gerbino remarks that ­Sannazaro’s egloga 1 was re-used by ‘popular’ versifiers such as Baldassare Olimpo da S­ assoferrato, but, as noted above, this eclogue already incorporated ‘popular’ e­ lements. On a disperata attempted by Bembo but abandoned see Claudia Berra, ‘Il Bembo “antibucolico”’, in Carrai 1998, pp. 235–43.

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more appropriate to follow (Catullus and Ovid in particular). The Eclogues were a schoolroom text, so it was small beer to refer to them; it was more interesting to refer to Theocritus than to Virgil, witness again Sannazaro’s piscatory eclogues or Navagero’s more pastoral lusus. ‘Allegorical’ pastoral could also be written in the vernacular, of course, one significant example in Italian being the apparently ‘simple’ egloga ‘Trista Amarilla mia’ – too simple, because too close to Virgilian exemplar: this apparent love lament was in fact an allegorical lament for the 1527 Sack of Rome, taking its cue from Servius’s gloss on Eclogue I, 30, that Amaryllis stood for ‘Rome’. Another is Garcilaso de la Vega’s Égloga II – important, like all three of his églogas (see Chapter 5 §29) precisely for their habilitation of their material in the vernacular rather than for their material itself. A third is the anonymous ‘Per monti e poggi, per campagne e piaggi’, an entirely Petrarchist sestina rendered pastoral by one of its recurring rhymes, gregge|flock|, which, with its talk of a number of streams or rivers being brought together, has been supposed an ‘allegory’ of a wedding. A fourth is the pastoral poetry of Andrew Marvell (some expressly so, some only within a broader definition), which I renege treating because it is so idiosyncratic, even perissos (see Chapter 1 §8, 20), except necessarily in Chapter 16 §9. The variety is considerable. Of course the ‘allegorical’ is rooted in all pastoral and often appears explicitly in the contexts discussed below. But neither from Garcilaso, for instance, nor from neo-Latin is there a progressive line of development of the kind we find in vernacular pastoral, in which certain works become canonical and a following author draws on the model of a previous, and in which the predominant thematic of love unfolds.

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f three  §28 v

28 In a sense ‘neo-Latin’ pastoral begins with Endelechius, following on Nemesianus; see, for example, Roger Green, ‘Refinement and Reappraisal in Vergilian Pastoral’, in Rees 2004, pp. 17–32. In Neo-Latin Literature and the Pastoral, Chapel Hill 1965, William L. Grant makes a distinction between ‘art’ pastoral and ‘allusive’ pastoral, one that Chaudhuri 1989 does much to undermine: thus there is very little, if any, ‘art’ (non-allusive) pastoral in Latin, even when the subject is love. Though Grant’s book is invaluable as a survey, one may wonder on reaching its end whether rearranging their poems into his various categories (besides ‘art pastoral’), his various “new forms” and “new uses” of pastoral, was any more useful than straightforwardly discussing one author after another. He lists their subject-matter in chapter headings as love (or this is what he calls ‘art pastoral’), religious and devotional, commemorative, panegyric and courtly, and “private”, a ragbag. It is the more difficult to assess the excerpts he gives because he seldom gives the Latin (everything is translated). Victoria Moul, ed., A Guide to Neo-Latin Literature, Cambridge 2017, has a section on pastoral but it is extraordinarily limited. For Sannazaro’s piscatory eclogues, and other Latin verse, see Sannazaro, Latin poetry, trans. M.C.J. Putnam, Cambridge, ma, 2009. For Scaliger’s translation of Virgil’s tenth eclogue see Danielis Heinsii emendationes et notae in Theocriti idyllia bucolica. Accesserunt epigrammata eiusdem, et idyllia quaedam ab eodem et Hugone Grotio ita translata ut versus versui respondeat: decima item Maronis ecloga ab eodem et Iosepho Scaligero dorice reddita: alia item non pauca, Heidelberg 1603. For the ‘Trista Amarilla mia’, published among the madrigal settings of Verdelot, see Don Harrán, ‘The Sack of Rome set to Music’, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 4, 1970, pp. 412–21. For ‘Per monti e poggi’, published in Gabrieli’s first book of madrigals for five voices, 1566, see Howard M. Brown, ‘The Madrigalian and the Formulaic in Andrea Gabrieli’s Pastoral Madrigals’, in Studies in the History of Art, 1992, vol. 36, Symposium Papers XX: ‘The Pastoral Landscape’, pp. 88–109, at pp. 90–91. On allegorical pastoral see also Lerner 1972, pp. 28–30; at p. 29, “The effect of wrapping up his characters in pastoral names is nil. The same is largely true of most pastoral elegies: it is even true of [Milton’s] Lycidas, and also of [Shelley’s] Adonais (though not of the great pastoral elegy in English, [Matthew Arnold’s] Thyrsis”). On Garcilaso see Bayo 1970, pp. 74–162; Gerhardt 1950, pp. 160–68; and below, Chapter 5 §21.

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Chapter 4 2 THE WILDERNESS’S APPEALING INHABITANTS

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3 1 Out there in the wilderness lived woodhouses, otherwise known as wildmen, but including women. Otherwise resembling men or women, woodhouses, male and female, had hair all over their bodies and various powers, such as superhuman strength. Surprisingly perhaps, they were not conceived as differing fundamentally from men and women who were under the rule of God and law – there was no pre-Darwinian idea that they were less evolved than us – except that, whatever they did, or however they behaved, it came naturally, as it did not to us. On a par with animals, they were free of free will. Gradually, from the end of the fourteenth century, the life of these creatures became the object of fantasy, and specifically they were represented hunting, jousting and conversing, even philosophizing, while courtiers, and townspeople in order to entertain the courts, would dress up as woodhouses and perform. In 1392 there was a famous bal des ardents|dance of burners|at the court of the French king Charles VI, at which courtiers attired in wildman costume, and nearly the king himself so attired, caught fire and were consumed to death; nothing similar on the same scale was attempted again. But as woodhouses became part of pageantry, so they became part of art, a little bit of which survives. 3 2 Wildmen are particularly well known as featuring in wall tapestries

made in Basle and Strasbourg in the fifteenth century. A couple of these, dating to about 1468–70, show woodhouses at the hunt, girt, and active in setting nets, for instance, in just the way that their aristocratic counterparts liked to do or have done. They have conversations, written out in scrolls hovering around their heads: one says to the woman beside him, forget the hunt, I am interested in love; she says, pay attention, the hounds are on to a scent. In a tapestry on loan to the Historisches Museum, Basle (fig. 4.1), a hunter wildman brings back a large hare to his wife, who holds a child at her shoulder and has come out from hut made of unhewn branches. This tapestry has two halves: one shows woodhouses happy and fortunate, the other has them allegorize the ‘unfaithfulness’ and deceit of the world. This is an opposition that has many parallels in pastoral as it evolves contemporaneously and later. The returning huntsman is in the former half, and nothing trammels his ideal happiness; the baby also indicates sexual fulfilment – no torment of unrequited love. (This is perhaps rather an obvious point, but the bliss does not stem from their being an ideal nuclear family. Sex itself is not going to be illustrated, so this is the most direct means available of indicating that it is taking place. In another, earlier, tapestry the wildman offers a sunflower in suit to a seated woman and child, a happy confusion of tenses.)

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fig. 4.1 Germany, 15th century, Woodhouses (detail), c. 1470, wool and linen tapestry, 78 × 597 cm, private collection

3 3 Woodhouses are otherwise shown indulging in exuberant aristocratic

follies in drypoint prints by the so called Housebook Master; they are shown again, in an engraving of about 1480 by the Master bxg that probably reflects a Housebook Master design (fig. 4.2), as a couple at peace in the wild, the mother cradling a child while the father reclines beside her and is climbed upon by another child. He is not carrying back any food, but a spring rises up from the grassy knoll on which he leans and there is abundant game in the landscape behind. Certainly a land of happiness, if not quite human! The child in the mother’s arm has a smiling expression even though he appears to be pinching his father, and even if the other child sets about his father’s back with vigour the father gazes into his eyes with evident love. Never at this period was Joseph so at ease with Mary, though they might sit on a similar grassy bank (in a well-known print by Dürer) on the Flight into Egypt. Not until the later eighteenth century was any bourgeois or aristocratic family shown dandling their children – certainly never with so soppy a father. Though examples can be found of tender love expressed between mother and child, or Virgin and Child, Master bxg’s print is, I believe, unique in coupling the father’s love with the mother’s and their children. Surely the father’s playing with his child also suggests his play with its mother. The way

1 See Richard Bernheimer, Wildmen in the Middle Ages, Cambridge ma i952. The bal des ardents is depicted, for example, in a miniature in a manuscript of ­Froissart’s Chronicle, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Ms fonds fr. 2646, f. 176r. 2 Anna Rapp Buri and Monica Stucky-Schürer, zahm und wild: Basler und Straßburger Bildteppiche des 15. Jahrhunderts, Mainz 1990; Thyssen tapestry no. 20.

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in which the wildman is casually reclined is striking; young male aristocratic lovers also depicted by the Housebook Master lie about similarly uninhibited in the kind of parties known as Gardens of Love. It is perhaps not far-fetched to read the print as a fantasy extension, not of the tourney or the hunt, but of the chivalric Garden of Love, with the babies as well as their hairiness being part of the costume change from the stone fountain, wine, lutes, chess or playing cards habitual in such ‘gardens’.

3 4 These wildmen belong to a broader category of subjects, initiating a tradition to which Bosch and Bruegel contributed and which was continued in the work of Teniers or Brouwer in the seventeenth century. For patrons more wealthy and more secure, these and other artists made imagery of the lower or outer world – of peasants, beggars, pedlars, gypsies, foreigners and soldiers (or freebooters as they might better be called), certainly not good citizens. While the wildmen are obviously projections, the others, too, were outside the bounds of the society for whom the prints were made – a matter of degree within a single category. The inhabitants of the New World would be added to it once the New World had been discovered. The impulse to depict such fauna of this world was not at all simply naturalist or narrative; it was generally to moralize, to induce odium, to stigmatize, to terrify, or alternatively to deprive of their menace, to habilitate, to render laughable. However, towards the end of the fifteenth century there is an occasional softening of the general attitude towards the reprehensible and unwanted, a lowering of the bourgeois and pious guard, a sneaking recognition – these images are silent, nothing has to be explicit – that the other life, the uncivilized life, might in some aspects be desirable, or include in it something desirable. In his treatise De hominis excellentia, written in just this period of the later fifteenth century, the Florentine humanist Bartolomeo Fonzio compared human and subhuman conditions, recognizing the “innate charity” or tendency to love of animals, as demonstrated precisely in their suckling and care of their infants. Animals, he claimed, do everything they do for pleasure; if they could speak they would affirm as much. (Thus their charity is motivated by the pleasure they take in it.) Humans, therefore, should find, by the use of reason, some better goal, otherwise they are equal to herd beasts, or, rather, worse than such beasts, who in some sense, “quodam modo”, surpass humanity – he means in charity and the taking of pleasure. 3 Livelier than Life: The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet or the Housebook Master, exh. cat., Rijksprintenkabinet, Amsterdam, 1985, no. 93.

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fig. 4.2 Master bxg after the Housebook Master, Woodhouse family, c. 1480?, engraving, 147 × 90 mm

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fig. 4.3 Anonymous, Reclining nymph, c. 1465–80, engraving, 54 × 98 mm

In Germany Hans Sachs used the wildman as the voice of a list of woes in human society that made him, the wildman, glad to live in the woods, escaping falsity, infidelity, enjoying peace and brotherhood. The message of Hans Sachs’s 1530 Klag der wilden Holzleut über die Ungetreue Welt| Lament of the wildmen over the faithless world|is apparently anticipated both in the wildman tapestry of 1470 in Basle and in a collection of shepherd sonnets in Venice in 1484 – Filenio Gallo’s (see Chapter 3 §14) – in which there is a similar lament for the loss of ‘faith’.

3 5 One finds, vice versa, this ideal of faith, fede, transposed into pastoral imagery in a unique series of round prints produced in Florence perhaps around 1460 – some of the series, however, are clearly later, cruder copies or variants of the earlier edition or editions (all survive only in singleton; fig. 4.4). Admittedly the figures who dance and sport and recline sometimes naked amid the flowers and grass – fra i fiori e l’erbe, to recall the emblematic phrase with which Petrarch in his Trionfi described Cleopatra seducing Caesar – are not (yet) nymphs or shepherds. But they are perfect couples, set, if they are set in space at all, in a landscape, expressing their troth in symbols such as rings and diamonds (or an armillary sphere); one couple each reaching out to such a sphere and a reclining nymph (fig. 4.3) hold the 4 This understanding of ‘fifteenth-century bourgeois’ mentality is derived from Paul Vandenbroeck, Jheronimus Bosch: Tussen volksleven en stadscultuur, Berchem 1987. For Bartolomeo Fonzio and these citations from him see Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness, London 1970.

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fig. 4.4 Anonymous,Betrothed couple with cupids, c. 1465–80, engraving, diameter 200 mm

fig. 4.5 Anonymous, Betrothed lovers with cupid offering a heart to a reclining nude, c. 1465–80, engraving, diameter c. 200 mm

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scrolled motto AMOR VUOL FÉ E DOVE FÉ NON NE AMOR NON PUÒ|Love wants Faith and where Faith isn’t Love can’t|. They clearly had to do with courtship as well as marriage – many bear joint coats of arms – with love as well as alliance. In one case (fig. 4.5) a cupid bears a chalice towards the reclining nude, containing a heart with an arrow through it: it is an offering that perhaps she is meant to eat, as Dante dreamed that Beatrice ate his heart, “dubitosamente”|diffidently|in Vita Nuova, iii, 6. Such images may have served craftsmen making bridal boxes or been pasted on to such boxes, it is thought – squat cylindrical boxes like one that survives in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, though it is not a corresponding size. In a mirror in the Victoria and Albert Museum that again has the same circular shape as these prints (fig. 4.6; directly recalling fig. 4.4), the reclining couple are unmistakeably a fantasy, not set in this world (which does not contain musicmaking putti, with wings). They cannot be set in Arcadia but possibly they inhabit a Cythera as described in Petrarch’s Trionfi (see Chapter 2 §15) and again in Politian’s Stanze. A couple like these feature again in Botticelli’s so called Mars and Venus in the National Gallery, London (see Chapter 7 §11), complicated by further imagery partly borrowed from a classical marriage picture, as described by the second-century writer Lucian; but Botticelli has made the putti Lucian described playing around the couple into satyrs – as such both indicators of his sexual love and suitable inhabitants of the landscape setting.

5 See Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, exh. cat. ed. Andrea Bayer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2008, for a variety of courtship and marriage-related objects, though none of these prints or the Boston box appeared in the exhibition; also Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy, London 2001 (noting a box in the Ashmolean similar to that in Boston; fig. 43), especially ch. 2, ‘Betrothal, Marriage and Virtuous Display’. The Boston box (inv. 47.116; 18 × 27.5 cm) was described by Georg Swarzenski, ‘A Marriage Casket and Its Moral’, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, vol. 45, no. 261, October 1947, pp. 55–62. For the two amor … non può prints see Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, exh. cat. ed. Alison Wright, National Gallery, London, 1999, nos. 89, 93; for the one with the dancers and reclining nude beneath, ibid., no. 91. For further discussion of the motto and on nudes reclining in a landscape see Chapter 7 §11.

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fig. 4.6 Anonymous, Mirror frame with sleeping nude couple and putti, wood and papier mâché, diameter 50.8 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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3 6 What the wildman might be in northern Europe the classical satyr might surely be in Italy. The Renaissance satyr, however, does not pop up once again as if he had always been hiding in the woods and it only needed a new look at Virgil or Ovid to summon him out. He might supersede the wildman but he was not his successor or equivalent: he was not, like him, a creature. Like the centaur, he was half man, half beast, recognizably an allegory. He was a classical appropriation, but, like Arcadia, a Renaissance construct. What was inherited directly from antiquity and might perhaps have been taken as a straight swop for a wildman family was the centaur family, one “ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις τολμήμασι”|among his other daring creations|, as Lucian called them, of the painter Zeuxis. Zeuxis’s composition resembled the Thyssen Collection wildman tapestry in depicting a suckling mother centaur and two children (one at the mother’s human tit, the other at her equine one). The father stood by, playfully frightening them by holding up a lion cub. She half reclined, half knelt on the ground. Renaissance artists sometimes reproduced such a scene in tiny vignettes pretending to be reliefs in classicizing painted architecture; otherwise, they preferred to convert the centaur family into a family of satyrs. In Botticelli’s rendition of Lucian’s centaur family in a vignette in his Calumny of Apelles in the Uffizi (fig. 4.9), the centaur parents have already bred little satyrs. Dürer set out about 1505 to compose a centaur family (fig. 4.7), but it became a satyr family (fig. 4.10). Dürer’s print was also influenced, in this case as in others, by the peripatetic Venetian artist Jacopo de’ Barbari, who produced around 1500 an almost comically beautiful little satyr family (fig. 4.8), itself probably inspired, at least in part, by northern prints of wildmen or similar by Schongauer, by the Housebook Master, or by others. Obviously unconscious of later readings of his hybrid being, and not yet overtly pastoral (otherwise he would pipe), the satyr plays the bowed viol (lira da braccio), which civilizes him, and certainly suggests that his love is benign and their felicity untroubled. 6 Lucian, Zeuxis, in Luciani opera, ed. M.D. Macleod, III, Oxford 1980, no. 63. The readiness to translate one to the other is also apparent in the description in 1499 of Botticelli’s so-called Pallas and the Centaur in the Uffizi as “Camilla and the satyr”: John Shearman, ‘The Collections of the Younger Branch of the Medici’, The Burlington Magazine, cxvii, January 1975, p. 25, no. 39. See also L.F. Kaufmann, The Noble Savage, Satyrs and Satyr-Families in Renaissance Art, Philadelphia 1979. For Dürer’s satyr family see Erwin Panofsky, Albert Dürer, Princeton nj 1943, p. 87, nos. 94, 95, 176, figs. 121–23. For Jacopo de’ Barbari see Simone Ferrari, Jacopo de’ Barbari, Milan 2006, no. 14.

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fig. 4.7 Albrecht Dürer, Centaur family, c. 1505, pen and ink, 109 × 78 mm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

f ig. 4.9 Botticelli, The Calumny of Apelles, (detail), c. 1494–95, tempera on panel, 62 × 91 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

fig. 4.8 Jacopo de’ Barbari, Satyr playing the viol to his wife and child , c. 1495–1516, etching, 85 × 78 mm

fig. 4.10 Albrecht Dürer, Satyr family, 1505, engraving, 115 × 70 mm (B.VII.83.69)

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37

In his 1504 addenda to the Arcadia Sannazaro deliberately echoed the phrasing of Lucian’s description of Zeuxis’s painting in describing a suckling satyress depicted on a ‘vase’ made by Mantegna; he reproduced not only Lucian’s phrasing but also the antithesis in his description between the tenderness of the suckling pedigree Thessalian horse-mother and the rude frightening roughness of the father. Picking up on Lucian’s remark that Zeuxis had done well so naturalistically to represent the ickle centaurs not letting go of the tit even while looking up at the father, Sannazaro piled on the sentiment: the mother suckled the little “satirello, e con tanta tenerezza il mirava, che pareva che di amore e di carità si struggesse”|and with such tenderness regarded him, as if she was consumed with love and charity|; Sannazaro also acerbically noted that the little thing suckled on one tit, and and yet turned his eye and stretched out his hand, as if fearing it would be taken away from him, to the other. While the Mantegna design, though it evidently existed, is now lost, this detail is reproduced in a derivative print (fig. 4.11). It is hardly possible to ascertain whether Mantegna himself, in devising his suckling nymph, meant to allude to Zeuxis’s centaur family, and that is why Sannazaro echoed his allusion in his description; but Mantegna may well have intended the reference, because his nymph’s one foot was “ὁ μὲν ὀκλάζοντι ἔοικεν” |like one kneeling|, while “ὁ δὲ ἔμπαλιν ἐπανίσταται”|the other was standing up|, as Lucian describes Zeuxis’s centauress, “οἷοί εἰσιν ἵπποι πειρώμενοι ἀναπηδᾶν”|as horses are when they struggle to spring up|. She also at the same time probably reproduced an antique figure of Venus kneeling widely known especially in North Italy and Venice, a type known from its supposed originator as the ‘Doidalsas’ Venus or later, from the owner of one example, as the ‘Lely’ Venus. One cannot uncover completely the process of transmission and invention. But it seems fairly clear that the classical centaur family was translated in the Renaissance into a satyr family, a notion not known to antiquity but more effective as an embodiment of the animal nature of humanity; and probable, too, that the spectator of this kind of imagery was meant to feel affected but to bear his own situation always in mind. 7 Sannazaro/Esparmer and Marino, prosa XI. For Palumba’s satyress see Hind 1938–48, ‘Master IB’, no. 11; Arkadien: Paradies auf Papier, exh. cat., Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 2014, no. 66 (Dagmar Korbacher). On the ‘Lely’ Venus see Robert Wald in Tintoretto, exh. cat., Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2007, s.v. Susannah and the Elders, no. 31; P.P. Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, ­Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, London and Oxford 1986, no. 18; and citations to §10 below.

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f four  §7 v

fig. 4.11 Giovanni Battista Palumba, A satyress with her two children, c. 1500–10, engraving, 104 × 76 mm

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fig. 4.12 After Andrea Mantegna, Putti with a mask, pen with wash, Musée du Louvre, Paris fig. 4.13 Roman, 1st century ad, Putto with a mask and a lionskin, Museo, Sperlonga

38

Indeed, this enticing image was paired, according to Sannazaro’s description, with another: Poco discosto da loro si vedean due fanciulli pur nudi, i quali avendosi posti duo volti orribili da mascare, cacciavano per le bocche di quelle le picciole mani, per porre spavento a duo altri che davanti gli stavano; de’ quali l’uno fuggendo si volgea indietro e per paura gridava, l’altro caduto in terra piangeva, e non possiendosi altrimente aiutare, stendeva la mano per graffiarli. Ma di fuori del vaso correva a torno a torno una vite carica di mature uve; e ne l’un de’ capi di quella un serpe si avolgeva con la coda, e con la bocca aperta venendo a trovare li labro del vaso, formava un bellissimo e strano manico da tenerlo. A little way off from them one saw two boys also nude, who, having put on two fearsome faces of masks, pushed through their mouths their little hands, to frighten two others who were in front of them; of whom one,

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fleeing, was turning his back and shouting, the other, having fallen to the ground, was crying, and, not being able to help himself in any other way, stretched out his hand to scratch them. But outside the vase there ran all round it a vine laden with ripe grapes; and from one of its heads a serpent wrapped itself with its tail, and coming with its open mouth to find the lip of the vase, formed a most beautiful and strange handle by which to hold it.

A copy of this side of the ‘vase’ survives (fig. 4.12), with just the edges of her shaggy leg and of the wineskin on which the satyress half sat visible on the right. As a basis for this image there was an antique source, perhaps a gem or cameo now lost (or see fig. 4.13), though the motif was relatively diffused in classical times, and was used not infrequently as a simile by classical writers, among them again Lucian, who criticized certain writers of history who composed massive, striking and tragic overtures to matter that was in fact of very little worth, declaring them to be like a child – “εἴ που Ἔρωτα εἶδες παίζοντα, προσωπεῖον Ἡρακλέους πάμμεγα ἢ Τιτᾶνος περικείμενον”|if you have ever seen a Cupid playing, putting on the huge mask of Hercules or of a Titan|. The lionskin hanging on the tree behind (or, in the classical fragment preserved in Sperlonga, fig. 4.13, beside) identifies the mask as belonging to Hercules. Thus it seems indicated to interpret the second image on the ‘vase’ as one of vainglory, of overweaning, of imparting value to something empty (otherwise in antiquity the image was moralized as an example of vain or ignorant fear, to be dispelled by the knowledge that the mask was only a mask; the putto running away must have been part of the original antique conception). Wrapped round in grapes and a serpent carrying a stark overtone of the Temptation of Eve and the Fall of Man, the vase is presented not only as an example of fine workmanship by Italy’s acknowledged greatest living artist (he would die in 1506) and as a brillant portrayal of affetti but also as a basket of sinfulness awaiting proper notice in this land only modern readers would regard as innocent: in the sensuality of the satyress and her child there is already greed and envy, and on this other side ignorance, violence, fear and pride. Sannazaro had done something not dissimilar in the ekphrasis in the first part of his work of the paintings on the portal of a temple – these imaginary, although subsequently they were linked by Ludovico Dolce to a painting by Titian (as discussed below, Chapter 6 §24). Indeed the problem of evil recurs in L’Arcadia: for example, following Galicio's song after the shepherds have left this temple (prosa 3), in which he lauds the birthday of his beloved as one in which the Golden Age returned (egloga 3), the narrator wants to know who she is, identifies her, and 

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then finds that, such is her cleavage, he is able to think of her “secrete parti con più efficacia”|her hidden parts with more vividness|. Then, when Elpisto and Logisto parade their stakes for a singing contest, one of them offers a cup with an image of Priapus raping a nymph, inscribed “Da tal radice nasce/ chi del mio mal si pasce”|From such a root is born/ the one who feeds on my ill| (echoing Petrarch, clxxiii, 14: “Tal frutto nasce da cotal radice”|Fruit like that is born from a root like that|) – recalling Montano’s earlier “avviene per le nostre invidie”|[this] is a consequence of our recurring envy| (see Chapter 3 §15). Or consider the irony when the narrator compares Carino to Paris: “che veracissimamente pareva il troiano Paris, quando ne le alte selve, tra i semplici armenti, in quella prima rusticità dimorava con la sua Ninfa, coronando sovente i vincitori montoni”|who very literally resembled the Trojan Paris, when in the high forests, among the simple herds, he lived with his nymph in that first rusticity, frequently crowning his winning rams – which has sexual meaning|. In Carino’s story (prosa viii), the description of his hunting of birds dwells not simply on their guilelessness but even on their undoing when one comes to the help of another. The guileful overtones of the imagery of Mantegna’s cup are typical of Sannazaro’s Arcadia.

39

In a painting in Berlin that is almost exactly contemporary with Sannazaro’s description – it is dated 1507 (fig. 4.14) – Albrecht Altdorfer portrayed another satyr family to not dissimilar effect. In the foreground the family remain sweet and peaceful enough, though they have been disturbed by the event in the background, where a naked man – a fellow denizen of the forest, whether satyr or wildman – attacks a clothed man – a member of civilization. A sentimental peek at such a family at peace does not blind either artist or audience to the fact that life beyond the pale is savage – any more than the audience of a wildlife film would be deceived into believing that a tigress playing affectingly with her cubs would not be highly dangerous if one were oneself in savannah. In an influential work George Boas and

8 The motif of the boys and the mask is discussed by Eckhard Leuschner, Persona, Larva, Maske: Ikonologische Studien zum 16. bis frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Europaische Hochschulschriften, Reihe XXVIII, vol. 292), Frankfurt 1997, ch. 2, ‘Übernahmen aus der antiken Kunst, (a) Der Putto und die Maske’, pp. 27–74. The text of Lucian is ‘Quomodo historia conscribenda sit’, 23 (III, no. 59). Michelangelo seems to have picked up this imagery in his ‘Prudence’, known through a number of copies (see Michelangelo’s Dream, exh. cat. ed. Stephanie Buck, Courtauld Gallery, London, 2010, no. 16), and in his Venus designed for Pontormo (Accademia, Florence): there two masks hang before a curtained-off box in which may be seen a tiny figure – Lucian’s “τὸ σῶμα δὲ αὐτὸ τὸ τῆς ἱστορίας μικρόν τι”|but the body itself of the history is some little thing|.

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fig. 4.14 Albrecht Altdorfer, Landscape with satyr family, 1507, oil on panel, 23 × 20 cm Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Arthur O. Lovejoy introduced the antithesis of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ primitivism, the noble savage in harmony with nature on one hand and the life nasty, brutish and short on the other: this distinction does not apply here. The artist is not trying to suggest that life outside civilization is how life should be led, that it is a better life; the terms remain unchanged; the voyeur has no intention to enact – quite the opposite. In the background the consequences

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of the intrusion are depicted; however, the satyr family, though the mother is alarmed and the father reaches for his club, seems unlikely to be touched; the intrusion serves only to emphasize their remoteness. The spectator’s privileged view into the woods has no platform.

3 10 Seemingly related to Mantegna’s suckling satyress was another kind of satyr pair made by the master of small bronze figures known as Antico, who also worked for the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Unfortunately the satyr and his companion do not survive as a pair, unlike other such satyr couples, depicted canoodling in a work attributed to Andrea Briosco, called Riccio, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 4.15) or copulating vigorously in an image long censored but remounted together in an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1983, and since then elsewhere – attributed now to Desiderio da Firenze (fig. 4.16). Again, a seated satyress with a child in the Wallace Collection may once have been partnered by a standing satyr of a type known in several examples, and there is another pair in the Metropolitan Museum. Antico’s pair, however, may never have been, since Bishop Lodovico Gonzaga, who certainly wished to have such a pair, suspected that the nude by Antico reflecting an antique statue of Venus kneeling (Venus drying her hair after the bath originally by Doidalsas; figs. 4.19, 4.20) that he wished to unite with his satyr was too small, and an attempt to pair them in modern times proved it to be impossible. He may have got the idea from the model for the satyr, the ‘Pan’ of the supposed Pan and Daphnis originally by Heliodorus (figs. 4.17, 4.18). The ‘Daphnis’ to whom ‘Pan’ makes his advances (an idea not, I think, to be found in the bucolic literature, though there is certainly pederastic banter in Theocritus) was suppressed, and the satyr was to be given a more conventional mate. Antico seems in consequence to have produced a more upright version of the nude (fig. 4.21).

9 A not dissimilar incident involving a wildman family is described in Bernardim Ribeiro’s romance Menina e Moça, II, ch. 47 (see further Chapter 5 §21). The woodhouse parents having been killed, the humans discover their baby, the hermit remarking: “Se fora em outro tempo, eu te criara para ver se o costume mudava a natureza|Another time, I would bring you up to see if custom changed nature|. Christopher Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape, Chicago 1993, pp. 97–98, hardly discusses this work. Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore 1935.

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fig. 4.15 Riccio, Satyr and satyress, c. 1515–20, bronze, 24 × 16.5 × 17.9 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

fig. 4.16 Desiderio da Firenze, Satyr and satyress, after 1523, bronze, height 27 cm, Musée National de la Renaissance, Château d’Écouen

10 The Genius of Venice, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1983, nos. S23, S24; New York 2008 (Riccio), no. 112. For the correspondence at the Gonzaga court see Umberto Rossi, ‘I medaglisti del Rinascimento alla Corte di Mantova’, Rivista italiana di ­numismatica, i, 1888, I, pp. 25ff; II, pp. 161ff.; II (cont.), pp. 433ff., letter of 22 July 1499; on the statues and the correspondence Anthony Radcliffe in The Thyssen Bornemisza Collection: Renaissance and Later Sculpture, ­London 1992, no. 23; and Bonacolsi L’Antico, exh. cat., Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, 2008–09, doc. 31, 86 and nos. VI, 10, 13, 15; Jeremy Warren, ‘Antico’s “Nude of the Tortoise”’, Nuovi Studi: Rivista di Arte Antica e Moderna, no. 16, 2010, pp. 27–31. For the circulation of the form of the Doidalsas nude at this period in general see Ann H. Allison, ‘Antique Sources of Leonardo’s Leda’, Art Bulletin, lvi, 1974, pp. 375ff. As far as I understand it the attempt made in Vienna in 1994 was to make a pair of the Doidalsas kneeling nude and the satyr, not of the more upright nude with the satyr – which might not have worked any better, of course, since their arms conflict rather than conjoin. Generally the more upright statuette is interpreted as ‘Atropos’, and similarly also the Doidalsas reduction as another Fate; but there are difficulties, namely that there is no documentation of any Fates by Antico, and no third one; that the Fates are not described or represented as nude; indeed they are not represented at this period at all, though they appeared on stage; and that the Doidalsas nude herself

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fig. 4.17 Antico, Satyr, brozne, height 28.6 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

fig. 4.18 Roman, after Heliodorus,‘Pan and Daphnis’, marble, this version nearly life-size, Museo nazionale, Naples

10 (cont.) was patently not a Fate. The gesture of the nude resembles a pouring action, as represented, for example, in a drawing by Paris Bordone (Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries, New York 1979, no. 391), a study for Bathsheba. For the Wallace Collection and also the Metropolitan pair (inv. 64.101.1415, 64.101.1416) see Jeremy Warren, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Italian Sculpture, London 2016, no. 55, pp. 228–37. Both Palumba (Hind 1938–48, ‘Master IB’, no. 6) and Benedetto Montagna produced prints generally regarded as representing a Satyr family (Hind 1938–48, ‘Benedetto Montagna’, no. 35), but neither is properly: the woman is human, only the satyr and the child are satyrs. For the rejection of this and other identifications as Daphnis see Andrea Riccio, exh. cat. ed. Denise Allen with Peta Motture, The Frick Collection, New York, 2008, cat. 22 (entry by C.D. Dickerson III). There appears to be no second antique that the taller nude by Antico follows, and the nudes’ gestures are very similar.

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fig. 4.19 Roman, after Doidalsas, Venus drying her hair after the bath, this version marble, life size, British Royal Collection, on loan to the British Museum, London fig. 4.20 Antico, Crouching Venus, bronze, height 28.6 cm, ThyssenBornemisza Family Collection fig. 4.21 Antico, Half-seated nude, bronze, height 29.6 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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3 11 About twenty years after this, in 1519, Isabella d’Este (consort to Bishop

Lodovico’s nephew Gianfrancesco Gonzaga) sought from Antico versions of the same pair, described by Antico as “la Nuta ch’è enochiata … ancora il satiro che la chareza, ch’è bella cosa, il se pria farli la bracha de fogli per honestade” |the nude who is kneeling … and the satyr who caresses her, which is a lovely thing; and he could have made for him trousers of foliage for decency [this was almost certainly a gesture to Isabella’s sensibilities]|. Bishop Lodovico’s satyr may not have physically caressed the nude, but the impression remains that these patrons were almost playing children’s games with these figures, as if they were constructing doll’s houses and having tea parties – or orgies – in them. Isabella’s and others’ studioli, if not Bishop Lodovico’s, survive to this day – small, barrel-vaulted chambers almost like cellars (Isabella’s was her “grotta”) into which the owner would retire for privacy or intimacy (and coolth), and to study the precious objects there contained, which were “de lo antiquo” in one way or another – to study or, may one not say, to play with them. Certainly the time spent there was acknowledged to be recreational and eased the proprietor’s care and melancholy, or distracted him or her from any affliction. I do not mean to belittle the studiolo by calling it a playroom: one imbibed there the food of love in converse with such objects as these bronzes, which can only be fully appreciated in the handling. I mean instead to make the parallel to the origin of all pastoral, coming together to make music.

3 12

A similar sentimental frame of mind might have affected the Venetian patrician Gabriele Vendramin when he looked upon Giorgione’s Tempest (fig. 4.22), a work which he may have commissioned or have owned since its execution. Presumably he kept it in his studiolo, regarded as outstanding in the city, whether in his ‘garden’ house on the Giudecca or in his ‘town’ house off the Grand Canal. In any case the suckling figure in Giorgione’s painting bears some resemblance to the Doidalsas nude, or to his contemporaries’ derivatives from it or variants on it. The kneeling, suckling female has become a gypsy, marked as such by her cloak and the way she wears it, and by the particular way she holds the child wrapped in it. She seems to have tipped up on the edges of Venice’s lagoon, and with 11 See further the citations in note 10. See Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo: Die Entstehung eines Raumtyps und seine Entwicklung bis um 1600, Berlin 1977, passim. Andrea Navagero (following long tradition) called his neo-Latin vignettes of Greek-named bucolics, lovers and others, lusus, ‘games’; see Chapter 10 §1.

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fig. 4.22 Giorgione, The Tempest, c. 1507–08, oil on canvas, 82 × 73 cm, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice

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her there is a man in gaudy costume, who may just have come across her. We have only two notices of this picture from the sixteenth century, in each of which the man is described differently (though the woman is consistently called a gypsy) – in the first as a soldier, in the second as a shepherd. His staff is not properly a shepherd’s staff, even if there were any sheep in the vicinity, and this alleged soldier appears to be unarmed; but in either or another case, given its arrested, and so timeless, movement, one has to view the picture as a kind of pastoral. Soldiers might be – frequently were – dandified, as he is, but he does not bear the cocksure feather in his cap which would mark him out as riffraff and would very soon become a hallmark of such figures – bravos. What is his intent on the gypsy? Is that his child? It seems possible to read the picture as the depiction of a family and to take it that he is the father of the child, given the vogue for satyr families and the formal connection between this picture and such imagery, but the way the man bears a staff and looks over at her from across the river suggests he has just discovered her.

12 The interpretation given here I first explored in Paul Holberton, ‘Giorgione’s Tempest or “little landscape with the storm with the gypsy”: more on the gypsy, and a reassessment’, Art History, vol. 18, no. 3, September 1995 (with attendant bibliography). All other identifications of the female are pure supposition, contrary to the two sole early sources, the second independent of the first; yet grounds for rejecting them have usually not even been regarded as required. See the measured account of Enrico Maria Dal ­Pozzolo, Giorgione, Milan 2009, pp. 238–51, who accepts that Michiel and others saw a gypsy, but is not satisfied that he knew what he was seeing. See also Aldo Manuzio, exh. cat. ed. Guido Beltramini and Davide Gasparotto, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, 2016, no. 59. Among publications subsequent to Holberton 1995 Marco Paoli, La ‘Tempesta’ svelata : Giorgione, Gabriele Vendramin, Cristoforo Marcello e la ‘Vecchia’, Lucca 2011, rejects (pp. 96–97)the woman being a gypsy on the grounds that she is not wearing a turban. This is to miss the point: the two sources for the painting described her as a gypsy; the absence of one of the markers for gypsies does not invalidate the identification, and certainly not their perception. The reason behind his rejection of the undeniable evidence is similar to the doubts of Dal Pozzolo: by Paoli it is found “deludente”|disappointing|(p. 143) that Gabriele Vendramin, through Michiel, could find nothing more significant in the pictures. But the identification finds support and significant development in R. Andrew Morrall, ‘Soldiers and Gypsies: Outsiders and their Families in Early Sixteenth Century German Art’, in Pia Cuneo, ed., Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles: Art and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, Turnhout 2001, pp. 159–80, at p. 178. Contemporaneously to the publication of this book I have returned to the picture in Paul Holberton, ‘Giorgione’s Tempest: A riddle without a cause’, Burlington Magazine clxiii, no. 1424, November 2021, pp. 1042–51. Here I have argued that in his work in general and in this picture as well Giorgione developed ideas for painting expressed by Leonardo, exploring new modes of illusionism, and that central to the Tempest is the instantaneity both of the lightning and of the gaze of the soldier at the gypsy, caught and held, and spell-binding the spectator, too. See there further for the representation of gypsies, and here further Chapter 7 §1ff. for the syndrome of the innamoramento that the soldier evidently undergoes.

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figs. 4.23–25 Botticelli, The Calumny of Apelles (details), Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

3 13 In any case, Giorgione’s work is not cosy. Family or chance encounter, there is a storm breaking in the background. The storm emphasizes the gypsy’s plight – homeless, exposed to the elements, inadequately dressed, a stranger in the landscape, where, gypsies having long since exhausted the charity extended to them as pilgrims when they first appeared in western Europe and acquired instead a reputation for thieving and deceit, the locals were likely to be hostile. Into this plight the spectator is immediately locked, gripped by the eyes she turns towards him – modestly, from a lowered head, gently, in such a way as to arouse compassion and feelings of tenderness. To the spectator she communicates the tenderness she feels for her child, at whom she does not gaze, like Mantegna’s nymph, but whom she delicately embraces to her tit with crawling fingers. And the soldier, too, does not look fiercely towards her: he stands across from her as if musing, as if he has been detained on his way and leans on that staff struck by her beauty. Thus he recalls other such gazing figures, who often also lean on their staffs, immobilized (one such occurs in the ‘panel’ in Botticelli’s Calumny next to his centaur/ satyr family: fig. 4.23; there are two other such vignettes higher up: figs. 4.24, 4.25). If Giorgione’s ‘soldier’ is transfixed, then certainly the spectator is meant to be, both by her gaze and by the lightning flash. She – her plight, her vulnerable feminity, her available sexuality – is the subject of the picture; 

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the spectator and his doppelgänger beside her are like the cavalier who comes across a wench in pastourelles, but also like the wildman husband who blissfully possesses her.

3 14 The greatest beauty of the picture is surely the way all this is held

in the moment – the moment the lightning strikes, the moment her gaze catches the spectator’s, the long moment that the young man has waited there. There is no release from the tension of the elements interlocked there – the tension of the disparate, jumbling ‘flats’ of the landscape, receding in an awkward row to an artificial depth; the tension of the woman sitting there, out of place; the man standing there, transfixed either in desire or in the contemplation of felicity, or both; the spectator caught in a mirror of criss-­crossing lines of sight. This extraordinary picture clearly draws on the satyr family: one can feel at its root the little print by Jacopo de’ Barbari of the satyr playing on his viol to the suckling satyress (fig. 4.8), who already, as if to emphasize their kinship, wears a turban and who, transmogrified here, recalls being a satyress or centauress by her half kneeling pose. She has not shaken off her fabulous status: though no longer a strange creature one might find if one went out into the woods, she has become a mesmerizing visitor from a foreign world that has arrived in ours. Or, fundamentally, from the world of the imagination: is this not, by a different stream, the situation of Petrarch beside the Sorga? Where (sonnet 281) he had seen the object of his desire Or in forma di nimpha o d’altra diva che del più chiaro fondo di Sorga esca, et pongasi a sedere in su la riva; Sometimes in the form of a nymph or other goddess who may rise from the clearest depths of the Sorga and set herself to sit on the bank.

The painted cart visible on the gatehouse, the emblem of the former Carrara rulers of Padua, and the modern dome in the far background fix the landscape in ordinary actuality. The figures are identifiably by some ditch or channel on the mainland edge of the lagoon. The tension, however, is not only in the parts of the landscape on the verge of toppling, or being blown by the wind, or in the lightning flash held in the sky, or in the halt in the youth’s progress between one step and another, but above all between this beseeching, seducing, naked female, whose ripe sexuality her suckling child already enjoys, and you (sc. male). The moment lasts.

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fig. 4.26 After David Teniers the Younger after Giorgione,The Rape, print from Theatrum Pictorium fig. 4.27 Quirin Boel after Giorgione, The Rape, from Prodromus (Catalogue of the Imperial Collection), c. 1735, pl. XVIII, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

3 15 Giorgione had painted, more than probably, an earlier picture, now lost, but recorded in a copy by Teniers the Younger (fig. 4.26), and in a Vienna inventory (fig. 4.27), prefiguring the situation in The Tempest. A traveller, a soldier in armour this time, has descended from his horse to accost a woman sitting naked by a stream. The circumstances of the encounter are obscure, although the landscape is again home, with a view out to a city on a lagoon. The situation is strikingly a pastourelle (see Chapter 2 §4) – the cavalier out riding, the woman whom he takes by force. Perhaps we should imagine 

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that the woman has been bathing. She is anonymous flesh, booty, prey, with no definable place in human society. Absent, perhaps disturbingly, is any classical myth, the mantle of a role that is usually thrown over such a blatant depiction of male desire. There is no sign of moralization; when a satyr rapes a nymph, for example, the unhappy outcome is implicit (at least at this period): the satyr will be frustrated in his intent and will suffer for indulging his lust. This soldier will apparently be able to ride off with impunity, and it seems most unlikely he has fallen in love and will be redeemed by it; there is no sign the woman may escape. It is difficult to guess how the owner of the picture might have felt before it: would he have pitied the woman’s condition? Would he have condoned the soldier? Though not a grave crime in the eyes of Venetian justice when perpetrated on the lower orders, rape required reparation – when marriage was not in question, payment. Is there a poetry, a melancholy in the sunset or in the patient horse, that once infused the original? However one reads it, the lost work had seminal importance. For one, the woman seems to have been a starting-point for the Tempest, since X-rays and infrared have revealed a figure in similar pose on the left-hand side of the picture (fig. 4.28), beneath the soldier, painted over when he was inserted; presumably Giorgione decided to replace her with a different kind of figure, our gypsy, in a different pose, in a different place in the painting. For another, the woman and the soldier together, he with his dagger, are a precedent for Titian’s Three Ages of Man (see Chapter 5 §10), which also very directly depicts male desire. For a third this unequivocal picture is token of the original sexual, confrontational force of other surviving or lost nudes by Giorgione, including the apparently peaceful Dresden Venus (see Chapter 7 §6).

15 On rape see Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex, Crime and Sexuality in ­Renaissance Venice, Oxford 1989.

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fig. 4.28 Giorgione, The Tempest (infrared detail of fig. 4.22)

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Chapter 5 2 CARMEN ELEGIACUM BUCOLICUM

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31

Carnal felicity was an illusive goal for a Christian man, even if, on relatively few occasions, it seems it could be represented in the Renaissance period. Satyrs, unlike real or supposedly real creatures living a different life – wildmen – seldom represented it being attained; more commonly they embodied the inevitable failure of human flesh to satisfy. To read them simply as embodiments of lust over-simplifies the syndrome to which the luckless creature – or construct – was bound. Even when indulged, satyrs (in works of sufficient quality to carry such nuances) reflect the experience – or teach the viewer – that it is not the nature of sexual pleasure to satisfy (only virtue can do that). In the straining expression of the copulating satyr attributed to Desiderio (fig. 4.16) one discerns in the male an overreaching, never to be fulfilled desire that contrasts distinctly with the satyress, who is inconsciently ribald and lewd in her bumping and bonking. This is an essential Renaissance gendering, the woman purely carnal, while for the thirsty man sex is salt water. There are single bronze satyrs by Riccio that drink so intensely as to induce pathos for them. We know that their bowls will then be empty, like the empty or poured vases surrounding the satyr in Lotto’s little allegory in Washington (fig. 5.1), or that of the satyr accompanying Lotto’s depiction of Petrarch’s vision of his beloved in canzone 123 (see fig. 5.24). Sensual sin is represented not as hateful but as a disappointment.

1 The likening of the sexual urge to thirst and its slaking to the drinking of salt water, which only increases it, occurs in Arsochi’s third eclogue, ‘Seguendo le orme d’un bramoso capro’|Following the tracks of a desirous goat| (in Bucoliche Elegantissime 1482). Echoing Petrarch’s sonnet 190, 14, “quand’io caddi ne l’acqua, ed ella sparve”, it concludes: … che vincto caddi giù lungo la gronda e perdei la speranza della fiera. Hor qui la secca crudeltà m’abbonda, ché quanto più la seta medicava, più m’asciugava con la salat’onda. Pur del pensier s’asciuga la bava. I fell defeated down along the gutter/ and lost any hope of my fierce prey./ Now here the dry torture overwhelms me,/ because the more it drugged my thirst, the more it dried me with its salt water. Even the saliva of my thought dries up. In the sixth eclogue of his Italian Pastorali, with the titulus “Ne la sesta Egloga alegoricamente parlano un caciatore affanato ed un pastore, nascondendo e’ nomi loro sì come è la matera nascosa”|In the sixth eclogue an exhausted hunter and a shepherd speak allegorically, hiding their names as their matter is hidden|, written after his Latin Pastoralia of the 1460s and contemporaneously with the publication of the Bucoliche Elegantissime, Matteo Maria Boiardo seems to have taken up Arsochi’s idea (Boiardo/Riccucci 2005, pp. 125–29): this hunter is again chasing a goat, and is warned off a spring; the hunter persists, however, and the shepherd tells him he must transform himself by wearing the shepherd’s “pele di lince”|lynx-skin|, perhaps suggesting that the adoption of the shepherd’s humility, even if false, will better achieve his aim of erotic conquest: the transvestiture imagery recalls the conclusion of Boccaccio’s Ameto (see Chapter 7 §4).

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fig. 5.1 Lorenzo Lotto, Allegory of Vice and Virtue, 1505, oil on panel, 56.5 × 42.2 cm, Samuel H. Kress Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1 (cont.) For Lotto’s allegory see Venice 1999–2000, no. 99; Lorenzo Lotto, exh. cat. ed. Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa, Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome, 2011, no. 50; Lorenzo Lotto Portraits, exh. cat. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo et al., Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, and National Gallery, London, 2018–19, no. 4, esp, pp. 194–95.

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3 2

The satyr as the ‘personality’ undergoing this kind of experience emerges for the first time, I believe, in Luca Pulci’s Driadeo of 1479. This scantly regarded work is important for the the themes it introduces. Its burial of the dog Pompiglio, for example, anticipates Sannazaro’s exequies of Ergasto’s mother; its visit to a temple, and description of the reliefs to be seen there, anticipate Sannazaro’s shepherds’ repairing to Pan’s temple (see Chapter 6 §24; A7). Above all, the destiny of the satyr presented in the Driadeo adumbrates the figure of the satyr that appears in art, whether in bronzes on the desks of h ­ umanists, in paintings large or small, or in prints and drawings.

3 3 The protagonist of the Driadeo is the satyr Severe, eponym of the Tuscan river Sieve, into which he dissolves, in the way that figures do in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, on dying for love. The nymph of whom he is enamoured is called Lora, the name of another Tuscan stream; once he has died of unrequited love for her, she discovers she is in love with him, and herself dies and metamorphoses into her river – and this is the reason, reader, for the confluence of the Lora and the Sieve. Though Ovid provided the prototype, Boccaccio had already in the previous century written a kind of rationalized aetiological myth of the rivers of Fiesole, Ninfale fiesolano, on which Pulci modelled his work; but the Driadeo is no longer set in the ancestral past: it is pure myth, favola, fable. Pulci’s aim was “ritrovar gli antichi semidei”|to re-invent the ancient demigods|. That may sound like Panofsky’s re-integration of antique form and antique content, disjoined in the Middle Ages, but Severe is a development of Boccaccio’s figures Ameto and Cimon; and, despite being called a satyr, he is nowhere said to look like one as now known – no goat’s feet or ears, no horns; instead he is “di linea pulchra … d’ogni beltà”|of a handsome line … of every beauty|. A semideo, Severe is actually the male equivalent of the otherwise entirely humanoid ‘nymphs’ he frequents. It all begins because he has spurned the love of these nymphs: one dies of it, and curses him to an unhappy love like hers. Pulci claims that he has heard this tale recounted “per tragedia” “by our shepherds” (he surely knew that ‘tragedy’ meant ‘goat song’). The unhappiness of his love, though effected by the curse, is Severe’s own fault: he comes across the nymph Lora sleeping, he debates whether to rape her, and finally, despite having cited to himself several warning precedents, including Actaeon and Diana, Jupiter and Semele, Nessus and Deianeira and Perseus and Andromeda, he 2 Pulci 1479.

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does – attempt to. He fails. What stirred him from his contemplation (“tucto amirato tenne gli occhi fissi”|he stared stupefied|) was a breath of wind that removed the “velo” from Lora’s face (sic), at which … l’amorosa fiamma gli fe’ cangiar le sue pudiche voglie et l’alma e ’l pecto gli riscalda e ’nfiamma … the amorous flame/ made him change his own chaste lusts/and heats and inflames his soul and breast.

The distinction is clear between temperate and intemperate love. Unlike others in his position, Severe has looked and leapt; and he knew he should only have looked – and learnt (like Ameto and Cimon; see Chapter 7 §4, 5). At Severe’s move Lora wakes; her dogs attack him (echo of Actaeon); he is left (at the end of Book I) to sit beneath a tree beside a river singing his sad fate. We have no representation of him in this activity, but somewhat in the spirit of the Driadeo seems to me Piero di Cosimo’s Satyr discovering an expired nymph (fig. 5.2): the cause of her death must be the small wound in her throat. There is no reason to suppose her death was caused in any way by love, but her dog is mourning and the satyr, here still a creature of nature, as it were Severe in his innocence, has just discovered her, tenderly turning her to discover her tragedia. Leonardo noted owning a copy of the Driadeo at just about the date of this picture; Piero might have had a copy, too.

fig. 5.2 Piero di Cosimo, Satyr discovering an expired nymph, oil on panel, 65.4 × 184.2 cm, c. 1495, National Gallery, London

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3 4 Representation of satyrs in visual art (except the one that kindly guided Anthony Abbot towards Paul the Hermit) postdate Pulci’s Driadeo of 1479, it appears. Except in some early works such as Piero di Cosimo’s (supposed to be of about 1495) – and already in Niccolò da Correggio’s play Cefalo of 1486, in which the satyr lusts and schemes, ruling out the play as Piero’s source – the satyr is soon established in character as a rampant ‘Severe’, unable to control his desire, incarnating intemperate love, voglie non-pudiche, and therefore implicitly or explicitly representing the suffering consequent upon indulgence of such voglie. Specifically, the satyr is eternally in the ‘Severe’ position, not simply lusting but acting on his lust after a nude sleeping nymph (whether represented or not), taking the bestial option that his half-animal nature predetermines. Sometimes he is successful – but in that case he will regret it. More often the nymph flees, leaving him bereft. Temperance and virtue lead to happiness, lust to unhappiness, as we all know. But some of us like to keep a memory of the fall, and to sorrow nostalgically for the imagined gain lost in it, in the figure of the satyr on our desk: those of these figures (which were serially produced) that have any quality seem designed to evoke such feelings. The bronzetto specialist Severo da Ravenna seems to have created an influential prototype in his Kneeling satyr (fig. 5.3). Possibly it evolved as a male version of the Doidalsas pose (see Chapter 4 §7). Versions known today show the satyr feelingly looking up to the inkwell or lamp he carries. Riccio carried the conceit further in the bound satyrs – subsequently produced individually – with which he adorned his Paschal Candlestick in the Santo in Padua; perhaps in their original context they stood for the conquest of the intemperate flesh but individually they became an archetypical image of desire trapped in its own toils – after all they resembled the victims of Love carried along in his chariot in representations of Petrarch’s Trionfi. 3 See Dennis Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo: Visions Beautiful and Strange, New Haven and London 2006, pp. 83–87, with bibliography; The Renaissance Nude, exh. cat. ed. Thomas Kren et al., The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and Royal Academy of Arts, London 2018–19, no. 36 (C. Jean Campbell). The association of this work with Niccolò da Correggio’s Cefalo of 1486 seems misguided, since in fact the play ultimately celebrates the resurrection of Procris by Diana and the satyr who features is a malign would-be lover of Procris whose role is to make her jealous by telling her that Cephalus (as in the Ovidian story) had called for ‘Aura’. One might suppose that the nymph has committed suicide, for love, but there are no signs for this (and no dagger). The rip in her throat seems more likely to have been caused by a wild beast: Elizabeth McGrath suggests that that beast would be the central of the three behind, whom the two dogs circle vengefully. See Romain Descendre, ‘La biblioteca di Leonardo’, in Atlante della letteratura italiana, ed. Sergio Luzzatto and Gabriele Pedullà, Turin 2010, I, pp. 592–95 + 1–5, at p. 1 (Codex Atlanticus, f. 559r).

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fig. 5.3 Severo da Ravenna, Kneeling satyr, early 16th century, bronze, height 20.5 cm, courtesy Benjamin Proust Fine Art Ltd

fig. 5.4 Attr. Desiderio da Firenze (after Riccio), Faun with pipes, c. 1520–30, bronze inkwell, 20.2 × 21.5 cm, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

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Such figures in their versions and variations easily take on or off their satyric attributes. The figure of the satyr is only one means to the end of representing this kind of longing. Severo even translated his satyr face on to his series of marine monsters, who also twist back and up, in frustrated pain under the prod of an accompanying Neptune’s salt-water trident. One may gather that the contortion of their pose, not only the grimace of their features, expressed the satyrs’ pitiful condition. In the best of these bronze statuettes their feeling is more delicately rendered, attaining melancholy. A well-known example in the Ashmolean Museum (fig. 5.4), now attributed to Desiderio da Firenze, shows a beautiful adolescent human boy, except that he has little horns, pointed ears and a piggy tail. He holds an inkwell pot

4 For satyrs as dramatic personae see Chapter 4 §6–7, 9–11, Chapter 8 §2, 3, 5, 11–12. See Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, exh. cat., Liebighaus, Frankfurt, 1985–86, nos. 148–55; also The Age of T ­ itian: Venetian Renaissance Art from Scottish Collections, N ­ ational Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2004, no. 182; and Venice 2016, no. 45.

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fig. 5.5 Moretto da Brescia, Count Fortunato Martinengo in his study, c. 1540–45, oil on canvas, 114 × 94.4 cm, National Gallery, London

disguised as an urn and a panpipe; he is commonly identified as Pan having just in vain chased Syrinx, who has metamorphosed into the reeds with which he would make his music. In fact his identity as Pan is unacceptable, given such a tender boy and such a grown and phallic (and always goat-legged) god, even if Pan was the archetypal representative of the satyric ‘position’, Syrinx becoming the reed and Pan the piper and pastoral the song by which he and we humankind ever since have lamented (see further below, §18). Another such statuette in Baltimore, attributed to Riccio, similarly seated and looking up, drawing breath, has no satyric attributes, but bears only the panpipe – he is called a shepherd, existential rather than mythical. Yet another related

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composition in the Louvre shows a pose and tortured upward glance that may recall the collapsed postures and agonized expressions of the statues of defeated Gallic warriors round the Mausoleum, known in Roman copies. One could continue the list of such objects, one could happily inventory these dolls that express sometimes so poignantly their longing and the pathos. There are many pictures, too, that conjure from their medium a similar aura or mood (sometimes regarded as ‘Giorgionesque’, but it is a manner of representation, not really a style) – in many cases referring specifically to a dream of sexual felicity, either bound to spoil because it is transient or viewed fatalistically (whatever the particular operation of the fates may be) as unattainable. A man’s active desire for a woman who would not or could not yield to him would cause him to fall into a melancholy – indeed his pain was expected to excite her pity, and thence her yielding. In a portrait by Moretto in the National Gallery, London, of Count Fortunato Martinengo (fig. 5.5) one can perhaps see such an enamoured dreamer represented, with his antique objects or replicas (the small bronze configuring a broken-off sandalled foot recalling the immensity of the Capitoline statue of Contantine and of the ancients’ achievement) and his cap inscribed “ἰου ἀγαν ποθῶ ”|Alas, I desire too much|.

3 6 This kind of bittersweet can be detected in painting perhaps indeed first in the work of Giorgione, indicated by piping. In The Birth of Paris, perhaps of around 1500 or a year or two earlier (lost, but known through a copy), he may have attempted to set such a meditative, depressive tone, because appropriate to the picture’s moral. It is signalled on the left by the old man who plays a reed pipe (fig. 5.6). Beside him the mother looks on and on the right the standing shepherds point to the baby Paris. The old man who pipes knows the consequences of the sparing of the life of the baby, presented as presaging great things – the contest between the goddesses and Paris’s award of the apple to Venus, who would reward him with the love of Helen, for whom the ships were launched. Originally, probably, the picture had a pendant (altogether lost) depicting the burning of Troy, which 5 On the attribution of the Ashmolean statuette and the whole group see Bertrand ­Jestaz, ‘Un groupe érotique de Riccio’, Fondation Eugène Piot: Monuments et M ­ émoires, lxv, 1983, pp. 25–54; Jeremy Warren, ‘The Faun who Plays the Pipes’, in Small Bronzes in the Renaissance, ed. Debra Pinkus (Studies in the History of Art LXV), Washington, DC, 2001 6§5, pp. 83–103; New York 2008 (Riccio), no. 23, pp. 240–45; see also Warren 2016, no. 62, pp. 300–05. For Moretto’s Martinengo see Penny 2004, pp. 172–81. The (presumed) gamma of the inscription is strangely formed but there is no mention of damage.

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would have demonstrated the destruction the baby was doomed to cause. So what tune should one suppose the old man to pipe? One of melancholy resignation to the inevitability of human fallibility? Surely, since he is old and wise. But also his music would be sweet, given the cosiness of the scene, the pity shown by the shepherds, the beauty of the grown Paris. Sweet and sad, sweet because sad, sweeter for being sad. Touching like the Ashmolean boy, or like the nightingale. Or like Virgil’s shepherds, as they were interpreted at the time.

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A certain Evangelista Fossa, in a work published in 1494, translated the early lines of Virgil’s Eclogue I periphrastically stressing “y lamenti del rixignolo”, the laments of the nightingale, “li gemiti e y gran dolori e tristi accenti/ comoveranti della tortorella”|the groans and great pains and sad accents of the turtledove will move you|; Virgil’s lines (in which there is no mention of a nightingale) actually say: nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo nor in the meantime will the cawing pigeons nor the turtledove cease to coo from high in the elms.

If feeling the pain of love, inevitably one took out one’s pipes: so we left Severe under a tree by the bank of a river; so we meet Tonino in Folengo’s macaronic pastoral parody Zanitonella: non tamen, oyme, gravem potui scampare brusorem per quem sforzatur cedere vanga pivae yet, agh, I could not escape the terrible heat [of love] which forces my spade to make way for my pipe.

The friends who might have visited Michiel Contarini’s palace in Venice, and seen there “… un Fauno ovver un Pastore nudo de marmo de do piedi, che senta sopra una rupe, ed appoggiato con la schiena sona una tibia pastorale, opera antica, integra e lodevole| … a faun or shepherd, nude, marble, two foot high, who is seated on a rock, and leaning on his back sounds the pastoral flute, an ancient work, intact, to be praised| plausibly would have ‘overinterpreted’ it much as Fossa did Virgil, racking up the sentiment. Fossa was an associate of the Venetian patrician Giovanni Badoer, who wrote his own bucolics; another patrician, Zuanantonio Venier, owned a manuscript (in his own hand) of Sannazaro’s Arcadia followed by Badoer’s Phylareto, asserting on its first page “Infausti et amicorum”|[belonging to] Ill-starred and his friends| – a

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fig. 5.6 David Teniers the Younger after Giorgione, The Birth of Paris, oil on panel, 21 × 30.5 cm, Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

6 Michiel/Frizzoni, p. 167, described the picture in the house of Taddeo Contarini as “La tela del paese con el nascimento de Paris, con li due pastori ritti in piede …”|The canvas of the landscape with the birth of Paris, with the two shepherds standing upright|; Terisio Pignatti, Giorgione, London 1971, no. C3; Giorgione: Myth and Enigma, ed. Sylvia Ferino Pagden and Giovanna Nepi Sciré, exh. cat., Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2004, p. 285, no. 9. For the pendant see Michiel/Frizzoni, p. 165, “La tela grande a oglio dell’Inferno con Enea e Anchise”|The large canvas in oil of the burning with Aeneas and Anchises|; this is lost without visual record. On the birth of Paris there is an article by Paul Joannides, ‘Titian, Giorgione and the Mystery of Paris’, Artibus et historiae, xxxi, no. 61, 2010, pp. 99–114; it is chiefly concerned with paintings that may be deemed to reflect Giorgione’s idea. ‘Nascimento’, as opposed to the usual word for ‘birth’, ‘nascita’, comports destiny: heroes such as Orlando had a ‘nascimento’; the eponymous story of Guerrino il Meschino begins: “In questo libro vulgarmente sé trata alcuna istoria breve de re Carlo imperatore. Poi del nascimento et opere del quello magnifico cavallero nominato Guerrino e prenominato Meschino|In this book in the vernacular is treated some brief story of the Emperor King Charles [Charlemagne]. Then of the birth and deeds of that magnificent knight named ‘Little Warrior’ and nicknamed ‘Wretched’|; editio princeps Padua 1473.

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pastoral ‘community’ seeing even themselves elegiacally. We can put beside these bronzes a contemporary sweety shepherd-boy painting (fig. 5.8), which perhaps derives from the ‘Daphnis’ of the Uffizi ‘Pan and Daphnis’ (fig. 4.18).

3 8 Tonino the rough digger, or a goat-footed satyr, are different in kind

from that delicate little canvas or from the bronze faunlet in the Ashmolean or Riccio’s graceful boy. They are not simply less refined; they do not convey, as a young boy conveys, both the flush of early desire and the transience of brief adolescence. The young ‘Daphnis’ derivation (fig. 5.8) or another boy with a flute in the Royal Collection (fig. 5.9) are too young, really, to be suffering the pains of love, but these have been projected back on to them because their innocence, read by a knowing observer, is the more poignant. The Royal Collection piper in fact derives from a slightly different series of such young boys, not originally pastoral, though here transposed into a pastoral clef (in fact his hand and the pipe seem inserted without connection to the head as if by another artist). Behind this image lay several works on a similar scale by Giorgione, one of them probably a boy in classical garb holding an arrow that survives in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (fig. 5.7), indicating that it is love that sends him thoughtful. A lost “pastorello” holding in his hand a fruit (which will rot with time) is recorded. In more than one copy probably also going back to Giorgione a similarly downcast boy holds what seems to be a glass sphere, not uncommonly used as a symbol of lability, fragility – extreme vulnerability, because so easily broken, to time and also fortune. In every case the boy’s gaze is already sufficient explanation. It is clearly contrived. Boys do not cast down their heads in a clouded gaze. Even if they do not play, they look alert. His sadness is there in order to induce the viewer to feel such sadness. It is similar to the pain that Giorgione’s Old Woman in the Accademia feels (inscribed col tempo|with time|), time for her having passed, time for the boy being about to pass. Not dissimilarly flowers are associated with young girls, expressing both their present bloom and their future withering. The transience of the flesh was a familiar theme, and, in both art and literature, often took on pastoral form (as in the meditative

7 A copy of Evangelista Fossa’s work is British Library C.6.a.22 6§7. Folengo/Cordié, Zanitonella, I, p. 4. Michiel/Frizzoni, p. 225; for another, similar, belonging to Francesco Zio and then A ­ ntonio Foscarini see pp. 176, 181. See Grignani 1973; on Venier Holberton 1985–86. Philip Rylands, Palma Vecchio, Cambridge 1992, no. 14.

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fig. 5.7 After (?) Giorgione, Boy with an arrow, c. 1510, oil on canvas, 48 × 41 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

shepherd depicted by Savoldo now in the Getty Museum; fig. 5.10). One could argue that this is the idea dominating Giulio Campagnola’s Young Shepherd – or Young and Old Shepherd (fig. 5.11); besides the young shepherd with his pipe and zaino, or scrip, there is also an old man. The dotted or blurred, ‘sfumato’ style of the engraving, sometimes regarded as ‘Giorgionesque’, correlates to the iconography – if the image is read again as intimating mortality. The viewer, drawn into their meditation on transience, himself falls into a reverie – an almost Virgilian fatalism or ‘suspension’ (for which see Chapter 1 §2). 8 John Shearman, The Early Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge 1983, p. 253, no. 271; Le Siècle de Titien, exh. cat., Grand Palais, Paris, 1993; Art of Italy, exh. cat. by Martin Clayton and Lucy Whitaker, Queen’s Gallery, London, 2007, no. 58, pp. 185–87; London 2016, no. 43. Vienna 2004, no. 6; and no. 14. Michiel/Frizzoni, p. 208. London 1983, no. 85; Gabriele Frings, ‘“Flauti dolci” und “pifferari”: Bemerkungen zur Ikonographie der Böckflöte in der Renaissance’, Tibia, no. 17, 1992, pp. 117–24; further bibliography on the website www.getty.edu. David Landau, ‘Printmaking in Venice at the Time of Manutius’, in Venice 2016, pp. 107–35, esp. p. 124–26, and with bibliography; Catherine Whistler, ‘Disegno a mano, disegno a stampa and the development of the independent landscape drawing in Renaissance Venice’, in Jenseits des disegno: Die Entstehung selbstständiger Zeichnungen in Deutschland und Italien im 15. und 16. Jh., ed. Daniela Bohde and Alessandro Nova, Petersberg 2018, pp. 128–45, at p. 136.

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fig. 5.8 Palma Vecchio?, Boy with pipes, c. 1505–10, oil on canvas, 19.6 × 16.4 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich fig. 5.9 Circle of Giorgione or Titian, Shepherd boy with a pipe, c. 1510–15, oil on canvas, 62.5 × 49.1 cm, British Royal Collection fig. 5.10 Girolamo Savoldo, Shepherd with a flute, c. 1525, oil on canvas, 98.4 × 79.4 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

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fig. 5.11 Giulio Campagnola,Young and old shepherd, engraving, 135 × 79 mm

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fig. 5.12 In the manner of Domenico Campagnola, The Ages of Man, c. 1510, engraving, 142 × 141 mm

3 9 A rather crude print of the period (fig. 5.12) shows entwined, nude,

copulating partners in the centre, the male of whom turns his head to see, making their way past him, an old woman on the left – who confronts his gaze – and on the right an old man holding by the hand a young child. Here are the Ages of Man (usually either three or seven, but obviously flexible), a medieval notion but certainly still on the mind in the Renaissance: one instance is the Venetian diarist Marin Sanuto reflecting on the sizes of trees in the painting of an arbour encompassing the Sala dei Pregadi in the Doge’s Palace: “… grandi, mezani e picoli: li piccoli impara, poi vien mezani, poi grandi, cussì è le tre età: zoveni, mezani e vecchi”|big, medium and little: the little ones learn, then they become middle-sized, then great, like the three ages, young, middle-aged and old|. Plausibly the Three Ages might have been a subject taken up by Giorgione, but the lost picture attributed to him in his biography by Ridolfi, which combined a soldier and a woman with a baby and a bent old man holding a skull, was surely not genuine. It remains possible that a painting by Van Dyck (fig. 5.13) reflects the work: it is certainly an Ages of Man picture and with little contemporary parallel, and the picture Ridolfi saw might have inspired Van Dyck if he saw it in Genoa and was told it was by Giorgione. (It was probably a deliberately giorgionizing work by the likes of Pietro Della Vecchia sold to its Genoese owner, Bartolomeo Cassinelli, during his sojourn in Venice). An ‘Ages of Man’ certifiably from Giorgione’s period is a painting in Philadelphia attributed to Palma Vecchio (fig. 5.14) that

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fig. 5.13 Anton van Dyck,The Four Ages of Man, c. 1510, oil on canvas, 115.5 × 167.7 cm, Musei Civici, Vicenza

fig. 5.14 (Follower of ) Palma Vecchio, The Ages of Man, c. 1515–20, oil on canvas, 141.9 × 157 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art

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has not hitherto been so categorized. A mood of melancholy pervades the work, in which both the soldier and the woman once again look downwards from heavily shadowed eye-sockets, intimating night thoughts. The playing children, contrasting with their conspicuously inactive parents, recall one of the earliest Renaissance emblems, a memento mori of a pair of putti playing with a skull first appearing in a relief roundel by Giovanni Boldù, copied on the external dado of the walls of the church of the Certosa at Pavia and elsewhere. The work is not exactly pastoral, but it recalls the ‘preArcadian’ families introduced above, it recalls the situation of Giorgione’s Tempest (when read as a family), it interlocks a number of themes in a kind of existential allegory of the human condition; or, to put it in terms more appropriate to the Renaissance, it prompts the viewer to muse on the archetypes it presents, to improvise learnedly or not, like Sanuto or not, like Shakespeare or not, on the many parts played by one man in his time, his acts being so many ages. The Pavia roundel is inscribed innocentia et memoria mortis. That “all the world’s a stage” is a reflection commonly arising ‘outside’ the world, observing, in solitude, perhaps even while resting, like Shakespeare’s Jacques, on a knoll or tree. Carlo Ridolfi, commenting on the Ages of Man he attributed to Giorgione, which he evidently prized, called it a “simbolo dell’humana vita”|symbol of human life|: he dwelled on the baby’s tears, quoting descriptions by Lucretius and Marino; he expatiated on the boiling blood and desire for (what Shakespeare called) “the bubble reputation” of the armed soldier; he devolved from the bent old man the moral that “tante bellezze, virtù e gratie del Cielo all’huomo compartita divenghino in fine esca de’ vermi entro ad un’oscura tomba”|so many beauties, virtues and graces granted by Heaven to Man end up the food of worms in an obscure tomb|. Another early sixteenth-century Northern Italian painting (fig. 5.15) represents a soldier and his moll admonished by a pilgrim (through life) to pay attention to a skull; the classical ruins might already have given them a hint; this could claim to be the earliest representation (avant la lettre) of ‘Et in Arcadia ego’, a notion which seems to have been given form just shortly before Ridolfi published his Maraviglie dell’Arte (1648): see Chapter 16 §1ff. Fig. 15 is inscribed on the trough bottom right: stultum est in illo statu vivere quo non audet mori|it is foolish to live in that state in which [one] does not dare to die|– so moralizing against carnal enjoyment as well.

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fig. 5.15 Domenico Caprioli?, Admonished lovers, formerly Guy Benson collection

9 Hind 1938–48, VII, ‘Domenico Campagnola’, no. 18 (‘in the manner of ’). Sanuto/Berchet, vol. XXIV, 25 July 1525. Carlo Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie d’Arte, ed. D.F. von Hadeln, 2 vols., Berlin 1914–24, I, pp. 100–01, placing the picture in the Cassinelli collection, Genoa. Ridolfi’s picture was long believed to be a figment, no Cassinelli being known, but see Andrea Polati, ‘Un Giorgione impossibile: ‘Allegoria della vita umana e la collezione Cassinelli di Genova’, Artibus et Historiae, xxxix, 2019, pp. 185–99, identifying Cassinelli and supposing his picture to have been a Giorgionesque pastiche by Pietro della Vecchia; but his candidate for the painting itself does not seem to me likely. For Van Dyck’s picture see Van Dyck: Paintings, exh. cat. ed. Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr, et al., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1990–91, no. 41; Susan J. Barnes et al.,Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, New Haven and London 2004, II.25, p. 169. Rylands 1992, no. A53. See Marika Leino, ‘Italian Renaissance Plaquettes and Lombard Architectural Monuments’, Arte Lombarda, nos. 146–48, 2006, pp. 111–26, at p. 112, figs. 2–4, catalogue no. 3.8, and Fashion, Devotion and Contemplation. The Status and Functions of Italian Renaissance Plaquettes, Bern 2013, p. 45. Another apparent Ages of Man is Domenico Campagnola’s Shepherd and Old Warrior, Hind 1938–48, VII, ‘Domenico Campagnola’, no. 9; but this may, rather, contrast action and idleness, or similar. Pignatti 1971, no. V19; Luba Freedman, The Classical Pastoral in the Visual Arts, New York 1989; Leino 2013, p. 117.

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fig. 5.16 Titian, The Three Ages of Man, 1513–14, oil on canvas, 90 × 151 cm, on loan from the Bridgewater Collection to the National Gallery of Edinburgh

3 10 The great masterpiece on the theme in the Renaissance period (or any period) is Titian’s Three Ages of Man (fig. 5.16). On the left the two lovers, in the background an old man with a skull, in the right foreground the playing babies. A lot of energy, a lot of feeling, boils in the two lovers, in the young man in particular. He exquisitely expresses in the curving stiffness of his body the longing he feels. Like the bronze statuettes, whose pose his figure closely resembles, Titian’s nude young man evokes and imitates classical statuary like Michiel Contarini’s Faun (§7). The young man is wholly human, but holds a pipe (in his right hand, against the ground) – a shepherd, then. A very beautiful girl or nymph visits him, holding two pipes. What exactly is she doing? Titian’s late modern audience has been so entranced by the blatantly phallic position of the pipe she holds in her left hand that we think it is the whole story. In fact it is only part of the point. Her pose is actually very wooden, virtually emblematic, because she is demonstrating the point. It is to do with the pipes – as pipes. He, poor boy, has been piping by himself, on his pipe, like a shepherd boy in bronze or in the Royal Collection painting, all 

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alone (figs. 5.4, 5.9). Then she comes along and offers him two pipes. The four fingers of each hand are very precisely located on the stops; one can see that there are precisely three further stops, uncovered, on the pipe she holds in her left hand, and clearly a larger number of stops below her fingers on the right. The message of these stops would have been evident to anyone who knew or knew of the plays of Terence or who had been involved in the performance of Roman comedy, initiated in the 1480s and brought to Venice in particular in the first decade of the sixteenth century by Francesco de’ Nobili, known as Cherea. Certainly many viewers, like the Paolo Palliolo who noted the like and unlike pipes when reporting a performance in 1513 in Rome for Leo X of Plautus’s Poenulus, would have known that Roman comedies included directions for the accompanying music: for Terence’s Andria, “Modos fecit Flaccus Claudii filius tibiis paribus, dextris vel sinistris”|Flaccus the son of Claudius made the music, with like pipes, right or left|; for his Heautontimorumenos, “imparibus deinde duabus dextris”|unlike, then two right|; for the Eunuchus, both right; for the Phormio, different; for the Hecyra, similar – and so on. The ancient instrument involved was the double flute, pairing left and right pipes or left and left or right and right. The ‘right’ flute was low-pitched, the ‘left’ highpitched, and the resulting music was high-pitched, low-pitched or high and low together. Manuscript and early printed books of Terence’s plays included two scholiasts’ introductions, in one of which it was explained: “Agebantur [comoediae] tibiis paribus et imparibus et dextris et sinistris. Dextrae autem tibiae sua gravitate seriem dictionemque comoedia pronunciabant. Sinistrae et Serranae acuminis levitate iocum in comoedia ostendebant. Ubi autem dextera et sinistra acta fabula inscribebatur, mixtum ioci et gravitatis denuntiabantur”| [The plays] were acted with similar and different flutes and right and left ones. Right flutes, however, by their gravity declared the development and the speeches of the comedy. Left flutes and Serranian ones made manifest by the levity of their high pitch the sport in the comedy. When, however, the story was marked as performed with right and left, the mixture of folly and gravity were being pointed out|. The variant explanation was also given: “sed quod paribus tibiis vel imparibus invenimus scriptum, hoc significat quod si quando monodio agebat unam tibiam inflabat, si quando sinodio utramque”|but if we find ‘with like or unlike pipes’ written, that means that if it was a matter of a soliloquy he blew one pipe, if it was a dialogue [he blew] both|. The emotional effect of music was also very much a subject for discussion in this period.

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3 11 The left flute is fun, that is why she puts it precisely there. But the right is serious. One should have known that what the girl brings with her is not simply joy, but joy and sadness mixed together. In the larger picture, the putti correspond to the iocum and the old man to the gravitas; he knows the plot and what mortality is. The garland round the girl’s head, usually indicating a troth, implies marriage, and the church behind offspring. Without going into the other implications, though, one can presume that the picture took its beginning from the piping youth – who remains its psychological protagonist. The rest of the picture is a development of his inner state: it tells you what he is piping, it is the subject and the mood of what he pipes. The picture is an apposite gloss on what would have been implicit in any representation of a piping figure.

10 See also Paul Joannides, Titian to 1518, New Haven and London 2001, pp. 193–201; Titian, exh. cat., National Gallery, London, 2003, no. 8; Edinburgh 2004, no. 15. On the pipes see Paul Holberton, ‘The Pipes in Titian’s Three Ages of Man’, Apollo, February 2002, pp. 26–30, with further bibliography; but I had omitted reference to contemporary performance of Plautine comedies here provided. For Cherea and his plays see Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, pp. 40 note 9 and 94, and Padoan 1982, pp. 35–40. In Rome in 1513, Leo X organized festivities for the ­conferment of c­ itizenship on G ­ iuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici that included the performance of Plautus’s ­Poenulus. In his account of the play Paolo Palliolo reported notably: “Allhora fu dato principio ad uno soave concento di pifare, el quale durò per buon spatio; né altro choro, musica né suono in tutta questa comedia fu udito, excetto la tromba del precone quando al populo fece audientia. Et in questo si sonno accostati al modo servato in fare le comedie a’ tempi di Plauto e anchor di Terentio, apresso li quali non ha luogo nessuno il choro, ma solo se li adoperavano le pifare, altramente nominate tibie, pari overo dispari et dextre overo sinistre”|In this they approached the way comedies were performed in the time of Plautus and Terence, in whose plays the chorus had no role and only pifare – also called tibie – were used, ­like or unlike and left-hand or right-hand|”: see ­Fabrizio Cruciani, Il teatro del Campidoglio e le feste romane del 1513 …, Milan 1969 6§10, pp. 59–62; cited in Gerbino 2009, p. 125. Pirrotta and Povoledo (1982, p. 122 note 8) mention a comedy put on in 1518 by Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi in which instead of intermedi (‘choruses’) there were various kinds of music, the emotional effect of which is carefully described in Le vite degli uomini illustri della casa Strozzi (ed. P. Stramboli, Florence 1892 6§11, p. xiii); Pirrotta remarks, “Their being linked to the main plot may also have been new”, but it can be seen that it follows from the application of the principle of “the way that comedies were performed in the time of Plautus and Terence”. The principle was evidently applied again by Machiavelli for his two comedies La Mandragola and La Clizia, in which madrigals, sung by a group of four musicians in La Clizia, took the place of intermedi. Pirrotta (pp. 153–54) supposes Machiavelli to have done this “purely instinctively and without theorizing”, but he may have been following up Terence’s scholiasts.

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fig. 5.17 After Mantegna, Nymph set upon by satyrs, c. 1500, pen and brown ink, coloured wash, over black chalk, 286 × 429 mm, Morgan Museum & Library, New York, inv. IV, 56

3 12 This instance of the use of allusive double pipes is perhaps not unique.

An allegory (fig. 5.17), known in two drawings and in a print by Girolamo Mocetto, may make the same reference: above the reclining nymph, top left, a man offers two pipes (with clearly indicated stops, three in number and four in number) to a startled faun, the companion of a second faun who is still intent on revealing the secret parts of the nude. The composition must be an allegory about sexual desire, though the sum total of its meditation

11 For the sexual significance of a garland, especially when bestowed, consider this passage from Cieco d’Adria’s play Il Pentimento Amoroso (1575; see further Chapter 8 §4, 17), I, v: “Il darmi questo fiore [la ghirlanda] in publico/ Fu una promessa tacita e infallibile/ Che vuol darmi in secreto poi quell’unico/ e amato fiore della sua pudicitia”|Her giving me this flower [garland] in public was an unbreakable tacit promise that she wants to give me in private later that singleton beloved flower of her modesty|; see also Chapter 10 §14 for paintings by Pieter Lastman in which there is play on the garland’s sexual connotation. Recognition in turn that Titian was au fait with contemporary thinking about theatre is important confirmation of the general assumption that he was at home in humanist patrician circles such as those of Pietro Bembo and Andrea Navagero. This reference to pipes (avoided as an issue both by David Jaffe in London 2003 and Peter Humfrey in his article, ‘The patron and early provenance of Titian’s Three Ages of Man’, Burlington Magazine, cxlv, 2003, pp. 17–22) is surely an indication of Titian’s standing and milieu at the time the picture was painted.

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on the central nude is easier to elucidate than its diverse parts. The darkness around the eyes of the man indicates his trouble. The pipes would have been added to illustrate the state of mind of this phallus-worshipper, of which he makes the faun aware through the pipes. (Is there any other reason why he should thrust the pipes in front of him?) In another version of the essential composition, a painting by Leonbruno, court artist at Mantua after Mantegna’s death, it is an old woman who startles an identical faun over the same nude, and she clearly stands for repentance, for the repentance that will inevitably follow his transient pleasure (if he even gets that far). Meanwhile on the right Neptune, if his trident indicates an addiction to salt water (increasing the drinker’s thirst; see §1), would be another victim of lust. In the foreground the calligraphic script says: Sepe eadem anas te iam sat pavit|often the same duck has now fed you enough|: that suggests to me a hunger that has been satisfied for a moment on many occasions – but ultimately has not satisfied. Ducks, according to Bartolomeo Platina, were not very nutritious (“mali nutrimenti”). One recalls Sannazaro’s cup with Priapus (Chapter 4 §8): “Da tal radice nasce/ chi del mio mal si pasce”|From such a root is born/ the one who feeds on my ill|. Just as it was the usual moral of the medieval pastourelle that it would have been better in the end if the chevalier had not got involved in the beginning, so the appealing creatures of the wilderness, or of the lower orders, or any sexual siren from the animal realm of the senses, otherwise to be excluded from good society or right thinking, were best left alone – though it might be a pleasure to gaze at them, and meditation upon them might lead a man of experience to turn to higher things, in due course; or one who sought recreation from his responsibilities might reflect on them knowingly and wistfully. Indeed he might compose on the matter, in the manner of Virgil, who (as inscriptions on other similar images tell us) is present here in the head in a basin beside the nymph, from which water flows, possibly recalling Dante’s “Or se’ tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte/che spandi di parlar sì largo fiume?”|Are you that Virgil, that spring that outpours so broad a stream of speech?|, spoken when he meets the poet in Inferno, I, 79–80. This is perhaps to give greater coherence to an allegory that was never integrated and can hardly be deciphered now. But the general air of sexual disorder sadly moralized suggests it is a kind of elegy.

3 13 The central element of this varying composition, the nymph reclining with an urn, appears in several other contexts, even quite innocently as simply the embodiment of a spring, or source. Another such even turns up as a relief on a wall in an early sixteenth-century painting representing an 

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fig. 5.18 Gianantonio Corona, St Anthony bringing Peace to Padua (detail), fresco, Scuola del Santo, Padua

episode from the life of St Anthony with which it had nothing to do (fig. 5.18). An early example of a water-nymph is that in the Ferrarese engraving entitled Pupila Augusta (fig. 5.19; pupilla is an orphan, a ward), which Dürer knew and copied (fig. 5.21); he copied, but incorporated it into a larger, allegoresque composition of his own, borrowing to put beside her the figure (now naked) that proffers the pipes to the fauns in Mocetto’s design (but here makes simply a gesture of admonition; Dürer’s source would have been another, earlier version). It is not clear where the kneeling figure – though reminiscent of nudes in the prints of Nicoletto da Modena – comes from. An epigram dating, it seems, to before 1477 crystallized the attraction of the water-nymph and also its danger; this, too, Dürer knew, and copied out on what seems to be his own conception of the nymph (fig. 5.20): Huius nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis, dormio, dum blandae sentio murmur aquae. Parce meum, quisquis tangis cava marmora, somnum rumpere. Sive bibas, sive lavere, tace, 12 The composition is unlikely to be Mocetto’s own. The drawings of the composition that survive are Uffizi no. 14589F (see Tiziano el il disegno veneziano, exh. cat. ed. W.R. Rearick, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli U ­ ffizi, Florence, 1976, no. 10) and here fig. 5.15 (see Disegni del Rinascimento in Valpadana, exh. cat. ed. Giovanni Agosti, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli ­Uffizi, Florence, 2001, no. 17; Andrea Mantegna e l’incisione italiana, exh. cat., Musei civici, Padua, 2003–04, no. 22 (Vera Segre); Mantegna 1431–1506, exh. cat. ed. Giovanni Agosti and Dominique Thiébaut, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2008, no. 340; London 2010, no. 24 (Caroline Campbell); Padua 2013, no. 1.13 (Davide Gasparotto and Adolfo Tura). The print by Mocetto is Hind 1938–48, ‘Mocetto’, no. 13; see also Serena Romano, Girolamo Mocetto, Modena 1985. For Leonbruno see Luisa Ventura, Lorenzo Leonbruno, un pittore a corte nella Mantova di primo Cinquecento, Rome 1995 6§12, pp. 182–87. Platina, De honesta voluptate e valetudine, Un trattato sui piaceri della tavola e la buona salute, ed. and trans. Enrico Carnevale Schianca (Biblioteca dell’“Archivum Romanicum”), Florence 2015, p. 240. On the nymph simply as water source see Florence 2001, no. 17; W. Kemp, ‘Eine Mantegneske Allegorie für Mantua’, Pantheon, xxvii, 1969 6§12, pp. 12ff. On the head in a basin to the nymph’s left see Scalabrini and Stimilli 2009, pp. 43–46 (they adduce the quotation from Dante); also http:// www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/opere-arte/schede/M0230-00191.

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fig. 5.19 Ferrarese, c. 1470, Pupila Augusta, print (single known example, whereabouts unknown)

fig. 5.20 Albrecht Dürer, The Nymph of the Spring, c. 1515, pen and ink with white heightening on green paper, 152 × 200 mm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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fig. 5.21 Albrecht Dürer, Pupila Augusta, c. 1498, pen and ink, 250 × 194 mm, British Royal Collection rcin 912175

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fig. 5.22 Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Nymph of the Spring, c. 1515–20, oil and tempera on limewood, 58 × 87 cm, Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten

Nymph of the grot, these springs I keep, And to the murmurs of these waters sleep; Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave! And drink in silence, or in silence lave! –

a theme taken up by Cranach in a series of paintings from about 1515 (fig. 5.22). Dürer apparently shows a perpetrator daring indeed to touch or wake the nymph.

3 14 A note in a manuscript attributes these lines to the Neapolitan humanist cleric Giovanni Antonio Campani, but the notion of waking the nymph seems to derive from a conceit in Byzantine literature that the figures in a work of art might look so real as to enjoin silence, for a noise or disturbance made by the viewer might rouse them. The association of sleep with running water seems to be deeply engrained – perhaps the sound of running water does indeed induce sleep; or at least running or trickling water induces tranquillity, calm and, in a hot climate (see Chapter 6 §2), a profound ease. Thirdly, the idea may be present that a nymph is easily frightened, rather like a doe: any kind of intemperance, arising in respect of her implicit 

f five  §1 3–§14 v

nudity, will not be tolerated, she will wake and she will vanish, leaving the intruder splashing in vain in the water, as in the conclusion of the vision in Petrarch’s sonnet 190, 14, “quand’io caddi ne l’acqua, ed ella sparve”|when I fell into the water, and she vanished|. At any rate the idea that the beholder will lust after the nymph became predominant as the epigram went its rounds. The innuendo of the single line to which the notion has become reduced in Cranach’s picture – Huius nympha loci: somnum ne rumpe: quiesco|I am the nymph of this place: do not disturb my sleep: [at the moment] I am quiet| – is patently sexual (in later versions a satyr is shown crouching in torment by the fountain). A still shorter variation is found in an engraving of 1510 (fig. 5.23), in which the nymph, reclining by the waterside, points ominously to the simple word QUIES: the viewer would be wise to have an eye to the hog beside her with an arrow in his backside. Otherwise the Huius nympha loci epigram is said to have been inspired by a statue of a nude, presumably antique, and it may well have been inscribed by a fountain in a humanist ‘sculpture garden’ in Rome. In one such, the pope’s own Belvedere, one could find an antique statue of a Bacchante reclining in a stupor after her revels that contemporaries preferred to interpret as a ‘Cleopatra’ – the Cleopatra that seduced Caesar “tra’ fiori e l’erba” (Petrarch, Trionfi, I, 90) – although in some of the epigrams to which this figure gave rise the notions embodied in the ‘nymph of the spring’ also occur.

13 For Pupila Augusta and Dürer’s drawing see Lamberto Vitali, ‘Un disegno di Alberto Dürer e una stampa ferrarese’, Bollettino d’Arte, xxxv, 1950, pp. 309–11; the Dürer drawings are Winkler nos. 663 and 153. Mark J. Zucker, ‘The Master of the “Sola-Busca Tarocchi” and the Rediscovery of Some Ferrarese Engravings of the Fifteenth Century’, Artibus et Historiae, vol. 18, no. 35, 1997 6§13, pp. 181–94, lists the print at p. 188. For ‘the nymph of the spring’ see Otto Kurz, ‘Huius nympha loci’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xvi, 1953, pp. 171ff., quoting Pope (whose translation is used here); Dieter Wuttke, ‘Zu Huius nympha loci’, Arcadia, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, iii, 1968, pp. 306ff.; Elizabeth B. ­MacDougall, ‘The Sleeping Nymph: Origins of a Humanist Fountain Type’, Art Bulletin, lvii, 1975, pp. 357ff. ; Barbara Baert, ‘The Sleeping Nymph Revisited: Ekphrasis, Genius Loci and Silence’ in The Figure of the Nymph in Early Modern Culture (Intersections 54), ed. Karl A.E. Enenkel and Anita Traninger, Leiden 2018, pp. 149–76. For Dürer’s early allegories see Der frühe Dürer, exh. cat. ed. Daniel Hess and Thomas Eser, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 2012, no. 151. For Cranach, see Max J. Friedländer and Jakob Rosenberg, Die Gemälde von Lucas Cranach, Basle 1979, no. 119; other versions nos. 120 (Thyssen Collection), 402, 403, 404; Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the time of Bellini, Dürer, and Titian, ed. Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1999–2000, no. 142.

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f five  carmen elegiacum bucolicum v

fig. 5.23 Giovanni Maria Pomedelli, Nymph reclining, 1510, woodcut, 150 × 145 mm

14 For the attribution to Campani see MacDougall 1975. Links to the discussion of ‘pleasure’ and epicureanism in Rome are explored in Chapter 6 §19ff. For the Byzantine conceit see Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators, Oxford 1971, p. 92 (he quotes an epigram by Manuel Melissenos). For running water, see Jean Starobinski, Die Geschichte der Melancholiebehandlung von den Anfängen bis 1900, Basle 1960, p. 23 (quoting Celsus). See also the variation on Petrarch cited in §1 above. For Pomedelli, see Hind 1938–48, V, p. 225; Millard Meiss, ‘Sleep in Venice’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cx, 1966, pp. 348–82, republished in The Painter’s Choice: Problems in the Interpretation of Renaissance Art, New York 1976, pp. 212–39, at p. 219; Gentili 1980, p. 69. On Roman collections of antiquities see Kathleen Wren Christian, Empire without End, London and New Haven 2010, pp. 134–42. For the Belvedere Cleopatra and verses and imagery associated with it see H. Brummer, The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere, Stockholm 1970, pp. 154–84. A serious of witty stanzas on the theme by Bernardo Accolti were composed in the first decade of the sixteenth century, in Accolti, Opera noua ... Zoe soneti, capitoli, stramoti & una comedia Recitata nelle solenne Noze del Magnificio Antonio Spannocchi, Venice 1515.

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f five  §14 v

fig. 5.24 Lorenzo Lotto, The Reign of Love, c. 1505, oil on panel, 42.9 × 33.7 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Samuel H. Kress Collection

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f five  carmen elegiacum bucolicum v

fig. 5.25 Venice, To the mother of all, woodcut from [Francesco Colonna], Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Venice 1499, fol. e1

3 15

It must have been difficult for Lorenzo Lotto not to conceive Petrarch’s Laura reclining beside the Sorga in terms once again of the nymph of the spring (fig. 5.24), of which the ‘nymph of the spring’ is in effect a classicizing resumé. Rather than a straightforward representation of the pastoral canzone 126 (see above Chapter 2 §8 and further Chapter 7 §9), we find the sleeping Laura accompanied by a satyr anticipating Cranach’s in its discomfiture, and a satyress, much more cheerful, perhaps meant to be a dryad accompanying and illustrating the naiad in Laura. It has even been supposed that Lotto borrowed the pose of his figure from Dürer’s nymph of the spring (fig. 5.20), though the sense there she is awakening is absent. The spectator remains transfixed (see further Chapter 7 §9).

3 16 Some such or another nymph of the spring, if not by Dürer then

by Mantegna, may then have been the model for the woodcut of a fountain (fig. 5.25) carved with the form of a reclining nude attended by satyrs at folio d8v in the unreformed Dominican friar Francesco Colonna’s magnificent Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, printed by the Aldine press in Venice in 1499. She

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f f i v e  § 1 5 – § 17 v

is inscribed ‘to the mother of all’ (panton tokadi), that is, Nature. The nude, whose breasts spout water, according to the text, represents female Nature, the satyr as it were male nature, or at least a catalyst. The two make a couple, as the two doves dipping their beaks into a common basin in the pediment illustrate. The satyr, however, is not leaping on the nymph: rather, as the text relates, he respectfully provides her with shade from the sun while she sleeps, by holding up a curtain or canvas and holding down a leafy branch. The respect paid to ‘the nymph of the spring’ is not only expressed in the dedicatory dative, “tokadi”|to the mother|but also internalized in the image. However, the text draws a comparison between her image and the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles, over which men were said to masturbate. So it is her role to excite the faun and make him spill his seed.

3 17

Beside Natura, the little satyrs bear snakes and a vase, derived probably from knowledge of the pagan rituals of Bacchus, though quite what they may stand for here can only be guessed – earth and water? insemination and germination? The satyrs being children also suggest the dimension of time, essential to growth. In one of the precedents for this image, the bronze relief ‘Martelli’ tondo of about 1470–80 in the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 5.26), in which Natura is represented with bared breast on one side and on the other a faun or possibly Pan or Silenus is the male principle, there is also a figure of an old woman in front: she again represents the dimension of time. Obviously some of the pastoral images already considered, such as Titian’s Three Ages of Man, deserve to be reconsidered in this light or with this

15 See Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, ‘Laura tra Polia e Berenice di Lorenzo Lotto’, Artibus et historiae, xiii, 1992, pp. 103–27, re-published as ‘A Valchiusa con Lotto’, in his collection Colori d’amore: ­Parole, gesti e carezze nella pittura veneziana del Cinquecento, Treviso 2008, pp. 54–75; and Rome 2011, no. 51. 16 Fundamental to the interpretation of the Hypnerotomachia image is Wolfgang Kemp, Natura: Ikonographische Studien zur Geschichte und Verbreitung einer Allegorie, Frankfurt 1970, though this appears to have been overlooked in English-language scholarship (even, most recently, Los Angeles and London 2018–19, no. 50. Kemp adduces the precedents of the frontispiece representing Nature to a Natural History by Pliny devised by the Neapolitan Luzio Fosforo and painted by Gasparo Romano (who came from Padua and might have had connections to Francesco Colonna in Venice), and of the Martelli Tondo (or Mirror). For this see further Frankfurt 1985–86, notably pp. 178ff. and no. 146; also no. 147 and Mantua 2008–09, II. 7, for other versions. The old woman bottom centre in the Martelli Tondo may reflect a medieval iconography of Nature as an old woman, in which the dimension of time was already implicit. The arguments for Francesco Colonna’s authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili seem to me convincing (and favoured by far the greater part of literary scholars), though it has been doubted. See the edition by Giovanni Pozzo and Lucia A. Ciapponi, Padua 1980. The work has been translated into English by Joscelyn Godwin, London 1999.

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f five  carmen elegiacum bucolicum v

fig. 5.26 Attributed to Caradosso, The Martelli Tondo, c. 1495–1500, cast bronze, inlaid with gold and silver, diameter 17.3 cm, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

emphasis: the Ages of Man are themselves the manifestation of Nature, the old man stands for decay and the babes for growth, and Titian’s couple stand for the sexuality and fertility that keeps it moving – again towards death. That Francesco Colonna’s nude should also be viewed, conversely, as a ‘pastoral’ manifestation is suggested in the text immediately preceding his description of the nude, for Poliphilo, as he makes his way towards the bath-house on which the ‘mother of all’ is represented, notes the beauty of the landscape, considerando il loco tanto amoeno commodissima statione et grato reducto di pastori, loco invitabondo certamente a cantare buccolice camoene considering the so pleasant place a very convenient stopping-point and welcome refuge of shepherds, a place certainly of a kind to invite the singing of bucolic eclogues.

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3 18 The paradox was more generally felt, that a “so pleasant place, very convenient katagoge and welcome refuge for shepherds” might at the same time be the scene for elegiac lamentation over the carnal nature of the human condition, and was exploited in literature. The opening of Sannazaro’s Arcadia, the scene it so famously sets of so pleasant a place, emerges in prosa 1 (see A6) as contrapuntal to the torment of Ergasto, the first among the author’s personae, his torment caused by the onset of desire. There was precedent for this opposition, for what one might call, in contrast to the Natureingang, the Naturentzug, once again in Petrarch – in his sonnet 310: Zephiro torna, e ’l bel tempo rimena, e i fiori et l’erbe, sua dolce famiglia, et garrir Progne et pianger Philomena, et primavera candida et vermiglia. Ridono i prati, e ’l ciel si rasserena, Giove s’allegra di mirar sua figlia; l’aria et l’acqua et la terra è d’amor piena; ogni animal d’amar si riconsiglia. Ma per me, lasso, tornano i più gravi sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge quella ch’al ciel se ne portò le chiavi; et cantar augelletti, et fiorir piagge, e ’n belle donne honeste atti soavi sono un deserto, et fere aspre et selvagge Zephyr returns, and brings back the fine weather, and the flowers and the grasses, his sweet family, and Progne to chatter and Philomena to weep, and spring in scarlet and white. The meadows smile, and the sky is blue, Jupiter rejoices to see his daughter; the air, the water and the earth are full of desire; every animal is inclining again to love. But for me, alas, there return the heaviest sighs, which from the depths of my heart she drags who took with her the keys to heaven; and the singing of birds, and the flowering of meadows, and the demure attitudes of beautiful women are a desert, and wild and savage beasts.

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As Sannazaro’s Arcadia continues the elegiac deepens, despite intervals of hope and celebration, concluding in the despairing ‘A la sampogna’, with its cry to lament, lament (“piange, piange”): although its exhortation stems from the death of the author’s beloved before her time, there is a wider implication that all things carnal will come to an end and are vanity. Carmen bucolicum elegiacum est. In the literature of the period in general, where a story is being told, it is the particular tragedy of the protagonists that is the object of lament, but the universalizing moralization is often implicit. Art, too, can tell a story, rather than emblematizing (as in the works discussed above) – there might be a good example in the two paintings attributed to Giovanni Agostino da Lodi representing the love of Pan for Syrinx (see figs. 6.18 and 6.19), which, it has been suggested, should have been accompanied by a lost third, in which Pan lamented the metamorphosed Syrinx – an image that would closely have resembled those of satyrs given above. Further below, Chapter 6 §24, there is discussion of an early passage in L’Arcadia in which a series of pictures conduce moralization, implicitly. In literature the story can be moralized not only implicitly but explicitly, and in an inbetween way presented as moral even if the moral is not specifically drawn: a leading example of the period, with explicitly moralizing metatexts, is Fernando de Rojas’s Celestina (1499, soon after developed and extended) – a play, declaredly a tragicomedy, though written to be read rather than performed – in which the death of the lover falling off the ladder by which he would have penetrated the beloved’s garden – an unfortunate accident – is, rather, a pointer that improper human desire is doomed, confirmed by the beloved’s hurling herself thereafter from a tower. 18 Petrarch’s poem was a favourite for setting to music, notably by Marenzio in a print of 1585 and Monteverdi in one of 1614. Another example of Naturentzug can be found in Book IX of Amadis de Gaule, Ch. 1, the lament of Darinel (see further Chapters 7 §8 and 9 §2); or in Niccolò da Correggio’s long description of the sunny natural world in contrast to the foul clouds that gather over “Cingul pastore infausto”|the unlucky shepherd Cingul| (Da Correggio/Tissoni Benvenuti no. 361). (Anónimo/) Fernando de Rojas, Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea: V centenario, 1499–1999, ed. Fernando Cantalapiedra Erostarbe, Kassel 2000. See further A Companion to Celestina, ed. Enrique Fernandez, Leiden and Boston 2017; on the relationship of the Celestina to ‘humanistic comedy’, see there Devid Paolini, ‘Theater without a Stage: Celestina and the Humanistic Comedy’, pp. 74–93; and on the classical and late medieval sources see Bienvenido Morros Mestres, ‘The Story of Hero and Leander: A Possible Unknown Source of Celestina’, pp. 141–58. Before her own Melibea laments Calisto’s death in these typically moralizing terms among others (see p. 154): “¡Oh la mas de las tristes, triste, tan poco tiempo posseido el plazer, tan presto venido el dolor!”|Oh the greatest of sadnesses sad, so little time pleasure is possessed, so quickly comes pain!|.

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3 19 The elegiac is intrinsic to life and so to pastoral; but particular resources were offered by the pastoral tradition, such as Theocritus’s Idyll I and Virgil’s Eclogues V and X, extending thereafter to Bion’s Adonis and Moschus’s lament for Bion after his death, as drawn upon for example by Clément Marot in his Eglogue I on the death of Louise de Savoie in 1531 – there is not really very much else about this poem that would justify calling it an eclogue – and later, for example, by Edmund Spenser in his lament for Philip Sidney, ‘Astrophel’, and conspicuously by John Milton in his ‘Lycidas’. Pastoral seems favoured, sometimes, precisely because it is consonant with elegiac sentiment. Sometimes it offers vignettes which correspond well to a visual representation in a work of art – one example already given is Severe at the end of Book I of the Driadeo (§3); there is Ergasto beneath a tree at the beginning of L’Arcadia (A6); one more occurs in a forgotten work by the forgotten Marco Rosiglia, Frottola di cento romiti, a book of tales, in which he depicts the ‘position’ of the disappointed faun in art (using the rimalmezzo and the sdrucciole we have seen absorbed into pastoral): D’indi discosti un pocho · trovammo un dio silvestre: che in fundo d’una alpestre · valle stava: dal mezo in giù mostrava · capra strana, l’altra parte era humana · cum fronde e fiori in testa: parlava in guisa mesta · et angosciosa cum una gloriosa · driadea. Io per me non potea · mirarla fixa in viso: tal cosa in paradiso · non ha Marte. Quivi finì sue arte · la natura. Ell’era de statura · grande ma non sfogiata, ben proportionata, · candidissima cosa mirabilissima · a vedere. Era un divin piacere · mirar sua chioma bionda, che per le spale abonda, · sparsa al vento, cum un filo d’argento · in cima acholta: senza pratica molta · non haresti comprexo se ’l era oro distexo · hover capilli. Io me stava a vederli · sbigotito: era la fronte un sito · d’avoglio senza vena. Li ciglij a mala pena · se mostravano. Li ochi ti chavavano · di peto. El naxo un chanaletto · paria de fin argento.

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La guanzia ad ogni vento · se movea: spesso la dipingea · vergognezza. Le labre per certezza · erano senza fallo finissimi chorale · orientale e perla naturale · era ogni dente. Nel peto veramente · me mancha la memoria: creder che altra gloria · e liziadria in paradiso sia · è un penser vano. Driedo l’archo e in mano · un bel dardo tenea: un drapizel vestea · a la nymphale – cossa celestiale, · cossa mirabile. Dicea el sathyr, chiamar ben miserabile: – Nympha, dipoi che li anni lassi involzere senza gustar tua zoventù mutabile, non vedi tu che ’l tempo ven per tolzere o macular al fine tua pulchritudine? Non ti lassar senza alchun fruto solzere. Intenerissi un pocho ormai l’anchudine che seri in pecto: o nympha, non mi occidere ch’a tempo in vano n’harai amaritudine. – Alhora la vidi ridere · e disse: – Pacientia. Datime ozi licentia; · da poi farò che di me voi · vi lodarete. – Et cum tal parolette · correndo fuzì via ché la sua compagnia · li andava inanti. Cum speranza e cum pianti restò quello. A little off to the side we found a country god,/ at the bottom of a rocky valley:/from the waist downwards he showed a strange goat,/ the other part was human, with leaves and flowers round his head:/ he was speaking in a manner sad and troubled/ with a glorious wood-nymph./ For my part I could not gaze at her in the face:/ Mars in Paradise does not possess such a creature./ Here nature achieved the limits of her art./ She was quite tall, but not excessively,/ well proportioned, [her skin] absolutely white/ a thing quite marvellous to look upon./ It was a divine pleasure to gaze at her blond hair,/ which tumbled over her shoulders, spreading in the wind,/ gathered at the top with a silver band:/without great experience you would not have known/ if it were spun gold or hair./ I stood staring at her amazed:/ her forehead was a site of ivory without flaw./ Her eyebrows were scarcely noticeable./ Her eyes drew

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you [or your heart] out of your chest./ Her nose appeared a channel of fine silver./ Her cheek moved with every wind:/ often shame painted it./ Her lips without doubt and without mistake/ were of the finest oriental coral,/ and all her teeth perfect pearls./ In my breast my memory failed:/ it is a vain thought to believe/ that there can be any other glory or prettiness./ She held her bow behind her and a fine arrow in her hand:/ a drape typical of a nymph clothed her/ – a heavenly creature, a marvellous creature./ The satyr was saying, in a cry truly miserable:/ ‘Nymph, since you let the years revolve/ without enjoying your mutable youth/ do you not see that time will come to take/ or spoil your beauty in the end?/ Do not let yourself plough without any fruit./Tenderize a little now the anvil/ that is in your breast: do not kill me:/ because in time you will have bitter regret for it without avail.’/Then I saw her laugh and say: ‘Be patient!/ Let me go today and later/ I will do things you will praise me for.’/ With such light words she fled at pace/ so as to catch up with her companions./ He was left in hope and in tears.

For all its sometimes awkward phrasing this vignette epitomizes what the satyr stood for, the essential terms of concupiscence.

3 20 Literary master of the elegiac was the Portuguese poet Bernardim Ribeiro, who, in the first of five eclogues that survive by him, ‘Persio e Fauno’, describes the poet as having been free and happy, then falling in love, then pining: Logo então começou ho seu gado enmagrecer; nunca mais dele curou, foi-se-le todo a perder, com o cuidado che cobrou. Then began straightaway/ his flock to diminish;/ he no longer cared for them,/ they were all to be lost,/ with the distress that took him over.

19 Clément Marot, Œuvres lyriques, ed. C.A. Mayer, London 1964, LXXXVII, pp. 321–37; Edmund Spenser, The Shepherd’s Calendar and Other Poems, ed. Philip Henderson (Everyman’s Library), London etc. 1932 (and reprints), pp. 270–76; The Works of John Milton, Wordsworth Poetry Library, Ware 1994, pp. 34–39. Opera del dignissimo doctore medico & poeta maestro Marcho Rosiglia da fuligno …, Venice 1515 (British Library C.40.b.45).

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The ‘pathetic fallacy’ comes precisely from the sources mentioned above in §19; there are many similar examples. His following eclogues, too, mine this rich vein of plainly expressed deep pathos. Ribeiro further wrote, in prose and verse, though with little, if any, reference to Sannazaro’s Arcadia, one of the most moving – and elegiacally extreme – texts ever written in the Renaissance, the untitled prose romance known from its incipit as Menina e Moça |Just a little girl|, first printed in Ferrara in 1554 but written in the later 1520s. The frame of the story, the written account of a woman never named which opens ‘When I was just a little girl they took me away a long distance from my father’s house’ (“Menina e moça me levaram de casa de meu pai para longes terras”), introduces an extraordinary alienation and longing, a dominant consciousness of lost pleasure and ineluctable pain, of a miserable ending to every enterprise or movement towards happiness, of futility and melancholy and of all the convolutions of melancholic meditation – present not only in the narration and in the speech of the characters but even in the description of the landscape – “estando eu aquì só, tão longe de toda a outre gente, e de mim ainda mais longe, donde não vejo senão serras de um cabo, que se não mudam nunca, e de outro águas do mar, que nunca estão quedas, onde cuidava eu já que esquecia à desaventura, poque ela e depos eu, a todo pder que ambas pudemos, não leixamos em mim nada em que pudesse nova mágoa ter lugar”|since I am here alone, so far from the other people, e still further from myself, where I see only mountains on one side, which never change, and on the other the waters of the sea, which never stay still, where I yet thought I should give the slip to my ill fortune, so that it and then I, with all the power that together we had, should not leave anything in me in which new pain could have a place|. The narrative itself, which is actually told to this anonymous amanuensis by another woman who she meets in the nearby woods, is begun after she has set off one day thither: E ainda bem não foi alto dia quando eu (parece que acinte) determinei ir-me para o pé deste monte, que de arvoredos grandes e verdes ervas e deleitosas sombras é cheio, por onde corre um pequeno ribeiro de água de todo o ano que, nas noites caladas, o rugido dele faz no mais alto deste monte um saudoso tom, que muitas vezes me tolhe o sono: onde outras muitas vou eu lavaar minhas lágrimas e onde muitas infinitas as torno a beber …. Mas eu, que sempre folguei de buscar meu dano, passei além e fui-me assentar de sob a espessa sombra de um verde freixo, que para baixo um pouco estava, e algumas das ramas estendia por cima de água, que ali fazia tamalavez de corrente e impedida de um penedo que no meio della estava, se partia para um e outro cabo, murmurando …. Estava de ali aprendendo tomar algum conforto no meu mal: que assim aquele penedo estava anojando aquela água

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que queria ir seu caminho, como minhas desaventuras no outro tempo soíam fazer a tudo o que eu mais queria, que já agora não quero nada …. Não tardou muito que, estando eu assim cuidando, sobre un verde ramo que por cima da água se estendia se veio pousar um rouxinol. E ele cada vez crescia mais em seus queixumes, que parecia, que come cansado, queria acabar, senão quando tornava como que começava. Então, triste da avezinha, que estando-se assim queixando, não sei como se caiu morta sobre aquela água. Caindo por entre as ramas, muitas folhas caíram também con ela. Pareceu aquilo sinal de pesar naquele arvoredo de caso tão desastrado …. O coracão me doeu tanto então em ver tão asinha morto quem dantes tão pouco havia que vira estar cantando, que não pude ter as lágrimas. And it was not yet noon when (as if purposefully) I decided to go to the foot of that mountain, which is full of great trees and green grasses and delicious shade, to the place where a small river of water runs all the year round. The roar of the river, in the silent nights, at the top of the mountain, makes a mournful tone, which often keeps me awake; and many other times I have gone there to wash my tears and countless times I have returned there to drink …. But I, whose pleasure it is always to seek out my own hurt, went there and sat beneath the thick shade of a green ash-tree, which stood a little way down, and extended some of its branches over the water, which every so often picked up a current there and was blocked by a rock which stood in the middle, so it divided to each side, gurgling …. I stood there learning from it to take some comfort in my pain, for just as the rock was obstructing the water that was trying to find its path, so my ill fortunes in former times had typically done for everything that I most wanted, while now I still want nothing …. It was not long, while I sat there thinking, before on a fresh branch which extended over the water I saw a nightingale perched. With each lament he grew louder and louder, seeming as if he were tired, as if he wanted to finish, except that he came again just as he had begun. And then, saddened by the little bird, which continued in this way with its laments, I do not know how but it fell down dead over the water. Falling down among the branches, it brought down a great many leaves with it. Such a terrible event seemed to be a sign of trouble in that wood …. My heart grieved so much in seeing the bird dead that so shortly before I had seen there singing, that I could not hold back my tears.

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The similarly anonymous, similarly grieving woman whom she meets is the first to tell her tale, and quite what her own sufferings were consequent upon is lost sight of in the book. But the emphasis upon the lot of woman is itself remarkable: indeed it is claimed in the third chapter that women suffer more than men, because they have fewer distractions and less freedom to roam. The narratrix contrasts the gay knight riding his fine horse with the delicate damsel behind her walls. Other aspects of this romance are discussed in Chapter 9 §3.

3 21 More is known about another great master of the elegiac, Garcilaso

de la Vega, of whose three ‘églogas’ two were written in about 1534 and the third in 1536, the year of his death aged twenty-nine. His haunting and famous first égloga consists of “el dulce lamentar”|the sweet lament|, or two laments, of Salicio for Galatea, who has fled him, of Nemoroso for Elisa, who has died. Nemoroso’s refrain “Salid sin duelo, lágrimas, corriendo”|Flow without compunction, tears, as you go| will surely recall Sannazaro’s “Piangi … piangi”|Weep, weep| and the concluding tone of L’Arcadia (Chapter 3 §15), while the many interwoven echoes of Virgil’s Eclogues – not least the shepherds ceasing their song with the sunset – create a further sounding board for its sad strings.

20 Obras completas de Bernardim Ribeiro, ed. Aquilino Ribeiro and M. Marques Braga, 2 vols., Lisbon 1971, I, pp. 1–24; II, pp. 2, 7–9. Critical literature is mentioned in Chapter 9 §3. 21 See www.fundaciongarcilasodelavega.com: for the work /garcilaso-de-la-vega/obra/eglogas/ egloga-1/; for criticism /en-relacion/expertos-garcilasistas; see also Gerhardt 1950, pp. 160–68; for the use of Virgil, Bayo 1970, pp. 85ff. Bayo also discusses other writers of eclogues, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Hernando de Acuña, and Fray Luis de León (though not Ribeiro’s eclogues).

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Chapter 6 2 SOME VERSIONS OF LANDSCAPE

f six  some versions of landscape v

3 1 Michelangelo, among others, regarded landscape painting as an exercise

in mere naturalism (“para enganar a vista exterior”|to deceive the external sight|), his point being (one may interpret) that landscape in a painting never could amount to more than landscape in nature; whatever its effects, they were replications of effects felt in nature: the gloom of a forest, the glare of a summer’s day, the frisson of a storm coming – the greater the contrivance, the greater the adherence to sensation. It is consistent with this that the enjoyment of landscape painting or the prowess of a landscape painter had little to do with pastoral: landscape was predominantly a matter of feature, prospect, light and weather, while pastoral was essentially concerned with feelings, with looking in than rather than looking out. Or the solitary lover commanded the trees to echo, not to impose their own message. Or the clear sweet fresh waters derived their attraction from their erotic imprint.

3 2 It has been supposed that Virgil inspired the Renaissance painters’ interest in landscape; it might have been more plausible to suggest Horace, or Lucretius. The basis of the supposition would be that he saw – or felt – landscape first; in fact Virgil, like other Roman poets, generally gives rare and meagre descriptions of landscape. In Odes I, ix, Horace evokes the snow on the mountain of Soracte; he has other beautiful beginnings (Odes I, ii, iv; IV, vii); he describes the pleasures of his farm in Epistolae I, xvi. Lucretius has many passages describing nature in many moods. In Virgil, there are beautiful descriptive passages not so much in the Eclogues but in the Georgics, for example I, 401–23, of the signs of summer, notably 404–09 describing a sparrowhawk and its prey. But these are not landscape descriptions, nor even of gardens. Otherwise there are passages by Virgil describing a setting (see Chapter 2 §15, noting the phrase ‘est locus’ …), but into these rather few instances attitudes anachronistic by nearly two thousand years should not be read. How can such isolated examples have inspired a desire for the representation of landscape towards which they were no practical help or relevance whatsoever? Which were nothing even to emulate? In any case it is rather to the operations of the seasons and their changes that the description of ‘landscape’ is directed (as in Theocritus, Idyll VII, 131–46, noted above, Chapter 3 §22, or in Eclogue III, 56–57, “quandoquidem … formosissimus annus”| when … the year is most beautiful|); it is the sound of the trees Theocritus evokes in the opening (Idyll I) of his Bucolics, not their sight; or it involves experience, emotions and associations that the painter (being fixed to naturalism) cannot translate: a famous (also in the Renaissance) evocation of life on the land may be found 

f six  §1–§2 v

1 Michelangelo speaks in Francisco de Holanda’s dialogues (Francisco de Holanda, Vier Gespräche über die Malerei …, ed. Joaquim de Vasconcellos, Vienna 1899, dialogue I, pp. 28–29): “Pintam en Frandes propriamente pera enganar a vista exterior, ou cousas que vos alegrem ou de que não possaes dizer mal, assi como santos e profetas. O seu pintar é trapos, maçonerias, verduras de campos, sombras d’arvores, e rios e pontes, a que chamam paisagens, e muitas feguras para cá e muitas para acoléa. E tudo ista inda que pareça bem a alguns olhos …”|In Flanders they paint just to deceive the external sight, such things as may make you happy and which you cannot complain of, as for example saints and prophets. They paint clothes and bricks, the vegetation of the fields, the shade of trees, and rivers and bridges, which they call landscapes, with many figures here and many there. And all this, though it pleases some persons …. |. This is quoted by Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art, Harmondsworth (1949) 1961, p. 40. Michelangelo’s beginning his list with saints and prophets might lead one to suppose that he had in mind works by such as Bosch and Patenier. For the function of landscape in Netherlandish painting see notably Reindert L. Falkenburg, Joachim Patinir: Landscape as an Image of the Pilgrimage of Life, Amsterdam 1988, and below, §6. For the context for Michaelangelo’s remarks, see James Hall, ‘Under siege: the aesthetics and politics of Michelangelo’s attack on Flemish painting’, Simiolus, vol. 42, no. 1/2, 2020, pp. 45–88. An important document of attitudes towards landscape in the sixteenth century is Erasmus’s Convivium religiosum, discussed in Paul Holberton, ‘“Honesta voluptas”: The Renaissance justification for the enjoyment of the natural world’, in Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger and Leopoldine Prosperetti, edd., Green Worlds in Early Modern Italy: Art and the Verdant Earth, Amsterdam 2019, pp. 69–86. For a recent survey of the generally consistent sixteenth-century Italian view of landscape see Simone Ferrari, ‘Temi nordici nel paesaggio veneziano nel Cinquecento, in de Fuccia and Brouard 2012, pp. 123–34. Compare also Edward Norgate, Miniatura, ed. Martin Hardie, Oxford 1919, p. 51; ed. Jeffrey M. Muller and Jim Murrell, New Haven and London 1997, p. 87: “Remenbring ever that Lanscape is nothing but Deceptive visions, a kind of cousning or cheating your owne Eyes, by our owne consent and assistance, and by a plot of your owne contriving ...”. He calls its deception “honest and innocent” (p. 83) presumably because it is neither iconodule nor pagan – content-free. His discussion of landscape is on pp. 82–89. On landscape in general see, for example, Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford History of Art), Oxford 1999, with a bibliography both general and specific to period (but only in English); for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see the useful summary by Alexander Wied, ‘Zur Geschichte der Europäischen Landschaftsmalerei’, in Die Flämische Landschaft 1520–1700, exh. cat. ed. Alexander Wied, Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Essen, and Kunst­historisches Museum, Vienna, 2003– 04, pp. 12–21, with bibliography, and other essays in this cata­logue; De uitvinding van het landschap: Van Patinir tot Rubens, 1520–1650, exh. cat., Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, 2004; Patrizia Cavazzini, ‘Towards the Pure Landscape’, in The Genius of Rome, 1592–1623, exh. cat. ed. Beverly Louise Brown, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2001; Götz Pochat, Figur und Landschaft: Eine historische Interpretation der Landschaftsmalerei von der Antike bis zur Renaissance, Berlin 1973. It is not my purpose here to give a history of landscape: this discussion is centred on landscape as ‘pastoral’, attempting to find a better way to see it and describe it. As foreshadowed in Chapter 1 §6 and the note thereto, quoting Schmidt 1987, p. 30, I wish chiefly to demolish false ideas, in order that some better-based views may emerge.

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in Virgil’s Georgics (II, 467–74), but it is more evocation than ecphrasis, and unpaintable: at secura quies et nescia fallere vita, dives opum variarum, at latis otia fundis (speluncae vivique lacus et frigida Tempe mugitusque boum mollesque sub arbore somni) non absunt; illic saltus ac lustra ferarum, et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus, sacra deum sanctique patres; extrema per illos Iustitia excedens terris vestigia fecit But unworried rest and a life that does not fail to provide, rich in diversity of produce, but ease in wide fields (caves and living lakes and cool Tempe and the lowing herd and soft slumbers beneath a tree) is not lacking; there are hollows and the dens of beasts and a youth that expects to work and is used to little, the rites of the gods and venerable parents; among them was the last place Justice left her footprints on departing the earth.

Elsewhere in the poem Virgil actually dismisses the enjoyment of landscape, claiming that the farmer should lay out his vines neatly in order to improve their yield and (II, 285): non animum modo uti pascat prospectus inanem not so that the prospect should feed the empty mind

or he says (II, 412–13): … laudato ingentia rura exiguum colito praise great country; cultivate small country.

Interest in landscape in art – which (I say without meaning to neglect earlier tradition, or such magnificent depictions of paradisiacal foliage and housing as those of the Ummayid mosaics in the Great Mosque in Damascus) developed from the late medieval period, became established as an interest in the early sixteenth century, exploded in the early seventeenth century, and was ubiquitous thereafter – was intrinsically a directly visual and unreferentially sensual one. Gilding under the paint in The Flight into Egypt in the predella of Gentile da Fabriano’s Strozzi Altarpiece (May 1423) gives a special effect of sunlight entirely for the delight of the eye, but unadvertised

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and unnoted – unconceived of – by commentators before the late twentieth century. The silhouettes of bare trees on the hill rising behind the donors attending the Nativity in Hugo van der Goes’s Portinari Altarpiece (c. 1478) brilliantly convey wintriness, but are entirely auxiliary to the story, the Nativity – as was universally the case for early Netherlandish landscapes. Poets might describe the sun rising or bare trees, but not for and as themselves (Shakespeare’s “ruined choirs” of Sonnet lxxiii are metaphorical) before, at best, Du Bartas’s Sepmaine or, rather, Thomson’s Seasons; even the language of Picturesque description leans on a few passages in Milton like a crutch, and Gilpin, of course, described landscape by describing landscape as a pictorial composition; fine words were vain beside the natural phenomenon itself. A poet not known for lack of faith in his own powers, Pietro Aretino, looking out one day in Venice on a particularly fine sunset, called instead for a painter, Titian, to capture it. The earliest attempt I know to associate the ability of artists to replicate effects of nature with literary precedent is the text by Hendrik de Roij attached to the first print of Abraham Bloemaert’s series of ‘Large Landscapes’ of 1614, beginning “o nimium felix”|too happy|– patently evoking Georgics II, 458 – and “et vera sorte beatus!”|and blessed with true fortune| – patently evoking Epode II, 1) – followed a list of the evils the peasants are missing (for which see Chapter 12 §4ff.); and here the fit is extremely bad: the nature of peasant life in them has very little to do with the purpose or enjoyment of the ‘picturesque’ landscapes. In general, in life, the countryside was enjoyed, if enjoyed at all, for its “otia” (see further Chapter 12, ‘Being Rural’), but such “otia” can be represented only by or at least with figures. Conversely, only artists could adequately record phenomena of weather, fauna or flora (see further Chapter 17 §6) and in the Renaissance it was for this ability, rather for any other aspect or association, that their landscapes earned praise. In literature, by contrast, the enjoyment of nature was overwhelmingly a sensory experience, often primarily erotic, whether the arousal of the Natureingang or the sensual dominion exerted by the noonday sun – a recurrent motif in Italian poetry – or the sirens that lurked by water or by wood: even much later Marcel Proust, walking out du côté du chez Swann, found that “Parfois à l’exaltation que me donnait la solitude, s’en ajoutait une autre que je ne savais pas en départager nettement, causée par le desir de voir surgir devant moi une paysanne, que je pourrais serrer dans mes bras”|Sometimes there was added to the exaltation that solitude gave me another that I could not definitely separate from it, caused by my desire to see appear in front of me a peasant girl, whom I could close in my arms| – so very long-lasting was the pastourelle expectation. Gardens, too, were there for comfort and delight,

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and even the practical side of it, the husbandry or the hunting, was directed towards the stomach – fruits, sweets, meat – or conviviality. This colours even the apparently objective landscape (as prospect), or the enumerative landscape, so to describe the way in which Michelangelo and others read it – as an inventory of features (as Vitruvius and Pliny had done before them). This kind of landscape, enumerative or ‘prospect’ landscape, may add up to something certainly, as it did for Petrarch on Mont Ventoux (Epistulae familiares, IV, i), namely the creation of the world and its wonders by God. This might be insisted upon by theologians or others implicitly or explicitly following Paul, Romans 1: 20; and they believed, too, that it was all created for the use and benefit of mankind (see further below, §16–17).

3 3 First another paragraph, in this tricky and shifting subject, to insist that

landscape does not ‘come out of ’ poetry, and most emphatically not pastoral poetry. Pastoral is set in landscape but – contrary to an extraordinarily widely held modern belief – the representation of landscape is not a concern of its poets. The description of a crafted object and its imagery is an established feature of pastoral; but it is not landscape that is represented in the object (there is no interest in landscape even in the long and elaborate ecphrasis of a series of paintings given by Damon in Book I, Partie XII, of Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée). It is true that Sannazaro describes some landscapes painted on the temple of Pan in the Arcadia, prosa III, but he soon moves on: “Ma quel che più intentamente mi piacque di mirare …|But what it pleased me more intently to regard …|. Conversely, the great specialist landscape painter Claude Lorrain was exalted by his contemporaries as a painter of morning freshness or haunted evenings; in his epitaph he was said to be one qui ipsos orientis et occidentis solis radios in campestribus mirifice ­pingendis effinxit who in marvellously painting the countryside counterfeited the rays themselves of the rising and setting sun

and the insistence on reproducing exactly emerges more fully in Sandrart’s description of their ‘student days’ out in the Campagna: … lage vor Tags biß in die Nacht im Felde, damit er die Tagröhte, der Sonnen Aufund Nidergang neben den Abendstunden recht natürlich zu bilden erlernete …. also mahlte hingegen er nur in kleinem Format, was von dem zweyten Grund am weitesten entlegen, nach dem Horizont verlierend gegen den Himmel auf, darinn er ein Meister war … Unter andern hat er mir überlaßen eine Morgenstund, darinnen

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2 See Clark 1961 (ch. 4, 2nd paragraph): “Two poets of antiquity, Ovid and Virgil, furnished the imaginations of the Renaissance artists … but Virgil was the inspiration of landscape”. This comes down to the idea of the Golden Age – which Virgil’s Eclogues represent for him (this is not a very good reading) – which he makes to underlie the “enchantment” of Giorgione’s landscape painting, though not Titian’s, who lacks “tenderness”(on which see further §11 below). Of course, the assumption that descriptions precede depictions is a traditional one, to be found again, for instance, in Norgate’s aetiology of landscape, mentioned in §3 below. The idea that painters drew their inspiration from classical poetry seems to have arisen in the later eighteenth century; one finds, for instance, a remark from a sale catalogue of 1807 regarding Poussin’s ‘Morning’ and ‘Evening’ (see below, Chapter 10 §4, figs. 10.6 and 10.7): “Indeed they are truly Virgilian, and evidently show the Painter’s intimacy with that Divine Poet; whose Bucolics, these pictures prove him to have most successfully studied” (see Timothy Standring, ‘A pastoral scene replaced among Nicolas Poussin’s early works’, in Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Rosenberg : Peintures et dessins en France et en Italie, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles, ed. Anna Ottani Cavina et al., Paris 2001, pp. 279– 83, at p. 280). This resembles ideas about Poussin found in Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Élémens de perspective pratique, à l’usage des artistes, suivis de réflexions et conseils à un élève sur la peinture, et particulièrement sur le genre de paysage, Paris, An VIII (1799–1800), pp. 377–79 and 483–89, ‘Du Paysage Pastoral’. Keith Christiansen, Gentile da Fabriano, London 1982, p. 33. Friedrich Winkler, Das Werk des Hugo van der Goes, Berlin 1924, p. 25, etc. On the appreciation and purpose of Netherlandish landscapes see Falkenburg 1988, introduction, pp. 1–8. On the language of the picturesque see Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760–1800, Aldershot 1990, pp. 12–13. For Bloemaert’s ‘Large Landscapes’, no. 1, see Marcel Röthlisberger and Marten Jan Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and his Sons: Paintings and Prints, 2 vols., Doornspijk 1993, no. 230. For example, in Castiglione’s Libro del Cortigiano/Bonora, I, xlix, the speaker remarks that, though one may remember what one sees, one cannot communicate it except by art. On the noonday sun see Perella 1979. Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, edn Bibliothèque de la Pleiade, édition en une volume, Paris 1999, ‘Combray, II’, p. 132. Letter to Titian, May 1544; notice in Jacob Burckhardt, trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, II, iii, ‘The Discovery of Natural Beauty’, New York etc. (Harper Torchback edn) 1958, p. 302; Lettere sull’arte di Pietro Aretino, ed. Ettore Camesasca, 3 vols., Milan 1957, II, pp. 16–18 (no. clxxix). In Paolo Giovio, Scritti d’arte: lessico ed ecfrasi, ed. Sonia Maffei, Pisa 1999, on the passage in ‘Raphaelis Urbinatis vita’, pp. 260–62, on landscape “parerga” (p. 272), Maffei comments (p. 279) that enumeration was generally the humanist approach, because it followed classical precedent for the description of painted landscapes (Pliny and Vitruvius). On Paul, Romans, 1: 20, and the argument from nature in general see, for example, Paul Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, New Haven and London 1995, ch. 2, ‘The Bible of Nature’; and more below, §16–17.

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eigentlich zu erkennen, wie die Sonne etwan zwey Stund über dem Horizont aufsteigend die neblichte Luft vertreibet und der Thau über dem Waßer schwebend in der Warheit sich verwunderlich hinein verlieret, die Sonne spielet nach Proportion über die Gründe herein, daß sie fast warhaft dem Leben gleich Graß, Gesträuß und Bäume beleuchtet und alles in natürlichen Licht und Schatten samt der reflexion perfect zeiget, also gleichsam die distanz eines jeden nach proportion abzumessen und correct wie in dem Leben selbst zu finden ist …. Also auch in einem anderen Stuck die Abendstund vor der Sonnen Untergang, welche über die Berge röhtlich hinab ziehet, worbey die hitzige rohte Trückene am Himmel und die Wärme, wie in heißen Sommertägen geschicht, an dem Gebürg, Bäumen und Thälern ganz verwunderlich und natürlich zu sehen …. noch ein drittes … da er vernünftig die zweyte Nachmittagsstund ausgebildet, wie das Vieh wieder durch einen Bach ausgetrieben wird in eine schöne Landschaft mit Bäumen, Ruinen und vielfältiger Erweiterung im Feld und Gebürg, alles der wahren Natur zum ähnlichsten … he lay in the fields before the break of day and until night in order to represent very exactly the red morning sky, sunrise and sunset and the evening hours …. [Claude] on the other hand, only painted, on a small scale, the view from the middle to the greatest distance, fading away towards the horizon and the sky, in which he was a master … he gave me a morning piece in which one can truly recognize how the sun, risen for some two hours above the horizon, drives away the misty air and how the dew floating upon the water really mingles astonishingly with it; the sun plays over the ground in all parts and lights up the grass, bushes and trees almost as in life, showing everything in natural light and shadow, together with the reflection, so that at the same time the distance of each object can be measured in proportion and found correct, as in life itself … in another piece, the evening hour before the setting of the sun, which is shown descending in reddish tints over the mountains, so that the red, hot, suffocating atmosphere and the warmth occurring on hot summer days are seen on the mountains, trees and valleys quite astonishingly and naturally … yet a third one, where he represented clearly the second hour of the afternoon, and how the cattle are driven again through a brook into a beautiful landscape with trees, ruins and plentiful unfolding of fields and mountains, all very similar to real nature.

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f six  §3–§4 v

Here there is no hint of pastoral poetry, and the reason why not is also clear: the focus is on naturalism. Claude and Poussin turned directly to the Roman Campagna for the ideation of their landscapes, for all that they might turn to Ovid for the figures to put in them. It is modern scholars, and these scholars alone, who have made the general, always unspecific, connection between pastoral (or ‘Arcadia’) and the development of landscape painting; there is no suggestion of it either in the paintings or in the sources. In the only account of its kind from the period that we have, Edward Norgate’s in his Miniatura (the latest redaction of which must date to just before 1650), the ‘invention’ of landscape came about because a painter took up his brush and started depicting the scenes an enthusiastic traveller narrated to him: this account, though unlikely – it is a kind of enactment of the Plinian/Vitruvian enumeration – nevertheless chimes perfectly with Mannerist landscape, and was inspired perhaps by the appearance of Bruegel’s amazing series of landscape prints (notably the ‘Great Landscapes’ series), which Norgate knew; but there is absolutely no hint of pastoral in it. The motivation was, rather, wonder – felt in particular by travellers (see below, Chapter 17 §8). Not least, ‘pastoral’ cannot cover the variety of landscape; it is only a particular kind of wellprovided summer landscape with people in it. Of course, once naturalistic landscape has become established as an artistic activity, it becomes possible to introduce signifiers to make the link to pastoral. These are discussed notably in Chapter 15 §13, 18.

3 4 Secondly, it is frequently insisted that certain landscape painters, Claude in particular, inevitably make the association to pastoral because what they depict is a locus amoenus. This term was taken up from the vocabulary of late classical rhetoric by Ernst Robert Curtius in 1942. He used it to designate the Motivkreis or ‘motif cycle’ that recurred in later classical and medieval descriptions of nature or natural phenomena; their motifs – grove, spring, hedge, flowers; caves, living lakes, cool Tempe – turn out unsurprisingly to have been taken over or developed from other literature. Curtius distinguished several kinds and a few contexts for the ‘topic’ he had identified, but primarily his concern was its critical validity. The question 3 For d’Urfé see Chapter 9 §32. Joachim von Sandrarts Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925, XXIII, cclxv, pp. 208–10; with small modifications as translated by Marcel Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain: The Paintings, London and New Haven 1961, pp. 47–50. For Bruegel’s prints, mentioned by Norgate, see, for example, Wied in Vienna 2003–04, pp. 74ff.

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that, explicitly, he sought to answer was why medieval (and later) natural description was so far from being based on nature, on observable reality, and his answer was that, from Ovid onwards, poetry had been dominated by rhetoric, that nature description stemmed not from observation but from the reworking of a rhetorical repertoire. Curtius was surely entirely correct that the locus amoenus Motivkreis, which much less correctly he equates with pastoral, indeed also with ‘Arcadia’, was a branch of ekphrasis, of that general part of rhetoric concerned with description; but he does not properly consider – it goes against his point – the context in which locus amoenus material might be brought to bear. Why, in what context, according to what decorum might poets reproduce an inherited landscape or garden description? Before the eighteenth century, as already noted, such ecphrasis was not a literary genre in its own right – even though imaginary gardens or landscapes are known from Homer and ever onwards. Indeed Curtius recognizes that a locus amoenus setting was often a “Rahmen”|frame| for the erotic; in the Middle Ages this association was perhaps predominant (he quotes a medieval lexicon: “amoena loca dicta: quod amorem praestant”|places called amoenus: because they provide for amor|), but this he notes almost in passing; and he expressly distinguishes the locus amoenus from the Natureingang (for which see Chapter 2 §3). The problem is that he defined the locus amoenus no more strictly than as a list of motifs, beginning with those appearing in the garden of Homer’s Alcinoüs, King of the Phaeaecians, and binding in others progressively, including necessarily pastoral settings, and infinitely, without exclusion: so there is no way out of the locus amoenus if you are in nature at all. A dimension he did not consider was that enumerating motifs was a standard humanist approach to landscape, following classical precedent – otherwise he would have seen its awkward consequences for the theory of his term. Curtius’s opposition to what he regarded as a ‘rhetorical’ response was Virgil, who had “felt poetically”|“poetisch empfunden”|, so he says (otherwise he says he does not wish to discuss him).Thus Virgil, only Virgil, had responded to nature directly, while other writers were limed in their locus amoenus. In one sense he and Clark shared their premises. Pictura, however, is not like poesis (Horace never said it was); it is not rhetorical, even if it would wish to be; at best the landscape depicted can suit the subject, according to decorum. To associate the locus amoenus with Claude – Claude, who eschews any kind of eroticism in his figuration, Claude, who is the first artist in Western history stated unequivocally and at length and by an eyewitness to have made studies after nature (though others certainly had done so before him), that Claude who was thereafter regarded by critics as the

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master of naturalism (often ‘mere’ naturalism) in landscape – is especially absurd. Claude, surely everything shows this, was concerned just like many other artists with naturalism or, in Michelangelo’s or Norgate’s terms, “deception” – the lack of which in literature was the very phenomenon that Curtius set out to explain with the notion of locus amoenus.

3 5

The ancient and medieval grammarians could not themselves make a distinction between a locus amoenus and a pleasant aspect of nature described because for them all writing was rhetorical. Consider the place of nature description in the discussion of style and genres by Hermogenes of Tarsus, writing in the late second century AD – the outstanding rhetorical theorist of his time, indeed the last significant rhetorician of antiquity and acknowledged to have been lastingly influential. His system relates style and ‘method’ (μέθοδος) to ‘idea’ (ἔννοια; often translated as ‘thought’ or ‘content’): so his discussion of ‘sweetness’ (γλυκύτης) of style – into which he introduces the description of nature and love, one after the other – depends on the sweetness intrinsic to the matter. It follows discussion of ‘simplicity’ (ἀφέλεια) and is followed by that of ‘subtlety’ and ‘modesty’, all conceived primarily as the tones a speaker may strike in order to convey a good impression; he uses examples, however, from written texts, citing Xenophon, for instance, as an author whose style in general is simple. When it comes to sweetness his citations are in the first instance narrative

4 Curtius (1942) 1975; reprised in Curtius 1963, ch. X. At ch. X {6}, p. 202, Curtius states unequivocally that the locus amoenus may lead without a break into the Hain (grove) or Mischwald (boschi). See a preliminary discussion of the term ‘locus amoenus’ in Chapters 1 §6n and 2 §15. Papias’s lexicon is quoted Curtius 1975, p. 203 note 3. Curtius refers to the “Lagerungsmotiv” in Curtius 1975, p. 198. I do not find it an appropriate term in the present context because it refers to an action (or inaction – rest) rather than to a kind of place; see below §18. Making an exception of Virgil: “Der ‘ideale’ oder idealisierte ‘Mischwald’ war noch bei Virgil poetisch empfunden …. Schon bei Ovid jedoch wird die Poesie von der Rhetorick beherrscht” (Curtius 1963, p. 201). It is not clear why Curtius should have found Virgil’s descriptions of the natural world ‘idealized’, except that he was thinking of the Eclogues and was influenced by the view of such as Snell (see Chapter 1 §6) regarding ‘Arcadia’. A significant follower of Curtius is Petra Maisak, Arkadien: Genese und Typologie eines idyllischen Wunschwelt, Bern 1981 (see pp. 18ff. and passim), since she defines the pastoral by the locus amoenus. See also Bryan Loughrey, ed., The Pastoral Mode: A Casebook, London and Basingstoke 1984, ‘Glossary’, p. 25, locus amoenus: “A set-piece description of an ideal landscape which often forms the backdrop for romantic encounters”.

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(“Ἔννοιαι δὲ γλυκεῖαί τε καὶ ἡδονὴν ἔχουσαι μάλιστα μὲν πᾶσαι αἱ μυθικαί”| Ideas that are sweet and containing pleasure are especially all mythical ones|): the telling of an untrue story is sweet; so also stories that are like myths, and again stories in Herodotus that are like myths but a little more believable. Then he says: Ἕτερoν δὲ παρὰ ταῦτα εἶδός ἐστιν ἡδονὴν ἔχων καὶ γλυκύτητα ἐννοιῶν ... πάντα, ὅσα ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἡδέα, λεγω δὲ τῇ ὂψει ἢ ἁφῇ ἢ γεύσει ἢ τινι ἂλλῃ ἀπολαύσει, ταῦτα καὶ λεγόμενα ἡδονὴν ποιεῖ. ἀλλ᾽αἵ μέν εἰσιν αἰσχραὶ τῶν κατὰ ἀπόλαυσιν ἡδονῶν, αἷ δ᾽οὐ τοιαῦται. καὶ τὰς μὲν οὐκ αἰσχρὰς ἐστιν ἁπλῶς ἐκφράζειν, οἷον κάλλος χωρίου καὶ φυτείας διαφόρους και ῥευμάτων ποικιλίας καὶ ὃσα τοιαῦτα. ταῦτα γὰρ καὶ τῃ ὀψει προσβάλλει ἡδονὴν ὁρώμενα καὶ τῇ ἀκοῇ, ὅτε ἐξαγγέλλει τις, ὥσπερ ἡ Σαπφὼ «ἀμφὶ δὲ ὕδωρ ψυχρὸν κελαδεῖ δι᾽ὔσδων μαλίνων» καὶ «αἰθυσσομένων δὲ φύλλων κῶμα καταρρεῖ» καὶ ὅσα πρὸ τούτων τε καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα εἴρηται. τοιοῦτόν ἐστι καὶ τὸ παρὰ τῷ Πλάτωνι ἐν Φαίδρῳ, οἷον «νὴ τὴν Ἣραν, καλή γε ἡ καταγωγή. ἥ τε γὰρ πλάτανος αὓτη μάλα αμφιλαφής τε καὶ ὑψηλή» καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. ταῦτα μὲν οὕτως ἄν τις ἐκφράζων ἡδονὴν ποιοίη καὶ γλυκύτητα. ὅσαι δέ εἰσιν αἰσχραὶ τῶν κατὰ τὰς ἀπολαύσεις ἡδονῶν, ἐοικυῖαν ἔχουσιν αὐταῖς καὶ τὴν διὰ τῆς ἀκοῆς τέρψιν καὶ γλυκύτητα. οῖς γὰρ ἕκαστος χαίρει πραττομένοις, ἐκείνοις οὗτος καὶ λεγομένοις ἡσθήσεται .... καθόλου τε πᾶσαι αἱ ἐρωτικαὶ ἔννοιαι γλυκεῖαι εἰσιν, ἐμπίπτουσι δὲ αὗται σχεδὸν ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς προειρημένοις κατ᾽ἔννοιαν γλυκύτητος εἴδεσι καὶ εἰσὶν αὐτῶν ὥσπερ μέρη.

Besides these there is another kind of idea that gives pleasure and produces sweetness .... Everything that is pleasing to our senses, that is, to the sight or to the touch or to the taste or to any other enjoyment, also gives pleasure when spoken of. Of those enjoyable ideas there are some that are obscene, others not so. Those that are not so it is [a matter of] simply describing [‘ecphrasing’], such as the beauty of a terrain and the diversity of the flora and the prettiness of the streams and other such things: for these things bring pleasure to the sight when they are seen and to the ear when they are reported, as Sappho does: ‘Beside cool water through the apple branches there sounds’ ... and ‘While the leaves are shaken, sleep descends’ and so on both before and after these lines. Of the same kind is the passage in Plato’s Phaedrus: ‘By Hera, this is a beautiful place to settle. For the plane tree itself has a full canopy and is tall.’ To describe these things in this way would produce pleasure and sweetness. Ideas that are obscene in their enjoyment bear resemblance to those enjoyments and [bring] pleasure and sweetness in the hearing, for whatever each man

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enjoys being enacted this man will like being described .... Generally all sexual ideas are sweet, and they occur in almost all the things with an idea of sweetness that we have discussed and are in effect divisions of them.

It is worth quoting more fully the well-known passage in the Phaedrus (230b) to which Hermogenes refers. Socrates remarks to Phaedrus that he has brought him to a lovely spot: νὴ τὴν Ἣραν, καλή γε ἡ καταγωγή. ἥ τε γὰρ πλάτανος αὕτη μάλ᾽ἀμφιλαφής τε καὶ ὑψηλή, τοῦ τε ἄγνου τὸ ὕψος καὶ τὸ σύσκιον πάγκαλον, καὶ ὡς ἀκμὴν ἔχει τῆς ἂνθης, ὡς ἂν εὐωδέστατον παρέχοι τὸν τόπον­.­ ἥ τε αὖ πηγὴ χαριεστάτη ὑπὸ τῆς πλατάνου ῥεῖ μάλα ψυχροῦ ὕδατος, ὥστε γε τῷ ποδὶ τεκμήρασθαι. Νυμφῶν τέ τινων καὶ Ἀχελῴου ἱερὸν ἀπὸ τῶν κορῶν τε καὶ αγαλμάτων ἔοικεν εἶναι. εἰ δ᾽αῦ βούλει, τὸ εὔπνουν τοῦ τόπου ὡς ἀγαπητὸν καὶ σφόδρα ἡδύ. θερινόν τε καὶ λιγυρὸν ὑπηχεῖ τῷ τῶν τεττίγων χορῷ. πάντων δὲ κομψότατον τὸ τῆς πόας, ὅτι ἐν ἠρέμα προσάντει ἱκανὴ πέφυκε κατακλινέντι τὴν κεφαλὴν παγκάλως ἔχειν.

By Hera, this is a beautiful place to settle. For this plane-tree has a full canopy and is tall, and the height of the maiden branches and the shade it casts is wonderful, and as it is in full flower it makes the spot extremely sweet-smelling; and the stream under the plane is also most pleasant, of very cool water – taking its temperature with my foot. It must be sacred to nymphs and to Achelous, to judge from the votive dolls and statuettes. The airiness of the place is as favoured as you could wish and exceedingly pleasant: it echoes with the shrill summer chorus of the crickets. But the best thing of all is the grass, because its gentle slope is perfectly adjusted for the reclining head.

I have translated the keyword of this passage, katagoge, as ‘place to settle’; that might also be ‘place to come down to’ or even ‘be beached down to’ (of a ship) or ‘driven down to’ – of goats, imaginably; others have translated it as “restingplace” or “havre”|harbour, haven|. Clearly there is no difference between this ecphrasis (‘ecphrasis’ is Hermogenes’s ordinary word for ‘description’) in what would presumably be called a locus amoenus by those who use the term and nature (or landscape) as it is (or as we perceive it); and as for the connotation that the term locus amoenus has taken on (whatever exactly that may be deemed to be), Socrates agrees with Phaedrus immediately afterwards that he is “ἀτοπώτατος”|quite out of place| because he is a townsman who likes company and books, the study of which the trees “οὐκ ἐθέλει”|are not willing| to provide (Hermogenes finds this figure particularly sweet): he has

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no preconceptions except to dislike landscape, he is a foreigner in it – so this is his raw experience (reported). Sappho’s fragmentary description of a bower (it might be the wind that sounds through the trees: the passage is not otherwise corroborated) anticipates the terms of Virgil’s Sabine delight, and is no less ‘poetically felt’ and equally unmediatedly sensual. ‘Katagogic’ might be a useful neutral term to describe a place where indifferently Socrates or Tityrus or a lover might recline, in pastoral or not; that may be erotic or parodic or just comfortable; that carries no intrinsic inflection. Another equivalent term might be Ruheplatz (literally ‘quietness place’), a term used by Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn in his treatise on painting of 1762 to differentiate such a landscape from others that might be grand, a vista, sublime etc.

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Accordingly we find that in Renaissance Italy ‘sweetness’ is very much a quality associated with landscape, for example Alberti in the De re aedificatoria, “Hilarescimus maiorem in modum animis, cum pictas videmus amoenitates regionum et portus et piscationes et venationes et natationes et agrestium ludos et florida et frondosa”| We are gladdened still more in our spirits when we see the beauties of regions and harbours and fishing and hunting and swimming and the sports of rustics and flora and foliage|. We find such enjoyment being taken in landscape more frequently in the sixteenth century, and may perhaps be epitomized in the quite often quoted remark by Paolo Pino in his short treatise on painting of 1548 that … gli oltramontani … fingono i paesi abitati da loro, i quali per quella lor selvatichezza si rendono gratissimi. Ma noi italiani siamo nel giardino del mondo, cosa più dilettevole da vedere che da fingere … northerners represent the countrysides in which they live, which, with the wildness they have, turn out very pleasant. But we Italians are in the garden of the world, something more delightful to look upon than to paint.

5 Hermogenis opera, ed. Hugo Rabe (Rhetores Graeci VI), Leipzig 1913; citations 339, 330, 331–32; in making my translation I have used both Cecil W. Wooten, Hermogenes On Types of Style, Chapel Hill and London 1987, and Michel Patillon, Hermogene, L’Art rhétorique, Paris 1997, in French. Jowett’s translation of the Phaedrus passage (Benjamin Jowett, Dialogues of Plato, III, edn Oxford 1953, p. 136) expands the Greek: “By Hera, a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents”. See also Alcée Sapho [Alcaeus, Sappho], ed. Théodore Reinach, Paris 1989, Sappho, I, no. 4. Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, Betrachtungen über die Mahlerei, Leipzig 1762, p. 351.

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f six  §5–§6 v

If they do not even describe it, can it be a locus amoenus? Again, Aretino found, among other qualities, in Titian’s Death of St Peter Martyr (which he called “la più bella cosa in Italia”; destroyed by fire in 1867) “che paese, raccolto ne la semplicità del suo naturale”| What a landscape, captured in the simplicity of its naturalness!|– enjoying it as being a representation of what is, and, were he to have heard of it, denying the presence of the locus amoenus. But see further Chapter 15 §15 for the equally problematic term ‘idealization’.

6 Leon Battista Alberti, L’architettura: De re aedificatoria, ed. Giovanni Orlandi, Milan [1966], Book IX, ch. 4. On such enjoyment of landscape see further Baxandall 1971, excerpt VI, by Manuel Chrysoloras on a tapestry representing the joys of spring; also XV, by Leonardo Giustinian, with the idea that painting can represent what in nature is not present, such as flowers in winter; and Gibson 2000, ch. 4, ‘Painting for Pleasure: An Excursus’, pp. 66–84. In the sixteenth century, when Philostratus’s Imagines came into circulation, its descriptions of the landscape elements of paintings, or indeed of paintings that were no more than landscapes, may have encouraged interest in the representation of landscape. Aretino/Camesasca, I, pp. 73–74 (no. XLIV), 29 October 1537. Paolo Pino, in Trattati d’arte nel Cinquecento, ed. Paola Barocchi, Bari 1960–62, I, at pp. 133–34. The modern reaction will be that Pino was ‘idealizing’ his country, but it was presumably, in the sixteenth century, ‘unspoilt’ (or, appositely in German, unverkünstelt|‘un-art-distorted’|). The reaction is a consequence of many scholars’ post-Marxist attitude that anything regarded as pleasant must be idealized – imposing their own grey-coloured spectacles. See further Chapter 15 §24 for a more appropriate reading of this and other passages. Apart from their other defects, the concepts both of art following poetry and of painting the ‘locus amoenus’ fail to accommodate any of the investigations of Ernst H. Gombrich in his book Art and Illusion, in which he discusses landscape notably at pp. 155–59 and 265–71 in the fifth edition, London 1977. Possibly an influential application of the term ‘locus amoenus’ to art was Erich Steingräber’s essay, ‘Natur – Landschaft – Landschaftsmalerei’, in Im Licht von Claude Lorrain, exh. cat. ­Munich 1983, pp. 13–30. He refers directly to Curtius; usually the term is used without reference or discussion. In any case the term seems embedded into modern scholarly discourse: one example among many is an article by Jill Pederson, ‘The Sala delle Asse as Locus Amoenus: Revisiting Leonardo da Vinci’s Arboreal Imagery in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco’, in Goodchild, Oettinger and Prosperetti 2019, pp. 89–108, again footnoting uniquely Curtius: on pp. 99–101 she sets out to prove that in the Sala delle Asse Leonardo deliberately created a ‘locus amoenus’, defined by her as “this classical idyllic space” (p. 99); and that in the gardens “the notion of the ‘locus amoenus’ would be made complete by the presence of a physical water course” (p. 107): the word ‘idyllic’ is also anachronistic and to suppose any intentionality from Leonardo in these terms is absurd. She claims (p. 107) that “in itself the Sala delle Asse embodied the dialectic inherent in the motif of the ‘locus amoenus’”. This is unpacked: “One trait of the ‘locus amoenus’ was that it was always on the cusp between the wild and the cultivated, the natural and the man-made. It was an ideal space that provided refuge and safety from the city, or more generally from an outer chaos.” She seems here to be introducing a number of ideas associated with pastoral. I question not only how these properties became accreted to Curtius’s notion, but above all whence ‘the locus amoenus’ acquired its definite article.

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fig. 6.1 Joachim Patinir, Charon carrying a human soul, c. 1520–24, oil on panel, 64 × 103 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

3 7 At the root of these muddled conceptions of landscape there seems

to be a desire to trace the origins of its appreciation. Literature is used as a means to access what is assumed to be, a priori, the sensibility that motivated the idea that landscape was something to be enjoyed. What earlier literature offers, however, are merely vignettes, examples of descriptions, nothing constituting a theme or thread – with the great exception of the pastourelle (see Chapter 2 §3–5 and A3). Here it is the season that provides the cue, and little description of nature as a scene is needed – often not enough to be regarded as an ecphrasis. The key ingredient is sensual pleasure – it is the Virgilian gelidus fons, Sappho’s sex (we may suppose) in the bower, Cavalcanti’s “sott’una freschetta foglia,/ là dov’i’ vidi fior’ d’ogni colore” (see Chapter 2 §5, A3). ‘Landscape’ was not necessarily a prospect, to be viewed, but also an intimate sensual experience: Giorgione’s Tempest (fig. 4.22; see Chapter 4 §12–14), though Michiel called it a “paese”, which we might translate as ‘landscape’, is

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highly intimate (resembling a pastourelle, a girl met by chance in a wood) and Giorgione’s work in general is attested as having been painted for the sensual enjoyment (“godere”) of his patrons. In Patinir’s remarkable Charon (fig. 6.1), the pleasant landscape has a siren beauty, like an inviting wood, or like the wide rather than narrow gate of Matthew, 7: 13–14: the correct path for the soul in the boat (which is looking the wrong way) is the rocky one and the pleasant landscape is actually a propylaion to the Gate of Hell (the picture must have been made to hang high up, so that the two foregrounds at the bottom of the picture – pillar rock versus green trees and meadow – would be conspicuous and emphatic). Patinir surely developed this moralization of the beautiful world from his elder contemporary Jheronimus Bosch: in his work hermits, for example, who were particularly well placed to contemplate nature, were not inclined to look upon it with pleasure, quite the opposite: for them it was more likely to produce distractions from their goal, to reach God by escaping the world – as in Jheronimus Bosch’s Saint Jerome at prayer (fig. 6.2).

7 An early instance of the term ‘landschap’ applied to (part of ) a painting is cited in James E. Snyder, ‘The Early Haarlem School of Painting: Ouwater and the Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl’, Art Bulletin, xlii, 1960, pp. 39–55, at p. 45 note 2 (the word is much older, meaning the hinterland of a city). The term ‘paese’ is used quite frequently, but not programmatically, most prominently by Marcantonio Michiel in the early sixteenth century to designate a type of painting. For Giorgione see Chapter 4 §13; Taddeo Albano to Isabella d’Este, 7 November 1510, in Alessandro Luzio, ‘Isabella d’Este e due grandi quadri di Giorgione’, Archivio Storico dell’Arte, 1888, at p. 47. See Falkenburg 1988, esp. pp. 73–82, 107–08, on the Charon; Patinir, exh. cat. ed. Alejandro Vergara, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2007, no. 1 (and passim). For the themes of Bosch’s paintings see the essays and entries in the exhibition catalogue Bosch, ed. Pilar Silva y Maroto, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2016; see there the essay by Reindert Falkenburg, ‘In Conversation with The Garden of Earthly Delights’, pp. 135–56, for a reading of – or a guide to reading – the many sensual beauties of ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’, all under the sign of evil; and further Falkenburg, The Land of Unlikeness: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, Zwolle 2011.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.2 Jheronimus Bosch, St Jerome at prayer, c. 1490–1500, oil on oak panel, 80 × 60.7 cm Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent

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f six  §8 v

3 8 Surely it is with the recognition and indulgence of conscious sensual pleasure itself that the appreciation of landscape must be deemed to originate – with the picking out of ‘a thing that I like’ and its endorsement – and this cannot be taken for granted, when the pleasant was moralized as sinful. It required a change of attitude. And we find such a change of attitude in the middle years of the fifteenth century in Italy, when the question of pleasure became a loud and live topic as a consequence of the revolutionary tract that was Lorenzo Valla’s De voluptate et vero bono| On pleasure and the true good| (the title was later modulated to less incendiary formulations). The first draft of this work, which he continued to modify, dates from 1431. Renewing the ethical debate between the ancient Stoics and Epicureans, which for the Middle Ages had been decided by Cicero and Seneca for the Stoics, Valla, with inconfutable arguments, destroyed the Stoic position, which opposed virtue, the right and the good, or “honestum”, to pleasure, “voluptas”. Any possible conciliation of honestum and voluptas had been rejected by Cicero in De finibus bonorum et malorum and elsewhere, and subsequently the two terms remained firmly in opposition, partly, it seems, for linguistic reasons: Cicero’s voluptas translated Greek ἡδονή, a more neutral term. Essentially Valla demonstrated the existence of pleasure in every human action – even and not less in the exercise of virtue – an inescapable pleasure because proprioceptive. Valla did not simply advocate Epicureanism in the place of Stoicism, however, although he enjoyed pursuing his argument to some of its logical conclusions: he rejected the antithesis of Stoic and Epicurean as misconceived, and moreover pagan, substituting a proclaimed Christian ethics, conscious of the afterlife. This was, however, a resolution insufficiently weighty for his predominantly clerical readers, and failed to calm the susceptibilities his empiricism had provocatively aroused. But, as Valla prophetically has his third speaker declare – Praesertim quod suptimeo, id quod in me experior, ne tam accurata et longa Vegii oratio mentes affecerit. Nam si iis qui diutius in aqua commorati, quamvis postea abstergant artus, tamen tacitus humor descendit altius atque insedit ut corpus egrotare faciat, quid de Vegii sermone suspicandum est, qui multitudine disputationum aures nostras occupavit, delectatione inferius influxit? Especially because I fear, as I feel in myself, whether such a well-targeted and extensive discourse by Vegius [the ‘Epicurean’ speaker] will not affect people’s minds. For if in people who have remained for a long time in water, although they dry off their limbs afterwards, still the moisture silently goes in more profoundly and settles so as to make the body sicken, what should

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be supposed of Vegius’s discourse, which has filled our ears with a multitude of arguments, and seeped in the deeper for the delight [we take in it] –

the undeniability of the presence of pleasure would not go away. Valla argued, furthermore, that nature, as the creation of God, could not be evil, and an evil intrinsic in nature would be the logical consequence of the opposition honestum–voluptas. It was impossible to deny pleasure; the only possible reaction to Valla’s thesis was to accept it, but then newly to determine what was good pleasure and what was bad.

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Thus, following on in the next generation, about 1464, Platina wrote a treatise entitled De honesta voluptate et valetudine|Of virtuous pleasure and health|. He refers to the debate aroused by Valla in his introduction: “Valet apud nos, ut video, Ciceronis auctoritas”|There prevails among us, as I see, Cicero’s authority|– opposing voluptas and honestum; “sed dicant, quaeso, hi Stoicidae … quid mali in se habeat considerata voluptas?|but let them tell us, I pray, this tribe of Stoics … what [part] of evil does moderated pleasure contain?|. As he links voluptas with valetudo|health|in his title, so in his text he claims, “Ad felicitatem enim voluptas illa quae ex honesta actione oritur, ut medicina ad sanitatem aegrotantem hominem perducit”|For the pleasure that arises from virtuous action leads to happiness just as medicine leads an ailing man to health|. It is worth noting where these ethical discussions are taking place: Valla’s dialogue is initiated in a portico (to avoid the rain) by Monte Giordano in the vicinity of the Pantheon, the party adjourning to a fine dinner at Panormita’s house, then renewing their discussion in his gardens. Platina reports that he wrote what he calls “has rusticationes”|these rural amusements|in the suburban villa of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga. Although his treatise is concerned overwhelmingly with food, he begins

8 See Giulia Sassi on ‘pleasure’ from Plato to the Enlightenment at http://science.jrank.org/ pages/7745/Hedonism-in-European-Thought.html (accessed 30 July 2016). Lorenzo Valla, De vero falsoque bono, ed. Maristella de Panizza Lorch, Bari 1972. For a discussion of the treatise see Letizia Panizza, ‘Lorenzo Valla’s De vero falsoque bono, Lactantius and Oratorical Scepticism’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xli, 1978, pp. 76–107. Quite how far and deeply Valla’s reorientation of the Christian view of pleasure penetrated may be measured by the discussion of happiness in Thomas More’s Utopia, 103–14 (edn used ed. J.H. Lupton, Oxford 1895). I have previously published, sometimes verbatim, much of the following argument in Holberton 2019 (honesta voluptas).

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with the wider picture of man’s well being, heading Chapter I “Deligendus locus ad habitandum”|Choosing a place to live|, of which he remarks: Deligat itaque homo non incivilis et ingenii particeps, tum in urbe cum in agris, pro anni tempore locum saluberrimum iucundum amoenum venustum ubi aedificet, ubi rei rusticae operam det, ubi musis et genio vacet, ubi postremo quod fieri perfacile a viro castissimo et docto potest cum diis ipsis loquatur. Therefore let a man who has any civility and who cultivates the mind choose, whether in the city or in the fields, a place according to the season particularly healthy, and sweet, pleasant and beautiful, where he may build, where he may set about farming, where he may have time for the muses and the spirit, where finally – which can be easy enough for a man who is very chaste and learned – he may converse with the gods.

Here Platina sketches the basis of what can be called a Christian georgic, or neo-georgic. It reiterates, though spontaneously, a delight in (favourable) nature for which there were many precedents, from which, however, the visual and the intellectual had generally been absent. Besides literary sources attesting to the tradition there is a remarkable recognition of the encouragement that the landscape and its qualities might give to such vita solitaria in a Florentine letter of 1410 received by Matteo di Simone Strozzi, who was planning to set up a ‘hermitage’ with friends outside the city in Fiesole: Veramente io credo che il vostro sia pensiero di fare questo per potervi alcun volta dilettare del parlare spirituale, o veramente per essere più idonei e atti alla meditazione delle Scritture: le quali cose il luogo e l’aria altro non grida Truly I believe that your idea in doing this is to be able every so often to delight in spiritual discourse, or truly so as to be more disposed or fit for meditation on the Scriptures: which is what the place and its air cry out for above all.

Following in his footsteps in the mid fifteenth century, Giovanni di Cosimo had built the Medici villa in Fiesole with comparable pious purpose combined with secular notions (including enjoyment of the act of building itself, noted by Platina), which were not regarded as antithetical. Valla, seeking an example of human happiness, had resorted only to the Sabine passage in Virgil’s Georgics II, 467ff. (quoted above §2) and 503ff., and not to any other example (I, i, and II, xxxvi). But this was extreme, and untypical. Giovanni di Cosimo, noted Filarete in his Trattato di architettura, first [re] built a suitable (“degna”) church “e ancora uno degno luogo propinquo, refriggerio quando l’aire campestre pigliare voleva. E così ancora lui si dilettava in varie

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gentilezze, e di libri e d’intagli antichi, e ancora di strumenti e d’altre cose varie, e gentilezze, e massime in questo edificare”|and additionally a suitable place nearby, [of] refreshment, when he wanted to take the country air. And thus he additionally delighted in various refined pursuits, and in books and antique cameos, and in instruments and other different things, and refined pursuits, and especially in this building activity|. Platina’s ‘neo-georgic’ – ‘neo’ because this is no mere farming: the cultivation of the mind and the spirit, here including the enjoyment of art, is also essential – marks an attitude referring back to classical models but reframing their terms in a pious outlook. Nothing to do with Curtius’s locus amoenus, Platina’s “locus saluberrimus iucundus amoenus venustus” corresponds to a villa and its grounds, that is to say the built villa, its immediate garden, its outlying orchard (what the Venetians called brolo or broglio) and, if sufficiently extensive, its park (barco) or hunting range. Clearly one would expect an appreciation of the physical landscape to follow from such an outlook or way of life, reconceived in humanist terms.

9 Platina/Carnevale Schianca 2015; see also Platina, on right pleasure and good health: a critical edition and translation of De honesta voluptate et valetudine, by Mary Ella Milham (Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies), Tempe az 1997. On the georgic tradition see P.A.F. van Veen, De soeticheydt des buyten-levens, vergeselschapt met de boucken (The Hague 1960) Utrecht 1985, notably pp. 152–56. This valuable book begins as an investigation of the Dutch hofdicht|garden poem|, but traces the conceit of its title (quoted from an early source, meaning ‘The sweetness of the outdoor life, in the society of books’) both back and into the eighteenth century and across Europe. The Strozzi letter is quoted from Alessandra Macinghi degli Strozzi, Lettere di una Gentildonna Fiorentina del secolo XVI ai figliuoli esuli, Florence 1877, pp. xix–xx, in Amanda Lillie, ‘Fiesole: Locus Amoenus or Penitential Landscape?’, I Tatti Studies, vol. 11, 2008, pp. 11–55, at p. 33; she also quotes Filarete (Trattato di architettura, ed. A.M. Finoli and L. Grassi, Milan 1972, p. 692) at p. 25. See there her discussion of the motivations behind the villa in Fiesole. For the ‘book of nature’ hinted at in the letter see §16ff. below, and for “grida”|shout| see “clamitat”|shout| in Erasmus, §12 below. On the broglio see Filippo de Vivo, ‘Walking in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Mobilizing the Early Modern City’, I Tatti Studies, xix, no. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 115–41, at pp. 132–33; on the barco see Holly S. Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance, New Haven and London 2015, pp. 147–64, both with references. Relevant also is the article by Natsumi Nonaka, ‘Verdant Architecture and Tripartite Chorography: Toeput and the Italian Villa Tradition’, in Goodchild, Oettlinger and Prosperetti 2019, pp. 131–52.

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3 10 In a famous chapter Burckhardt commended Pius II (pope from 1458 to 1464) for enjoying natural settings and choosing to picnic in them. In fact humanists and the Curia in Rome seem to have been foremost in the appreciation of nature and to emphasize it, because, one may hypothesize, unlike others they had to account for their pleasures. An associate of the Borgia pope Alexander VI, Cardinal Giulio Cesarini, was among the first to create a ‘sculpture garden’, appending the following inscription: Julianus sancti Angeli diaconus cardinalis caesarinus dietam hanc statuariam studiis suis et gentilium suorum voluptati honestae dicavit suo natali die xxxiiii, xiii Kal. iunii, Alexandri vi pont. max. anno viii salutis mc ab U.C. mmccxxxiii Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, deacon of Sant’Angelo, has dedicated this gallery of statuary to his own studies and to the honest pleasure of his family, on his 34th birthday, on 20 May, in the seventh year of the pontificate of Alexander VI, ad 1500, ab urbe condita 2233.

The recourse to the Greek word dieta leads back directly to Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, II, 17, describing, using a number of Greek terms, his villa at Laurentium – not simply the villa, but the numerous views of the land and sea all around that it afforded. One particular dieta in the building, where he took refuge, as it were in a villa within the villa, he described (II, 17, 20) as “amores mei, re vera amores”|my passion, literally passion| as if it were his nympha or puella. Cesarini’s “honesta voluptas” is today translated as ‘proper’ or ‘seemly’ or ‘decorous’ pleasure, but the point is rather that it is voluptuary while it is not sinful (ignoring the intervening debate one might also say it was again Hermogenes’s ‘sweetness’ without the ‘obscene’ or erotic). Undoubtedly here the phrase was needed because the statuary would have been largely nude, and one can align this stance with the established distinction in sexual psychology between seeing blamelessly and acting culpably (see the discussion in Chapter 7 §1ff.). The phrase remained attached particularly to the enjoyment taken in gardens (with sculpture) and recurs in the fullest surviving statement of the so-called ‘lex hortorum’ adopted by the Curia. This was expounded in an inscription in portentously archaizing Latin in a grotto of the Villa Giulia following its fitting out in the early 1550s: Hoc in suburbano omnium si non quot orbis at quot in urbis sunt ambitu pulcherrimo ad honestam potissime voluptatem facto honeste voluptarier cunctis fas honestis esto … In this very beautiful suburban environment created for all in the city [urbis] if not in the world [orbis] for the most honest pleasure let it be right for all honest persons to take honest pleasure ….

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The public’s virtuous enjoyment was to derive from the freedom to walk about, pick the fruit, drink the water, watch the fish, listen to the birds and study the statuary. The voluptuary connotation – and as it were the danger that the pleasure could turn sinful – takes physical form in the reference to the Acqua Vergine, the source for the garden’s water: Aquam hanc quod virgo est ne temeranto, sitimq[ue] fistulis non flumine poculis non osculo aut volis extinguunto This water that is virgin let them not defile, and let them extinguish their thirst from pipes, not from the running water, with cups, not with the mouth or the hollows of the hand;

and in the further injunction that visitors may gaze at the statuary in the villa “dum ne nimio stupore in ea vortantur”|only so long as they are not thrown into excessive amazement|.

3 11 Later the nexus of associations attached to these gardens extended even to the Golden Age, expressed in an inscription in a later Cesarini garden: Hosce hortos anni quacunque intraveris hora Et domus haec pulchri rustica quidquid habet Inspicias lustresque oculis licet hospes, et oris Ista tibi in primis esse parata putes Ut si quid fuerit quo tu oblectare, voluptas Quae nunc una mea est iam geminetur, oro These gardens, whatever the season of the year during which you have entered them, and anything of beauty that this rustic house possesses, gaze upon, guest, and survey with your eyes, and suppose it to have been in the first hours [of the world] that these things were prepared for you, so that, if there shall have been anything in which you delight, the pleasure that for the moment is mine alone may now be duplicated, I pray,

taken up more explicitly in the next century for the Borghese gardens: Exteris magis haec parantur quam hero in aureo saeculo ubi cuncta aurea temporum securitas fecit bene morato hospiti ferreas leges praefigere herus vetat sit hic amico pro lege honesta voluptas

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These things have been prepared rather for strangers than for the owner, in a golden age when the security of the times made everything golden. For the guest who tarries conformably the owner forbids the clamping down of iron laws. Let there be here in the place of law virtuous pleasure for a friend.

3 12

Clearly the notion of ‘honest pleasure’ and its association with gardens was not invented in the Renaissance. It appears, for instance, in a description of Eden by the fifth-century poet Dracontius, in his De laudibus Dei, I, 414: let Adam enjoy the Garden rightly; but there is one tree he is told in the next line he must not taste. In the fourteenth century Petrarch in his De remediiis utriusque fortunae, I, 58, ‘De viridariis’|On gardens|, is aware of both honest and stuprous use of gardens (“Gaudium: Amena mihi sunt viridaria. Ratio: Habent hec interdum, fateor, honeste aliquid voluptatis, nonnumquam etiam inhoneste …” |Joy: I find gardens lovely. Reason: Sometimes, I must say, these have something of honest pleasure, but also sometimes vicious …| (citing the Emperor Tiberius on Capri). One indicative fifteenth-century instance is a letter of 18 November 1480 from his business partner Giovacchino Guasconi in Florence to the merchant and banker Filippo Strozzi in Naples regarding his “masseria”|farm| there, where he could grow fruit and enjoy the delights both of the table and of the view, which Guasconi believed would be for him “grande passatenpo honesto”|a great honest dalliance|. It is not hard to suppose that from enjoyment of views such men could pass to enjoyment of painted landscape, and found particular enjoyment in the landscapes of Netherlandish paintings of the early Renaissance period, even though they originally served an exclusively devotional use, as so many aids to the 10 Burckhardt/Middlemore 1958, II, iii, ‘The Discovery of Natural Beauty’. Rodolfo Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di Roma …, Rome 1902, II, p. 133 (his expansions). The inscription is preserved in an eighteenth-century manuscript; see further David Coffin, ‘The “Lex Hortorum” and Access to Gardens of Latium During the Renaissance’, Journal of Garden History, no. 2, 1982, pp. 201–32; republished in Coffin, Magnificent Buildings, Splendid Gardens, ed. Vanessa Bezemer Sellers, Princeton nj 2008, p. 186 note 8. For the earlier context (with focus on the collection of antiquities), see Wren Christian 2010. See Coffin 2008, pp. 164–89; his translation of honesta voluptas in three different passages. For the Villa Giulia inscription see pp. 174, 187 note 12 and fig. 4. For the ‘nymph of the spring’ see Chapter 5 §13–14. 11 See Coffin 2008, pp. 186–87 notes 2 and 8; I have corrected or normalized punctuation and spelling. See also pp. 166–67 and 187 note 11 for the related inscriptions from the gardens of Cardinal Andrea della Valle, dating to the 1520s and 1530s, including the phrase “honesti otii oblectamento”|for the enjoyment of virtuous leisure|.

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memory of the lingering viewer, lingering on the picture in order to relish the action in it: they were not (at least primarily) ‘deceptive’ representations but purposed only towards the symbol or story (usually of the Virgin’s cult). Ernst Gombrich ingeniously suggested that such landscapes were ‘enjoyed’ – commodified – by Italian patrons who looked upon them with different eyes, so that these works became objects of patent aesthetic interest, or pleasure. The Boschian panels mostly still in Venice that Cardinal Domenico Grimani acquired either within the lifetime of the painter (died 1516) or very shortly after perfectly exemplify this commodification: Grimani acquired them for an art collection rather than as aids to prayer, appreciating them for the amazing shapes and antics of the devils in them, as fantasies (“sogni”) – in the Italian sources there is not a hint of interest in the saintly fortitude shown in the face of these devils by the main figures, which was Bosch’s own theme and the pictures’ justification.

3 13

The notion of ‘honesta voluptas’ duly appears, too, in Erasmus of Rotterdam’s colloquy Convivium religiosum, published in Basle in in 1522 as part of his collection Familiarum Colloquiorum formulae …, first as a short overture (March 1522) and then as the full orchestral piece ( July–August 1522) in which he handles a number of ideas about nature and especially the neo-georgic – it is set in a villa and discusses both the appurtenances of an ideal villa and attitudes towards them. Though often brief and pithy, and allusive rather than expository, this dialogue demonstrates both Erasmus’s knowledge of the issues and a clear determination of them in pious (“religiosum”) terms. When Eusebius, opening the dialogue, states his wonder that men enjoy cities, Timotheus explains that not everyone enjoys

12 Petrarch, Les remèdes aux deux fortunes, ed. Christophe Carraud, 2 vols., Grenoble 2002, I, pp. 280–85. Strozzi’s villa is discussed, and the quotation given at p. 244 and footnote 38, in Amanda Lillie, ‘“Grande passatenpo honesto”: Filippo Strozzi’s Garden at Naples’, in Studies on Florence and the Italian Renaissance in Honour of F.W. Kent, ed. Peter Howard and Cecilia Hewlett, Turnhout 2016, pp. 235–56. See E.H. Gombrich, ‘The Renaissance Theory of Art and the Rise of Landscape’, in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, London 1966, pp. 107–21. Bernard Aikema, in his introduction to the collection Alle origini dei generi pittorici fra l’Italia e l’Europa, 1600 ca., ed. Carlo Corsato and Bernard Aikema, Treviso 2013, pp. 9–19, at p. 12 and note 17, misrepresents Gombrich by supposing him to identify a theory or structure of genres (among them landscape) at this period. For Grimani’s purchase of Bosch’s works see Madrid 2016, nos. 32, 41, with references, notably to Bernard Aikema, ‘Hieronymus Bosch and Italy?’, in Hieronymus Bosch: New insights into his life and work, ed. Jos Koldeweij et al., Rotterdam and Ghent 2001, pp. 25–31.

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the flowers and meadows and streams, or even if they do that pleasure may yield to another. He is taken to mean by that usury and more generally the desire for gain, using the word foenerator – intended, of course, to refer to the Alfius in Horace’s ‘Beatus ille’ (Epode II), who in order to keep banking puts off his rustication (“iam iam futurus rusticus”|ever this moment about to be a countryman) indefinitely. In disdain for such people Eusebius exclaims “Nos philosophi sumus”|We are philosophers|, which introduces Plato’s Phaedrus, the very passage Hermogenes had found exemplary (see §5), picking up the the first part of Timotheus’s point that not everyone enjoys the country and reiterating Socrates’s complaint that, unlike men in the town, trees in the country were unwilling to teach him: “arbores et hortos, fontes et amnes, qui pascerent oculos, caeterum nihil loquuntur ac proinde nihil docerent”|trees and gardens, streams and rivers, which feed the eyes, otherwise say nothing and therefore teach nothing|. The reply in turn to this is the pivot and overture to the entire dialogue; for the consideration of landscape, the phrase ‘feed the eyes’ (and not the mind) is crucial – suggesting not merely the visual but also art and anticipating Michelangelo’s complaint (§1). In the first version of this dialogue (March 1522) Eusebius continues: Est nonnihil quod dixit Socrates, si solus obambules in agris. Quamquam mea sententia non est muta rerum natura, sed undiquaque loquax est et multa docet contemplantem si nacta fuerit hominem attentum ac docilem. Sed Socrates in eo secessu quam multa docet Phaedrum suum et vicissim ab eo discit. What Socrates says has some truth, if you walk off in the fields alone. But in my opinion nature is not mute, but absolutely everywhere speaking, and if you contemplate it teaches many things once it finds a man who is attentive and receptive. But how many things did Socrates in his retreat teach his friend Phaedrus and in turn learn from him!

The point that nature is eloquent seems actually occluded by the emphasis on conversation between Socrates and Phaedrus, but the intention is not to take us back to the town but to connect to the ‘neo-georgic’ tradition of like-minded and learned friends retreating to the countryside to intellectual and pious delights (with reference to ‘honesta voluptas’); in the second edition Erasmus here inserts (after “docilem”) an aside to the ‘book of nature’ topos, even though this makes the continuity still worse: quid aliud clamitat illa tam amoena naturae vernantis facies quam opificis Dei sapientiam bonitati parem? what else does the so very beautiful face of verdant nature cry out than the wisdom equal to the goodness of its artist God?

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This was not the reading Patinir expected his viewer to make! The phrase facies naturae is one used repeatedly by Pliny for landscape in his Epistle XVII on his villa at Laurentium. And Eusebius now invites his interlocutors to visit his “praediolum suburbanum”, his country estate (the word is Ciceronian and Plinian). There is reference again to Horace, explicitly this time – to his “dapes inemptas”|unbought feasts| (Epode II, 48), a phrase commonly echoed (see further Chapter 12 §1) to emphasize physical as well as intellectual self-sufficiency in the countryside. When the invitation has been made and accepted the first version of the colloquy ends; for the July–August edition the fuller text evidently not yet completed earlier was ready.

3 14 When the guests arrive Eusebius invites them to view his gardens

while the meal is cooked: the garden is kept open in daylight and anyone may pick what they want (following the Roman lex hortorum). And as if it were a heaven Peter is represented at the gate, displacing the Mercury or centaurs or “alia portenta” that some are said to paint at their doors, as is “dignius homine Christiano”|more appropriate to a Christian|. This figure “loquitur”|speaks|: there is an inscription. Again, instead of a Priapus or herm in this garden there is a chapel and an image of Christ on the altar – an implicit criticism of the Curial garden with its statuary. Also the fountain there (from which all may drink, following the lex hortorum) is clean and refreshes with its celestial liquids: tacitly the contrast to the fountain of the nymph of the spring (see Chapter 5 §13, 14) is there, banished by the Psalmist’s image of the panting hart. The guests are impressed: “Papae, Epicureos hortos mihi videre videor”|Wow, I seem to see the gardens of Epicurus!| and Eusebius partially agrees: “Totus hic locus voluptati dicatus est, sed honestae, pascendis oculis, recreandis naribus, reficiendis animis”|This whole place is devoted to pleasure, but honest pleasure, feeding the eyes, refreshing the nostrils, restoring the spirits|. Eusebius speaks of a garden, but in due course – in later ages – this refreshment will be sought in a wider nature, in a park or an estate and eventually in a wilderness. Now the moralizing begins: this lovely water flows off to clean the kitchen and be deposited in a drain,

13 This dialogue by Erasmus was noted in Van Veen 1985, p. 156, and by Lisa Vergara, Rubens and the Poetics of Landscape, New Haven and London 1982, p. 167, but I have not seen it discussed, except in Martin Wackernagel, ‘Der ideale Landsitz eines christlichen Humanisten der Renaissancezeit’, in Festgabe für Aloïs Fuchs zum 70. Geburtstage, Paderborn 1950, pp. 159–71. Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami: recognita et adnotatione critica instructa notisque illustrata, Amsterdam (or later Leiden) 1965–, Ordo I, vol. iii, pp. 221–22 and pp. 231–66.

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and so we find the word of God treated. But this view is corrected: in fact He disposes all for our benefit, including the various uses of water. Eusebius shows his guests more of the garden, and indeed his paintings of gardens (for which see Chapter 17 §6).

3 15 A division between ‘honest’ and sinful pleasure we find once again

in the Petrarca Spirituale, published 1536, of Domenico Malipiero, who, in keeping with his aim of redirecting Petrarch’s Canzoniere to Christological or Mariological sentiment while preserving the universally accepted beauty of its language, subverted Petrarchan landscape associations towards godliness: according to his introduction, when fulfilling his long-held wish to visit the poet’s house and tomb at Arquà Petrarca, there, in the (also erotically dangerous) heat of the day, his companions having retired to rest, he wanders off alone: … come Romito, me ne vado in questo prossimo boschetto, per pigliar alcun trastullo alla natura mia convenevole. O che dilettoso diporto mi presta il sì bello e solitario ricetto: dove tanti arbori fronzuti fanno gratissima ombra; et spira soave aura, & gli augelletti dolcemente cantando, m’invitano a lodare il Creatore: onde tutto dentro e di fuori d’ineffabile giocondità ricreare mi sento … like a Hermit, I go off into this wood close by, to take some delight agreeable to my nature. O what a pleasurable enjoyment the so lovely and solitary retreat offers me: where so many leafy trees create a very welcome shade; and there breathes a soft breeze, and the birds, singing sweetly, invite me to praise the Creator; whence wholly inside and outside I feel myself refreshed by an ineffable happiness.

For this happiness there was now a licensed compartment. Hermits, as the friar suggests, were particularly well placed to contemplate nature, but they had not always been of his disposition towards it, as noted (§7). In Pietro Bembo’s also petrarchizing Asolani (1505) a hermit dwelling not far away, in hills to the north rather than the south of Padua, used the example of all the wonders before his eyes, though mainly the heavenly luminaries, to point Lavinello in this direction, away from the flesh which he had hitherto thought might be led up to goodness: Perciò che, o Lavinello, che pensi tu che sia questo eterno specchio dimostrantesi agli occhi nostri … e gli tanti splendori, che da ogni parte si veggono di questa circonferenza, che intorni si gira … Elle non sono altre, figliuolo, che vaghezze di colui, che è di loro e d’ogni altra cosa dispensatore e maestro, le quali egli ci manda

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incontro a guisa di messaggi, invitantici ad amar lui …. Il quale dimostramento che altro è, se non una eterna voce che ci sgrida: O stolti, che vaneggiate? voi ciechi, d’intorno a quelle vostre false bellezze occupati, a guisa di Narciso vi pascete di vano desio, non v’accorgete che elle sono ombre della vera, che voi abbandonate …. Mirate noi, come belle creature ci siamo, e pensate quanto dee esser bello colui, di cui noi siamo ministri. Therefore what, Lavinello, what do you think this eternal mirror showing itself to our eyes is? … and so many splendours, which are visible from every part of this circumference that revolves around us? … These are not anything but the lovelinesses of him, who is of them and of every other thing the dispenser and master: he sends them ahead like messengers, inviting us to love him … What else is this spectacle if not an eternal voice which cries to us: ‘Fools, why waste your time? Blindmen, caught up in those false beauties of yours, like Narcissus feeding on futile desire, do you not realise that they are the shadows of the true one, which you are turning your back on …. Look at us, the beautiful creations that we are, and think how beautiful must be the one whose ministers we are.

3 16 “O stolti, che vaneggiate?” should apply to all seekers after pleasure, but

now some vanities have become shadows of the truth. In this enlargement of Christian thought the contemplation of nature might lead towards God even those who had not heard the Gospel. Giorgione’s Three Philosophers (fig. 6.3) may represent just this idea, for this idea would explain why these philosophers should be set in a landscape (though this is not unusual in itself ); their instruments of measurement and chart (one holds a diagram of an eclipse of the sun) would mark them not only as philosophers but also as engaged in study of the luminaries, a study which had only one conclusion. Both Giorgione and Bembo would have known the passage in Sannazaro’s Arcadia (prosa viii) in which the wise ‘priest’ Enareto, who knows the language of plants and of the birds, can hear them thanking God for their existence when the dawn comes up, as it seems to here. Although several other readings of the picture (and yet not this one) have been advanced, the sources are consistent and clear, starting with Marcantonio Michiel, who

15 Domenico Malipiero, Il Petrarca Spirituale, Venice 1536, prologue. Madrid, 2016, no. 30; for hermits in Bosch’s works see the essay by Paul Vandenbroeck, ‘The Axiology and Ideology of Jheronimus Bosch’, pp. 91–113, at pp. 101–02. Bembo/Dionisotti, ‘Gli Asolani’, III, xv, pp. 488ff.

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recorded Giorgione’s picture in Taddeo Contarini's house in 1525: “… 3 filosofi nel paese, due ritti e uno sentado che contempla gli raggi solari, cum quel saxo finto così mirabilmente …|three philosophers in the countryside, two standing and one sitting, who contemplate the rays of the sun, with that rock so admirably depicted|. Unfortunately the rock he particularly emphasized has been cut down on the left and what remains is severely damaged, permitting many modern observers to presume that his ‘rock’ is actually a cave. There is no sign of light shining across it, but representations of the painting before it was cut down (fig. 6.4) show that almost the entire missing part of the rock was illumined; in the painting as it is there is clear evidence in the shadows present particularly around the feet of the first two philosophers that the light was conceived, and painted, as coming from the left, despite the sun rising over the hills in the centre of the picture: Michiel notes that the painting was completed by Sebastiano Veneziano, then Giorgione’s pupil or assistant, and it is probable that Sebastiano added the sun together with the trees to the right of it, these being painted over other layers without reserve, and more boldly painted than anything else in this generally rather delicate and deliberate panel. Thus Contarini, though the emphasis here is on the miracle of the heavenly bodies, could reiterate Matteo Strozzi and anticipate Erasmus in exclaiming: “quid aliud clamitat illa tam amoena naturae vernantis facies quam opificis Dei sapientiam bonitati parem?”|what else does the so very beautiful face of verdant nature cry out than the wisdom equal to the goodness of its artist God?|. It also is possible – although later, in a 1556 inventory, they were not hanging together in the same room – that Giorgione’s picture was originally painted for his patron to complement a picture by Bellini that he had acquired on the market, Giovanni Bellini’s St Francis (fig. 6.5), of very similar height (124.4 cm; Giorgione’s picture is 123.3 cm). St Francis by contrast knew God by a manifestation of his presence, a theophany; these philosophers were working by their own devices, “contemplating the (rays of the) sun” and thereby reaching God by reading ‘the book of nature’.

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fig. 6.3 Giorgione and Sebastiano Veneziano, The Three Philosophers, c. 1506–08, oil on canvas, 124 × 145 cm (cut down on the left), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

16 Michiel (ed. Frizzoni, p. 164), described the picture in the house of Taddeo Contarini as quoted; so again in the Hamilton lists (E.K. Waterhouse, ‘Paintings from Venice for Seventeeth-Century England’, Italian Studies, vii, 1952, p. 16, no. 42) “A picture with 3 Astronomers and Geometricians in a Landskip who contemplat and measure …” and again in Archduke Leopold Wilhelm’s collection (Adolf Berger, ‘Inventar der Kunstsammlung der Erzherzogs Leopold Wilhelm’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, i, 1883, p. xciv). Representations of philosophers in the open air run parallel to their representation in a study; see E.H. Kantorowicz, ‘Die Wiederkehr gelehrter Anachorese im Mittelalter’, reprinted in his Selected Studies, New York 1965, pp. 339ff., and Ursula Hoff, ‘Meditation in Solitude’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, i, 1937–38, pp. 292ff. Such works as Petrarch’s De vita solitaria established

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fig. 6.4 David Teniers the Younger, Giorgione’s Three Philosophers, detail of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery in Brussels, c. 1651, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, no. 739

fig. 6.5 Giovanni Bellini, St Francis in the Desert, c. 1475–78, oil on panel, 124 × 145 cm, The Frick Collection, New York

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16 (cont.) the principle of meditating ‘in nature’ (quoting Quintilian, X, iii, 2; Prose, ed. Guido Martellotti et al., Milan and Naples 1955, p. 366). Visual representations contemporary to Giorgione include an Aristotle of 1483 illustrated by Gerolamo da Cremona with Aristotle and Averroes seated in a landscape (Morgan Library E41A, f. 2; Lillian Armstrong, Renaissance Miniatures and Classical Imagery, London 1981, fig. 131). For the literature on Giorgione’s picture and a discussion see Vienna 2004, no. 5, and pp. 267–68; Dal Pozzolo 2009, pp. 252–65. Suppositions that the rock is a cave; that the philosophers are the three Magi; that they are identifiable by name or by the philosophy they represent seem to me unfounded. There is much closely contemporary imagery showing didactic inspiration through light emanating from the heavens, notably Carpaccio’s Vision of St Jerome concluding his cycle of the life of St Augustine in the Scuola di San Giorgio in Venice (see Helen Roberts, ‘St Augustine in “St Jerome’s Study”: Carpaccio’s Painting and its legendary source’, Art Bulletin, xli, 1959, pp. 283ff.); more commonly the rays of the light are marked, as in Cranach’s 1502 portrait of Johannes Cuspinian in Winterthur (Dieter Koepplin, Cranachs Ehebildnis des Johannes Cuspinians von 1502, Basle 1973); such rays are very common in medals – they are marked even in the earliest known Renaissance medal, of the duc de Berry (Mark Jones, A Catalogue of French Medals in the British Museum, London 1982, no. 6); see further G.F. Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals, London 1930, notably nos. 41, 236, 282, 313, 451, 501, 839, 931, 954, 956, 957, 960, 996, 1012, 1017, 1023, 1085 – some 47 in all. Giorgione’s picture has been cut down about 17.5 cm on the left. Representations of the original after it entered the collection of Archduke Wilhelm, by Teniers and others, show the missing part (see fig. 6.4). Regarding what one may deduce from the present surface or undersurfaces of the painting, I am grateful for the considered observations made to me by Elke Oberthaler, Restauratorin-Leiterin for the Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. For the Contarini inventory see Jaynie Anderson, Giorgione: Peintre de la “brièveté poétique”, Paris 1996, pp. 298–99, 370; Vienna 2004, pp. 179–83. Michiel reads the St Francis, which he says was formerly owned by Zuan Michiel, as “nel deserto” (ibid.); Francis seems here not to be receiving the stigmata but to undergo a vision of the deity like other saints. One can gather from John V. Fleming, From Bonaventura to Bellini: An Essay in Franciscan Exegesis, Princeton nj 1982, that it represents no particular episode of Francis’s life but a looser idea of his spiritual experience: a good parallel is his representation with Job in the tympanum of the church of San Giobbe in Venice, adoring the heavenly rays (Bellini painted the high altarpiece of this new build of the 1480s; also Job is shown earlier, on one of the roundels of the basamento of the Carthusian foundation (Certosa) outside Pavia, receiving divine inspiration, or succour, in this way). However, A. Richard Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy, Princeton nj 1966, pp. 59–65, associated the picture with Francis’s Canticle, which indeed involves the adoration of God through his creation. See further the full discussion in Charlotte Hale and Susannah Ruthergen, In a New Light: Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, New York 2015. A passage in Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortigiano, I, xlix, states (ed. Bonora) “… la machina del mondo che noi veggiamo coll’amplo cielo di chiare stelle tanto splendido e nel mezzo la terra dei mari cinta … variata … ornata, dir si po che una nobile e grande pittura sia, per man della natura e di Dio composta”|the engine of the world, which we see with its ample sky so splendid with bright stars and in the middle the earth surrounded by seas … varied … and adorned, can be said to be a grand and noble picture, composed by the hand of nature and of God|. In Holberton 2019 (honesta voluptas) I used the term ‘ontological argument’ as an equivalent for ‘argument from design’. I am grateful to Paul Taylor for pointing out to me my error.

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f six  §16–§17 v

3 17 The notion of nature leading to the idea of God, nowadays sometimes known as ‘intelligent design’, thereafter became established, but there is not much sign – that I know – of its diffusion before 1500; on the contrary, Erasmus’s insertion of the sentence quoted and his extension of the dialogue suggests the idea was quite new, or at least newly fashionable. A classic expression is by Constantijn Huygens in his Hofwyck of 1653: Dit ’s uyt het Boeck gepraett dat God heeft willen sparen Tot onser zielen licht, van doe wy niet en waren. Het ander light’er by: het Boeck van alle dingh, Van alles dat hy eens in ’t groote Rond beving, Het wonderlicke Boeck van sijn’ sess wercke-dagen. This is spoken from the Book, that God was willing to spare to our souls’ light, from which we do not stray. By it he lay the other, the Book of all things, Of all that he once created in the great round, The wonderful Book of his six workdays,

and so on; but this is not the place to continue with this tradition so far as to come up against the dissemination of deism and theism and the like of Barthold Heinrich Brockes’s Irdische Vergnügen in Gott|Earthly enjoyment in God |(1721–48, in nine volumes). However, I return to the notion in Chapter 17, discussing a picture by Rubens to which the idea seems particularly relevant, and note here a sixteenth-century source that transposes the idea into visual terms, from Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo d’Amore of 1542 (Tullia d’Aragona speaking): Hor che altro è il mondo fuor che una bella et grande adunanza de’ ritratti della natura? La quale, havendo animo di dipingere la gloria di Dio, et quella in uno luogo solo ricogliere non potendo, produsse infinite specie di cose, le quali, ciascheduna a suo modo, in qualche parte l’assomigliassero. Il mondo adunque è tutto insieme un ritratto di Dio, fatto per mano della Natura.  Now what else is the world but a beautiful and great collection of portraits of nature, who, desirous of painting the glory of God, and not being able to bring that together in one single place, produced infinite kind of things, each of which, in its own way, should reflect him? Thus the world is all together a portrait of God by the hand of nature. 17 Huyghens quoted in Van Veen 1985, p. 29; for Brockes see pp. 191–92. Sperone Speroni, Dialogo d’Amore, Venice 1542, f. 42v; ed. Mario Pozzi, Trattatisti del Cinquecento, vol. 1, Milan 1978, pp. 511–63, at p. 547.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

3 18

The question was not so much the landscape itself but ‘pastoral’ landscape, or the relationship of ‘pastoral’ and ‘landscape’. Since what may be meant by ‘pastoral’ is so ill-defined, I have introduced the term ‘katagogic’, which includes the pastoral – it houses the Lagerungsmotif which for Curtius epitomized the pastoral, for instance – but is less prejudicial: it does not involve the associations the beholder may bring to the landscape represented, or the poet may deliberately introduce, and above all the host of anachronistic notions attached to the notion of pastoral today. Certainly a very early example available of the katagogic in a landscape painting occurs in just this very same period around 1500, in Italy, in Venice, accompanying a comparatively greater consciousness of the facies naturae, as Erasmus would call it – in Titian’s early Flight into Egypt (fig. 6.6), displayed in London in April 2012 after a long restoration at the Hermitage. Long attributed to Titian but also frequently – and still – doubted, the work has a secure provenance from the house of Andrea Loredan in Venice, today known as the Vendramin-Calergi, and a date unlikely to exceed 1510. Landscapes of this size and scale would hitherto have been more usual and probably fairly common in tapestries or fresco, but, compared to representations in these media, which are not conducive to apparent recession, Titian’s canvas must have offered a novel depth of field (in this respect comparable to Sebastiano’s present Kingston Lacy Judgement of Solomon, with its deep-reaching colonnade, which was painted for the very same patron and palace, still unfinished when Sebastiano left Venice in 1511). Difficult to parallel earlier – though certainly exploited later – is the pool of water in the forest, an excellent device by which to suggest an extensive planar surface by no more than a few horizontal streaks on the canvas itself; the intimation of light and shade amidst the foliage of the wood (making a striking contrast to the comparatively inanimate forest behind the main scene in Giovanni Bellini’s Death of Peter Martyr in the National Gallery, London); the strong volumetric block made for the flock of sheep by heavy shadowing (this is a damaged area, however); and the suggestion of the three-dimensionality of the hills on the right by nothing much more than the variation of the greens of the grass covering them (possibly Titian had learnt this from Netherlandish painters, such as Bosch; Vasari goes so far as to claim he had assistance from Flemings in his studio for this picture – in effect this is a contemporary endorsement of the importance of this picture in the history of landscape; and if Bosch visited Venice, as some scholars have supposed, might the two painters not have met!?). In fact, paradoxically, the provision of winding paths in paintings by Titian only a little later (for example the National

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f six  §18 v

fig. 6.6 Titian, The Flight into Egypt, c. 1507, oil on canvas, 206 × 336 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Gallery, London, Noli me tangere) seems less progressive. Even amongst these innovations the creation of a middle ground in the centre of the Hermitage painting is perhaps the most brilliant: a group of three figures (fig. 6.7) – a standing, leaning soldier and two youths in unusually natural, freely invented poses – situated at what seems just the right point to set, by their scale, a good implied depth and to hold the eye by their intrinsic interest, anchors the composition. Background though it is, Titian conjured up a perfect katagoge, obviously recalling figures such as those Giovanni Bellini had placed in the background of some of his Madonnas, such as the National Gallery ‘Madonna of the Meadow’ (fig. 6.9), or some by Giorgione, but in a new formulation. These figures can be regarded in a certain sense as pastoral, even though they lack any appropriate attribute; the leaning soldier takes up an established pose (there are examples in the Roman Virgil; see figs. 1.1ff.), while the two seated boys, who suggest no obvious precedent, intimate their

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.7 Titian, The Flight into Egypt (detail of fig. 6.6) fig. 6.8 Woodcut accompanying Eclogue I, Virgil’s Eclogues, edn Venice: Stagnino, 1507



fig. 6.9 Giovanni Bellini, ‘The Madonna of the Meadow’ (detail), c. 1500–05, oil originally on wood, 66.5 × 85.1 cm, National Gallery, London fig. 6.10 Follower of Giorgione and Titian, Soldier and moll, c. 1510?, oil on panel, 45.9 × 44.2 cm, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

f six  §18–§19 v

ease and that their conversation is pleasant. Indeed the group bears a clear resemblance to the figures of a woodcut print accompanying a 1507 Venetian edition of Virgil’s Eclogues (fig. 6.8) – but also again to a picture in the Fogg Art Museum in Harvard (fig. 6.10) that obviously derives from Giorgione’s Tempest (fig. 4.22) and is not far from it in date; Giorgione’s Tempest itself describes a katagoge, disrupted by a storm. These and other pictures that are regarded as pastoral but are not properly equivalent with pastoral can be understood as sharing with pastoral – and with the opening passage of Sannazaro’s L’Arcadia (A6) in particular – the depiction of a katagoge.

3 19 Sometimes artists address a pastoral theme directly (see Chapters 3

§24–26 and 5 §3). In a style seemingly antedating his Young and old shepherd (fig. 5.11), Giulio Campagnola produced a remarkable Old man piping (fig. 6.11), which perhaps contains the germ of that later elegiac but foregrounds other concerns. It is definitely a landscape, paese, very large in relation to its subject; and that piping figure cannot not refer to pastoral although at the same time it asserts its difference from pastoral. Giulio, praised by contemporaries as a prodigy both of learning and of art, undoubtedly knew the Eclogues; nonetheless he does not echo ancillary illustrations to Virgil (like fig. 6.8): his katagogic figure evokes Tityrus but at the same time

18 I distinguish ‘katagogic’ from ‘Lagerungsmotif’ not least because one is a kind of place and the other the posture of a figure. The ‘Lagerungsmotif’may be subject to many more moods and meanings, not least parodic: see Scalabrini and Stimilli 2009, with a wealth of references, notably from Folengo. See Antonio Mazzotta, Titian: A fresh look at nature, exh. cat., National Gallery, London, 2012. The picture had been discussed earlier notably by Joannides 2001, pp. 36–40; it was dismissed by Wethey (Harold Wethey, The Paintings of Titian, 3 vols., 1969, 1971, 1975), I, no. X12. To my mind this large painting (with almost life-size figures) made a good match with the London National Gallery’s own very early Titian (undisputed), The Adoration of the Shepherd. See further the review of the exhibition by Paul Hills, The Burlington Magazine, cliv, no. 1313, August 2012, pp. 588–89, and James R. Jewitt, ‘Revisiting Titian’s “Flight into Egypt” at Ca’ Loredan, Venice’, The Burlington Magazine, clxiii, no. 1414, January 2021, pp. 28–33. For the suggestion that Venetian painters’ landscapes were inspired by Sannazaro – a revision of the older thesis in Clark and others discussed above – see also Milan 2012, and my review of this exhibition and catalogue, The Burlington Magazine, cxlv, May 2012, pp. 370–72. Woodcut published Unglaub 2015; for the Harvard picture see https://hvrd.art/o/232479, with bibliography. One precedent for Titian’s pool of water, and a good contrast to it, is that on the right in Paolo Uccello’s Hunt in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.11 Giulio Campagnola, Old man piping, engraving, 79 × 135 mm

denies the connection, since there is no beech-tree and the saddle against which he leans introduces a modern world of work (it seems to be a saddle for the back of a mule, perhaps like that ridden by the Virgin in Titian’s picture). His being able to repose in this world of work evokes, rather than pastoral, the peace of Virgil’s Sabine hills. It is self-consciously careful in its perspective and lavish in its depiction of the lowly buildings behind, which in their detail rival those in Dürer’s print of the Prodigal Son. However, not only do they not depend on Dürer (though in other works Giulio had lifted elements from his prints) but they are characteristic of the Veneto, buildings of a kind one finds frequently in the landscapes of the period but that are seen here in an unprecedentedly extensive depiction. They look like an example avant la lettre of what was called later in the century in Holland schilderactig|picturesque|– a term used to denote a quality that still later in England was admired in Dutch art and contributed to the eighteenthcentury notion of ‘picturesque’; in its earlier usage it seems to have meant a natural (or naturalized) but visually or texturally interesting aspect of environment. For the Dutch it is perhaps best exemplified in Abraham

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f s i x  § 1 9 – § 20 v

Bloemaert’s prints and drawings of ruined byres or cottages (even paintings: see fig. 12.6; otherwise his ‘Farmhouses’ series published in 1614), but there was a continuing Italian tradition of such interest, following from Giulio to Domenico Campagnola and onwards to Muziano and so more widely before the end of the century. Giulio’s print is actually, as better befits a landscape subject, not pastoral but georgic, since normal, not only literary, shepherds stereotypically piped on pipes (see further Chapter 15 §18); indeed his clothes are a peasant’s. The exact date of the print is indeterminable; one may well wonder at what point during the Wars of Cambrai (commenced 1509; after the heavy defeat suffered by the Venetians at Agnadello in that year Campagnola’s native Padua was lost, then recovered and defended from Maximilian’s troops) it was produced – perhaps more probably, also on grounds of its comparatively early style, before their outbreak, or at least intensification. Though original in his treatment and subject-matter, Giulio often took up material from other artists; in this case I would suppose he was led by Giorgione, whose unfortunately now murky drawing in Rotterdam of a figure seated before the wide view of a walled town (fig. 6.12) could be regarded as the earliest surviving landscape ‘presentation’ drawing – it was once accompanied by another such drawing, with a bridge, and there might have been more, which Giulio wished to emulate. Or indeed he drew on Titian, to whom what is clearly a prior drawing featuring this background and the goat has been attributed; Campagnola took this over, regularizing and simplifying the buildings to a degree and deliberately fixing the goat on the lower frameline; he introduced the old man (or maybe began with the old man, taking over the background from the drawing) so as to provide a subject, to all appearances lyricizing rural peace and rest.

3 20

Generally Venetian landscapes of this period are read to too great a degree as pastoral; and what happens in them is often quite the opposite of elegiac. In a stylistically close group of drawings by Domenico Campagnola later in the second decade we find the jealous husband in a murderous scuffle; the apparent buggery in another (fig. 6.13) is not necessarily willing; the two youths in a landcape in one that is signed do not appear to be innocent, either; one of another such pair of youths (fig. 6.15) appears to hold a pipe, and they bend towards each other not unlike the men in the Louvre Concert champêtre (fig. 3.3), but they do not suggest harmony. Later landscape prints associated with Titian may be sinister, too, for example one in Chatsworth with a sleeping nymph beneath a drape. Even Titian’s 1530s woodcut milking scene (later much borrowed upon; fig. 15.1) has

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f six  some versions of landscape v

19 London 1983, no. P8; see further Landau 2016, pp. 106–35, on Giulio pp. 122–27. For the topic of retirement see van Veen 1985, especially pp. 115ff., ‘De Georgica in het werk der humanisten’. On ‘schilderachtig’ see Gibson 2000, ch. 7, ‘Rustic Ruins’, pp. 141–77. For an example of Bloemaert’s drawings see Goltzius to Van Gogh. Drawings and Paintings from the P. & N. de Boer Foundation, exh. cat. Fondation Custodia, Paris, 2014, no. 59; see also Chapter 12 §9, fig. 12.6. The ‘Farmhouses’ series is Röthlisberger and Bok 1993, no. 230. See further Venice 1999–2000, no. 104, and Whistler 2018, pp. 128–45, for a remarkable early exercise in ‘pure’ woodland by Domenico Campagnola (her fig. 10; Fondation Custodia, Paris, Collection Frits Lugt, inv. 503); and again Christopher S. Wood, ‘Landscapes by Wolf Huber and Domenico Campagnola’, in Bohde and Nova 2018, pp. 313–31, fig. 11 (Louvre, Collection Rothschild, inv. 4061) for a print developing even further Giulio’s aggregation of buildings, now without any figures, which Wood regards as possibly a German imitation of his work. Whistler, however, strangely in my view, does not mention Giorgione’s Rotterdam drawing. The drawing in question, in the Louvre (inv. RF 5539; TTC, no. 580) is generally regarded as anticipating Campagnola’s print (for example, W.R. Rearick, ‘From Arcady to the Barnyard’, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 36, 1992, pp. 136–59, at p. 141); Whistler 2018, however, at p. 138, regards Campagnola’s print as prior. I can only see the Louvre drawing as a naturalistic study from life, which Campagnola has stylized and reduced rather than refined: I cannot see that any artist arriving at the much freer and more delicate drawing “starting” from the intense and highly laboured print with its very repetitive strokes. For the dating of the print consider Charles Hope, ‘Drawings, Attribution and Evidence: Giulio Campagnola, Giorgione and Early Titian’, in Rethinking Renaissance Drawings: Essays in Honour of David McTavish, ed. Una Roman d’Elia, Toronto 2014, pp. 61–89. Giorgione’s Rotterdam drawing is TTC, no. 709. See B.W. Meijer, ‘Due proposte iconografiche per il “Pastorello” di Rotterdam’, in Giorgione: Atti del convegno internazionale di studio per il quinto centenario della nascita di Giorgione, Castelfranco Veneto 1979, pp. 53–56; Venice 1999–2000, no. 96; Dal Pozzolo 2009, pp. 180–86. The attribution to Giorgione of the Rotterdam drawing is strengthened by its basic similarities of style to the drawing discovered in a 1497 Dante in the Library of the University of Sydney, itself similar to the Madonna of the National Gallery, London, Adoration, attributed to Giorgione: see Jaynie Anderson et al., ‘Giorgione in Sydney’, The Burlington Magazine, clxi, no. 1392, March 2019, pp. 190–99. I do not credit the widely accepted identification of the castellated city in the Rotterdam drawing as Montagnana (see S. Carezzolo et al., ‘Castel San Zeno di Montagnana in un disegno attribuito a Giorgione’, Antichità Viva, vol. 17, nos. 4–5, 1978, pp. 40–52). Their argument is concerned exclusively with displacing the traditional identification of the town as Castelfranco with the better fit of Montagnana. They do not consider the possibility that the elements pointing to Montagnana may be generic. Essentially the drawing shows three towers along a curtain wall and a keep (mastio) with two further towers, one larger and one smaller. Further details are not present or do not agree. There is no reason why this combination should not have occurred up and down the Veneto, in which every town was castellated in this period, in what was evidently a similar manner. The presupposition that Giorgione intended to represent anywhere in particular is unjustifiable: he would naturally represent a generic person against the backdrop of a generic town. This person, barefoot, with a staff, would again be, like the figures in The Tempest, a wanderer, tramp or pilgrim.

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f s i x  § 1 9 – § 20 v

fig. 6.12 Giorgione, Traveller reposing in a landscape, red chalk, 203 × 290 mm, Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam

an eagle in its midst and a horse bounding away in a background field, and it is actual, unsentimental, undistanced. In a case that is undeniably pastoral, since its figures have come together to play music, in a print by Giulio Campagnola finished by Domenico Campagnola (fig. 6.14), “enchantment” (Kenneth Clark’s term, rather dependant on Walter Pater’s reading of the Louvre Concert champêtre) is on the whole absent. Of course Titian’s Louvre Concert champêtre and Three Ages of Man (see Chapters 3 §24, fig. 3.3, and 5 §10, fig. 5.16) engage with pastoral; but the vivid shepherd in the background of the Concert Champêtre does not ipso facto make the landscape itself pastoral.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.13 Domenico Campagnola,Youths sodomizing (?) in a landscape, c. 1520, pen and brown ink on paper, 236 × 213 mm, Albertina, Vienna

20 See TTC, nos. 1932, 1943, 1961, 1970, etc.; also Harold Wethey, Titian and his Drawings, with Reference to Giorgione and Some Close Contemporaries, Princeton nj, c. 1987. On the Campagnola drawings specifically see Christophe Brouard, ‘Tradition and gender transgression: The iconography of the shepherd couple in Venetian pastoral landscape during the sixteenth century’, in Sexualities, Textualities, Art and Music in Early Modern Italy: Playing with Boundaries, ed. Melanie L. Marshall, Linda L. Carroll and Katherine A. McIver, Farnham 2014, pp. 133–54; unfortunately he, too, takes it for granted that the landscape is “pastoral”, referring, as do other scholars, to Rearick 1992. Indeed Rearick 1992, cited in the previous note, is much relied on by later scholars, and therefore may require more detailed attention. Rearick’s statement, p. 138, that “Giorgione was, by the end of the cinquecento, credited with the primary role in creating the visual counterpart of the literary-poetic arcadian mode” cannot be supported in any way. In fact he believes that Giorgione lacked the “direct response to nature … fundamental” (he says) to pastoral; only Titian was capable of it. To Titian he attributes the background to the problematic Louvre drawing RF 1979 (TTC, no. 578) with a standing St John the Baptist and a landscape closely similar to a print by Giulio Campagnola (Hind 1938–48, no. 2), which to him “seems the first true pastoral landscape”.

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f s i x  § 20 v

fig. 6.14 Giulio and Domenico Campagnola, Musicians (by Domenico) in a landscape (by Giulio), engraving, 135 × 257 mm

fig. 6.15 Domenico Campagnola, Two reclining youths in a landscape, c. 1517, pen and brown ink, 194 × 289 mm, British Museum, London, inv. Ff,1.65

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f six  some versions of landscape v

20 (cont.) This is simply hyperbole, designed to support a wishful attribution. Titian also provided the basis for Campagnola’s Old man piping (here fig. 6.11), “a pivotal work in the metamorphosis of Christian shepherds at the Nativity to arcadian rustics in a Virgilian idyll” – a ‘metamorphosis’ in which nothing is shown to have changed. Rearick suggests that then Titian designed and Campagnola converted into a print (here fig. 5.11) what seems to “illustrate a moment” (p. 143) in Eclogue V, 45–48 – he was perhaps led to this by Menalcas’s reference to Mopsus’s song being as welcome as sleep to the tired in line 46: but, though the old man in the print may sleep, Menalcas and Mopsus in Eclogue V do not. In the present fig. 6.13 he sees Thyrsis crowning Corydon, from Eclogue VII, an event Virgil failed there to describe, and there is no ilex, beneath which these two led their flocks and the contest took place. He discusses Previtali’s fourfold story from Tebaldeo in the National Gallery, London (see fig. 3.1), in which he finds the influence of the artists mentioned – but no sign of that “literary-poetic arcadian mode”, which, he implies, rather, Previtali fails to achieve, even in what is an illustration of an eclogue. So this so-called “mode” is nothing more than an ephemeral phase in Titian’s stylistic development, because, in Rearick’s narrative, “for a time the pastoral idyll of Virgilian tone fell into abeyance” (p. 143). And we hear no more of it: the talk turns to satyrs (a patchy survey), and then to the “georgic”, with reference to Titian’s Milkmaid woodcut (here fig. 15.1), about the status of which he seems a little uncertain; he refers to prints of this kind as “modest images of peasant life … that kept the bucolic tradition poised for its own revival”. He relegates the following formulation to footnote 44: “Titian did not regard his imagery as an explicit illustration of an exact passage in Virgil’s text but rather chose to synthesize the various aspects of the poem into a poetic image that would be evocative rather than illustrative of its source”. Which source was that, though? Equally unfounded suppositions to do with Arcadia are prevalent in a more recent article, by Davide Ambrosi, ‘Giorgione’s classical roots: The role of myth in Venetian depictions of Arcadia’, in L’età d’oro: Mito, filosofia, immaginario, ed. Carlo Chiurco, Venice 2018, pp. 224–54. He sees the mercantile nobility turning to the land, “and collectively dedicating themselves to refined otia, which nurtured the creation of literature based on the love of nature and of landscape, and was capable of inspiring the new intellectual climate tied to the ideal of Arcadia” (p. 228). The reader does not hear any more about this literature, of which we must suppose Sannazaro’s L’Arcadia to be the core, which either reflects or generates (he does not say) the “climate” that is “tied to the ideal of Arcadia”, apparently something existing separately from Sannazaro’s work; but it can no more have existed before it (see Chapter 2) than it can have after it, in its wake, or inspired by it (as discussed in Chapter 11). The article reaches its conclusion with Giorgione’s “extraordinary ability to depict scenes capable of evoking a primal and Arcadian atmosphere”; it emerges (p. 254) that Ambrosi has in mind primarily Giorgione’s Tempest, for which all this has been in a way a preparation, even an interpretation; and indeed one can find there together the classical, the contemporary and the vernacular (see Chapter 4 §12–14), but nowhere Arcadia. The Milkmaid woodcut is Titian and the Venetian Woodcut, exh. cat. ed. David Rosand and Michelangelo ­Muraro, International Exhibitions Foundation, Washington, DC, 1976, no. 21; the drawing is TTC no. 1959; see further Venice 1999–2000, no. 136 (and there also Lucas van Leyden’s engraved Milkmaid, no. 135, neither more nor less pastoral). Giulio Campagnola took his initial drawing in the Louvre (TTC no. 579) into a print, one state of which survives unfinished (Hind 1938–48, V, ‘Giulio Campagnola’, no. 6); for the second state see London 1983 (Genius of Venice), no. P7. See note to §2 above; Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, ‘The School of Giorgione’, edn used London 1912, pp. 130–54. Most unfortunately, Jodi Cranston’s book The Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice, Penn University Park 2019, came to my notice only moments before this one went to press.

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f s i x  § 20 – § 2 1 v

3 21 So when these early sixteenth-century landscapes, or country settings,

are nonetheless described as ‘arcadian’ – what does that mean? Not something created by the practice of song, music, poetry. Possibly something exclusive, escapist, self-deceiving – a Marxist or post-Marxist judgement now without value, diminished to mean no more than recreational, or no more than a landscape entered by a member of the elite? More probably nothing, a pure redundancy (even though ‘real’ or ‘vernacular’ landscape is sometimes opposed to it). There was surely no such thing as an arcadian landscape until the pastoral (actually georgic: see Chapter 19 §25) had been elevated by Samuel Palmer into something ‘spiritual’ by his visionary illustrations of the Eclogues, Georgics and Milton’s ‘L’Allegro’ (for which last see Chapter 16 §8). We must discard any synchronic or universal notion of ‘pastoral’, bzw. ‘arcadian’, or our application of the term will be anachronistically coloured. Why not consider instead how Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli, then at Venice, viewed a landscape illuminated in a manuscript for him by Giulio Campagnola, though unfortunately Giulio’s work itself does not survive? Augurelli praises: Et maria, atque lacus, viridique in gramine fontis Quo nymphae, Satyrique, et monticolae Silvani Conveniunt, caeloque illic et sole fruuntur Quisque suo, variis intenti lusibus omnes … and seas, and lakes, and streams amidst green grass where nymphs, satyrs and mountain-dwelling wood creatures come together, and there enjoy the sky and sun each on their own, all of them bent on their various games.

The presence of satyrs does not render this arcadian, quite the opposite, since satyrs are not agonists in the Eclogues or in Sannazaro’s Arcadia; they are described as “praesentes … divos” in Eclogue I, 41, but also as “praesentia numina” in Georgics, I, 10, which goes to say they are gods, indifferently, of the country; moreover most of the second line quoted is a cento from Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, 193. It was perhaps Augurelli alone who read into the image these creatures’ enjoyment of nature and who perceived them as coming together, “conveniunt”, a pastoral conviviality (see Chapter 1 §12), going on to echo, in what is now ‘honest’ form, Virgil’s “trahit sua quemque voluptas”|each his own pleasure draws| (Eclogues II, 65). Assuming that Augurelli represented Campagnola’s intention, that intention was to create a landscape with classicizing staffage – all’antica. What the staffage did, but not the landscape, obviously, was very like pastoral in this case, and again in others, for instance an anonymous Venetian painting in Washington

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.16 Unknown Venetian artist, Pagan figures in a landscape, c. 1515, oil on panel transferred to canvas, 39.5 × 81 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Widener Collection

(fig. 6.16), though the “games” are less distinctly pastoral. Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods also now in Washington had other “games” again, taken from Ovid’s Fasti. Conversely staffage can be added, as in Lotto’s vision of Petrarch canzone 123 (fig. 5.24), to emphasize that the landscape is open country, where only such a vision could take place. Two fine landscapes by Giovanni Agostino da Lodi are the stage for Pan’s pursuit of Syrinx (figs. 6.17, 6.18); it seems possible that once there was also a painting of Pan playing on reeds like those into which she had been transformed – suitable to have been included in the present Chapter 5 above (§18), had it survived. These landscapes might be described as ‘Arcadian’ but not by virtue of any characteristic of their own but only because Pan is there. This is even though their forms have an elegant sfumato, perhaps comparable to Campagnola’s, and envelope or integrate the figures in a manner to rival Giorgione’s Tempest (fig. 4.22). We might generically call these classicizing figures in such rural contexts ‘pagan’ (‘pagan’ – like paese – deriving from Latin pagus|country|).

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f s i x  § 2 1 – § 22 v

3 22 In the same period Giulio Clovio, in his lives of contemporary painters, deployed the term, from Pliny, of “parerga”|Beiwerke, accessory work (accessory in respect of the subject or storia)| to categorize landscape. He was associating landscapes particularly with Dosso Dossi, somewhat arbitrarily, unless perhaps he was recalling that Dossi had painted them for Raphael when working for a period in his studio. Enumerating landscape features in the usual way, unusually he includes among them the phrase “opaca nemorum”|the dark places of the forests|, which may have been a response to the dense, dark greenery rather specific to Dosso (see fig. 10.1) but in any case is a kind of cliché or cento like Augurelli’s “satyrique et monticolae silvani”. It would be natural that some kind of association, like this one, might be carried over from verbal landscape descriptions, employing classical formulations or standard phrases, thus enlivening itemization, but it is difficult to conceive that artists would set out to represent these verbalizations, or how they point to their having done so. As far as I know we have no evidence for anything of the kind. Mention has been made of the ‘familiarizing predicatives’ (see Chapter 2 §13) of Sannazaro’s Arcadia; and particular incidents within nature may be verbalized and impressed into the language, and related contingents in painted landscape might be a pretext for their citation. However, this seems to me to belong to the beholder’s share, and where the beholder does not speak up there is a limit to what one can surmise on the beholder’s behalf. Perhaps, in landscape representation, one could speak of topos – the motif – and topic – 21 See Samuel Palmer 1805–1881: Vision and Landscape, exh. cat. ed. William Vaughan, Elizabeth E. Barker and Colin Harrison, British Museum, London, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2005–06, in particular nos. 11–15, 19, 162, 163. Ioannis Aurelii Augurelli P. Arimensis Chrysopoeiae Libri III et Gerontion Liber Primus, Venice 1515, III, lines 305ff.; see Armando Balduino, ‘Un poeta umanista (G.G. Augurelli) di fronte all’arte contemporanea’, in La letteratura la rappresentazione la musica al tempo e nei luoghi di Giorgione, ed. Michelangelo Muraro, Rome 1987, pp. 59–76; quoted p. 68. In Places of Delight: The Pastoral Landscape, exh. cat. ed. Robert Cafritz, Phillips Collection,Washington, DC, 1988–89, pp. 73ff., Cafritz calls this kind of landscape ‘satyric’; the Washington painting features as no. 1 (fig. 36). See also Whistler 2018, notably pp. 133 and 136, for the idea that specifically Campagnola’s ‘dotted’ style was conducive to “thoughts on the enchantment of landscape where nature and antiquity are mysteriously intertwined and the imagination of poets and artists can take flight” – which indeed it may have been; but I would resist the idea that that style had “antique resonances” as opposed to Campagnola’s tighter, linear “humanist” one (as she calls it): ‘antique’ and ‘humanist’ are hardly contrary. But, where this style is in alliance with the subject-matter, I would happily admit such images are moody (see above, Chapter 5 §8) but would relate the mood to the figures, above all the figures, and not the landscape. On the paintings by Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, see Venice 2016, no. 60, pp. 278–79.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.17 Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, Pan wooing Syrinx (and Apollo pursuing Daphne), c. 1505, oil on panel, 46 × 36.5 cm, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

f s i x  § 2 1 – § 22 v

fig. 6.18 Giovanni Agostino da Lodi, The river Ladon assisting Syrinx in her metamorphosis into reeds, c. 1505, oil on panel, 46 × 36.5 cm, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, on loan to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.19 Altobello Melone, Portrait of an unknown man, c. 1510, oil on panel, 58.1 × 48.2 cm, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

the use of motifs. A topos might be a certain way of representing foliage, and a topic might be a happy katagoge, or figures in a storm, or ‘paganizing’ staffage. It is not impossible to apply a value to the storm in the background behind the man in Altobello’s portrait in Bergamo (fig. 6.19) – that his moral strength or virtue prevails against it: this was a more or less a more or less explicit theme in contemporary portraiture. One can also find the mere ‘topos’ circulating, as in the example of the shrubbery clump behind Abraham in Titian’s woodcut of The Sacrifice of Isaac that is found detached in a drawing (fig. 6.20), or the instance of a print of a knarled tree with goats by Campagnola which Bruegel apparently echoed. If one can apply these terms both to images and to words, and can speak of both a painted and a described topic, one can in theory make a connection between art and literature, between Sannazaro

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f s i x  § 22 – § 2 3 v

fig. 6.20 Copy after Titian, Group of Trees, pen and brown ink on beige paper, 218 × 319 mm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

and Titian – between Sannazaro’s endearing “gli alti albori” (see Chapter 2 §12) and Titian’s observed clump – but this presupposes a pastoral context, which in fact the use of the motif in a scene of the Sacrifice of Abraham entirely precludes. What is more, in looking for this kind of correlation, one may miss the fact that for parerga more exciting qualities were sought, like those in the two different, equally spectacular, backgrounds of Raphael’s La Perla, that on the right perhaps recalling Marcantonio’s print (of his Venice period) known as ‘The Dream of Raphael’, with its comet exploding against a mountain; there was a preference for ‘infernos’, burning towns, torchlit scenes and suchlike light effects, and superb painted models to follow in the outstanding parerga of Jheronimus Bosch.

3 23

The Paduan, Campagnolesque tradition and surviving group of landscape drawings was important not so much technically as because these drawings and prints appear so often to be landscapes pursued for their own sake, in so far as their figures are little more than anecdotal, or not even that. Becoming something more than parerga, therefore, these works affirm landscape as a subject by virtue of their lack of story – and ‘pastoral’ is not a term that one can rightly employ to fill that gap. What is involved is not simply the shift between the function of such a drawing as a study, for ulterior use, and the self-sufficiency of Giorgione’s Rotterdam drawing (fig. 6.12); in landscape pictures, not only may there be no story, but the figures may not be grouped coherently in one activity. Because each is disparately intent, each in

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f six  some versions of landscape v

his or her own time, on their own doing (“variis intenti lusibus omnes”), they imply a shared space, shared air and shared time that is greater than any of them. Notably in the work of Bosch, once more, one finds landscape incidents not directly connected to the main scene, except loosely as further examples that may illustrate the evil of the wider world (for example the person running away in fright in the background of Bosch’s St Christopher in Rotterdam). A ‘pure’ landscape is produced by an absence of figures – or also by the ‘failure’ of the figures to provide a subject. An inkling of such failure occurs in a drawing 22 As noted by Maffei in Giovio/Maffei, regarding ‘Raphaelis Urbinatis vita’, pp. 260–62, commentary pp. 276–79. Maffei (p. 276) points out that Giovio had already used a very similar description in an earlier work, without associating it with any painter. Statius, Thebaid I, 376, has the phrase “opaca legens nemorum”|picking his way through the darks of the woods| and it recurs in medieval Latin narratives of coenobitic saints and others. On the ‘Gestalt’ configurations to be found in landscape paintings (though I think she over-reads them; see further Chapter 17 §6n), see Leopoldine Prosperetti, Landscape and Philosophy in the Art of Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625), Farnham 2009, especially ch. 6, ‘Anatomy of Greenery: the vegetal lexicon’, pp. 157–98. Appropriately, she introduces the notion of an “archive” of motifs developed collectively by artists (with notable contributions by individual ones); see also her ‘Trees: An overlooked topic in Renaissance art’, in de Fuccia and Brouard 2012, pp. 71–88. For theme of the sitter’s virtue expressed in portraits (and above all in Giorgione’s self-portrait as David) see Paul Holberton, ‘To Loosen the Tongue of Mute Poetry: Giorgione’s Self-Portrait as “David” as a Paragone Demonstration’, in Poetry on Art: Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Thomas Frangenberg, Donington 2003, pp. 37–56). For the Altobello see https://www.lacarrara.it/en/ catalogo/81lc00157. This important drawing was acquired for the Metropolitan by Roger Fry while employed there: see Caroline Elam, Roger Fry and Italian Art, London 2019, p. 48. On the transferred motif from Titian’s print see Peter Dreyer, ‘Tizianfälschungen des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, Korrekturen zur Definition der Delineatio bei Tizian und Anmerkungen zur Datierung seiner Holzschnitte’, Pantheon, vol. 37, no. 4, 1979, pp. 365–75; see further https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/340882. Presumably a study from nature à la Dürer underlies both woodcut and drawing, which itself seems to be derivative. On the motif of the tree which Bruegel may have taken up see Milan 2012, no. 42 (drawing in the Ambrosiana Library, inv. F245, INF.N.9), similar to the tree in the woodcut Two goats at the foot of a tree (Washington 1976, no. 25); see further Prosperetti 2012. On the interest in lights burning in the dark, see Beverly L. Brown, ‘From Hell to Paradise: Landscape and Figure in Early Sixteenth-Century Venice’, in Venice 1999–2000, pp. 424–31. See Late Raphael, exh. cat. ed. Paul Joannides and Tom Henry, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, and Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2012–13, no. 50; Museo Nacional del Prado, inv. no. P301. On Marcantonio Raimondi’s ‘Dream’, see Alessandro Nova, ‘Giorgione’s Inferno with Aeneas and Anchises for Taddeo Contarini’, in Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, ed. Luisa Ciammitti, Steven F. Ostrow and Salvatore Settis, Los Angeles 1998, pp. 41–62; Venice 1999– 2000, no. 114; Beverly L. Brown, ‘Troubled Waters: Marcantonio Raimondi and Dürer’s Nightmares on the Shore’, in Marcantonio Raimondi, Raphael and the Image Multiplied, ed. Edward H. Wouk with David Morris, Manchester 2016, pp. 32–41.

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f s i x  § 22 – § 2 3 v

fig. 6.21 Attr. Domenico Campagnola, Women regarding a rape, pen and brown ink over chalk, 210 × 310 mm, Gabinetto degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 472P

doubtfully attributed to Domenico Campagnola in the Uffizi (fig. 6.21): two nymphs in the foreground, with no identity, witness the Rape of Europa in the middle ground; the inkling of the idea must have been provided by Dürer’s 1498 engraving of a Sea-monster but the reversal of the scales of onlookers and event makes all the difference. The fact that the main figures are onlookers contributes to a sense that the event happened to take place there, at one moment, in landscape that pre-existed and will remain when the fuss has died away. This is an effect memorably conveyed in Auden’s poem on Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus (fig. 6.22): About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood:

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f six  some versions of landscape v

They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breugel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In his reversal of subject and staffage, background to foreground, Bruegel had actually taken his cue from Ovid: hos aliquis tremula dum captat harundine pisces, aut pastor baculo stivave innixus arator vidit et obstipuit, quique aethera carpere possent, credidit esse deos. These a man who was catching a fish with a shaking rod or a shepherd leaning on his crook or a ploughman on his plough saw and were amazed, and believed to be gods these who could make their way through the air.

Indeed pointing figures, frequently employed by Claude for example, become a recurrent device in landscape painting, once the genre is established. The landscape will be all the ‘purer’ when the attention (at least of the foreground nymph) is directed to what does not appear to be an event at all, as in Titian’s drawing of fauns and a nymph in Bayonne (fig. 6.23). 23 For Domenico Campagnola and his ‘school’ see TTC, pp. 123–24. Madrid 2016, no. 31. There are other examples of strange events in other backgrounds. The Uffizi drawing is TTC no. 1986 (rejected as Domenico Campagnola); see Drawing in Venice: Titian to Canaletto, exh. cat. ed. Catherine Whistler, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2015, no. 15. The Sea-monster is Bartsch VII.84.71. W.H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson, London 1976. Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, 217–20. The Bayonne drawing is TTC no. 1871; Wethey 1987, no. 40. In fact the ‘subject’ is the satyr’s impending rape of the nymph, as is more apparent in the engravings made after the drawing.

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f six  §23–§24 v

fig. 6.22 Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, 1558, oil on panel, 7.3 × 112 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

3 24

Similar pagans feature in a drawing by or possibly after Titian in Darmstadt (fig. 6.25), in his earliest style: two crouching figures, implicitly satyrs, either side of a sleeping nude are attracted by an incident in the background, possibly a hunt death or possibly animals rutting – or a feature of the landscape; there are also dimly visible a man on the right with a mastiff or a horse and trees and buildings, and possibly mountains. Ludovico Dolce in a dialogue treatise in which the subject of satyrs comes up seemingly refers to some such work as the Bayonne work, or indeed a painting, which Titian had composed, he said: … mostrando di haverlo fatto per il paese della Lascivia e forse imitando a cotal modo o più tosto alludendo alla Pittura che descrive il Sannazaro nella sua Arcadia making it appear that he had made it to represent the land of sexual licence and perhaps imitating in that way or rather alluding to the Painting that Sannazaro describes in his Arcadia.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.23 Titian, Nymphs and satyrs in a forest, c. 1565, pen and brown ink on paper, 265 × 405 mm, Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Dolce does not say Titian composed an ‘arcadian’ landscape. He relates its topic to a more specific comparandum, the “pittura” that is described in prosa iii of the Arcadia (A7). It is unlikely, given its serial or cinematic nature, that Titian translated Sannazaro’s ecphrasis into paint, and Dolce corrects “imitating” to “alluding”; it is also undoubtedly Dolce’s allusion rather than Titian’s, for Titian did not need, in the way Dolce did, to explain what sort of landscape this was – a self-sufficient one. The passage is applicable also to the surviving ‘Pardo Venus’ in the Louvre (fig. 6.24), sent to King Philip II shortly before 1552 (but clearly initiated much earlier and developed from the Darmstadt and other such drawings). The work bears such a makeshift title (‘Pardo’ from the royal palace in Madrid where it was once housed; ‘Venus’ because she is nude, not because related to any story of Venus) precisely (in my view) because it was not readily classifiable. In a letter Titian described undoubtedly this picture baldly as a “paesaggio”|landscape|– one

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f six  §24 v

fig. 6.24 Titian, The Pardo ‘Venus’, c. 1535–40, reworked c. 1552, oil on canvas, 196 × 386 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

fig. 6.25 Titian (or perhaps after), Nymph and companion, c. 1515, red chalk, 140 × 190 mm, Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt

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f six  some versions of landscape v

A7

JACOPO SANNAZARO, L’ARCADIA, prosa ii (part)

Ma per potere devotamente offrire i voti fatti ne le necessità passate sovra i fumanti altari, tutti inseme di campagnia andammo al santo tempio. Al quale per non molto gradi poggiati, vedemmo in su la porta dipinte alcune selve e colli bellissimi e copiosi di alberi fronzuti e di mille varietà di fiori; tra i quali si vedeano molti armenti che andavano pascendo e spaziandosi per li verdi prati, con forse dieci cani dintorno che li guardavano; le pedate dei quali in su la polvere naturalissime si discernevano. De’ pastori alcuni mungevano, alcuni tondavano lane, altri sonavano sampogne, e tali vi erano, che pareva che cantando si ingegnassero di accordarsi col suono di quelle. Ma quel che più intentamente mi piacque a mirare, erano certe Ninfe ignude, le quali dietro un tronco di castagno stavano quasi mezze nascose, ridendo di un montone, che per intendere a rodere una ghirlanda [ghianda?] di quercia che dinanzi agli occhi gli pendea, non si ricordava di pascere le erbe che dintorno gli stavano. In questo venivano quattro Satiri con le corna in testa e i piedi caprini per una macchia di lentischi pian piano, per prenderle dopo le spalle; di che elle avedendosi, si mettevano in fuga per lo folto bosco, non schivando né pruni né cosa che li potesse nocere. De la quali una più che le altre presta, era poggiata sovra un cárpino, e quindi con un ramo lungo in mano si difendea; le altre si erano per la paura gittate dentro un fiume, e per quello fuggivano notando, e le chiare onde poco o niente gli nascondevano de le bianche carni. Ma poi che si vedevano campate dal pericolo, stavano assise da l’altra riva affannate e anelanti, asciugandosi i bagnati capelli; e quindi con gesti e con parole pareva che increpare volessero coloro che giungere non le avevano potuto. Et in un de’ lati vi era Apollo biondissimo, il quale appoggiato ad un bastone di selvatica oliva guardava gli armenti di Admeto a la riva di un fiume; e per attentamente mirare duo forti tori che con le corna si urtavano, non si avvedea del sagace Mercurio, che in abito pastorale, con una pelle di capra appiccata sotto al sinistro umero, gli furava le vacche. Et in quel medesmo spazio stava Batto, palesatore del furto, transformato in sasso, tenendo il dito disteso in gesto di dimostrante. E poco più basso si vedeva pur Mercurio, che sedendo ad una gran pietra con gonfiate guance sonava una sampogna, e con ogni astuzia si ingegnava di ingannare lo occhiuto Argo.

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f A 7 : s a n n a z a r o, a r c a d i a , p r o s a i i v

But so as to be able to offer the pledges made in past necessities over the smoking altars, we all together went in a company to the sacred temple. Here, resting on the not many steps, we saw painted above the portal certain woods and hills, very beautiful and abundant in leafy trees and a thousand varieties of flowers; and through them many herds that went grazing and roaming through the green meadows, with perhaps ten dogs around who watched over them, whose footprints in the dust were visible most naturally. Of the shepherds some were milking, some were shearing, some were playing zampogne, and there were some who, it seemed, were trying in their song to harmonize with the sound of these. But what it pleased me to look at most closely were certain unclothed nymphs, who were half hidden behind the trunk of a chestnut tree, laughing at a ram which, intent on gnawing a garland of oak that hung before its eyes, had forgotten to graze on the grass that lay around it. Meanwhile there came up four satyrs, with horns on their heads and goat feet, softy softly through a thicket of mastic trees, to take them from behind; becoming aware of which, they put themselves in flight through the thick shrubbery, failing to avoid the thorns and other things that might harm them. One among these quicker than the rest was leaning on a hornbeam, and from this with a long branch in her hands defended herself; the others for fear had thrown themselves into a stream, and through it were swimming in flight, and the clear waters scarcely or not at all hid their white flesh. But once they had seen that they had escaped from the danger, they sat on the other bank out of breath and panting, drying their wet hair; and from there with gestures and words, it seemed, they wanted to scorn those who had not been able to catch them. And on one side there was Apollo, very fair, who, leaning on a staff of wild olive, was guarding the cattle of Admetus on the bank of a river; and because he was intently watching two strong bulls who were clashing horns he had not noticed the resourceful Mercury, who, in shepherd’s garb, with a goatskin hung over his left shoulder, was making off with the cows. And in that same space stood Battus, who raised the alarm at the theft, turned into stone, his finger held out in a gesture of denunciation. And a little further down Mercury was again to be seen, sitting on a great stone playing a zampogna with swollen cheeks, and with every guile seeking the means to deceive the many eyes of Argus.

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f six  some versions of landscape v

Da l’altra parte giaceva appiè di un altissimo cerro un pastore addormentato in mezzo de le sue capre, et un cane gli stava odorando la tasca che sotto la testa tenea; il quale, però che la Luna con lieto occhio il mirava, stimai che Endimione fusse. Appresso di costui era Paris, che con la falce avea cominciato a scrivere ‘Enone’ a la corteccia di un olmo, e per giudicare le ignude Dee che dinanzi gli stavano, non la avea potuto ancora del tutto fornire. Ma quel ch’è non men sottile a pensare che dilettevole a vedere, era lo accorgimento del discreto pintore, il quale avendo fatto Giunone e Minerva di tanto estrema bellezza che ad avanzarle sarebbe stato impossibile, e diffidandosi di fare Venere sì bella come bisognava, la dipinse volta di spalle, scusando il difetto con la astuzia. E molte altre cose leggiadre e bellissime a riguardare, de le quali io ora mal mi ricordo, vi vidi per diversi luoghi dipinte. Ma entrati nel tempio ….

On the other side there was lying at the foot of a very high turkey oak a shepherd asleep amidst his goats, and there was a dog sniffing the satchel that he had put under his head; who, since the Moon was looking down on him with a glad eye, I guessed to be Endymion. Near him was Paris, who had begun to write ‘Oenone’ with his scythe in the bark of an elm tree and, in order to judge the naked goddesses who stood before him, had not quite been able to finish it. But what is no less subtle to realise than delightful to see was the wit of the discreet painter, who had made Juno and Minerva of such extreme beauty that it would have been impossible to surpass them, and not believing that he could make Venus as beautiful as was needed, painted her with her back turned, cleverly excusing the fault. And many other light and very beautiful things to look at, which I do not now remember very well, I saw there painted in various places. But entering the temple ….

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f s i x  A 7 : s a n n a z a r o, a r c a d i a , p r o s a i i – § 2 4 v

of the earliest uses of this extension of the word ‘paese’ known. On another occasion he called it “la nuda con il paese con il satirro”|the nude with the landscape with the satyr|. As in other cases, a template remained for the making of copies or variants, and Lomazzo describes another version, in Titian’s studio at his death, now untraced, una Venere che dorme con Sattiri che gli scoprono le parti più occulte et altre [sic] Satiri intorno che mangiano uva e ridono come imbriachi e lontano Adone in un paese, che segue la caccia. A Venus who sleeps, with satyrs who uncover her most secret parts and other satyrs around who eat grapes and laugh like drunkards and in the distance is Adonis in a landscape who follows the hunt.

What Titian’s painting has in common both with the one Sannazaro describes and with pure or indeterminate landscapes is that it creates a countryside staffed by demigods and nymphs in which various incidents happen, leaving the viewer’s interpretation open, as Sannazaro does. That is, Sannazaro does not state that his theme is ‘watch out’, or that the viewer so intent on the pictures may, like the figures inside the pictures, himself be unaware of an important development because he, like them, is distracted; while he foregrounds the activity of viewing, the viewing is moralized within the picture only. A parallel in an actual painting might be Bruegel’s Peasant and Nest-robber – its pointing figure not seeing the water into which he is about to plunge. Erasmus finds the same gist in one of the paintings he describes in his Convivium religiosum, in which animals hunt: “αἴρων αἰροῦμαι”|in taking I will be taken|. Titian in the Pardo Venus does not make explicit or permit the straightforward identification of any particular moral or story, but the occupants of his countryside may well bring one or more to mind – the dogs attacking a deer in the background behind the nude recalling Actaeon; the eager huntsman recalling Adonis (as Lomazzo read it); the bathers in the background suggesting a classic sexual encounter; the satyr, looking up at the shooting Cupid with a grimace, expressing the psychological moment of consent to temptation (his lifting of the drape recalls the movement of Severe in Pulci’s Driadeo, lifting the veil from Lora’s “face” (see Chapter 5 §3); he suffers like the satyr in later versions of Cranach’s Nymph of the Spring; Chapter 5 §15). All the while the second faun is peaceably chatting with an adjacent nymph (or country girl); he is not engaged with the pointing huntsman; once more, their two unrelated continuations, as the French say, illustrate the ‘landscape’ status of the picture. This anchoring group is as essential to the picture as the nude that Titian identified as its prime

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f six  some versions of landscape v

motif (one of the figures in this group, too, though varied, goes back to the Darmstadt drawing), and it is essential to the nature of the picture – a tableau rather than an incident, “a country of pleasure” rather than a mythology in a landscape, captured moments (the blast on the horn at the sight of prey; the satyr’s lunge) rather than a story dramatized.

3 25

It looks as though, in Venice, landscapes were in many cases lawns on which to put out figures – if pagan, intrinsically moralizable – to play. An early landscape obviously begging the viewer to make some judgement is one by Giovanni Cariani in Berlin (fig. 6.26), in which the cushion on which the woman reclines emphasizes her luxuriousness; but the landscape behind her bears indications of potential or actual trouble: things seem quiet on the left but, in the middle ground and on the right, soldiers mean war and houses are burning. It was the viewer’s choice to associate the two and to make a reading: he might decide the fires were those of love (unlike today’s art historian, he did not have to decode all parts of the picture as a whole; he did not have to reckon

24 On Bruegel’s picture in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, see Joseph Leo Koerner, ‘Everyman in Motion: From Bosch to Bruegel’, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 139, 2006, pp. 297–328, with further references; notably also Mirror of Everyday Life: Genreprints in the Netherlands, exh. cat. ed. Eddy de Jongh and Ger Luitjen, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1997, no. 16 (Bird-nester). Erasmus/Opera omnia, Ordo I, vol. iii, p. 239, l. 246. While the figure on the left of the nude in the Darmstadt drawing has gone to ­constitute the huntsman in the Pardo picture, the man on the right is the basis both for the satyr lifting the veil from the nude and for the one conversing with the nymph; the latter may bear some resemblance to the Yvette Bar collection drawing (TTC no. 1948; Wethey 1987, no. 54) but this drawing may be ­derivative. Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo … nel quale si ragiona delle qualità de i colori, Venice 1565, f. 51r; see Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat, ‘Tizian Studien’, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, n.f. x, 1936, pp. 137ff. See Tiziano. L’Epistolario, ed. Lionello Puppi, Florence 2012, nos. 163 (11 October 1552) and 275 (connected to letter of 22 December 1574); also Mauro Lucco in Milan 2012, p. 17. Gian Paolo Lomazzo is quoted by Wethey, III, p. 56; from Idea del Templo, 1590, p. 133; in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto P. Ciardi, 2 vols., Florence 1973, I, p. 346. For the Pardo ‘Venus’ see Wethey, III, no. 21, and discussion pp. 53–56. Regarding this passage in Sannazaro see Creighton Gilbert, ‘On Subject and Not-Subject in Italian Renaissance Pictures’, Art Bulletin, xxxiv, 1952, pp. 202–17, classed this ecphrasis as having no subject, missing the joke (which fact undermines his argument). For the Jupiter and Antiope reading see Augusto Gentili, ‘Antiope di Tiziano’, Storia dell’arte, xxi, 1974, pp. 253ff.; Gentili 1980, pp. 94–107.

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f six  §24–§25 v

fig. 6.26 Giovanni Cariani, Woman in a Landscape, c. 1510–12, oil on canvas, 74 × 94 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

with the painter’s intention; he did not have to reconcile contradictions). He might more probably associate the woman with luxuria and the soldiers with the wars that were raging in the Venetain terraferma – this would certainly be typical of the thinking of the time, of the laments of the diarist Girolamo Priuli, for instance. A not dissimilar question, or readable message, is posed by Girolamo da Treviso’s reclining nude in the Borghese Gallery (fig. 6.27): this is a woman’s naked body – are you, or am I, going to wake her up (see again Chapter 5 §13, 14)? What is she dreaming, or machinating? Will the luxuria of this woman or the urgings of lust eventually have a political effect, for which the city would stand? We have notice of an early pair (and of one of them a visual record; see Chapter 5 §6) of “paesi” by Giorgione that probably represented a kind of ‘before’ and ‘after’, the ‘before’ being the Birth of Paris and the ‘after’ being the Destruction of Troy: this obvious trope of moralistic thinking may be applied directly to the presentation of a lascivious figure and a burning town, without accessing Bible, myth or history. Giorgione – like

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f six  some versions of landscape v

fig. 6.27 Girolamo da Treviso, Sleeping woman, c. 1523, oil on canvas, 130 × 213 cm, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Titian again in the Pardo Venus – might represent a tipping point, as perhaps in The Rape or more dramatically in The Tempest (see Chapter 4 §15): it would be the spectator’s guess, or moral view, as to what would or should happen next. Other nudes in landscapes may seem to discard the psychological dimension, but Palma Vecchio’s nudes almost always seem to challenge the viewer (see further Chapter 7 §13, fig. 7.10). There are some art historians who will not tolerate any side-stepping of the rules of allegory (as formulated later in academic contexts) or the absence of textual reference (they must have the Pardo ‘Venus’ as Jupiter and Antiope, for instance); in my view that is to close down not simply the content of the picture but the cultural ambience of its creation. When these moralizable landscapes took on classical attributes, that did not a priori bring with it strictness in following a known story, any more than it did in contemporary theatre. And clarity of intent is sometimes too much to demand. A conspicuous case is an anonymous so-called ‘giorgionesque’ landscape in the Sarah Blaffer Foundation, Houston (fig. 6.28), which one might

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f six  §25 v

fig. 6.28 Venice c. 1515–20, Landscape with figures, oil on canvas, 130 × 213 cm, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

better describe as ‘allegoresque’, since the figures ape narrative activity but no story is identifiable: they are ostentatiously classicizing and look as though they have meaning, lots of it – which is enough. It is not shocking to find such ‘freedom’ when certain painters were almost notorious for it: Paolo Pino in his treatise on painting already mentioned has one speaker proudly claim that his fellow Venetian artist Sante Zago would paint figures “senza significato né suo né altrui, e pur maneggia tutte l’antichità di Roma, immo del mondo”| without any meaning either of their own or of anybody else’s, and withal he deploys all the antiquities of Rome, indeed in the world|; his interlocutor replies: “Tanto è maggior gloria la sua”|So much the greater credit to him|. Giorgio Vasari knew of this kind of approach, but in his Vite and letters he fairly consistently censured both the painters who carried on in this way and those who would so eagerly and readily praise and exalt them – notably Giorgione at the Fontego dei Todeschi in a passage inserted in his second edition of his Life in 1568, but also, for example, Amico Aspertini. Such artists failed to ‘observe the story’

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f six  some versions of landscape v

(osservare la storia) and produced ambiguous or indeed meaningless figuration, often in a show of virtuosity, for which he used the term mostrare l’arte, a term which for him precluded meaning; he also claimed that Aspertini would paint with both hands at once. One has to bear in mind the openendedness, or arrant arbitrariness, of contemporary reading, which contemporary discussion of exegesis and allegorization did not at all condemn; and again that in literature or drama ‘novelistic’ rules of plot logic and consistency had not yet been formulated and were certainly not demanded.

3 26

Landscape of this kind is equivalent to a stage, and the window through which one looks on to it to a proscenium arch – or it is equivalent to the chamber of the imagination in the Renaissance conception of the mind. The space where things one imagined – above all intimate things – took place was, by long tradition, a landscape, because there it took place privately (see Chapter 2 §2), outside society, beyond the pale and into the wilderness. This landscape could be pictured naturalistically or indeed even identified with a real place, for example by Petrarch, beside the river Sorga (sonnet 281, referring to that “dolce ricetto”|sweet refuge|… “fuggendo altrui et, s’esser

25 For the Cariani see Venice 1999–2000, no. 97; Milan 2012, no. 19. For Girolamo Priuli, see Alberto Tenenti, ‘The Sense of Space and Time in the Venetian World of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Renaissance Venice, ed. John Hale, London 1973, pp. 17–46. For the Girolamo da Treviso see London 1983 (Genius of Venice), no. 40. For further consideration of the male gaze and the sleeping woman see Chapters 5 §13ff.; 7 §1ff.; 18 §12–14. This idea of a ‘moralizable’ landscape is obviously not congruent with Panofsky’s so-called paysage moralisé, since in this instance the figures the landscape frames are moralized. See the discussion of this “discredited” notion by Patricia Emison, ‘The Paysage Moralisé’, Artibus et Historiae, vol. 16, no. 31, 1995, pp. 125–37. For the Houston picture see Milan 2012, no. 15. Pino/Barocchi, p. 114; Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. Paola Barocchi and Rosanna Bettarini, Florence, 1966–97, IV, pp. 496, 518. For mostrare l’arte see Thomas Frangenberg, ‘Decorum in the Palazzo Magno in Trent’, Renaissance Studies, vol. 7, no. 4, 1993, pp. 352–78, esp. pp. 368–74. For norms of exegesis see Paul Holberton, ‘Of Antique and Other Figures: Metaphor in Early Renaissance Art’, Word and Image, vol. 1, no. 1, January–March 1985 , pp. 31–58. On approaches to narrative not being naturalistic or novelistic in an English Renaissance context, see Alastair Fowler, Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Art and Literature, Oxford 2003, esp. chs. 4, 7.

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f s i x  § 2 5 – § 26 v

può, me stesso”|fleeing others and, if possible, myself|, seeing ‘her’ “Or in forma di nimpha o d’altra diva/…/ or l’ho veduto su per l’erba fresca/ calcare i fior’ com’una donna viva”|Sometimes in the form of a nymph or other goddess … sometimes I have seen her on the fresh grass/ tread the flowers like a living woman|. The general Renaissance pursuit of illusionism was extended to landscape, of course, and to the particular details of nature, but even the ‘pure’ or ‘self-sufficient’ landscape was a setting in which something was meant to be shown or to happen (the converse of the definition suggested above). It was like a stage-set, which occasionally we may find empty – a comparison also made in theory (see Chapter 15 §2).

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Chapter 7 2 COURTEOUS LOVE

f s e v e n  co u rt e o u s lov e v

3 1 At the end of a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Ameto, properly

called La comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, its owner, Giovanni d’Antonio Minerbetti, opined, after the explicit Questo libro conpilato per messere giovani bocchacci Nonn è libro de ni[n]phe chome è intitolato Ma è libro di virtù. Amen. This book composed by Messer Giovanni Boccaccio is not a book of nymphs as it is entitled but a book of virtue. Amen.

Minerbetti, probably like many others, had been struck by the fact that, though beginning as a tale of sexual adventure – Ameto, out hunting in the woods, comes across a number of nymphs bathing – the Ameto turns into a paean of the transformation that can be wrought on the rude male by the beauty of fair woman. Just before the end of the book the climax of the transformation, evidently moving Minerbetti rather profoundly, is symbolized by Ameto’s cleansing by the nymphs in a fountain – achieving a state resembling ecstasy and redemption displacing the phallic triumph that one might have expected.

3 2 The Ameto, written in the early 1340s, is not the only work in which Boccaccio promoted his ideas of what he claimed to be the real Venus – “… non quella Venere che gli stolti alle loro disordinate concupiscenzie chiamono dea, ma quella dalla quale i veri e giusti e santi amori discendono intra’ mortali”|not that Venus whom the stupid call goddess to their unruly desires, but she from whom true and just and holy loves descend among mortals| – but it is the one in which he best gives us to understand how these good ‘loves’ come into being from a state that we would call sexual arousal. The text of the Ameto demonstrates time and again that ‘celestial’ love (as it was commonly called) did not involve a denial of concupiscence (lascivia) but followed from it, indeed could only begin from it. That notion has important implications for an understanding of later, Neoplatonist ideas about eros, which humanists knew to refer properly only to the love between man and boy, but which was extended to the relations between man and woman so far as to become a commonplace of their conversation (and even, in Catholic circles in the seventeenth century, virtually to equate physical and spiritual union). It is certainly also relevant to any discussion of the female nude in the visual arts, often simplistically interpreted as just lust ware. 1 See the critical edition of Boccaccio’s Comedia by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, Florence 1963; Minerbetti’s manuscript is his no. 15 (page viii), Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, cod. 1051 (R, II, 29).

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f seven  §1–§3 v

3 3 But the bliss and knowledge that Ameto attains is not readily attained

on this earth. The book is introduced in the first person by Boccaccio, who returns in an epilogue, in which he claims to have been peeping through the bushes at Ameto, observing his antics, and worrying at times that he was staring too insistently at his nymphs; he expresses his envy at the delight Ameto feels, contrasting it to his own melancholy. This arises because he finds that the original impulse he felt, like Ameto’s, is contaminated, unlike Ameto’s, with an eccessive and ­illicit one, by which he is tormented, and relieved only by return to the beauty of the object:

2 Boccaccio/Quaglio xlii, 1. Not entirely, but certainly to some degree failure to understand the Renaissance nude (or sexuality) has been due to Marxist feminism, as in such canonical works as John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972; both a television series and a book). In this apparently then re­volutionary but to present eyes banal tract it is generally supposed that female nudes were effectively rape victims, or slightly worse than that, because not only were they laid out so that the male could leap upon them – symbolically, but that was just as bad – but it was an evil conspiracy that the woman should have been induced to be lying there at all, open to the male gaze, victim of male thought. In the 1970s, when this book appeared, it was the fashion to read pictures ­literally, or as if they depicted circumstances that were in some way real; commen­tators such as Berger were able to gain notable insights by thrusting aside the hidebound academic veil which kept these subjects rarified, that pretended they were art for art’s sake, that they did not have anything to do with anything so low as sex – in other words by ­ odern representations of ignoring the tradition behind them. There was a lot of talk that early m nudes were the equivalent of ‘pin-ups’ (even in the 1970s a rather dated expression), though it was probably not suggested that they were an aid to the ‘patron’s’ masturbation. Certainly we should recognize – we can hardly avoid it – that such women were an object of the male gaze. What has not been much investigated is the nature of the male gaze in the Renaissance, about which in fact a great deal was written at the time. The belief that Venetian half-length ‘belle donne’ are ‘portraits’ of ­cour­tesans (that is to say, not that prostitutes were used as the painter’s model, but that the woman was represented as a prostitute – not as an abstract fantasy) is tenacious. On the contrary, representations of sexual objects were for the most part not ‘pornographic’ but an invitation to consider male desire. To see notable s­ cholars ­cutting to the quick of Titian’s nudes in the ‘Berger’ climate of opinion turn to the ­papers of Charles Hope and Carlo Ginzburg in Tiziano e Venezia: Convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia 1976, ed. Massimo Gemin and Gianantonio Paladini, Vicenza 1980, respectively ‘Problems of Interpretation in Titian’s Erotic Paintings’, pp. 111–24, and ‘Tiziano, Ovidio e i codici della figurazione erotica nel ’500’, pp. 125–35. Regarding the nude, see more recent approaches in Los Angeles and London 2018–19, though Neoplatonism is hardly discussed.

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f s e v e n  co u rt e o u s lov e v

Fra la fronzuta e nova primavera in loco spesso d’erbette e di fiori, da folti rami chiuso, posto m’era ad ascoltare i lieti e vaghi amori nascosamente, delle ninfe belle que’ recitanti, e de’ loro amadori … io sanza me grand’ora dimorai in non provata mai felicitate. Ma poscia ch’io in me quindi tornai per la novella fiamma che raccese l’antica, tosto com’io la provai, subitamente il cor ferito intese il ben di quelle, sì come provato, arguendo di lì le sue offese; e quel ben, che io prima avea gustato puro, da quindi innanzi con disiri di nuovo accesi venne mescolato; e così gioia insieme con martiri aveva: gioia, quelle rimirando e ascoltando i lor caldi suspiri; martiri aveva, troppo disiando ciò ch’esser non potea, avegna dio che il bene era più, ben compensando. Così ne’ miei pensieri e nel disio conoscea que’ d’Ameto, il qual si stava a mirar quelle sì fiso che io di lui sovente in me stesso dubbiava non fosse grave a quelle il suo mirare, e di ciò forte fra me il ripigliava. E di lui invidioso, palesare, tal volta fu mi volli; poi mi tenni, temendo condizion non peggiorare e con quel cuor che pote’ sostenni vederlo a tanta corte presidente parlar con motti e con riso e con cenni ma tutto questo m’usciva di mente qualor nel viso ne mirava alcuna o udiva cantar sì dolcemente ….

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f seven  §3–§4 v

In leafy and fresh spring,/ in a place thick with verdure and flowers,/ closed in by dense branches, I had placed myself/ to listen to the happy and pretty loves,/ secretly, of the fair nymphs,/as they declared these and those of their lovers … I remained in a trance for long hours/ in a happiness never before experienced./But once I returned from there to myself,/ through the new flame that rekindled/the old, just as soon as I experienced it,/ suddenly my stricken heart felt/ the good of those [flames], that it had just felt,/ inferring from there its hurt;/ and that good, which previously I had tasted/ pure, from then on with desires/ ­k indled again came mixed; and thus joy together with pains/ I had – joy, in looking at those [nymphs]/ and listening to their warm sighs;/ pains, desiring too greatly/ what could not be, even if/ the pleasure was greater, certainly outweighing. Thus in my thoughts and in my desire/ I knew those of Ameto, who stood/ gazing at them [the nymphs] so fixedly that I/ often in myself doubted him/ that his looking might be irksome to them/ and for this I strongly reproved him in myself./Indeed, jealous of him, to reveal myself/ I sometimes wanted; then I held myself back,/ fearing to make things worse,/ and with what heart I could I put up with/ seeing him presiding over such a court/ speaking with jests and laughter and gesticulations;/but all this went out of my mind/ whenever I looked a nymph in the face/ or heard one sing so sweetly.

3 4 This “mirar fisso” of Ameto is many times and with glee detailed by

Boccaccio. The nature of his ‘fixed gaze’ is entirely phallic, being aimed (for mirare also has this sense), being rod-like (as ‘fixed’) and being said, expressly, to be penetrative – exploring under what it sees, even right down between the legs (to the ‘fruit’, as Boccaccio calls it). Not only in the opening passage (ch. v) but also elsewhere (xii, xv, xxviii) Boccaccio dwells on Ameto’s ogling, on what he ogles and what he feels while ogling, and remarks explicitly that Ameto’s thoughts are “non sano” and that his eye is “lussurioso”|lustful|. The emphasis on the visual enjoyment of the female body is certainly aesthetic, for instance in appreciating the effect of clothing – a black shoe heightens the white of the foot – but also, more than sensual, it is carnal; it is not, however, predatory or fetichistic. It is a leitmotif of the whole ‘comedy’, which consists largely of the songs and stories the nymphs relate in the ‘court’ over which Ameto is invited to preside (see figs. 7.1, 7.2) – so strong a motif that the book

3 Boccaccio/Quaglio xlix.

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f s e v e n  co u rt e o u s lov e v

has taken its name from him, the constant witness, so constantly and intently ogling that he hardly listens to these songs. Ameto (‘let him love’, a hybrid of the Latin subjunctive amet and imperative amato) is the very figure of male desire, even if at the end his satyric nature is stripped from him: on an order from Venus, who has descended among them, the nymphs run towards Ameto, rip his “panni selvaggi”|savage garments|from him and plunge him into a fountain, in which “nella quale tutto si senti lavare”|he felt himself completely washed| – later, “brievemente, d’animale bruto, uomo divenuto essere li pare”|in sum, from brute animal he seemed to have become a man|.

35

It may seem to us that Boccaccio must have had his tongue in his cheek when he claimed in the last words of his book that he freely entrusted its examination and correction to the mother and mistress of all, the Most Holy Church of Rome. But we have seen that it surely did not seem that way to readers of his time. They would recognize Ameto’s emotions as paradigms for their own, delighting in the conviction that there was something inspiring and enlightening about sexual desire, that something ennobling could come about following the contemplation of the female form. Boccaccio delicately provides recognition that shame or sin, in reality, comes attached to the desire – mocking the figure of Ameto, expressing the worry that he is overstepping limits, and splitting Ameto off as a fantasy figure by introducing himself at the beginning and end of the work not simply as a narrator but as a spectator rooted in the real world, unable to be Ameto – only the better to enable the reader to bask in the steam these nymphs foment in Ameto’s imaginative faculty. It may be that Ameto walks off into an allegorical dimension that the reader cannot follow, but the reader can ogle together with him initially, he can enter with him into the trance or suspension that the nymphs induce – he can enjoy the seizure (above himself, beside himself, outside himself ) that comes before any action, any precipitation of desire, any descent to the grubbiness of a want. There is time and space before being channelled into genital organization, before the male gaze becomes priapic – a wonderful moment of excitement and awe. This is what Boccaccio characterizes as being sacred, or at the very least licit, by giving it an outcome that retains a high positive, that is non-carnal. In his little compendium of the Ameto in the story of Cimon and Efigenia in the Decameron (V, i) the “bestione”|great beast| Cimon comes across, in “un boschetto”, Efigenia, seeing “sopra il verde prato dormire una bellissima giovane con un vestimento indosso tanto sottile, che quasi niente delle candide carni nascondea”|sleeping on the green sward a very beautiful young girl wearing a garment so thin that it hid hardly anything of

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f seven  §4–§5 v

4 Boccaccio/Quaglio vii, 1: “Continua nella incominciata opera Ameto e sospinto da focosi disii séguita i caldi amori con petto non sano ….” xii, 2: “Ameto ... a più mirabile vita alzò la testa: e già non in terra ma in cielo riputava di stare, riguardando e le venute prima e le seconde con non minor maraviglia, le quali non umane pensava ma dèe.” Much of this chapter is devoted to description of the charms of the nymphs that Ameto admires more than a little penetratively. One passage (xii, 15, 16): “Egli poi rimira le braccia e le bellissime mani non isdicevoli al formoso busto, e lei cinta d’uliva considera, e in ogni parte mirando, ove potesse entrare la sottile vista, di passare s’argomenta. Così fatte bellezze li fanno migliori sperare le nascose e in sé o l’uso o la vista di quelle con più focoso appetito cercare.” Another (xii, 27, 28): “E poi ch’egli con sottili avvedimenti ha le scoperte parti guardate, alle coperte più lo ’ntelletto che l’occhio dispone. Egli non guari di sotto la scollatura discerne le rilevate parti in picciola altezza e con l’occhio mentale trapassa dentro a’ vestimenti e con diletto vede chi di quello rilievo porga cagione, non meno dolci sentendole ch’elle siano”; continuing (xii, 30): “E per quelle apriture mettendo l’occhio, di vedere s’argomenta ciò che uno bianchissimo vestimento, al verde dimorante di sotto, gli nega, e ben conosce che il frutto di ciò c’ha veduto è riposto nelle parti nascose; il quale non altro che Giove reputa degno di possedere.” Even while the singing and talking goes on, and the author luxuriates in his descriptions of the b­ eauties of the nymphs, Ameto returns to his ogling ways (xv, 26): “Ma poi che egli, con intenta cura la candida gola e il diritto collo e del petto e degli omeri quella parte, che il vestir non gli toglie, speculate, tutte le loda, e con quelle gli altri membri, e i palesi e i nascosi; e con lussurioso occhio rimira lunga fiata il piè di lei, andante calzato da sola scarpetta, la quale poco più che le dita di quello, sottile e stretta, copriva; e, nera, pensa che lui bianco faccia parere.” Still, during the stories that are told, Ameto is found to have been continuing to gaze (xxviii, 1) or more than that to fantasize (xxviii, 5, 8–9): “Mentre che la giovane ninfa co’ lunghi ragionamenti si tira il tempo dietro, Ameto con l’occhio ladro riguarda l’aperte bellezze di tutte quante …. Egli, mirandole effettuosamente con ardente disio, in sé medesimo fa diverse imaginazioni concordevoli a’ suoi disii. Egli alcuna volta imagina d’essere stretto dalla braccia dell’una e dell’altra stringere il candido collo, e quasi se come d’alcuna sentisse i dolci baci, cotale gustava la saporita saliva; e tenente alquanto la bocca aperta, nulla altra cosa prende che le vane aure …. Egli non intende cosa che vi si dica, anzi tiene l’anima con tutte le forze legata nelle dilicate braccia e ne’ candidi seni delle donne; e così dimora come se non vi fosse. Ma la ferma imaginativa di lui, vagente per le segrete parti di quelle, delle quali alcuna non s’avedeva, sì stavano attente ad ascoltar la parlante, da una di loro fu rivocata a’ luoghi suoi, avendo già compiuto la bella ninfa il suo cantare, acciò che esso, poco intendente alle dette cose, imponesse a un’altra l’usato peso.” xliv, 1: “Le divine parole appena aveano fine che le ninfe, in pié dirizzate, corsero inverso Ameto; il quale sì stupefatto stava a rimirare Venere che preso dalla sua Lia non si sentì, infino a tanto che, di dosso gittatili i panni selvaggi, nella chiara fonte il tuffò, nella quale tutto si sentì lavare.” xlvi, 4: “Ma sopra tutti gli altri pensieri il rallegra l’essergli da quelle gli occhi svelati a conoscere le predette cose e a vedere la santa dèa venuta quivi e ad avere interamente saputa Lia, e sé sentire ornato, come si sente, e possibile all’amore di tante donne e degno di quello mentre li piacerà; e brievemente, d’animale bruto, uomo divenuto essere li pare.” For the illustrations on the deschi da parto in the Metropolitan Museum, see Cecilia de Carli, I deschi da parto e la pittura del primo rinascimento, Turin 1997, no. 12. It may be remarked how consistent Ameto’s psychology or sentiments are with the basic syndrome of enamourment explained at the beginning of Andreas Capellanus’s treatise (c. 1200), as quoted in the note to §12 below.

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f s e v e n  co u rt e o u s lov e v

figs. 7.1, 7.2 Master of 1416, Deschi da parto with illustrations of scenes from Boccaccio’s Ameto: Ameto comes upon the nymphs and The shepherds Alcesto and Acaten compete, c. 1410, tempera on panel, both 53.7 × 56.2 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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f seven  §5 v

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f s e v e n  co u rt e o u s lov e v

her white flesh|; and after this experience Cimon becomes civilized, the best mannered youth (“il meglio costumato”) in the land. This phrase takes us back to Andreas Capellanus’s late twelfth-century De Amore, in the chapter ‘On the effect of love’, which states, in a fourteenth-century Italian translation: “… quelli ch’è aspro e no adorno e quelli ch’è di vil gente, sì ’l fa ben costumato”|one who is rough and uncouth and who is low-born [Love] makes well mannered|. This popular subject of Cimon (revived notably in the 1620s) would appeal also to Botticelli, who wrought three variations on it among the fictive reliefs of his Calumny of Apelles (see figs. 4.23–25).

36

In Petrarch, as he roasts on the slow spit of his desire, as in Boccaccio’s commentary from the bushes where he watches in the Ameto, there is constant return to that first moment, which is constantly re-lived (Boccaccio describes his witnessing Ameto as “rekindling” his own “antico amore”; in the Canzoniere, Petrarch frequently recalls the moment in which he ‘fell’, often counting the number of years he had loved Laura). The memory of the first onrush of sexual desire, often before it knew it was sexual desire, is treasured, and not buried: it may constantly be reawakened. Surely this ­archaic psychology would also have applied to images, particularly paintings (displayed in more or less public places) of nude women. A man coming across an image such as Giorgione’s so-called Venus – long presumed, too absolutely, to stand at the head of what became thereafter an iconographic category – would re-live the trance state of initial en­amourment, and for that reason take delight in it; for the same reason he would not feel that his enjoyment was sinful, masturbatory, prurient or ‘luxurious’, since the state predated the precipitation of desire or want; and because this state was one of suspension, before or between various possible outcomes, he could moralize the depiction before him (assuming properties or symbols in the picture itself did not anticipate him in this) either ‘upwards’, towards the 5 Boccaccio/Quaglio l, 6, referring back to 3: “È però liberamente l’examinazione e la correzione di essa [rosa, tra le spine della mia avversità nata] commetto nella madre di tutti e maestra, Sacratissima Chiesa di Roma, e de’ più savi e di te [the dedicatee].” For an explanation of ‘genital organization’ – according to Freudians a post-Oedipal process of concentrating originally ‘polymorphous’ sexuality into predominantly phallic, penetrative, desire – see Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death, London 1959, pp. 27 et sqq. Andreas Capellanus, De Amore, ed. Graziano Ruffini, Milan 1980, I, viii. On the relevance of the fictive reliefs in his Uffizi Calumny to the rest of Botticelli’s erotic ‘mythologies’ see Paul Holberton, ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies: Classicism and Invention’, in Botticelli Past and Present, ed. Ana Debenedetti and Caroline Elam, London 2019, pp. 53–72, esp. 56–62.

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fig. 7.3 Giorgione and Titian, Sleeping woman (The Dresden ‘Venus’), c. 1485, oil on canvas, 108.5 × 175 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

induction of moral, chivalric qualities, or ‘downwards’, towards the moral, spiritual dangers of carnal indulgence – the friars’ view; or of course he did not need to moralize at all, or might tacitly (who knows to what degree) accept or ignore their implications or connotations. Giorgione’s picture (fig. 7.3) is described explicitly in the terms of this psychology by Marco Boschini in his Carta del Navagar Pitoresco of 1660: Venus speaks, In Ca’ Marcello pur, con nobil’arte, m’ha depenta Zorzon da Castel Franco che, per retrarne natural un fianco, resté contento e amirativo Marte” In Palazzo Marcello with noble art/ Giorgione painted me/ portraying my flank in the flesh/ so that Mars stood still in content and admiration.

Since Mars was not present in the picture Boschini was evidently supplying a spectator’s reaction. 6 Marco Boschini, La carta del navegar pitoresco …, ed. Anna Pallucchini, Venice 1966, p. 664.

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37

Such terms recur repeatedly; no direct recall of the Ameto need be presumed: they were common­place. Cimon coming across Efigenia “fermatosi sopra il suo bastone, senza dire alcuna cosa, con ammirazion grandissima la ’ncomincio intentissimo a riguardare”|coming to halt [and resting] on his staff, without saying anything, with very great wonderment began to gaze at her extremely intently|. In the second of his first three eclogues, concerned with ‘honest’ and ‘insane’ love, Mantuan has Amyntas coming across a nude bathing, at whom he stares “baculoque innixus acerno”|leaning on his maple staff|. In Pulci’s Driadeo Severe, coming across the sleeping Lora, “tucto amirato tenne gli occhi fissi/ … et stando alquanto li muto et sospeso”| all in wonder he held his eyes fixed … and standing some time there mute and transported| (I, xliii, xliv). In Politian’s Stanze per la giostra Iulio (Giuliano de’ Medici) is similarly thunderstruck when hunting in the boschi, for he comes across Simonetta Vespucci (I, lvi) “assisa sovra la verdura”|sitting on the grass| (I, lvi, lvii): sta come un forsennato, e ’l cor gli assidera e gli s’aghiaccia el sangue entro le vene; sta come un marmo fisso … E par che ’l cor del petto si schianti, e che del corpo l’alma via si fugga he stands like a man struck mad, and his heart freezes, and his blood turns to ice within his veins; he stands like fixed marble … It seems that his heart in his chest breaks in pieces, and that his soul abandons his body.

I believe Politian exceeds every other Renaissance poet in the forcefulness with which he handles this topic. It is the plot of the Stanze that Giuliano is inspired by this encounter to excel in the giostra, the tournament. There are many other instances, not to mention Dante’s encounter with Beatrice as described in the Vita Nuova; instances also obscure, as in Marco Rosiglia’s Frottola di cento romiti (see Chapter 5 §19), in which the narrator sees a satyr and nymph: “io mi stava a vederli sbigotito”|I stood there gazing at them in amazement|; in a poem in an anthology of 1608 it is a shepherd coming across the ‘nympha loci’ who “amens stupidusque haerens miratur … oblitus”| mindless, stupefied, anchored to the spot, looks on … forgetful|. These conventions did not die out quickly: in Milton’s Paradise Lost, on finding Eve as God made her,

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That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good, of emnity disarmed

Satan eventually comes round: Thoughts, whither have you led me? Into what sweet Compulsion thus transported to forget?

3 8 We find the convention treated with a touch of irony, because he is low-born – though otherwise admirable, “robuste & fort bon luteur”|sturdy and an excellent lutenist| – when the “riche berger” Darinel falls in love with the shepherdess Silvie (whom neither she herself nor he knows to be the daughter of the Emperor Lusuart) in Book IX of the Amadis cycle: “… le plus du temps il se trouvait tout estaticq, tout estoit ravy en la memoire de Silvie: de sorte que quand il revenait à soy, il voyoit à tous les coups ses troupeaux fort eloignez de lui … enracinant en [son] cœur une mémoire que ne se pourra iamais oster ”|… most of the time he found himself quite ecstatic, he was entirely possessed in the memory of Silvie: to the extent that when he returned to himself, he found all of a sudden his flocks had wandered a long way off from him … rooting in [his] heart a memory that can never be moved from there|. Soon after, Florisel – who is nobly born; indeed Silvie is actually his aunt – and his companion Garinter, out hunting, find Darinel reduced by despair to the condition of a wildman, haunting lonely haunts and singing her praises (though he denies being alone, because “ceste belle Silvie, dont je me complains & lamente sans cesse, est continuellement dans mon cœur”|this beautiful Silvie, of whom I complain and lament without cease, is continually in my heart|), as a result of which they, both of them, fall in love with her (falling in love through a picture is also common enough) and go to find her: finding her, “ils se fourrerent dedans l’epesseur du boucage pour la contempler plus aysement”| they hid themselves in the thickness of the boscage so as to contemplate her the better| – not unlike the narrator of the Ameto; and Florisel soon remarks to

7 Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Mario Marti, Milan 1950, edn 1981, V, 1; Pulci 1479, I, xliii, xliv; Mantuan/ Mustard, ii, ‘De insani amoris exitu infelici’, line 79. Politian/Maier, I, lvi, lvii. Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova, ed. Domenico de’ Robertis, Milan and Naples 1980, iii, 1, and xv, 4–6. Quoted by Brummer 1970, p. 171, from a Delitiae of 1608. See also the first few poems given in Marco Pecoraro, Per la storia di Pietro Bembo, Venice and Rome 1959. Milton/Wordsworth Poetry Library, Paradise Lost, IX, ll. 463–75.

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her, “car votre naïve beauté & plaisant maintien, donnent temoignage que les dieux des forests ne sont gueres loing de ce lieu ou il se recreent en vous contemplant”|for your simple beauty and attractive carriage bear witness that the gods of the forests are not going to be far from here, where they take delight in contemplating you|.

39

Not unlike Florisel and Garinter, or indeed the narrator of the Ameto, are two figures in a fresco inserted in modern times into a wall in a room in the castle south of Padua at Monselice, when it was refurbished between the World Wars by Count Vittorio Cini (fig. 7.4); this fresco without provenance is very little known, indeed might as well have been lost – probably like a good many others that have been destroyed – since it has attracted so little attention. It is accompanied, and surely always was, by a fresco of similar size representing The Judgement of Paris (fig. 7.5), so represented as to express the complaisance of artist and patron in Paris’s choice. In The Realm of Love, to name this vision after the “Qui regna Amor” of Petrarch’s canzone 126 (see Chapter 2 §8), since the Cupid above similarly ‘rains’ flowers, the nude has a veil very like the veil that Venus wears in the Judgement of Paris and perhaps might be called a Venus. That is a little misleading, given the arrow entering the heart of one of the two figures ‘contemplating’ the nude, which diagrammatically declares his feelings and eternalizes the moment of rapture. The quality of the two Monselice frescos is not very high, but they hint at an established visual tradition anticipating Giorgione’s not so very archetypal Venus. Lorenzo Lotto painted another Realm of Love in a little work in the National Gallery in Washington (see Chapter 5 §15; fig. 5.24), in which the recreative ‘gods of the forests’ are introduced as a kind of applause; perhaps here the lion is a token of the wilderness in which this scene may be deemed to be taking place.

8 Amadis de Gaule, IX, ch. 1, edn used Lyons 1577. This book was first published in Spanish in 1530. See also further below, Chapter 9 §2. 9 The Monselice frescos were published by Bernhard Hinz, ‘“Amorosa Visione”: Inkunabeln der profanen Malerei in Florenz’, Städel-Jahrbuch, n.f. xi, 1987, pp. 127–46. It seems unlikely that the artist was Florentine, as Hinz believed, though the frescos were acquired in Florence in 1938 (they have no previous provenance). Scholars I have consulted incline more towards North Italy, c. 1425– 50. Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo has told me that Federico Zeri dismissed them as fakes.

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fig. 7.4 Anonymous, The Realm of Love, c. 1430?, fresco re-immured, Cini collection, Castello di Monselice

fig. 7.5 Anonymous, The Judgement of Paris, c. 1430?, fresco re-immured, Cini collection, Castello di Monselice

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3 10

Otherwise Giorgione’s Dresden Venus, partly because of its terrible condition, raises a great number of questions. The picture Boschini saw in the Marcello palace was surely the picture that Marcantonio Michiel noted in the house of Hieronimo Marcello in 1525, “La tela della Venere nuda, che dorme in uno paese con Cupidine ... |The canvas of the nude Venus, who sleeps in a landscape with Cupid ...|. But was she really a Venus? It was perhaps only the Cupid that led Michiel to suppose so; there is nothing else to identify her, and the Cupid may instead have only indicated her desirability, as in other cases where the nude is patently not Venus. In any case this Cupid (which had deteriorated so far that in 1837 the figure was painted out and the landscape filled in over its place) and the landscape itself were, according to Michiel, “finiti”|finished| by Titian: it is clear today that Titian did indeed paint all the landscape of the painting now in Dresden, and to all appearances all the rest of the picture around the silhouette of the nude, in some parts repainting what was already there. There then followed in the course of time further considerable restorative overpainting – not only in the area of the Cupid – and the repainting and varnishing cannot now be removed because it would leave only fragments. Even if the Cupid is taken to signify the woman to be Venus, we certainly do not know it was Giorgione’s own intention to make her a Venus. Probably Michiel identified the nude as Venus because its pose was classicizing, recalling for us such works as the Barberini Faun (arm behind the head) or the Sleeping Hermaphrodite (sleeping on drapery) or the Medici Venus (hand over vulva) or to Michiel other antique imagery to which these are related, and because she was nude. There is indeed no sign of any clothes she might have, only of drapery which seems originally to have extended all along down to the bottom edge. Meanwhile her face is entirely repainted – rather à la Rossetti – and there is no proof her eyes were originally closed, although, where it was not necessary, the restorers would not have wished to modify the painting. Whether she is designated Venus or not, there is no classical text that Giorgione may have illustrated or extant direct precedent on which he may have based the woman’s form. The most important marker is the landscape setting: perhaps Giorgione had always wished to place her against a landscape, if not actually in one – Titian achieved this by painting in grass beneath her on the left and right – because there is no sign whatsover in infrared or X-ray of architecture behind her. A woman asleep in the landscape had no particular association with the goddess Venus, but would have been seen as the kind of nude one might happen on, or more broadly as a fantasy figure, a potentially allegorical one: that she sleeps in a landscape would have been enough to locate her within the Ameto or ‘Cimon’

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or “qui regna Amor” tradition, that is to say, ultimately, the pastourelle tradition (see Chapter 2 §4). The viewer is implicitly placed as having wandered into the boschi, there to come across an object of his desire: the rich drapery on which she reclines, perhaps particularly recalling Boccaccio’s ‘Cimon’, is almost a kind of daïs. To this Titian added the Cupid: there was much lead-white used to paint him, which must have served to cover Giorgione’s darker ground, as opposed to the body of the woman, which has always drawn its pallor from the light ground beneath its thin paint.

3 11

For his ‘Venus’ Giorgione probably drew not only or simply on a lost nude by Mantegna, or Polifilo’s vision of Natura (see Chapter 5 §13–16), but also on a tradition of epithalamial imagery; it is probable enough that the Monselice frescoes would have been painted originally to celebrate a marriage or to decorate a ‘marriage room’, the master bedroom where the new couple were recreatively to procreate. Amongst other paraphernalia accom­ panying a marriage – examples were brought together in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Art and Love in Renaissance Italy – we find a variety of imagery celebrating the concupiscence from which happy and healthy infants were supposed to arise, which, of course, was the same concupiscence from which civilizing love arose. Trousseau chests (cassoni) were painted or moulded with supine females, and in a number of pictures the reclining nude is accompanied by the coats of arms of the families concerned or by allusive imagery such as a ring, or by both in an example by Girolamo di Benvenuto in the Museo Horne in Florence (fig. 7.6), or, in an extraordinary picture by Lorenzo Lotto (fig. 7.7), by a host of such symbols. It has been argued accordingly that Giorgione’s picture, too, was an epithalamium, but, though marriage may have been the occasion of its commission, that does not encapsulate or exhaust its more reticent

10 Michiel/Frizzoni, p. 169. Charles Hope, in his forthcoming collection of Titian documents, has argued that the Dresden picture cannot be the Marcello picture that Ridolfi described (Ridolfi/ Hadeln, I, p. 83) because he stated the Cupid held a bird, of which there is no trace; but it seems to me more likely that Ridolfi was mistaken (or the trace has disappeared) than that the Dresden picture, with its nude not in fact typical of Titian, is another work altogether. On the attributional questions, see Joannides 2001, pp. 179–81; Peter Humfrey, Titian, London and New York 2007, p. 102; for the condition history and technical data see Marlies Giebe, ‘Die Schlummernde Venus von Giorgione und Tiziano. Bestandsaufnahme und Konservierung – neue Ergebnisse der Röntgenanalyse’, Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 1992, pp. 91–108; republished in Italian in Tiziano: Amor Sacro e Amor Profano, exh. cat., Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, 1995, pp. 369–85. I am grateful to Frau Giebe, Head of Conservation at the SKD, for looking at the picture with me for much of the morning of 13 January 2017.

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fig. 7.6 Girolamo di Benvenuto, Epithalamial Venus, c. 1520?, oil on panel, 61 × 100 cm, Museo Horne, Florence

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fig. 7.7 Lorenzo Lotto, Epithalamial Venus, c. 1520, oil on panel, 92 × 112 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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imagery. Patently an object such as a mirror frame in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Chapter 4 §5; fig. 4.6) rejoices in beauty (it framed a mirror) and indicates the joys of love “tra’ fiori e l’erba”; the mirror is closely comparable to a number of circular prints produced in Florence in the third quarter of the fifteenth century (see figs. 4.4, 4.5). More than one of these and other kinds of object, too, bear the motto Amor vuol fé|Love requires faith or troth| (see Chapter 4 §5), continuing “e dove nonne fe nonne Amor” |and where there is no faith there is no love| – and the accompanying motif of the ring becomes more than a token of the marriage barter, it represents an adamantine pledge. On this kind of imagery, classicization supersedes, for example in Botticelli’s so-called Mars and Venus in the National Gallery, London, which patently recalls such earlier marriage imagery even while merging into it Lucian’s description in his Herodotus of Aetion’s painting of the marriage of Alexander and Roxana; but it should not be presupposed that the two pictures of similarly reclining women in the National Gallery, London, and the Louvre in Paris respectively derive from Botticelli rather than represent a tradition on which Botticelli plays a variation. So again in Giorgione’s Dresden ‘Venus’, where, however, the deliberate curtailment of epi­thalamial symbols is striking. While it bears a similar concupiscent charge the nude is set in a specific rather than an emblematic landscape, as if it were real, as if a real spectator were expected, as if things known to happen in such circumstances might happen again. What is more, Giorgione had explored sexual imagery before, in his Rape (figs. 4.26–27), in the Tempest (fig. 4.22) and in the so-called Laura (fig. 7.8), an image drawing upon epithalamial ritual – the gesture of drawing her robe from her breast. A figment of male desire might naturally refer to, even embody, the moment at which sex was meant to begin, on the first night of marriage, though it does not necessarily follow from this that this first nude presented unallegorically – and many that were subsequently painted – must have been epithalamial in the sense of having been made specifically for the occasion of a marriage.

3 12

Most conspicuously in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, but also in Dante’s Vita Nuova and repeatedly in Renaissance love poetry across all Europe and into the seventeenth century, and from the beginning described by Andreas Capellanus, the lover’s real beloved gives place to an image of her carried in the memory or the heart: it is this that becomes the true object of the lover’s devotion. This image is in effect a snapshot of the beloved taken when the lover fell in love. Petrarch, Dante and others speak of the beloved being written, imprinted or painted in their heart, sometimes by the god of love. On

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one occasion, sonnet 130, Petrarch declares the image that Love has sculpted in his heart to be superior to any work by Praxiteles or Pheidias; in his more ­famous sonnet 77 on Simone Martini’s portrait of Laura the line “la beltà che m’ave il cor conquiso”|the beauty that has conquered my heart|undoubtedly contains this idea: it is clear that Simone somehow reproduced, as Petrarch saw it, something metaphysically more than the likeness of her, in other words the figure of her with which the poet was enamoured, the figure that he saw in his heart. This Giorgione’s ‘Laura’, then, would be an ideal image, challenging, through the marker of the ‘laurel’ that grows up behind her (possibly even recalling the current metaphor of the image being ‘rooted’ in the heart), both Simone’s portrait and Petrarch’s own depiction of his beloved in his poetry. This ‘image of the heart’ may be viewed as a kind of reverse of Pygmalion’s statue, the real object of desire converted into a statue in which the lover’s desire is crystallized. Indeed this crystallization is known as the ‘canon of beauty’, the beloved being described in a series of standard metaphors – her lips like rubies, teeth like pearls, neck like snow or ivory, breasts like apples, and so on: all this work of conceptual statuary takes place in the lover’s fervid heart. It is this that the ‘introverted’ Petrarchan 11 See New York 2008 (Art and Love); also Syson and Thornton 2001, ch. 2, pp. 37–77; Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence, exh. cat. by Caroline Campbell, Courtauld Gallery, London, 2009; Virtù d’amore: pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino, exh. cat. ed. Claudio Paolini, Daniela Parenti and Ludovica Sebregondi, Gallerie dell’Accademia and Museo Horne, Florence, 2010. For supine females, especially on the inside of cassone lids, see New York 2008 (Art and Love), no. 58b, with bibliography; London 2009, fig. 1 (example in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen); Paul Schubring, Cassoni, Leipzig 1915, nos. 156, 157; 289, 290; and represented in the ‘Otto’ series of unique prints produced in mid-century Florence and later (see Hind 1938–48, A.IV). For bridal boxes or betrothal chests see Syson and Thornton 2001, pp. 58–62, also New York 2008 (Art and Love), no. 38. For Girolamo di Benvenuto’s nude see Il Museo Horne a Firenze, ed. Filippo Rossi, Milan 1967, no. 59. For Lotto’s bridal nude see New York 2008 (Art and Love), no. 148. For objects bearing the motto amor … non può see above, Chapter 4 §5 and fig. 4.3; see also P.F. Watson, The Garden of Love in Tuscan Art, Philadelphia 1979, pp. 86, 88–89, tracing its early occurrence (“Amor vol fede”) in a short poem by Boccaccio,’Amor, che con sua forza e virtù regna’. On rings see New York 2008 (Art and Love), no. 32. On the Botticelli and related pictures, see Holberton 2019 (Botticelli). On Giorgione’s Laura, see Dal Pozzolo 2008, pp. 30–53; New York 2008 (Art and Love), no. 145; Los Angeles and London 2018–19, no. 103; and for a re-reading of the inscription and discussion of the patron Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, ‘Il problema della committenza della “Laura” di Giorgione: Una revisione paleografica e un’ipotesi aperta’, Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien, vols. 17–18, 2016, pp. 44–57.

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fig. 7.8 Giorgione, ‘Laura’, 1506, oil on canvas over panel, 41 × 33.6 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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lover is fixated upon. In turning to the ‘image of the heart’ he relives and rekindles the fulmination of his enamourment, in a fundamentally static, contemplative, binding or enchaining (a Petrarchan metaphor) position. A feminist critic once described this position to me as masturbatory. It is not masturbatory in so far as it animates the lover, in a way that the lover repeatedly claims has changed his life for the better.

3 13 While the spectator, however notionally, feels the flicker of that ‘first

flame’, the onset of love that knows not yet what love is, he is not in a stable state, and from it he must emerge. The next event is a matter of his choice (though he may blame his ill fortune). Looking leads necessarily to leaping only for satyrs; human beings may become more human. The image itself may give a clue, may subtly or crudely, tacitly or explicitly, hint at or declare

12 Capellanus explains that the image of the beloved enters the lover’s spirit or heart through his sight and there develops: “Amor est passio quaedam innata procedens ex visione et immoderata cogitatione formae alterius sexus … sed ex sola cogitatione, quam concipit animus ex eo, quod vidit, passio illa procedit. Nam quum aliquis videt aliquam aptam amori et suo formatam arbitrio, statim eam incipit concupiscere corde; postea vero, quotiens de ipsa cogitat, totiens eius magis ardescit amore, quousque ad cogitationem devenerit pleniorem. Postmodum mulieris incipit cogitare facturas et eius distinguere membra suosque actus imaginari eiusque corpora secreta rimari ac cuiusque membri officio desiderat perpotiri.”|Love is a certain inborn passion proceeding from sight and unrestrained thought of the form of the opposite sex …. but it is only from the thought, which the spirit conceives from what it sees, that the passion proceeds. For when a man sees a woman apt for love and formed to his taste, he immediately begins to desire her in his heart; subsequently, however, the more he thinks of her, the more he burns with love, to the point that his imagination becomes more and more full of her. Later he begins to think about the physical attributes of the woman and to imagine her in action and to search out the secret parts of her body, and desires to enjoy completely every function her parts may serve.| See further for this conception, for example, Ricardo Castells, ‘Lovesickness and the Problematical Text of Celestina, Act 1’, in Fernandez 2017, pp. 225–41, at pp. 234ff. This also links the idea to the lover’s traditional sleeplessness – it is the image that keeps him awake. That Petrarchism revolved around the ‘image in the heart’ is well known: see, for example, David Kalstone, ‘The Transformation of Arcadia: Sannazaro and Sir Philip Sidney’, Comparative Literature, vol. 15, no. 3, 1963, pp. 234–49, at p. 238. There is a poem of about 1510 by Girolamo Bologni paragonizing a Laura painted by ­Jacopo Bellini with Petrarch’s poetry: see Dal Pozzolo 1993, p. 260 and note 21 (omitted from his 2008 revised republication). Pietro Bembo wrote a sonnet, ‘O imagine mia celeste e pura’, in which he compared an image by Giovanni Bellini to the image he had carved in his heart, “che scolpita ho nel cor” (Bembo/Dionisotti, Rime, no. 19). Dal Pozzolo makes an undeniable case for the epithalamial nature of Giorgione’s Laura; but need this epithalamial imagery have been used strictly or only in the context of a marriage? On the canon of beauty see Giovanni Pozzo, ‘Il ritratto della donna nella poesia .... Giorgione’, Lettere italiane, xxx, no. 1, 1979, pp. 1–30; reprinted in Giorgione e l’umanismo veneziano, ed. Rodolfo Pallucchini, Florence 1981, pp. 309ff.

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fig. 7.9 Francesco Vecellio?, Venus and Cupid, c. 1515, oil on canvas, 110.5 × 138.5 cm, Wallace Collection, London

fig. 7.10 Palma Vecchio, Venus and Cupid, c. 1524, oil on canvas, 118 × 209 cm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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fig. 7.11 Marcantonio Raimondi, Nude pleasuring herself, c. 1510, engraving, 141 × 70 mm

fig. 7.12 Zoan Andrea, Lovers, c. 1495, engraving, 250 × 226 mm

the outcome that in a work of literature would be a continuation of the narrative. Sixteenth-century Venetian nudes are comparatively reticent; but one can find examples in the work of the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi, for example, that labour with meaning. One approach is to make play particularly with Cupid’s arrow, notably in a Venetian picture in the Wallace Collection, London (fig. 7.9), which seems to be based on Moschus’s Eros drapetes (Venus searching for her runaway son; see Chapter 8 §6) or in Palma Vecchio’s Venus and Cupid in Cambridge (fig. 7.10), which has no textual source, and is open wider to interpretation, though the erotic meaning of the arrow is definite. The instance of a surviving print by Marcantonio Raimondi of another such nude using a dildo (fig. 7.11) indicates that the sexuality of these images, for all their apparent, now distanced, idealization, was clear and direct. However, the fact that Marcantonio’s print survives in a unique example, and that, of a large number believed printed, not a single set of ‘I Modi’ (the notorious set of prints by Marcantonio after Giulio Romano) is extant shows also that outright pornography, unaccommodated, was likely to provoke adverse

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reaction. A rare print (fig. 7.12), antedating the Modi, featuring fully human protagonists in their pleasure clearly marks them as pagan by providing a curtain deriving from Bacchic sarcophagus reliefs and a pair of hanging panpipes – what you see is sinful, and so also were ‘the loves of the gods’, even if so depicted the sin was made more remote. The High Renaissance is often said to have ended with the Sack of Rome in 1527, but that upset was put right to some extent; the backlash of censorious fury against the Modi of 1524 was never rectified, and certainly heralded the climate of repression, codification and reform that continued until about the last decade of the sixteenth century (see Chapter 10 § 10n).

3 14 However that may be, it is true enough that after the episode of the ‘Modi’ a rather different approach to eroticism emerges. Neoplatonism became part of its discourse, even dominated it. That dominance extended to pastoral, since love was all the drama of later sixteenth-century pastoral theatre and romance. Discussion of Neoplatonism usually starts with Marsilio Ficino, the translator and interpreter of Plato’s dialogues under the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent. In De amore, in which, again in dialogue, successive Florentines expound the different speeches given by the diners of Plato’s Symposium, Ficino distinguishes carnal love from spiritual, stating that both are ‘good’ in so far as both are motivated by vision of the divine, the human body being a divine creation. At the sight of bodily beauty, “Si ad contemplativam, statim a forme corporalis aspectu ad spiritualis atque divine 13 These images and others related have been discussed notably by Meiss 1976 and by Gentili 1980, pp. 68–71. For Dosso see Los Angeles and London 2018–19, no. 48, with bibliography. Wethey, III, no. X–44; Ingamells, The Wallace Collection Catalogue of Pictures, 1985–92, I, pp. 361–65, P19; see further Friedländer and Rosenberg 1979, p. 118, nos. 244, 245. Rylands 1992, no. 67. On the ‘Modi’ see New York (Art and Love) 2008, nos. 99–100; Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture, Princeton nj 1999; Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art, Chicago 2011, pp. 223–38. Nagel seems to me to underestimate the carnality of what he calls the “idealized” nude, perpetuating and reading back Kenneth Clark’s distinction (Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, New York 1953, p. 3f.) between the ‘naked’ and the ‘nude’ into what is a single general style. Such a distinction is certainly not tolerated in James Grantham Turner, Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy, New Haven and London 2017. Hind 1938–48, ‘Zoan Andrea’, no. 18. On the highly erotic Bacchic sarcophagus recorded by Marcantonio, see Turner 2017 (Raimondi’s Bacchanal) with bibliography. David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print, New Haven and London 1994, pp. 297–98.

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contemplationem erigimur. Si ad voluptuosam, subito a visu ad concupiscentiam tangendi descendimus”|If [we are disposed] to the contemplative, we are immediately elevated … to the contemplation of spiritual and divine beauty. If to the voluptuous life, we descend immediately from sight to the desire to touch|. He adds, but does not develop, “Si ad activam atque moralem in sola illa videndi et conversandi oblectatione perseveramus …. Activi [amor] remanet in aspectu”|If to the active and moral life, we continue in the mere pleasure of seeing and conversing …. [The love] of the active man remains in seeing|. The contemplative, if they feel any, have no use for their sexual urge. Ficino makes no connection between the love he describes and literary love, with the sole exception (which proves the rule) of a reference to Guido Cavalcanti’s ‘Donna mi prega’, the most metaphysical poem in the canon of the dolce stil novo; but few of the terms with which Ficino expounds his own ­notions can be found in the poem itself. The poem was no doubt introduced in order to honour Giovanni Cavalcanti, who is also one of Ficino’s speakers. Not only did Ficino himself not even consider the notion of any way up from sexual arousal (even of the thunderstruck kind) to apprehension of the divine – and in the simile of the chariot of the soul from Plato’s Phaedrus that he ­took up the ‘passion’ horse fails in any way to cooperate with the ‘intellect’ horse (or rider: the interpretation varies), it is only a nuisance – but also his contemporaries explicitly denied any such movement. In particular Pico della Mirandola, writing a commentary on Girolamo Benivieni’s Canzone dello Amor celeste e divino|Song of heavenly and divine love|, inspired by Ficino, refused to allow that the love declared in Guido Cavalcanti’s ‘Donna mi prega’ was ‘celestial’. Ficino would have agreed: following Plato he never envisaged that the corporeal beauty that might encourage “nixus quidam ad divinam pulchritudinem evolandi”|a certain effort of flying up to divine beauty|could be female. In another commentary, this by Lorenzo de’ Medici himself on his own sonnets, Lorenzo, despite citing numerous authorities including both Plato and Aristotle, declares at one point, “E mettendo per al presente da parte quello amore, il quale, secondo Platone, è mezzo a tutte le cose a trovare la loro perfezione e riposarsi ultimamente nella suprema Bellezza, cioè Dio; parlando di quello amore che s’estende solamente ad amare l’umana creatura, dico che, se bene questa non è quella perfezione d’amore che si chiama ‘sommo bene’, almanco …”|And putting aside for the moment that love that, according to Plato, is a means for all things to find their perfection and to repose ultimately in the supreme Beauty, that is, God; speaking of that love that extends only to loving the human creation, I say that, even if this is not that perfection of love that is called ‘summum bonum’, still …|. A little later Mario Equicola, advisor to Isabella

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d’Este, writing over several years his own Libro de natura de amore, drafted a passage in which “Speravo io tacitamente da l’amore celeste ne l’amore volgare fare ritrovare il lectore ma il troppo intervallo dal celo in terra, la distantia et spatio di loro mel veta”|I hoped tacitly from celestial love to make the reader find himself again in vulgar love but the too great gap between heaven and earth, the distance and the space between them, forbids me|. Most notably, in Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani of 1505 the extended discussion of love is concluded by the speaker Lavinello’s relation of his encounter with a hermit, who roundly and pointedly disclaims the possibility of moving to the spiritual without altogether renouncing the carnal. In the first book of Gli Asolani Perettino discourses of unhappy love, in the second book Gismondo discourses of happy love – enjoying his beloved sensually – and Lavinello, the third of the three speakers, is set to explain that love is something else again. He begins by defining love as desire for the beautiful – “desio della bellezza”– restricting its enjoyment to the senses of sight and hearing: this is surely adopted from Plato and Ficino. However, after composing two Petrarchizing canzoni on this 14 Erwin Panofsky (Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic, New York 1969, ch. V, ‘Reflections on Love and Beauty’, pp. 121–25; Studies in Iconology, Oxford 1939, edn New York 1962, ch. IV, ‘Blind Cupid’, at pp. 121–25; ch. V, ‘The Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy’, at pp. 129–60) was quite correct to see Neoplatonism pervasive in Renaissance culture, but mistaken in supposing that it became so as early as the fifteenth or first or even second quarter of the sixteenth century and in its ‘pure’ form as proposed by Ficino. Marsile Ficin [Marsilio Ficino], Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, De l’amour/Commentarium in convivium Platonis, De amore, ed. Pierre Laurens, Paris, 2002; see also Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, ed. and trans. Sears Jayne, 2nd edn, Dallas 1985 and Ficino’s own translation into Italian, El Libro d’Amore, ed. Sandra Niccoli, Florence 1987, vi, 8; references to vii, 1 (Cavalcanti); vii, 14 (women and boys); vii, 14 (Phaedrus charioteer); 15: “Verus enim amor nihil est aliud quam nixus quidam ad divinam pulchritudinem evolandi, ab aspectu corporalis pulchritudinis excitatus. Adulterinus autem ab aspectu in tactum precipitatio”|For true love is nothing other than a certain effect of flying up to divine beauty, aroused by the sight of corporeal beauty. But adulterous love is a falling down from sight to touch|. Girolamo Benivieni, Opere … con una canzone dello Amor celeste & divino, col commento dello Ill. S. conte Giovani Pico Mirandolano, Venice 1522. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Scritti scelti, ed. Emilio Bigi, Turin 1977, p. 301. Quotation from an early draft of Mario Equicola’s Libro in Mario Pozzi, ‘Mario Equicola e la cultura cortigiana: appunti sulla redazione manoscritta del “Libro de natura de Amore”, Lettere Italiane, xxxii, no. 2, 1980, pp. 149ff., at p. 167. Bembo/Dionisotti 1966, III, notably xxi. For the spread of Neoplatonism see Jill Kraye, ‘The Transformation of Platonic Love in the Italian Renaissance’, in Platonism and the English Imagination, ed. Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton, Cambridge and New York 1994, pp. 76–85.

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theme Lavinello abandons any further development and narrates his meeting with the anonymous hermit, who, dismissing all human love as vanity, gives him instead the argument from design for God (see Chapter 6 §15).

3 15 Nevertheless the Symposium and the De amore were vital contributions

to a changed climate, offering as an alternative to manly prowess – “Con voi men vengo”, cries the instructed Iulio in the Stanze, “Amor, Minerva e Gloria”|With you I will set off, Love, Prudence and Glory| – greater development of an intellectual dimension. A rather shaky resolution of Neoplatonism and traditional chivalric and ‘courteous’ love (so to call it, since literary civilizing love has much in common with ‘courtly’ love but is not the same thing) is found for the first time not in Bembo’s own work, but in the speech given to him as a character in Il libro del cortigiano by Baldassare Castiglione: on the fourth night, concluding their long discussions, Bembo discourses on the nature of love, having been compelled, as he is made to say, to consult the hermit that his own character Lavinello had consulted in his own Asolani, although in fact the Neoplatonic ideas ‘Bembo’ puts forward, involving ‘grades’ or ‘steps’ (gradi) of love, derive most conspicuously from Pico della Mirandola’s Commento on Benivieni’s Canzone. It took Castiglione some time to evolve his synthesis, but after the publication of the Cortigiano in 1528 the two ‘systems’, courteous-chivalric and philosophic, became increasingly and soon very closely combined. Castiglione revived the principle that is of course in Plato but at which Christians had hitherto baulked, grounding sexual desire as “[il] più basso grado della scala per la qual si pò ascendere al vero amore”|the lowest step of the stair on which one may climb to the true love|, which is the love of the divine. (Stricter Neoplatonists, on the other hand, held, as noted, that only love of a man or boy could lead up in this way, and in his verse and correspondence, in a manner acceptable to society, Michelangelo, for one, was able to practise such homosexual Neoplatonism.) It is a tottery stair that, even within the book itself, not all ‘Bembo’’s interlocutors are prepared to climb, but, the speech having been delivered so very late at night that, once ‘Bembo’ has returned to earth from his flight of fancy, the company may make their way to bed without the need for torches, there is no opportunity, within the book, to challenge his vision; however, one may conclude that, like much high talk in a lucubration, it was not to be taken too seriously. Castiglione makes more of the threefold scheme barely adumbrated in Ficino, ranging the animal, sensual and appetitive; the human, rational and elective; the angelic, intellectual and willed. These are different words for the same bundled thing, I myself would say, but the middle term corresponds

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to Ficino’s ‘active and moral’ contemplators, “in sola illa videndi et conversandi oblectatione perseveramus”| we continue in the mere pleasure of seeing and conversing| (though this may seem neither active nor moral). ‘Bembo’ indulges the young in whom the senses are strong, the reason comparatively weak; he declares that they do “cose virtuose”|virtuous things| to earn the favour of their beloved, and show “gentilezza, cortesia e valore e le altre nobil condicioni” under its influence (in traditional fashion). Older men, however, as the animal spirits wane, “… col fren della ragion correggono la nequicia del senso …”|with the brake of reason correct the perversity of the sense| and, “entra[ndo] nella divina strada amorosa con la guida della ragione”|entering on the divine road of love with the guide of reason|, realise that beauty (the object of their desire) is “un raggio divino”|a divine ray|, which it is more appropriate to see or to hear than to touch or to taste, and so they prefer to continue in the mere pleasure of seeing and conversing: “così pascerà di dolcissimo cibo l’anima per la via di questi due sensi”|in this way he will feed the soul with very sweet food through these two senses (seeing and hearing)|. It is this step, seemingly, that (if the theory worked) the Duke would take at the opening of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die;

although in ‘Bembo’’s scheme the appetite might vaporize into an intellectual appreciation of general beauty: “Per fuggir adunque il tormento di questa assenzia e goder la bellezza senza passione, bisogna che ’l cortigiano con l’aiuto della ragione revochi in tutto il desiderio dal corpo alla bellezza sola e, quanto più po, la contempli in se stessa simplice e pura e dentro nella imaginazione la formi astratta da ogni materia; e così la faccia amica e cara all’anima sua, ed ivi la goda e seco l’abbia giorno e notte, in ogni tempo e loco … che chiuso nel core si porterà sempre seco il suo precioso tesoro ed ancora per virtù della imaginazione si formerà dentro in se stesso quella bellezza molto più bella che in effetto non sarà”| Therefore to escape the torment of this absence and to enjoy her beauty without passion, the courtier must, with the help of reason, recall in its totality his desire from the body to beauty alone and, as far as possible, contemplate it in itself, simple and pure, and form it in the imagination abstracted from all matter; and in this way make it dear and close to his soul, and there enjoy it and have it with him day and night, everywhere and all the time … because enclosed in his heart he will always carry with him his own precious treasure and again by the power of his imagination he will form within himself that beauty

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much more beautiful than it can be in reality|. In these concluding words the image in the heart of the older tradition has been aligned with the object of Platonic contemplation by the reason – lastingly.

3 16 The courtly setting of Castiglione’s work permeates ‘Bembo’’s exposition, in which he presents his ‘courtier’ wooing or flirting with a “donna di palazzo”|lady-in-waiting| in “conversatione”. This (elderly) courtier would love his beloved’s inner beauty as much as her outer, and guide it, “seminando virtù nel giardin di quel bel animo”|sowing virtue in the garden of that fine spirit|, a simile of Christian instruction, or “il vero generare ed esprimere la bellezza nella bellezza”|truly generating and making manifest beauty in beauty|, a Neoplatonic formula to which the old soldier Morello d’Ortona retorts, “Il generare la bellezza nella bellezza con effetto, sarebbe il generar un bel figliolo in una bella donna”|Generating beauty in beauty to any effect would be generating a fine son in a fine woman|. Undeterred, ‘Bembo’ strikingly describes the nature of a chaste kiss, “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 15 Politian/Maier, II, xlvi, 1. Castiglione/Bonora, IV, li-lxx. For commentary see Bart van den Bossche, ‘“Quelli amori che son dolci senza amaritudine”: the ­Petrarchist Bembo in The Book of the Courtier’, in Petrarch and His Readers in the Renaissance, ed. K.A.E. Enenkel and Jan Papy, Leyden 2006, with bibliography; this includes Lawrence V. Ryan, ‘Book Four of Castiglione’s Courtier: Climax or Afterthought?’, Studies in the Renaissance, xix, 1972, pp. 156–79; Piero Floriani, Bembo e Castiglione: Studi sul classicismo del Cinquecento, Rome n. d. [1976], pp. 169–87; Guido Arbizzoni, L­ ’ordine e la persuasione: Pietro Bembo, personaggio nel ‘Cortegiano’, Urbino 1983, pp. 7–47. It has been suggested that the phrase ‘donna di palazzo’ was chosen by Castiglione to avoid the word, already with its other sense, ‘cortigiana’; if this is true, it is also true that he specifically avoided it. Others were prepared to make the association, however: see Quiviger 2010, ch. 6, p. 68 and note 5, on Brocardo’s lost oration on love, as recorded by Sperone Speroni (Speroni 1542, ff. 22–23v). On Michelangelo’s Neoplatonism, and specifically his love for Tomasso de’ Cavalieri, the father of the composer Emilio, see London 2010 (Michelangelo). Castiglione/Bonora, liii; liv: … son però molti che per guadagnar la grazia delle donne amate fan cose virtuose …; … purché in esso mostrino gentilezza, cortesia e valore e le altre nobili condicioni …; … e quando non son più nella età giovenile, in tutto l’abandonino [l’amor sensuale], allontanandosi da questo sensual desiderio, come dal più basso grado della scala per la qual si po ascendere al vero amore …; lxii: … e così entrar nella divina strada amorosa con la guida della ragione, e prima considerar che ’l corpo, ove quella bellezza risplende, non è il fonte ond’ella nasce, anzi che la bellezza, per esser cosa incorporea e, come avemo detto, un raggio divino …; …e così pascerà di dolcissimo cibo l’anima per la via di questi dui sensi, i quali tengon poco del corporeo e son ministri della ragione …; lxvi, as quoted, to which compare, earlier, lxii: “subito che s’accorge che gli occhi rapiscano quella imagine e la portano al core”.

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anime, ed una sola di quelle due così composta regga quasi dui corpi”|not to move to any unchaste desire, but because he feels that that bond is an opening of the entrance to their souls, which, drawn by the desire of the one for the other, transfuse themselves alternately still, one in the body of the other, and in this way they mix together so that each of them has two souls, and one soul alone made up of two rules as it were two bodies| – reviving a notion of love found in the twelfth-century Hugh of St-Victor, flickering in Petrarch, endorsed by Ficino and later in the sixteenth century to pervade that displaced court, or green room for a court, pastoral romance.

3 17

One might turn to Titian’s so-called ‘Venus of Urbino’ (fig. 7.13) with the different mentality mapped by Castiglione. Castiglione was weaving the Neoplatonic element into his courtiers’ discussion of love in the years immediately before 1520, and composed ‘Bembo’’s final speech in the years just after. Titian may well have painted his picture, not necessarily for any particular patron, though it was eventually obtained by the duke of Urbino, during a similar period. He, too, drew on earlier sources, most patently the reclining nude herself of the picture by Giorgione he had finished, while also alluding, in the action of the maids placing clothes in the chest (or perhaps taking them out), to the epithalamial context in which such nudes had often been found; there is also a weaker, as it were cancelled or replaced allusion to the ‘Bacchic’ curtain found behind nudes in classical reliefs and picked up in the Hypnerotomachia “panton tokas” (fig. 5.25) and in Zoan Andrea’s engraving of a couple coupling beside panpipes (fig. 7.12). The spectator, rather than supposedly stumbling on this creature in the unknown and remaining thunderstruck, has now to confront the woman, the embodiment of his desire, in full consciousness, because, now, she is not a vision but a fellow occupant of his world and not sleeping but returning his gaze: he has to relish her beauty with a more rational appraisal, he has almost to discourse on it. For original spectators the reconfiguration of nymph into nude donna di palazzo (here the ambiguity of ‘Bembo’’s term is highly apposite) must certainly have been striking – certainly strikingly naturalistic. Early viewers would surely have been aware that the contemplation the picture advocated might be ‘high’ as well as ‘low’; in my own opinion the picture derives from this intention equally to be ‘high’ its remarkable serenity.

16 Ibidem: lxii: … e così seminando virtù nel giardin di quel bel’animo, raccorrà ancora frutti di bellissimi costumi e gustaragli con mirabile diletto; e questo sarà il vero generare ed esprimere la bellezza nella bellezza, il che da alcuni si dice esser il fin d’amore …; lxiii: Quivi il signor Morello – Il generar – disse – la bellezza nella bellezza con effetto, sarebbe il generar un bel figliolo in una bella donna ….

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fig. 7.13 Titian, ‘The Venus of Urbino’, c. 1520, oil on canvas, 119.5 × 165 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

17 Wethey, III, no. 54. Mary Pardo, ‘Artifice as seduction in Titian’, in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe: Institutions, Texts, Images, ed. James Grantham Turner, Cambridge 1993, pp. 55–89, cites Sperone Speroni, whose ideas could be highly Neoplatonic, and specifically his ‘Dialogo d’amore’ (Speroni/ Pozzi, pp. 511–63), in which Titian is discussed (pp. 547–48). See also the essays and references of Titian’s “Venus of Urbino”, ed. Rona Goffen, Cambridge 1997. In a paper given at a National Gallery, London, seminar in 2010 of which he kindly later sent me a revised text Guido Rebecchini argued that the “donna” that Cardinal I­ppolito de’ Medici had earlier seen in Titian’s studio might have been the picture later sold to Francesco Maria della Rovere, and read the work very much in the context of the documented frequentation of courtesans by patrons, or aspirant patrons, of these works by Titian; he found the picture to be similar in spirit, and occasionally in the ­letter, to the anonymous poem Vanto della cortigiana ferrarese (see next note). The Venus (or her transferred figure) was also developed later by Titian into a Danaë, which Giovanni della Casa declared would put the “diavolo adosso” anyone who saw it, and made the ‘Venus’ ‘of Urbino’ look like a Theatine nun by comparison (see Roberto Zapperi, ‘Alessandro Farnese, Giovanni Della Casa and Titian’s Danaë in Naples’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, liv, 1991, pp. 159–71, at p. 163); such remarks should also be seen as an expression of the naturalism, and therefore great worth, of the painting, and certainly not simply as squeals of delight in its pornographic content.

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fig. 7.14 Titian, frontispiece to Pietro Aretino, La Sirena, Venice c. 1538, woodcut

3 18

If we wish to follow through the development of ideas of love following Castiglione’s Cortigiano, there is no obvious benchmark text available (excepting for the moment Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana, for which see Chapter 9 §5ff.). Virtual statuary (‘the canon of beauty’) continues to dominate, for instance in the anonymous 1530s Vanto della cortigiana ferrarese (followed by a Lamento della cortigiana ferrarese in which she has caught the clap), which begins with a recognizable list of the qualities of the courtesan – her lips like rubies, teeth like pearls, neck like snow, breasts like apples, and so on – adapted to the context. Pietro Aretino develops this convention to lyrical excess in his 1538 Sirena, with a woodcut frontispiece for which it is believed Titian provided the design (fig. 7.14). The woman Aretino called his siren or mermaid was the wife of a Paduan called Sireno; his love for her was entirely platonic in the modern sense, but his poem to her, a lament sung beside Venetian waters by this confessed “pastor Toscano” – an early example of the shepherd, outside any context, as the figure of a sincere, pure-hearted suitor – contains no Neoplatonism. Ultra-virtuosistically Aretino goes through a hyperbolic recitation of the canon, praising Sirena not to the stars but for her

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eyes as the stars, as the whole universe, quite systematically running over the parts of her body and then on to her invisible or moral qualities. Everything is contained in the image of the heart (whether or not set in heaven), and in the attitude, which is one of worship. The Sirena herself is reported merely to have been embarrassed by this, to her, irrelevant outpouring. Meanwhile Mario Equicola in his Libro de Amore as published in 1525 – after his initial hesitation – had decided that Petrarch in fact belonged to “la setta platonica”|the Platonic sect|, though Domenico Malipiero, publishing in 1536 (see Chapter 6 §15), insisted on the “vergogna”|shame|of the Canzoniere’s opening sonnet and its passion and vanity. He complained that Petrarch was more widely read than the Gospels, in every country, and hoped, presumably, that the reliance of all the young people on him for their ‘matter’ need be an attraction only to his style and language. ‘Petrarchismo’ is indeed recognized as dominant in sixteenth-century culture, in the first instance formally or linguistically but in the second as shaping to a large degree the protocols of lovemaking in courts and elsewhere; but not many who today use the terms ‘Petrarchism’ and ‘Neoplatonism’ seem to ask to what degree they overlap or differ. It could also be claimed that both were so integral, so absorbed and melded, as to be invisible as specific influences. Take the example of Agostino Beccari’s pastoral play Il Sacrificio, first performed in 1554 and later revived and used as a pawn in the ‘wars’ around the nature and status of pastoral theatre at the end of the century: the 1554 prologue claims that the sight of naked beautiful women, if granted freely (as for example to Paris, by contrast to Actaeon), could ennoble and inspire, or verbatim “Mi ridriccian l’ingegno e l’intelletto”|once more for me straighten up the genius and the intellect| – a pun not felt to be, or actually, incongruous (consider also Ficino’s “erigimur”, §14). The idea of contemplating female beauty, whether with the eyes or with the mind, so long as it could be dignified as contemplating, could be regarded positively, though what it led to remained ambiguous – whether it was to virtuous behaviour or to more elevated thought or both. One may find it comic that Giovanni Ruscelli should terminate his Neoplatonizing discourse on love with a list of the 450 most beautiful women in Italy, ready to inspire upward-leading contemplation, but it may be seen as a kind of national pride. In his Trattato dell’amore humano of 1561 Flaminio Nobili found the idea to be commonplace, remarking wrily that in fact contemplation of the stars might be a better way to God (see Chapter 6 §16, 17) than the contemplation of women.

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3 19 It is not as though either Neoplatonism or Petrarchism ousted other

modes of love, at court or elsewhere. There is no reason to discount the new – newly written – chivalric literature of the sixteenth century, and in particular the great series of books of Amadís de Gaula/Amadis de Gaule, which in French, by various authors (Spanish, Italian and French), eventually numbered twenty-one, or twenty-four if you include three last books originally written in German. Amadis may figure in manuscripts in the early fourteenth century, but his story was newly composed by Garcia Rodríguez de Montalvo when he published it in five books in 1508–10. In the ‘Prologo’ to his extraordinarily popular work Montalvo aligned his story with Sallust and with Livy, who “Otra manera de más convenible credito tuvo, apartandolos de la fuerças corporales les llegó al ardimiento y esfuerço del corazón”|took a different manner [from other story-tellers] of more decent credit; removing them from physical forces he brought them to the ardour and the force of the heart|. Criticizing others who narrated miraculous deeds, Montalvo claimed (not that his book was not full of miraculous events but) that his book was not, by contrast, “fuera de la ordén de natura”|outside the order of nature|, and had a real purpose, to provide “los buenos enxemplos y doctrinas”|good examples and doctrines|, which “tomemos por alas con que nuestras ánimas suban a la alteza de la gloria donde fueron criadas”| which we take for wings with which our souls may rise to the height of the glory from which they were created|. Amadis, in a novel way, is a good man, a Christian hero, and a great lover, even while he battles giants – a hero of courtesy, above all towards Oriane,

18 Il Vanto is available at the British Library in a 1570 reprint; a copy of the Lamento (undated) is in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. The Vanto features a reworking of the diffused ‘canon of beauty’, already noted in the passage from Marco Rosiglia quoted in Chapter 5 §19. The text of Pietro Aretino’s Sirena is available at www.classicitaliani.it/aretino; for the woodcut see Washington 1976, no. 42, and New York 2008 (Art and Love), no. 113c. Mario Equicola, Libro de natura de amore (1525), Venice 1607, p. 11. On Petrarchism see Petrarca, Venezia e il Veneto, ed. Giorgio Padoan, Florence 1976; in the Cinquecento, Luigi Baldacci, Il petrarchismo italiano nel Cinquecento, republished Padua 1974. Agostino Beccari, Alberto Lollio, Agostino Argenti, Favole, ed. Fulvio Pevere, Turin 1999, Beccari, Sacrificio, ‘Prologo’ [1554], line 63. Giovanni Ruscelli, Lettera … sopra un sonetto …, Venice 1552, noted Quiviger 2010. On Quattrocento celebration of beautiful women see Luke Syson in New York 2008 (Art and Love), ‘Belle: Picturing Beautiful Women’, pp. 246–54, and Syson and Thornton 2001, ch. 2, ‘Betrothal, Marriage and Virtuous Display’. Flaminio Nobili, Il Trattato dell’amore humano, Lucca 1567, quoted A.A. Parker, The Philosophy of Love in Spanish Literature, Edinburgh 1985, ch. IV, note 2.

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to whom he is enduringly faithful. The medieval romances, the matters of Britain and of France, had numerous rough edges, and their heroes might be tragic or flawed; these ‘modern’ romance cycles, Amadis, Palmerín, the Espejo de Príncipes or Mirror of Knighthood and Belianís (Belianís was a single book but the Emperor Charles V, who especially prized it, wrote to the author asking for a sequel) were sentimental story books with unfailingly courteous heroes – they even became courtesy books, witness the publication of the Thresor des livres d’Amadis|Treasury of the Amadis books|, a collection of speeches and letters from the Amadis series, frequently reprinted in France from 1559. Amadis and his progeny (the courteous contemplator Florisel [see 9 §2] was his great-great-grandson) were sentimental heroes, as modern as comic books; Amadis appealed even in Italy, where he had Ariosto’s Orlando to contend with.

3 20 Another work that has similarly been little apprized are the madrigals of Luigi Cassola, collected and published by his friend Giuseppe Betussi with a dedication to another friend, Pietro Aretino, for the first time in 1543, and reprinted immediately. These show Petrarchism used not simply as a model but ingested and regurgitated in highly emotional vignettes. Cassola’s collection in the edition of 1543 contains 364 madrigals, with 23 ballate. Employing Petrarchan vocabulary, Cassola shapes the drift of his shorter gist typical of madrigals to a specific point that emerges in the last line; he is happy to repeat and to dwell, he often riffs, as it were, on Petrarchan phrases or gambits, for example S’i’ dissi mai …|If I ever said …|; he attempts nothing too complex or too subtle, or indeed too varied; he loves cliché, constantly reworking it, or simply constantly repeating it. His stance towards the beloved has no need to undergo development; this remains ‘image in the heart’ Petrarchism. In the end she falls ill and dies; even this constitutes very little movement. It may not be coincidence that in Cassola’s time, and throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, madrigals were set only for the different male voices; the introduction of female singers, at least for the madrigal, is not attested until the 1560s. The first versification sets the tone of the collection:

19 On Amadis see Henry Thomas, Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry …, Cambridge 1920, citing (p. 149) Andres Fernandez’s prologue to Geronimo Fernandez, Tercera y quarta parte del imbencible principe dõ Belianis de Grecia, 1579; John J. O’Connor, Amadis de Gaule and its Influence on Elizabethan Literature, New Brunswick 1970; also ‘Antecedents of the novel in sixteenth-century Spain’, by E. Michael Gerli, in The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, ed. David T. Gies, Cambridge 2004, pp. 178–200, notably pp. 181–84. Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís de Gaula, ed. Edwin B. Place, Madrid 1959, ‘Prologo’.

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f s e v e n  § 1 9 – § 20 v

L’alto valor, che signoreggia in voi Gentil alma mia dea S’inalza tanto ormai coi raggi suoi; Che giunge al ciel ove albergar solea: Et io, che veg[g]io i luminosi rai Da far arder il ciel, non che la terra Hor di fiamma maggior, di maggior guerra Temo via più che mai: Per che si grande altezza Cosa mortal non prezza. The high quality that reigns in you,/ My gentle life-giving goddess,/ Rises now so greatly with its rays,/ that it reaches the heaven where it used to reside:/ And I, as I look upon the light-bearing rays/ that would make the heaven burn, let alone the earth,/ Of greater flame, of greater war,/ fear much more than ever:/ Because such great height/ will mortal matter slight.

Echoing Petrarch from the off (“L’alto signor dinanzi a cui non vale …” is the opening of Canzoniere ccxli, for example), and employing such Petrarchist terminology as “guerra”, the ‘war’ or trouble to which the lover is subjected by his desire, Cassola sets his Madonna on a pedestal from which she never descends (even when in madrigal 137 he urges her to uncover her breasts, if not to his touch at least to his sight). She is almost irrelevant: it is the male lover’s emotion that is the subject. It is properly Petrarchist, unempowerable desire locked like Narcissus in the gaze – but uplifting, and easily read also as Neoplatonic. This paralytic lover has strong feelings, though, very commonly expressed as ‘dying’: in at least 120 of his 364 madrigals Cassola uses the verb morire or the noun morte, and refers to death in other words in quite a number more.

20 For Cassola see Einstein 1949, I, pp. 172ff.; Ulrich Schulz-Buschhaus, Das Madrigal: Zur Stilgeschichte der italienischen Lyrik zwischen Renaissance und Barock, Bad Homburg v. d. H., Berlin and Zurich 1969; Giuliano Bellorini (ed.), Luigi Cassola, Il Canzoniere del Codice Vaticano Capponiano 74, Piacenza 2002. ­Bellorini refers to ­editions of Cassola’s madrigals of 1543 and 1545 only, but Schulz-Buschhaus used an edition dated 1544, as did I (British Library, 240.d.26). Einstein noted that Cassola had been very little studied by l­iterary historians; Schulz-Buschhaus refers to Croce’s damning remarks on his work and continues in the dismissal of the literary value of his madrigals. But they were not poems but songs, to be set to a tune or to their own music, and, as being sung, appropriately simplified and cento-istic (or quodlibet-istic).

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fig. 7.15 After Titian, Venus and Cupid, original 1545, oil on canvas, 139 × 195 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

3 21 Suppose we ventured to look in this light at paintings representing desire, for example the reclining nudes by Titian following on from the ‘Venus’ in Dresden and the ‘Venus’ ‘of Urbino’, among them the Venus for the Emperor Charles V dating to 1545. The painting is now lost, but it has been supposed that a rather contemplative Venus in the Uffizi (fig. 7.15) is a copy after it. Her figure should have inspired Charles, too, to surpass himself, according to the chivalric pattern. Her beauty should have been an object of “alto valore” if Charles had adopted the stance of Cassola’s madrigals. He would have recognized her nude body without equivocation as the receptacle of her high value, if for Cassola that value was not compromised by the idea of seeing her breasts. Would this devout and pious ruler, whom Titian would portray in these years as a mirror of Christian knighthood in at the Battle of Mühlberg (Museo del Prado), have instead responded to this Venus salaciously? Titian wrote in the letter accompanying his gift, “… ho speranza che farà chiara fede quanto la mia arte avanzi se stesso in adoperarsi per la Maestà”|I hope that it will show clear faith how greatly my art surpasses itself when put to work for your Majesty|, vocabulary indicating a high impresa, 

f seven  §21 v

fig. 7.16 Titian, using a design by Giorgione (?), Serenading shepherd, c. 1515–20, ink, 223 × 226 mm, British Museum, London

not an after-dinner nudge-nudge. Other patrons might be delighted to view other pictures of nudes with carnal recognition of their beauty – Titian’s contemporary Danaë for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese is a noted case – but Titian might have been taking a risk if he sent a picture that could be read in no other way to this strait patron. 21 Wethey, III, no. 49. For the Danaë see Zapperi 1991. Charles would probably not have been surprised, however, by Titian’s sending the nude. His father Philip had paid a substantial sum for an uncommissioned nude presented to him by an unnamed artist in 1505: see Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V, New Haven and London 2019, p. 22, citing a document from the Lille Archives civiles, série B, B219/297.

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above, top to bottom fig. 7.20 Titian and workshop, Venus and a musician, c. 1565, oil on canvas, 165 × 210 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York

above, top to bottom fig. 7.17 Titian and workshop, Venus and a musician, c. 1555, oil on canvas, 148 × 217 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, inv no. p421 fig. 7.18 Titian and workshop, Venus and a musician, c. 1550, oil on canvas, 136 × 220 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, inv. no. p420 fig. 7.19 Titian and workshop, Venus and a musician, c. 1550, oil on canvas, 115 × 210 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

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fig. 7.21 Titian and workshop, Venus and a musician, c. 1565, oil on canvas, 150.5 × 197 cm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

f s e v e n  § 22 v

fig. 7.22 Titian, Nymph and shepherd, c. 1570–75, oil on canvas, 150 × 187 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

3 22

In a series following on Charles V’s picture, painted for his son Philip II’s court, the Venus is accompanied by a music-maker (figs. 7.17–21) – putatively a Cassola-esque madrigalist. There is a precedent for these in a drawing in the British Museum representing a nude playing a flute while being ‘serenaded’ by a man with a viola da braccio (fig. 7.16). It looks as though this nude may have pre-existed, and Titian then developed the drawing around it, or rather with it: Titian himself will have drawn the nude, which has certainly been gone over, but its tighter outline indicates perhaps that he started here, then integrated her into a larger design. The fact that this very same nude appears in the Louvre Concert champêtre suggests her pre-existence, and her pose is in fact a development of that of the gipsy in Giorgione’s Tempest, so it is plausible that she was an invention of Giorgione’s that Titian

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took up, just as he reworked Giorgione’s conception of a reclining nude in the Dresden ‘Venus’ and again in the ‘Venus’ of Urbino; Michiel reports to the effect that designs of nudes by Giorgione were in circulation. I have suggested that the nymphs appear in the Concert champêtre to indicate the success of the musicians’ music (Chapter 3 §24); here the nymph is the object of the shepherding musician’s devotion (even if he is not ogling her) and the different levels on which they exist expresses her being a notion, an icon in the lover’s heart. This seems fundamentally the position in Titian’s later series of paintings in which a courtier serenades a nude (figs. 7.17–21); in two cases the setting is a large palace garden or brolo, a space reserved for elegant and civilized conversation (not the kind of walled garden traditionally associated with transgressive love): the pair may be in a kind of banqueting house in the grounds. In the version in Berlin (fig. 7.19) the courtier bears a marked resemblance to Philip II, a likeness which, even if not an identification, is telling, because this must at the very least be a courtier aping the fashion he set. In the two other organ-playing versions Titian made boldly explicit (by the glance of the courtier) the sexual basis on which the upward puffing of male desire depended, but this should not have spoilt the quality of his music. It is claimed that the Metropolitan version (fig. 7.20) was the last in the series, and that Titian himself painted its landscape, among what are otherwise workshop variations intended for the king’s servitors rather than the king himself; it is interesting that now Venus holds a pipe, consonant with the wilder landscape in which fauns disport, because one may regard Titian’s Nymph and a Shepherd (fig. 7.22) as the next, larger variation in the series, the courtier now transformed into a shepherd and Venus into a nymph. For it would surely be erroneous to read this (much damaged) work as simple, bucolic or nostalgic, even though the figures reprise Sebastiano’s Polyphemus (Farnesina, Rome) and also probably Giorgione’s – or his own in Giorgione’s mode – back-turning nymph reflected in a print by Giulio Campagnola. The ramping goat and swirling atmosphere, complementing the enticing withdrawal of the girl – whose fleshy flanks once gleamed – and the man’s thrusting homage, suggest the full engagement of his active and moral spirits in the experience of desire.

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f s e v e n  § 22 – § 2 3 v

3 23 The situation of the courtier or shepherd before the nude, constituting

an innamoramento, is continued into further episodes in Veronese’s four paintings of unknown original context now in the National Gallery, London (figs. 7.23–26). After the enamourment follow the pains and tribulations (internal) of the male lover; questions of loyalty and jealousy (or external tribulations) complicating the passage of true lovers; and the consummation to which they progress. Though no details of the commission are known and there is no evidence for the order in which one should read the pictures, read in this way they encapsulate and anticipate in little much of the tragi-comedy of the early seventeenth century. Veronese (otherwise in his mythological painting quite a master in the language and vicissitudes of love) appears to have devised a typical pre-nuptial drama for the couple who achieve their union in the final scene (as I suppose it to be), namely, 1) enamourment – the reclining female nude standing for the first enamourment of the lover; the man forms an image of her in his heart which includes her invisible virtues, and in which (by contrast to her comportment in reality) implicitly or actually she is represented naked; he looks up because inspired but the sexual basis is also clear; 2) the lover’s subsequent suffering, as he feels the pains of love (Cupid has shot his bow, and now, in the painter’s invenzione, beats him with it); this is a Petrarchist position: the new lover feels or is scorned by his mistress, who here (I would say) looks angrily on Cupid and clings to her companion, who holds an ermine, known for giving up its life rather than soil its white coat;

22 On the drawing, TTC, no. 1928; Wethey 1987, no. 35; London 2016, no. 25. Hugo Chapman was kind enough to look at this drawing in the British Museum with me in June 2014, and to demonstrate to my satisfaction that the drawing was all by one hand and, not least by reference to other drawings in the same solander, by Titian – despite the changing colour in the ink (on which basis it has been supposed to be by two hands: see Fabio Benzi, ‘Un disegno a Londra e il Concerto Campestre del Louvre’, Arte Veneta, xxxvi, 1982, pp. 182–87). Michiel/Frizzoni, pp. 51, 230, records another female nude by Giorgione and a male nude “in un paese”|in a landscape|. For the backward-turning nude see, for example, Vienna 2004, no. 22. For the paintings, see Wethey, III, nos. 45, 46, 47, 48, 50; Hope 1980; Rona Goffen, Titian’s Women, New Haven and London 1997, pp. 159–69; Tiziano, exh. cat. ed. Miguel Falomir, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 2003, nos. 41, 42; Der späte Tizian und die Sinnlichkeit der Malerei, exh. cat. ed. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2007, no. 2.7 (Keith Christiansen). See also Katherine A. McIver, ‘Visual Pleasures, Sensual Sounds: Music, Morality and Sexuality in Paintings by Titian’, in Marshall, Carroll and McIver 2014, pp. 13–21.

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1

2

3

4

figs. 7.23–26 Paolo Veronese, An Allegory of Love, oil on canvas, four pieces, 186.1/189.9 × 186.7/194.3 cm National Gallery, London

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f seven  §23–§24 v

3) the lover woos in earnest (it is clearly the same man throughout), against some kind of rival, wearing pink, or possibly an emissary who has brought a letter; the letter appears to say possede |possesses|; or he could be a member of her family; the figures join hands, conceivably also the two men (behind and beneath the woman as the viewer sees her), in a ring, even in a dance (one cupid is also playing music), recalling the Three Graces who give, receive and give back; but her pose is rather contorted and the other cupid is gripping her leg, indicating a struggle – so this is much more likely to be a representation of jealousy, as if each were tugging her towards him: she looks back to the man in pink, perhaps even down to the letter, but her lover (whose prominent knee may recall the knee thrust by men between the legs of a woman they may assault) seems to pull her to turn towards him – her trunk is turned to him, and it looks as though she will turn his way; 4) successful pairing and its solemnization, with epithalamial garland, olive branch and chains (held by a cupid) of union and ‘possession’; the belt Venus wears had been used in marriage imagery before; the woman offers herself – the ordained happy ending.

3 24 There is visual imagery from before and after the publication of the Cortigiano that clearly enough indicates the ‘upward’ drive of love, such as Correggio’s more or less contemporary painting of Mercury tutoring Love (fig. 7.27). The ideas behind this and other images are often supposed to be Neoplatonic but, if perhaps they are, they are not so in a strict sense, only Neoplatonical in a looser way. To speak in essentials, Neoplatonism was Platonism Christianized, not so difficult since Plato, who invented the notion of non-dimensional or immaterial existence – the theory of Ideas – was built into Christian theology in the first place. Or, to put it another way, Neoplatonism was one corner in the room of the general 23 In the catalogues to the two exhibitions in which these paintings were exhibited in 2014, at the National Gallery in London and at the Gran Guardia in Verona, the paintings were hung respectively in the four corners of a room and along a single wall (exh. cats. Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice, by Xavier Salomon, National Gallery, London, 2014, and Paolo Veronese: L’illusione della realtà, ed. Paola Marini and Bernard Aikema, Palazzo della Gran Guardia, Verona, 2014, respectively pp. 181–91 and pp. 218–24; both catalogues refer to further bibliography). The National Gallery hang juxtaposed ‘Respect’, as the innamoramento is termed, and ‘Happy Union’ but to read them as I have proposed meant to move from right round to left. The Verona hang concluded with ‘Happy Union’ but placed the innamoramento third, beginning with ‘Scorn’. The last time I looked (summer 2019) they were hung in the National Gallery in the order I have given but reading from right to left. For the belt consider Filippino Lippi’s Erato in Berlin: see Florence 2010, no. 21 ( Jonathan K. Nelson).

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fig. 7.27 Correggio, Venus, Mercury and Cupid, c. 1525, oil on canvas, 155.5 × 91.5 cm, National Gallery, London

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f seven  §24 v

Renaissance project of reconciling the pagan and Christian traditions, and, as in art, as in architecture, as in literature, so also in philosophy it involved ‘pseudomorphosis’, masking the emergence of an early modern new under the appearance of a reworked old – often literally by exploring new ideas in allegories constructed with classical figures. In his Dialoghi d’Amore Leone Ebreo expounds and reconciles Plato, Aristotle and the Bible, reading back into the Judaic story of the Creation the Platonic myth inserted into the mouth of Aristophanes in the Symposium that humans were originally androgynous beings, then were divided into two for their arrogance and now are for ever seeking their other half. He claims that the Greeks took this myth from Genesis, for Adam was both male and female until Eve was taken from his rib (alleged to mean ‘side’ – “lato” – in the original Hebrew), and he dilates on the two, equated, versions, in one of which the androgyne was separated before sinning and in the other after. This and more is framed in the Platonizing form of a dialogue between two Greek-sounding stooges, Filone (recalling Philo, eponym of a Platonic dialogue, masculine, and meaning ‘lover’) and Sofia (perhaps recalling ‘Sophist’, eponym of another dialogue, feminine, and meaning ‘wisdom’). The modern twist is that they are two (‘Petrarchan’) lovers, as well as disputants; that is to say, he is her lover but she does not love him. At the beginning and end of each of the three books they revert from philosophical discussion to amorous altercation. Sofia, despite her name, is not the dispenser of wisdom; that is Filone, the lover. The conclusion of the dialogue takes a significant turn: Filone: È vero che t’ho detto che la somma bellezza è la sapienza divina; la quale in te ne la formazione e ne l’angelica disposizione de l’anima, se bene gli manca qualche cosa de la esercitazione, reluce in tal maniera che la tua immagine ne la mente mia è fatta e reputata divina e adorata per quella. Sofia: Non credeva già che in tua bocca capisse adulazione .... Filone: .... E quella che chiami adulazione, non è, ché in effetto, se la tua bellezza in me non fussi fatta divina, mai l’amor tuo m’averia levato la mente da ogn’altra cosa che in te, come ha fatto. Filone: It is true that I told you that the highest beauty is divine wisdom, which in you, in the formation and in the angelic disposition of your soul – even if it lacks a little in its exercise – shines out in such a manner that the image of you in my mind has become and is esteemed as divine and as such adored. Sofia: I had not expected that from your mouth we should get adulation ... Filone: .... And what you call adulation, is not that, because in reality, if your beauty had not become divine in me, the love of you would never have lifted my mind from everything but [dwelling] on you, as it has.

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The direction of the lover’s contemplation, which in Ficino, or indeed for Castiglione’s ‘Bembo’ or again in Michelangelo’s poetry, was always towards the divine itself (incorporated), has here – as far as I know for the first time – shifted towards the ‘soul’ of the beloved, converging therefore towards the Petrarchan ‘image in the heart’. She has hitherto been no more than the castle of her ‘canonical’ body serving as a repository of jewels and virtues, but now the castellan herself is notionally present. This is a prelude to the emergence of the beloved woman as a person, then as a personality, a conspicuous early modern phenomenon.

3 25

Increasingly the lover claims to be fixated not only on the physical charms of his beloved, or on her virtues or honour, but on her soul. One such declaration of love is made by the noble ‘dying’ Timbrio to his beloved Nisida in Book III of Cervantes’s pastoral romance Galatea, commencing with the beautiful lines: Salud te embia aquel que no la tiene, Nisida, ni la espera en tiempo alguno si por tus manos mismas no le viene. [Wishes for your] health one sends you who has none, Nisida, nor hopes for it in any time unless it comes from your hands.

Particularly striking are these lines: El verte y adorarte llegó junto, porque ¿quien fuera aquel que no adorarade vn angel bello el sin ygual trasumpto? Mi alma tu belleza, al mundo rara, vio tan curiosamente, que no quiso en el rostro parar la vista clara. Alla en el alma tuya vn parayso fue descubriendo de bellezas tantas, que dan de nueua gloria cierto auiso. Con estas ricas alas te leuantas hasta llegar al cielo, y en la tierra al sabio admiras, y al que es simple espantas. 24 On Correggio see David Ekserdjian, Correggio, New Haven and London 1997, pp. 268–74. Leone Ebreo, Dialoghi d’Amore, ed. Santino Caramella, Bari 1929, pp. 294–97 and 388.

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f seven  §24–§26 v

Dichosa el alma que tal bien encierra, y no menos dichoso el que por ella la suya rinde a la amorosa guerra. En deuda soy a mi fatal estrella, que me quiso rendir a quien encubre en tan hermoso cuerpo alma tan bella. Seeing you and adoring you came together, for who would not adore the peerless likeness of an angel? My soul saw your beauty without like in the world so inquisitively that it did not wish to stop its clear vision at your face. There in your soul was a paradise, unfolding so many beauties that give certain report of new glory. With these rich wings you rise to reach heaven, and on earth you [cause] wonder to the wise, fear to the simple. Happy the soul that holds such a good, and no less happy the one that for that soul surrenders his own soul in love’s war. I am in debt to my fatal star, which required me to surrender to one who encloses in so beautiful a body such a beautiful soul.

He wins her as his bride.

3 26 This important change in the relations between the sexes may be

remarked in different form in the words and behaviour of Marcela at the funeral of Grisostomo in Part I, Chapter XIV, of Cervantes’s Don Quijote. Recalling the appearance at the end of the Galatea of the ‘cruel’ Gelasia on a rock lording it over the suicidal Galersio (on which see Chapter 9 §9–13), Marcela interrupts the readings being given of Grisostomo’s poetry to her after he had been laid to earth: … lo estorbó una maravillosa visión – que tal parecía ella – que improvisamente se les ofrecío a los ojos; y fue que por cima de la peña donde se cavaba la sepultura pareció la pastora Marcela, tan hermosa, que pasaba a su fama su hermosura. … he was disturbed by a marvellous vision – for so it appeared to be – which unexpectedly offered itself to their eyes; and it was that on top of the rock where the grave was being dug there appeared the shepherdess Marcela, so beautiful that her beauty surpassed the fame of it.

25 This ‘pun’ on salute| greeting, health| had a history, both Italian and Spanish. Obras completas de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: La Galatea, ed. Rudolph Schevill and Adolfo Bonilla, 2 vols., Madrid 1914, Book III, pp. 162ff.; http:^www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/la-galatea--1.

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Not there to gloat, she wishes to explain that she has been falsely blamed for the death of Grisostomo: Hízome el cielo, según vosotros decís, hermosa, y de tal manera, que, sin ser poderosos a otra cosa, a que me améis os mueve mi hermosura, y por el amor que me mostráis decís y aun queréis que esté yo obligada a amaros. Yo conozco, con el natural entendimiento que Dios me ha dado, que todo lo hermoso es amable; mas no alcanzo que, por razón de ser amado, esté obligado lo que es amado por hermoso a amar a quien le ama …. Y, según yo he oído decir, el verdadero amor no se divide, y ha de ser voluntario, y no forzoso. Siendo esto así, como yo creo que lo es,¿por que queréis que rinda mi voluntad por fuerza, obligada no más de que decís que me queréis bien? Si no, decidme: si como el cielo me hizo hermosa me hiciera fea, ¿fuera justo que me quejara de vosotros porque no me amábades? … Yo nací libre, y para poder vivir libre escogí la soledad de los campos: los árboles de estas montañas son mi compañia; las claras aguas de estos arroyos, mis espejos; con los árboles y con las aguas comunico mis pensamientos y hermosura …. A los que he enamorado con la vista he desengañado con las palabras; y si los deseos se sustentan con esperanzas, no habiendo yo dado alguna a Grisostomo, ni a otro alguno, el fin de ninguno de ellos, bien se puede decir que antes le mató su porfía que mi crueldad … Si yo conservo mi limpieza con la compañia de los árboles, ¿por qué ha de querer que la pierda el que quiere que la tenga con los hombres? … Tienen mis deseos por término estas montañas, y si de aquí salen es a contemplar la hermosura del cielo, pasos con que camina el alma a su morada primera. Heaven made me, just as you say, beautiful, and in such a manner that, without your being able to help it, my beauty moves you to fall in love with me, and for the love that you feel for me you you claim and even demand that I should be obliged to love you. I know, with the natural understanding that God has given me, that everything beautiful is loveable; but I do not accept that, just because she is loved, one who is loved for her beauty is obliged to love the one who loves her …. And, from what I have heard said, true love is not to be shared out, and should be voluntary, and not compelled. This being so, as I believe it is, why do you require that I should be compelled to give up my freedom of choice, on no other grounds than that you tell me that you really love me? If this is not so, tell me: if heaven, instead of making me beautiful, were to make me ugly, would I have the right to complain that you did not love me? … I was born free, and so as to be able to live freely I chose the solitude of the countryside: the trees of these hills are my companions; the clear waters

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of these streams my mirrors; with the trees and with the waters I share my thoughts and my beauty …. Those who I have enamoured with my eyes I have disillusioned with my words; and if desires are sustained by hope, not having given any to Grisostomo, or to anyone else, the death of any one of them can rightly be said to be due to their obstinacy rather than to my cruelty …. If I preserve my virginity with the company of trees, why should I be expected to lose it by the very same that require that I should preserve it with men? Let my desires be directed towards these mountains, and if they should leave them it is to contemplate the beauty of heaven, with the steps that the soul takes to its origin.

Anyone who after this blamed or pursued Marcela, who fortunately possessed an income from her uncle, should expect the “pena de caer en la furiosa indignación”|the penalty of falling into the furious indignation|of the most chivalrous Don Quijote himself, so he declares. They throw the ‘dying’ poetry of Grisostomo – Chrysostom, Golden Mouth, Petrarchist – into the fire.

3 27 Clearly the freedom of action that Marcela claimed was conditional,

even if those conditions might appear to be self-imposed. The most important, fundamental condition was her chastity, here requiring if not monastic seclusion certainly solitude – in fact her going off on her own into the woods is a fantasy equivalent to that of shepherds’ supposed freedom to love (see Chapter 18 §26). At any rate one finds in pastorals of the later sixteenth century and onwards, which are not of course treatises of philosophy or even of behaviour – though they might recall late medieval ‘schools of love’ in their lengthy discussion of love by young people practising or wishing to practise it – two voices instead of one, agents instead of an offrant and an idol, and the domestication of Neoplatonist ideals to personal discourse. Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée was surely the most shining example of these pastorals (see further Chapter 9 §31ff.). D’Urfé had studied philosophy and had drawn upon Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Equicola directly in his earlier Epistres Morales; the Astrée is very different, but it trades in an acculturated Neoplatonism. In a question and answer session held by the core brigata of lovers with Adamas, the learned Druid (often compared to a contemporary ‘father confessor’) who aids and instructs Astrée’s lover Céladon, the response emerges that love, or falling in love, is an act of the

26 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Francisco Rico, Barcelona 2004, pp. 103–29; Marcela’s speech pp. 125–29.

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reason; more than that, that the basis of love is a recognition by one soul in another of the like intelligence that each received from their respective planets. So disposed the world Toutautis (the Celtic Jupiter). All problems in love stem from failures, since the body is fallible, to transmit or receive proper knowledge of the intelligences. Thus, notionally, human love mounts to Ficino’s third level, of intellectual contemplation of ideas, although undoubtedly this is a subversion of that supposed act – but at least it does not licentiously reject it outright, like Tasso in the rallying cry of the Act II chorus in the Aminta, preaching a love superior to “socratiche carte” (see further Chapter 8 §9). Certainly we have lost sight of the summum bonum even if we are now communicating with heavenly intelligences. In fact we are not communicating even with the angels, the lovers are communicating with each o ­ ther. Paradoxically enough, the application of Neoplatonic ideas to the courteous love tradition eventually produces the concept of the ‘soul’ of the boy contemplating the ‘soul’ of the girl, making an ever more actual advance on the canon of beauty, physical or abstract, that the lover had earlier entirely internalized. Clearly, by the end of the century, that image has been reincarnated in the beloved herself: for example, in Lope de Vega’s Arcadia Anfriso compares a miniature he has of Belisarda with the image he has of her in his soul (see Chapter 9 §20). In the Neoplatonism adopted in the Catholic zone – around the queen – in the English Caroline court, body and soul may become in effect interchangeable, the (virtual) act of sex itself being spiritual (see Chapter 18 §13). This reflects an entirely cerebral, but newly direct and personal relationship between lovers, in which the old Petrarchism remained in the apparently unequal relationship between woman and man, the man apparently utterly subservient; in practice the way they could behave towards each other was highly constrained and circumscribed, but conversation could at least take place. Though almost entirely cerebral (for Neoplatonist theory was its permit and justification), it nevertheless institutionalized unmarried potential and actual lovers conversing within polite society, in the world, at court or in a salon, both of them honnêtement. Emblematically, one can see the difference by comparing Titian’s drawing of the early sixteenth century of a serenading shepherd and from it following his various Venuses with an onlooker (figs. 7.17–21) with the meeting of Daifilo and Granida (see figs. 14.2 and following on the pendant figs. 14.3 and 14.4): he kneels to her but they occupy the same space and reality. As the seventeenth century advances, the abstraction of the Petrarchist ideal becomes indeed an object of ridicule, as in Charles Sorel’s Berger Extravagant (1627): Lysis has had absolutely no contact, and scarcely

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even sight, with the woman, Charité, whom, as a shepherd, he has chosen to adore (see Chapter 14 §12 and her diagrammatic representation, fig. 14.18). In the Netherlands, a distinction between liefde (love) and min (love – in his terms, sexual) made by Dirk Coornhert in his 1586 treatise on morality and the good life, the Zedekunst, paralleled the fundamental Neoplatonic distinction seen from Ficino onwards. However, Coornhert’s and the Protestant view of the relations between the sexes (for which see Chapters 13 and 14, on English and Dutch pastoral) differed from the Catholic, as represented not only in d’Urfé’s great work but also, for example, in Jean Puget de la Serre’s Roman de la Cour de Bruxelles of 1628, a ‘metachronic’ romance of the court in Brussels under the ascetic rule of Archdukes Albert and Isabella: while indebted to Honoré d’Urfé this offers a portrait of the lovemaking in Catholic court society closer to reality, and makes a very strong contrast to Johan van Heemskerck’s closely contemporary Protestant bourgeois man-to-woman Batavische Arcadia (see further Chapter 18 §21–32).

3 28 In Brussels, as emerges resonantly from de la Serre’s Roman, there

prevailed not merely chastity but “austerité”: here wooing by men consists above all in an attempt, usually doomed, to eke even a smile through the barrier of exhibited indifference of the women, even though they may nurse reciprocal feelings. In France, in the circles in which Honoré d’Urfé himself moved, above all the salon of Mme de Rambouillet, women might converse not only with other women but also with men ‘freely’ but in fact under similar conditions of chastity, this being the essential nature of the rules of propriety and politeness – honnêteté – imposed. Theory followed practice in the advice, directed particularly towards women, of François de Sales, codifying what one might call the presence of the ‘soul’ in the secular, in society, at court. The so-called ‘femme forte’ that emerged from this cultural shift drew her ‘strength’ from her ‘chastity’, the chastity that she imposed on her milieu, as

27 D’Urfé/Vaganay, Partie III, V, pp. 263–69. The conflation of Plato and Petrarchism may be remarked, for example, in the letter of Lentulus to Terentia in Robert Greene’s Tully’s Love (ed. Alexander B. Grosart, The Life and Complete Works of Robert Greene, MA, 1881–83, 12 vols., VII, pp. 95–216, at p. 150): “Unde exquizitam tuam perfectionem oculis contemplans, singulares animi dotes auribus accipiens, excellentiae tuae ideam in imo pectore collocavi”|Hence contemplating with my eyes your exquisite perfection, receiving through my ears the singular gifts of your mind, I fixed the idea of your excellence deep in my heart|. Dirk Coornhert, Zedekunst dat is wellevenskunste, ed. B. Becker, Leiden 1942; trans. Gerrit Voogt, The Art of Living Well By Means of Knowledge of the Truth about Man, Sin, and Virtue, Hilversum 2015.

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also certain regal figures did, including Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I. This broader notion of ‘chastity’ encompassed also physical love between consorts (the Catholic authorities reproved married partners who might seek to enjoy sex, thus allowing wives, such as occupied a position of respect, to remain ‘chaste’); pledged lovers could also remain chaste; so chastity was not so much a way of behaviour as a mentality, imposed upon a society. ‘Neoplatonic’ love would indeed be difficult to sustain without ‘chastity’; as a way of life pursued by a court, salon, clique or other society, it enabled honnête conversation, conversation that even when quite frequently permitting double entendre remained in its context still entirely ‘chaste’.

28 On chastity see further Chapters 13 §15 and 18 §15. For an example even of the austere Archduchess Isabella discussing sexual matters see Cordula van Wyhe, ‘Between Chastity and Passion. The Impact of the French Exiles on the Cult of Courtly Love at the Brussels Court in the 1630s’, in Passion, Affekt und Leidenschaft in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger et al., 2 vols., Wiesbaden 2005, pp. 951–80, at p. 962, quoting Antonio Rodríguez Villa, Correspondencia de la Infanta Archiduquesa Dona Isabel-Clara-Eugenia de Austria, Madrid 1906, pp. 235ff., letter no. 189. See, for example, Ian Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature 1610–1652, Oxford 1977, pp. 141–42, ‘The Salons’, and passim.

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Chapter 8 2 AMOR VUOL FÉ

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3 1 An ‘eclogue’, as inherited from Virgil, was a short piece of poetry sung by a shepherd or two or more shepherds alternately – there would be little point in defining it more closely than that. We find the term ‘egloga’ so widely used in the Renaissance in Italy, then in France and Spain, that it seems almost catch-all (though one near-consistency in Italy is that its metre is terza rima). However, the majority of ‘eclogues’ that we know (and no doubt many that have vanished) were once specific to the context of their recital. Although many made their way into print at some date following the occasion (or occasions, for they might be used again), they were not in their nature literary compositions in the same sense as pastoral poetry or pastoral romance, which was written to be read. These poems were to be read not necessarily in solitude: the dedications preceding the contributions to the Buccoliche Elegantissime suggest that they may have been delivered at academic gatherings (or similar avant la lettre) – Virgilian ‘communities’. Indeed Sannazaro’s Arcadia resembles a final polished essay produced in a schoolroom in which the pupils had been encouraged to circulate their efforts. It is primarily a collection of eclogues, linked by an expanding narrative. By contrast Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana of 1559 was a story, an influential prelude to a new wave of lengthy, narrative pastoral romances for reading on paper in the second half of the sixteenth century (see further Chapter 9); all these incorporated poetry arguably along the lines of Sannazaro’s work, but these poems were mostly not now eclogues. Of course Pietro Bembo’s Asolani, more directly following on Sannazaro, also incorporated poetry in a prose frame, but had abandoned the pastoral veil and with it any patently pastoral form (though its Petrarchism necessarily absorbed Petrarch’s embedded pastoral: see Chapter 3 §27). The eclogue lived on now primarily as performance (egloga rappresentativa), developing into a ‘country play’ (scena boschereccia), and as such undoubtedly had a continuing life in the early and middle years of the sixteenth century, until superseded by the more complex ‘pastoral play’. 3 2 The occasion for which these recitals or performances – these, and others for one reason or another not designated egloghe – were created was frequently a marriage or, if not, an important reception. A happy ending, in those cases where there was to be any kind of plot, was obligatory. In the context of a marriage the ending was an outright epithalamium, celebrating the coming together of young lovers; all that went before was so much elasticity that would eventually unwind so as to pile up their joy (and the joy of all the onlookers). Frequently the classical gods were brought on, 

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exercising their traditional powers – of reason, prudence, prophecy, love, and so on – or related personifications appeared – Virtue, Reason, Love, etc. – moving onwards toward the desired end for the lover and his beloved, frequently but not always designated shepherd and nymph. For example, in the first “farza” in the Fior di Delia by Antonio Ricco published in 1508, Pallas, Juno, Apollo and Venus and Cupid succeed each other on the boards, Cupid striking the “zovinetto” and the “ninfa” and the couple soon kissing (music strikes up, according to a stage direction) and initiating a dance. Such dramatically basic performances would come to be leavened by the example of classical comedy, in which time and again ill-starred lovers eventually triumph over their tribulations (and not only in Roman comedy but also in Hellenistic novels, in which the eutychia, or happy outcome, was consequent on the peripateia, or reversal of fortune) – and by the example not simply of classical comedy, but of modern comedy on classical models, developed in the hands of authors such as Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Ariosto. But the Egle was a specifically pastoral innovation, as its author, Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio of Ferrara, insisted; this was 1545. Cinzio equated his drama to the satyr plays that accompanied classical Greek tragedy as a kind of lightener after catharsis and of which there is notice also in Vitruvius. The plot of the untypical Egle is that the gods have ousted their natural suitors, the satyrs, in pursuing the

1 In Venice, as noted (Chapters 1 §28 and 5 §7), there was a circle around Giovanni Badoer; in Florence the “accademia de’ buccoici”; of course such communality was usual among poets and humanists even if not specifically pastoral. The difference between eclogue and pastoral play was certainly felt, at least in retrospect: a note before the publication in 1587 of Agostino Beccari’s Sacrificio claims that “avanti che il Signor Beccari facesse questo suo Sacrificio, che ben è da trentaquattro anni, non si leggevano se non poche egloghe rozze, nelle quali solo due o tre persone parlavano”|Before Signor Beccari created his Sacrificio, which is a good 34 years ago [1554], all you could read was quite a number of rough eclogues, in which only two or three people spoke|: Beccari, Lollio, Argenti/Pevere, p. 5; see also Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido e il compendio della poesia tragicomedia, ed. Gioachino Brognoligo, Bari 1914, pp. 272–73; Lisa Sampson, Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre, London 2006, p. 27; also noted in Gerbino 2009, p. 176. On the other hand Cieco d’Adria (for whom see §17 below) at one point in their texts called both his fully developed plays (Calisto and Il Pentimento Amoroso) an “egloga”. See further Pieri 1983, notably chs. 5–7, pp. 65–141; Sampson 2006, pp. 12–60; also Gerbino 2009, pp. 52–67, 123–32, with contemporary descriptions of eclogues ­performed, and passim; many plays are noted and summarized and grouped by their subtitles in Lohse 2015, ch. 3.4, ‘Rural-dramatische Gattungen’, pp. 525–624, also listed pp. 663–70, among which the more common are: ‘egloga’, ‘egloga pastorale’, ‘egloga rusticale’, giving way to ‘favola boschereccia’, ‘favola pastorale’, etc. See further Francesca Bortoletti, Egloga e spettacolo nel primo Rinascimento: da Firenze alle corti, Rome 2008, on Neapolitan and Florentine examples.

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nymphs, and in response the satyrs plan a general rape. However, their plan, having been contrived with the aid of Egle, a free-thinking, free-drinking, sexually liberated nymph (presumably the namesake of the nymph Ægle of Virgil’s Eclogue VI, even though Cinzio explicitly sought an alternative base for his play, in classical drama rather than Virgil) – their plan is undone by a series of metamorphoses of the chased nymphs, eventually leaving Silvano to counsel Pan that one should not desire what heaven does not grant, or anything contrary to honestà, if, that is, you want a happy ending. Giraldi’s attempt to put the pastoral play on a classical footing may not have been followed, but that left the problem of its basis and decorum unsolved (see further Chapter 11 §6, 12).

3 3 A hugely important aspect of the pastoral play in Italy is that it gave a voice to the ‘nymph’ – a voice almost entirely absent in Virgil’s Eclogues themselves and in fifteenth-century pastoral, not to mention sixteenthcentury Petrarchist poetry – even if what the nymphs say is initially predictable and stylized, lacking any individual characteristics. Indeed pastoral theatre revolved around the ‘nymph’s’ honesty, that is chastity, or an unblameworthiness taken for virtue – ‘good name’; and the essential passage that the play was required to make was from virgin to bride, even though it was the male shepherds who predominantly held the stage and appeared to drive the plot. Everyone knew that these nymphs were equivalent to the marriageable maidens of local higher society life and that their concerns, through their stylization and classicization (as followers of Diana), reflected their fraught position. One early example is Marcantonio Epicuro’s Mirzia, written probably in the 1540s, though neither performed nor published in his lifetime and seeing the light of print only in 1582 (misattributed). At its heart is an ‘egloga’ of the destined lovers Mirzia and Trebazio, though Trebazio 2 Antonio Ricco, Sonetti Capitoli Epistole Desperata Eglogha Barzellette Strambotti Farse, edn used Venice 1514. Ricco may also have been written the music: see Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, p. 101 and note 53. Baldassare Castiglione’s Tirsi, an “egloga pastorale” performed at Carnival in 1506 or 1508, may be mentioned: the shepherds stand for courtiers and Diana for the Duchess of Urbino; Lohse 2015, pp. 560–62. Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, Egle, Lettera sovra il comporre le satire atte alla scena, Favola pastorale, ed. C. Molinari, Bologna 1985. On the ‘rough’ tradition represented in the Egle, its elimination from later polished pastoral and its continuation in the freer work of Cieco d’Adria, see Marzia Pieri, ‘Ameni siti e “cannose paludi”: le favole pastorali’, in Luigi Groto e il suo tempo: Atti del convegno di studi, Adria, 27–29 aprile 1984, ed. Giorgio Brunello and Antonio Lodo, Rovigo 1987, pp. 317–36.

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has two companions who also fall in love, and Mirzia too has companions, including the goddess Diana herself; there is also a Sibyl who pronounces an oracle and a satyr who, having renounced love as too much trouble, assists the shepherds. The scene is set in Naples as Naples ever is, but the shepherds are shepherds with sheep (not a prominent feature of the local economy) and they invoke the pagan gods; what is more, one of the shepherds and Mirzia herself undergo Ovidian metamorphosis into tree and fountain. Trabazio woos Mirzia and is rejected; she repents of her rejection but he, having followed the Sibyl’s suggestion that he should shun rather than chase her, causes her to mutate in her grief into a myrtle, in which state, however, she speaks to him and begs him to persuade Venus to return her to her true form, which he and the satyr successfully do. In later plays the main drama of the courtship is sometimes less clear because it is not the only one, that is, it becomes part of a series of intertwining mismatches (A loves B, B loves C, C loves A or D, etc.), resulting in multiple final pairings, and also because rediscovered parentage or villains of various kinds – satyrs, magicians – distort the course of events to which the couple or couples are destined. The Mirzia was described in 1582 as a “comedia pastorale”; much of the verse is in sdrucciole, which sets a decorum in which the tone will never be very far from the low, and the shepherds, accordingly, are more comic than noble and perform actions like climbing trees to see better or to gather birds’ nests; even the metamorphoses, for instance of Ottimio turned into a fountain by the madness of his grief, are rather homely (for in this way, it is remarked, he will be able to enjoy Diana).

3 4 The two levels of tone in the Mirzia are more distinct in the Egle – that of the pastore and that of the gross figure, often a capraio |goatherd| who works for the pastore – and are found again, for instance, in Flaminio Guarnieri’s two plays of 1569, in one of which Tognino (a ‘nencial’ corruption of the anyway non-‘shepherd’ name ‘Antonio’) displays a gross lust in a rich peasant language for Galatea, a lovely nymph, otherwise pursued by the pastori Dameta (whom she loves) and Hibleo, an older man. In the third act Palemone by magic makes Dameta look like Hibleo and Hibleo look like Dameta, deceiving Galatea, but in the fourth act the situation is restored (by order of Pan, who – in narration – appears in a dream to Palemone): Hibleo learns his lesson and renounces love, while Galatea and Dameta are married on the spot and invited to share a bed in Palemon’s house (“dopo cena harrete un letto/ che solo de voi doi sarrà ricetto”|after dinner you will have a bed which will be a special place for you two alone|). Disingenuously – in order to divert invidious criticism – the author in his prologue (in sdrucciole) 

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renounces “il dir dolce, alto, e nobile”|sweet, high and noble speech|even though each act is introduced by a proper sonnet, addressed to Galatea – who is perhaps a figure of the bride, if this was composed or performed for a wedding – and the pastori speak high, with literary echoes (not in sdrucciole). The author promises instead: Ma sol materia rozza, con un tenue, e basso stil, lontano da ogni Regola di questi, che hoggi il Pegaseo cavalcano But only rough material, with a slight,/ and low style, far from every Rule/ of those who today take Pegasus as their steed,

as is marked by its being in four acts … a capriccio del’Autor, non per immitar’ Nevio, non Ennio, non Plauto, non Terentio Che tutte le lor opere divisero In atti, e gli dier nome di comedia, Che questa sua puol’ battezare chiachiara … at the caprice of the author,/ not to imitate Naevius, or Ennius, or Plautus, or Terence,/ who all divided their works/ in acts, and gave them the name of comedy, for this of his own can be christened ‘chatter’.

3 I drammi pastorali di Antonio Marsi detto l’Epicuro Napoletano, ed. Italo Palmarini, I, Bologna 1887. For Epicuro and also Luigi Tansillo (I due pellegrini) see Sampson 2006, pp. 13–14; she surveys ‘The Earliest Examples of Pastoral Drama’ (pp. 12–60). For a survey of the types and variations within the later sixteenth-cerntury Italian pastoral play see Louise George Clubb, ‘The making of the pastoral play: some Italian experiments between 1573 and 1590’, in Petrarch to Pirandello: Studies in Italian Literature in Honour of Beatrice Corrigan, ed. Julius A. Molinaro, Toronto 1973, pp. 45–72, with previous bibliography (she created the term ‘intrigue structure’, in what seems now a rather old-fashioned use of the term ‘intrigue’, but she borrowed it from the title of Pasqualigo’s play). The emergence of the woman’s voice in sixteenth-century Italian amorous literature has been much studied and discussed; without entering into the subject or the literature further, here I stress only the obvious fact that pastoral was a prime vehicle for amorous poetry and that its establishment made women into characters; that it offered an opportunity, taken up by the emergent professional actress. Gerbino 2009, p. 195, quotes Adriano Valerini writing of the remarkable actress Vincenza Armani: “Che dirò delle pastorali da lei prima introdotte in scena?”|What shall I say of the pastorals that she for the first time put on stage? (Oratione … in morte della Divina Signora Vincenza Armani, Venice [1570]). These would be pastorals in which the nymph, played by a woman, had a significant part. See further Siro Ferrone, La Commedia dell’Arte: Attrici e attori in Europa (xvi–xviii secolo), Turin 2014, esp. ch. 2, ‘La donna in scena’, pp. 40–61.

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Guarnieri’s other play, Nova Arcadia, also of 1569, but with a dedication dated August while that of the Mago is dated May, has two peasant characters, Zampone and Trapasso, but in this case a kindly landlord, Ugolino, stops them quarrelling over the nymph they lust for and gives them some work. His kindness extends to the nymph herself, Gigia, and the shepherd Licida, who spurns her, until (in a reversal of the usual) she happens to find him asleep, and in waking him swoons, because he asks her sharply, “quest’è ’l tuo honore?”|so this is your honour?|, which causes him, thinking her dead, to turn to pity, and so is persuaded by Ugolino to marry her, remarking: Il tuo persuadermi, e le ragioni E l’amor, e fermezza di costei Fanno ch’(a forza mia) hoggi mi doni E lietamente mi supponghi a lei Your persuasion, and reasons/ and her love, and constancy/ have brought it about that today, of my own will, I give myself/ and joyfully submit myself to her.

Like Palemon in the Mago, here, too, the good Ugolino provides a feast and a bed for them, which actually precedes the marriage on the morrow. Guarnieri wrote, directed and was published in the small town of Osimo; two similarly provincial but significant plays of Luigi Groto, il Cieco d’Adria|The Blindman of Adria|– Calisto and especially Il Pentimento Amoroso, written entirely in sdrucciole (Guarnieri had also deployed such rhymes, which in the dedication to the Nova Arcadia he called “nella rima Bernasca contadinire”|to ‘hodgify’ in the mode of Francesco Berni|) – once again contain these two levels. These works are longer and have a greater number of characters and what might be called a plot. Absent from Cieco’s plays, however – though common elsewhere, as also in the Commedia d’Arte, who put on pastoral plays, too, or included pastoral interludes – were the metamorphoses or the magical or miraculous events – the “inverosimile”|unrealistic|, as Giambattista Guarini, scion of the humanist Guarini family, founded by Guarino Guarino (1374– 1460), commentating on his Pastor Fido at the turn of the century, would term it (essentially following Aristotle, Poetics, 1460, 1461, etc.) In fact there is magic in Cieco’s play, but, by contrast to Guarnieri’s, it is presented as an act of deception by the magician. Cieco’s Pentimento (see further below, §17) is also moralized, like Guarnieri’s, in this anticipating Guarino and indeed Tasso’s groundbreaking Aminta. A classic, developed, ‘pre-’ Tasso and Guarino play is Alvise Pasqualigo’s Gl’Intricati|The Crisscrossed|, printed 1581 though dating from earlier, with a prologue by a wildman (“selvatico”), disparaging of

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“dottori”|authorities|who would constrain his liberty to do what he pleased with what he had, for instance eat his salad after his dinner or have a drink before his meal, when that suited his appetite. He also disparages lovers’ talk as lovers’ talk, but the play was evidently performed for a marriage, in honour of a “bella coppia”. Recalling the clownish Spanish ‘pastor bobo’ often used to introduce more serious matter, Pasqualigo’s ‘Selvatico’ is a more domestic figure than the grosser capraio, mediating the gradual upwardmoving tone of the pastoral (matched by similar developments in comedy) while also showing a kind of popular resistance.

35

Torquato Tasso’s Aminta, first performed in 1573 (or, more exactly, known to have been performed for a second time in February 1574), remains quite close to the ‘egloga’, involving anyway a single pair of lovers, with an uncomplicated plot and an unspectacular scenario (its dramatic action is all reported); it has, however, nothing (however improbable) inverisimilitudinous, deploys a wide use of classical references or subtexts and achieves consistently, lacking any comic or low characters, a higher ‘tone’ than anything seen before. Above all it lent serious intent to the pastoral form by making the protagonists, for the first time, the agents of their own happy ending, that is to say, Aminta, not simply a main swain but a hero, ‘earns’, morally, by his behaviour, by his devotion, by his own chastity, his nymph’s love, thereby moving not only the beloved herself but the fates, the heavens and the gods to machinate the happy outcome. The motto amor vuol fé|love needs faith (or troth)|had frequently accompanied marriage imagery and materials from the fifteenth century (see Chapters 4 §5 and 7 §11). Indeed it is troth that underlies Petrarch’s entire Canzoniere – or any subsequent Petrarchist ‘project’ – the lover’s refusal to give up or change or renege on his love for the inaccessible beloved, who ultimately yields (and it may seem she will never yield) only to constancy (‘faith’). In pastoral plays we find the lover’s ‘progress’ in this regard assessed by the nymph: though this assessment often starts from an outright refusal to consider it, we also often find her debating her lover’s merits or her own stirring feelings. These may be as dominating for her as for her lover and

4 MAGO. Egloga Pastorale di M. Flaminio Guarnieri da Osimo, Osimo 1569. His source for Ennius and Naevius and his self-defence in general was Terence’s prologue to the Andria. Nova Arcadia. Egloga Pastorale di M. Flaminio Guarnieri da Osimo, Osimo 1569. An example of this rare work is bound together with the Mago in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, shelfmark 5D185. For the unusually extensive landscape descriptions in it see below, Chapter 11 §9. Luigi Groto, called Cieco d’Adria, Il Pentimento Amoroso, Venice 1576; Calisto, (edn used) Venice 1599.

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similarly lead to suicide if not reciprocated or if betrayed (male lovers tend to suicide before their beloved has favoured them, female ones after being jilted: she always had much more at stake by making her commitment – her virginity and her ‘good name’). Nevertheless the resolution of his or her or their situation is seldom in their own hands – it certainly does not emerge from any ‘characterological’ interaction. Tasso’s lover Aminta, on the other hand, perseveres and is rewarded, proving his love by his attempted suicide, which unlocks Silvia’s heart, without any external intervention. What is more, he refuses under the most extreme circumstances and for all the urging of his peers to cheat or to compromise the ‘honesty’ of his beloved, most piquantly in the ‘scene’ where, having driven off the satyr who has managed to tie Silvia naked to a tree, he unties her doing his very best to spare her blushes (the ‘scene’ is reported in the play, not enacted). This satyr, incidentally, is the classicized, therefore ‘high’ equivalent, in Tasso’s play, of the lustful villano in others. Although it was not inconsistent with Neoplatonism to relish the salacious, Aminta himself does not do so – the paragon of the chaste male suitor, setting a new pattern for the ‘courteous’ or ‘Neoplatonic’ lover of the early seventeenth century.

36

The Aminta was first printed in 1581, a ‘sleeper’ rising thereafter to fame all over Europe. From local performance it became influential text. A great variety of interpretations have since been put upon it, both as a text and as a performance in its original context; their variety is extraordinary, given its apparent simplicity, banality even. Tasso in his genius seems just to have sat down and written it, its fluency, its sharpness, its wit, its humanity appearing almost gratuitous, not having hitherto been required or expected in the genre. However, it drew from and refined a number of recent such plays, particularly in Ferrara, not least Giraldi’s, who had also penned a Favola pastorale with a prologue by Amor, as Tasso’s has; but Tasso’s verse is so much more spirited. Tasso’s play begins with Amor’s announcement, ‘Who would believe that under human form and under these pastoral wrappings there should be hidden a god?’ Tasso’s Italian appears nothing particular, it just has a well-organized sense and an easy musicality: “Chi crederia che sotto umane forme/ e sotto queste pastorali spoglie/ fosse nascosto un Dio?”. Commentators are stirred into exegesis rather by Tasso’s apparently casual usurpation or distortion of cliché – apparently casual, but for commentators casuistic: Amor’s opening in itself has been enough to send one lot off seeking an allegorical dimension, while all Amor comes down to mean, as he goes on to say, is that he has decided to “adoprar l’armi/ ne’ rozzi petti”|to

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wield his weapons in rough hearts|, shunning the courts for “boschi”, among “le genti minute”. Nothing strange about that, since it established decorum, justifying the god’s presence in a shepherd context, announcing the play’s pastoral nature, although, while the “boschi” are indeed conventional – they are the stage – “le genti minute” are not Virgilian but quotidian, the vernacular ruled of Ferrara. Tasso constantly creates such intricate puzzles both from the insidious melding of innocuous clichés and by sharpening or freshening them into naturalism – who would indeed believe that this was the god of love when it was patently an actor walking on a stage? Picking up the motif, by then well known, of a 2nd-century BC poem by Moschus, ‘Eros drapetes’, that has Venus searching for her errant ‘son’, he develops it naturalistically and licentiously: he echoes Moschus verbatim in having Venus promise kisses to anyone who will reveal her son’s presence to her, but subverts her “o dolci

5 On the date of Tasso’s Aminta see Fabrizio Cruciani, ‘Percorsi critici verso la prima ­rappresentazione dell’Aminta’, in Torquato Tasso tra letteratura musica teatro e arti ­figurativi, exh. cat. ed. A. Buzzoni, Bologna 1985, pp. 179–92. On Tasso in general see the Warburg Institute Library classmark ENM 50. For the essential qualities and importance of Tasso’s play that I have not repeated here, or that are less relevant to the development I emphasize here, see, for example, Jules Marsan, La Pastorale dramatique en France à la fin du XVIe et au commencement du XVIIe siècle, Paris 1905, ch. II, ‘Les transformations de la pastorale italienne’, pp. 32–58 (also comparing it to Guarini’s Pastor Fido). He praises the Aminta for its spontaneity, its psychology, its harmony, its dramaticity. See further Sampson 2006, pp. 61–97, ‘Tasso’s Aminta: Raising the Profile of the Pastoral Play’. Torquato Tasso, Poesie, ed. Francesco Flora, Milan and Naples 1952, pp. 611–81. Another example of Tasso’s technique might be the opening lines of the play itself, following the prologue, which echo Virgil, Aeneid IV, 32–33, words spoken to Dido by her sister, though the (broader) rewards of Venus become the (narrower) pleasures of Venus: “solane perpetua maerens carpere iuventa/ nec dulces natos, Veneris nec praemia noris?”; “Vorrai dunque pur, Silvia,/ dai piaceri di Venere lontana/ menarne tu questa tua giovinezza?/ Né ’l dolce nome di Madre udrai?/ Né intorno ti vedrai v­ ezzosamente/ scherzar i figli pargoletti?” – all elegantly and lightly done. In the earliest illustrated edition, Venice 1583 (and only in this one), Amor appears dressed in a goatskin (nebris) – not therefore literally a tradesman or peasant, but in Renaissance eyes classical shepherd garb (examples occur in the frontispiece and other illustrations to the 1602 Ciotti edition of the Pastor Fido). Amor’s opening speech establishes the decorum of the play. For illustrations to editions of the Aminta see Paola Guerrini, ‘L’Aminta e l’iconografia di “paesaggio” nella drammaturgia pastorale’, in Sviluppi della drammaturgia pastorale nell’Europa del Cinque-Seicento, XV Convegno, 1991, Rome 1992, pp. 301–44; Mylène Sarant, ‘Histoires d’amours pastorales, iconographie de la pastorale narrative dans les arts du xviie siècle’, PhD thesis, Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne, UFR d’Art et d’Archéologie, 4 vols., 2005, [II], ‘L’Aminta de Torquato Tasso’, no. 1. Sarant’s thesis was kindly signalled and made available to me by Elizabeth McGrath. For the Ciotti edn nebris see her [III], ‘Le Pastor Fido de Guarini’, nos. 58, 61–65.

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baci, o cosa altra più cara”|either sweet kisses, or something else more dear| into a suggestion still more carnal. Moreover he then argues the lemma, having Cupid scornfully declare that he, too, can offer “o dolci baci, o cosa altra più cara” to those who hide him, and his kisses, compared to Venus’s, “saran sempre più cari a le fanciulle”|will always be dearer to the girls|. Tasso extends an old classical saw into a glimpse of the flush of a contemporary adolescent. He, and Guarino with him, was writing licentiously erotic madrigals at the same period, these also in pastoral guise (see Chapter 10 §6).

3 7 Despite the deeper interpretations the play has generated among scholars in recent times it is possible to take the easy way out: it has no very great meaning. Anything that hints at meaning is being played with. Let us read the text in the spirit that Amor himself expresses: Io, che non son fanciullo, se ben ho volto fanciullesco e atti, voglio dispor di me come a me piace; ch’a me fu, non a lei, concessa in sorte la face onnipotente, e l’arco d’oro I, who am no boy,/ even if I have a boyish face and looks,/ wish to behave as I like;/ since it was to me, not to her [his mother Venus], that were by destiny given/ the all-powerful torch and the golden bow.

6 Among interpretations see, for example, Elisabetta Graziosi, Aminta 1573–1580: Amore e matrimonio in casa d’Este, Lucca 2001. Otherwise see Sampson 2006, pp. 61–93, on the open-endedness of the play, and notably on Tasso’s own reticence regarding it, in stark contrast in Guarino’s obsessive defence of his own Pastor Fido. The importance of the Aminta for the history of love-making has long been r­ecognized but has been expressed perhaps rather differently. Consider, for example, J.H. Whitfield writing in his introduction to an edition of Guarino’s Pastor Fido (Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido, ed. J.H. Whitfield, Edinburgh 1976, p. 14): “Here it is enough to be reminded of [Jules] Marsan’s opening remarks, in his old book … [Marsan 1905]. There he says of the seventeenth c­ entury in France, that Italy and Spain ‘lui ont revélé l’amour’ |­ discovered love for her|. As far as Italy is c­ oncerned, we need no other gloss than that of Alexandre Hardy in the p­ reface to his Corine: ‘L’invention de ce poëme est dûë à la galanterie italienne, qui nous en donna le premier modelle; ses principaux et plus célèbres auteurs sont Tasse, Guarini et autres sublimes esprits …. Ce sont les docteurs du pays latin, sous lesquels j’ay pris mes licences e que j’estime plus que tous les rimeurs d’auiourd’huy”| The invention of this poem is due to Italian gallantry, which gave us its first model; its principal and most c­ elebrated authors are Tasso, Guarini and other noble spirits …. They are the d­ octors of Italy, under whom I have learnt my trade and whom I esteem more than all the rhymesters of today|; Marsan 1905, pp. ix and 241; Alexandre Hardy, Théâtre complet, ed. Sandrine Berrégard et al., 4 vols., Paris 2012–19, III, 2013, p. 587.

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It is a pastoral comedy. However, Tasso’s Aminta is a serious character – as obdurate in his chastity as any nymph, and in his chastity worthy of her chastity – and in this both original and the clear model, for example, for Céladon in Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée, the greatest of all pastoral romances, or for Daifilo in Cornelisz de Hooch’s impressive Granida, to mention only two.

38

It is a corollary that the importance of the Aminta does and did not lie in its Neoplatonism (a chimera, though half a book has been devoted to it) or in any dark or other allegory or in its message or meaning, but in the quality of its debate about love, setting the tone for going on two centuries of courtship. It can be summed up almost as Cupid does, concluding his prologue: … e questa è pure suprema gloria e gran miracolo mio: render simili a le più dotte cetre le rustiche sampogne; e, se mia madre, che si sdegna vedermi errar fra’ boschi, ciò non conosce, è cieca ella, e non io, cui cieco a torto il cieco volgo appella and this is in fact my supreme glory and great miracle: to render similar to the most learned lyres rustic pipes; and, if my mother, so opposed to seeing me wander through the country, does not know that, she is the one who is blind, not me, whom wrongly the blind masses call blind.

This last line contains the sort of wordplay that Battista Guarini is known for; his Pastor Fido disseminated in less challenging and more proper form the pattern of loving that Tasso had crystallized. This pattern, one of virtuous ‘faith’ leading to ultimate triumph and to happiness (“amante … per mezzo della sua fede … fatto felice”|the lover … by means of his faith … gaining happiness|, noted by Guarino himself as the armature of his play), is more implicit but nevertheless clear in the Aminta.

8 See Richard Cody, The Landscape of the Mind: Pastoralism and Platonic Theory in Tasso’s Aminta and Shakespeare’s Early Comedies, Oxford 1969, a book that in its day was taken seriously. Guarini/Brognoligo, p. 265 and again p. 276.

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3 9 Act I: Silvia, whom Aminta loves, is told by Dafne not to waste her youth and beauty but to yield to love. She is happy, being a nymph, with following the chaste Diana to the hunt, but Dafne (following a trope first made in Giraldi’s work) tells her that her pleasure in sport, which she thinks sufficient, parallels the ancients’ notion that water and acorns were sweet food and drink, but today, of course, these are for animals, we drink wine and we eat bread. Mostrommi l’ombra d’una breve notte allora quel che ’l lungo corso e ’l lume di mille giorni non m’avea mostrato”, Then the darkness of a brief night showed me what the long course and light of a thousand days had failed to show me,

urges Dafne unambiguously. (The reference to intercourse was reinforced because the “mille” piquantly – because inverted – recalled the thousands of kisses of Catullus 5, a constant point of reference for neo-Latin erotic poetry of the sixteenth century.) There is then a digression in which Dafne tells of the cave of Elpino, referring under ‘pastoral’ names to members of the court, including Tasso (Tirsi) himself; but that this part is ‘allegorical’ does not mean that the whole play should be read in this way: Tasso perhaps acted this role, and Giambattista Pigna might have played Elpino; the fact that this part is so patently ‘allegorical’ argues in fact that the rest, too, if it had been allegorical, would have been patently so, too.

3 10

It is Aminta’s turn to take the stage. He had known Silvia from childhood, then began feeling the “incognito affetto” of love; he went in steeper when he feigned being stung by a bee so she could kiss the wound. Then he declared his love, and she would have none of him (this scenario recalls Carino’s declaration in prosa viii of the Arcadia of Sannazaro; it is not really a classical thing that happens – certainly not in Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe despite its play with the “incognito affetto”: see Chapter 10 §3). Tirsi, fortunately, has a plan, but before telling the plan he tells, in another digression, of Mopso

9 Other authors known to have performed in their own plays include Niccolò da Correggio, Tebaldeo, Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, Ariosto (Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, pp. 45 note 21, 55 note 47, 122 note 8), Andrea Calmo, Artemio Gigio Giancarli and Cieco d’Adria (see Marzia Pieri, ‘Il “laboratorio” provinciale di Luigi Groto’, Rivista italiana di drammaturgia, vol. 14, 1979, pp. 3–35, at p. 5); Tasso had certainly recited in public beforehand: Sampson 2006, p. 63 (in 1570).

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(neatly echoing Virgil) who told him (neatly echoing Virgil) of the big city – the court – where he, as a rustic, would come to grief, but in fact he was well received, and encouraged to sing wars and men (Gerusalemme Liberata), until, on his return, he was given the evil eye by the said Mopso (assumed to be a rival at court, but not patently identifiable like Elpino and Tirsi and perhaps merely a figure of hate as Mopsus is to Damon in Eclogue VIII). There follows a justly famous song (A8) by the chorus (an element more properly ‘tragic’ but institutionalized in pastoral drama in the late fifteenth century) in which honour is identified as the vice which destroyed the Golden Age, in antinomy to the “legge aurea e felice/ che natura scolpì:/ S’ei piace, ei lice”| the golden, happy law that nature cut in stone: if you like it, it is permitted|. “Opra è tua sola, o Onore,/ che furto sia quel che fu don d’Amore”|It is your work alone, Honour, that what was given by Love should become theft|. Tasso might as well have been an atheist; and, one way or another, he suffered for giving air so boldly to such untimely truths. The prospect he opened up in these few words would not leave Renaissance pastoral: Guarino immediately and directly in the Pastor Fido (rewriting it using the same rhyme-scheme) and in various ways others – not least Shakespeare – reworked and rebutted and redeveloped that resonant phrase “S’ei piace, ei lice”, which might be seen as the motto above the door into the ‘world’ of ‘Arcadia’ (see Chapter 13 §14). It is perhaps not right to see Tasso painting with an entirely broad brush: his target was surely specifically the ‘honour’ that justified arranged, or forced, marriage – a universal practice which pastoral generally tended to skirt it, perhaps surprisingly, but presumably lest it cause offence (see further below, Chapter 9 §8n).

3 11 Act II: Dafne and Tirsi put their heads together, but before they do a

satyr has entered the dramatis personae; and he is true to his heritage of lusting and rape, for which he delivers an apologia. Tirsi and Dafne find that Silvia is not above looking at herself in pools – indicative that she, after all, will

10 For the motif of the bee sting Tasso may well have drawn upon Longus, Daphnis and Chloe; see further Chapter 10 §3. Tasso himself wrote that among the cantos in the Gerusalemme Liberata “Le più lascive … sono le più belle”|The erotic ones … are the best|, though he had to cut them for publication (see Sampson 2006, p. 85, quoting Tasso’s letter to Scipio Gonzaga, 24 April 1576). His lascivious madrigal ‘Nel dolce seno de la bella Clori’ is discussed below, Chapter 10 §6. For the taking up of the ‘honour’ chorus in England by Samuel Daniel (whose translation I use here) and ultimately, indirectly, Shakespeare, see Chapter 13 §13; and by Kenelm Digby Chapter 18 §11.

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be susceptible to love – and agree that the world has grown old, and sadder. Tirsi thinks this is due to the greater commerce between country and city, a feeble diagnosis but one that will often be repeated. Dafni, however, though she forbids Tirsi to spread it, claims that women do not want respectful lovers (Aminta is above all rispettoso): if Aminta will take what she does not give Silvia will be grateful. (This thesis is not in the end put to the test, so not disproved.) The plot tightens: independently both the satyr and Aminta determine to assault Silvia while she bathes in a favourite spot, là dove a le dolci acque fa dolce ombra quel platano ch’invita al fresco seggio le ninfe … where the sweet waters are sweetly shaded/ by that plane-tree which invites the nymphs to its cool bower.

But also benches have been set out for the school of love, as Dafne and Tirsi debate its turns and merits, until Tirsi interposes another patent allegory, eulogizing Alfonso II as the god who “haec otia fecit” like Augustus for Tityrus/Virgil. Dafni would continue the debate, but Aminta is to be urged and briefed. Another radical chorus backs physical love against the divine allegedly achieved by the pursuit of beauty: Amore, leggan pur altri le socratiche carte ch’io in due begli occhi apprenderò quest’arte, e perderan le rime de le penne più saggie appo le mie selvaggie che rozza mano in rozza scorza imprime Love, let others read/ Neoplatonic pages/ but I will learn this art in two fair eyes/ and the verses of the wisest pens will lose beside my wild ones,/ scored into rough bark by rough hand.

Sweetest Tasso, warbling wild! The sentiment, attacking the establishment, is so easily, naturally and provocatively developed out of the humility topos and the oldest motif in pastoral literature.

3 12

We move on to a kind of Rococo: late sixteenth-century pastoral often conjures vignettes demanding to be modelled by a Kändler (see further Chapter 10§8). Act III: The satyr has tied Silvia to a tree, tied nude by her own hair and girdle (reported) – a scene quite possibly derived from the scene

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A8

TORQUATO TASSO, AMINTA, Act I, chorus

O bella età de l’oro, non già perché di latte sen’ corse il fiume e stillò mele il bosco; non perché i frutti loro dier da l’aratro intatte le terre, e gli angui errar senz’ira o tosco; non perché nuvol fosco non spiegò allor suo velo, ma in primavera eterna, ch’ora s’accende e verna, rise di luce e di sereno il cielo; né portò peregrino o guerra o merce agli altrui lidi il pino; ma sol perché quel vano nome senza soggetto, quell’idolo d’errori, idol d’inganno, quel che dal volgo insano onor poscia fu detto, che di nostra natura ’l feo tiranno, non mischiava il suo affanno fra le liete dolcezze de l’amoroso gregge; né fu sua dura legge nota a quell’alme in libertate avvezze, ma legge aurea e felice che natura scolpì: «S’ei piace, ei lice». Allor tra fiori e linfe traen dolci carole gli Amoretti senz’archi e senza faci; sedean pastori e ninfe meschiando a le parole vezzi e susurri, ed ai susurri i baci strettamente tenaci; la verginella ignude scopria sue fresche rose, ch’or tien nel velo ascose,

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f A 8 : ta s s o, a m i n ta , a c t i , c h o r u s v

SAMUEL DANIEL, ‘A PASTORAL’, from DELIA, 1592

O Happy golden Age, Not for that Rivers ran With streams of milk, and honey dropped from trees; Not that the earth did gage Unto the husbandman Her voluntary fruits, free without fees:

Not for no cold did freeze, Nor any cloud beguile Th’eternal flowing Spring Wherein lived everything, And whereon th’heavens perpetually did smile; Not for no ship had brought From foreign shores, or wars or wares ill fought. But only for that name, That idle name of wind; That idol of deceit, that empty sound Called HONOUR, which became The tyrant of the mind, And so torments our Nature without ground; Was not yet vainly found: Nor yet sad griefes imparts Amidst the sweet delights Of joyful amorous wights. Nor were his hard laws known to free-born hearts, But golden lawes like these Which nature wrote, That’s lawful which doth please. Then amongst flowers and springs Making delightful sport, Sat Lovers without conflict, without flame; And Nymphs and shepherds sings, Mixing in wanton sort Whisp’rings with Songs, then kisses with the same Which from affection came: The naked virgin then Her roses fresh reveals, Which now her veil conceals:

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e le poma del seno acerbe e crude; e spesso in fonte o in lago scherzar si vide con l’amata il vago. Tu prima, Onor, velasti la fonte dei diletti, negando l’onde a l’amorosa sete; tu a’ begli occhi insegnasti di starne in sé ristretti, e tener lor bellezze altrui secrete; tu raccogliesti in rete le chiome a l’aura sparte; tu i dolci atti lascivi festi ritrosi e schivi; ai detti il fren ponesti, ai passi l’arte; opra è tua sola, o Onore, che furto sia quel che fu don d’Amore. E son tuoi fatti egregi le pene e i pianti nostri. Ma tu, d’Amore e di Natura donno, tu domator de’ Regi, che fai tra questi chiostri, che la grandezza tua capir non ponno? Vattene, e turba il sonno agl’illustri e potenti: noi qui, negletta e bassa turba, senza te lassa viver ne l’uso de l’antiche genti. Amiam, ché non ha tregua con gli anni umana vita, e si dilegua. Amiam, ché ’l Sol si muore e poi rinasce: a noi sua breve luce s’asconde, e ’l sonno eterna notte adduce. http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ITA1390/_P4.HTM, still available early 2021

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The tender apples in her bosom seen. And oft in Rivers clear The lovers with their Loves comforting were. HONOUR, thou first didst close The spring of all delight: Denying water to the amorous thirst Thou taught’st fair eyes to lose The glory of their light; Restrained from men, and on themselves reversed. Thou in a lawn did first Those golden hairs encase, Late spread unto the wind; Thou mad’st loose grace unkind, Gav’st bridle to their words, art to their pace. O Honour it is thou That mak’st that stealth, which love doth free allow. It is thy worke that brings Our griefs, and torments thus: But thou fierce Lord of Nature and of Love, The qualifier of Kings, What doest thou here with us That are below thy power, shut from above? Go and from us remove, Trouble the mighties’ sleep, Let us neglected, base, Live still with thy grace, And th’use of th’ancient happy ages keepe: Let’s love: this life of ours Can make no truce with time that all devours. Let’s love: the sun doth set, and rise again, But whenas our short light Comes once to set, it makes eternal night. The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel, ed. Alexander B. Grosart, 5 vols., privately printed 1885, I, pp. 260–62

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in which Issa manages to tie up with her own girdle the lustful Apollo in Cieco’s Calisto (III, v), and then beguiles him into climbing a tree (IV, iv; see Chapter 11 §8), but this only marks Tasso’s higher tone, eliminating the comic element. Aminta drives off the satyr and (reported) addresses the various parts of her body as he undoes her in the picture of a reverent lover: Quinci con le sue mani le mani le sciolse in modo tal, che parea che temesse pur di toccarle, e desiasse insieme; So with his hands he undid her hands/ in such fashion that he seemed that he feared/ just to touch her, and at the same time desired to …

while she refuses to acknowledge him. Tirsi searches for Aminta, fearing he may now have decided to take his life – unless perchance he has stolen off to Elpino’s cave, ove sovente suole raddolcir gli amarissimi martiri al dolce suon de la sampogna chiara, ch’ad udir trae da gli alti monti i sassi, e correr fa di puro latte i fiumi, e stillar mele da le dure scorze – Where oft he uses/ to soften the very bitter pains [of love]/ at the sweet sound of the clear flute,/ which, to listen, draws the rocks from the high mountains,/ and makes the rivers flow milk,/ and honey to drip from the hard bark

to which cave Tirsi repairs, in one of the most perfectly elegant exits in the history of the stage (still citing the classics, of course: dripping honey is from Eclogue IV, 30). In the epilogue to L’Arcadia, addressed ‘A la sampogna’, Sannazaro had hung up with finality the pastoral pipe he had taken up, as he says in prosa x – the syrinx made by Pan, learnt by Theocritus, mastered by Virgil; now Tasso has been able to take it down. Aminta may not be dead, but Silvia is: recovered, newly dressed, she had set off for the hunt, to take on and chase after a wolf (reported): it looks as if the wolf had the better of her. This, too, is the end for Aminta, Thisbe to her Pyramus. One wonders whether Tasso might not have contrived a more psychological, less creaking means of achieving an apparent double suicide; but that was never the way of Renaissance drama – not required!

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3 13 Acts IV and V: Not being dead, but now believing a new messenger who recounts that Aminta is, having thrown himself off a cliff, Silvia repents, delaying killing herself only so that she can see Aminta buried. But Elpino, who with Tirsi had witnessed Aminta’s precipitation, but also his fall being broken by a bush, narrates the happy ending. Aminta has won his nymph by his supreme demonstration of faith – his refusal to cease to love his beloved, his refusal to force her or to cross her, to fail in his rispetto, his superhuman – utterly courteous – tolerance of every ill (possibly this twist was derived, or, rather, developed by Tasso from Guarnieri’s Gigia: see §4 above). It is Elpino’s task to report the good news, and he declares: Felice lui, che sì gran segno ha dato d’amore, e de l’amor il dolce or gusta, a cui gli affanni scorsi ed i perigli fanno soave e dolce condimento Happy is he, who has given so great a proof/ of love; of love now he tastes the sweet,/ to which the pains he has suffered and the dangers/ make a sweet and delicious condiment.

It must be said that the chorus is not entirely in agreement, concluding: Non so se il molto amaro, che provato ha costui servendo, amando, piangendo e disperando, raddolcito puot’esser pienamente d’alcun dolce presente; ma, se più caro viene e più si gusta dopo ’l male il bene, io non ti cheggio, Amore, questa beatitudine maggiore; bea pur gli altri in tal guisa: me la mia ninfa accoglia dopo brevi preghiere e servir breve; e siano i condimenti de le nostre dolcezze non sì gravi tormenti, ma soavi disdegni e soavi ripulse, risse e guerre a cui segua, reintegrando i cori, o pace o tregua.

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I do not know if the great bitterness/ that he has felt in serving, in loving/ weeping and despairing,/ can be fully sweetened/ by any present sweet;/ but, even if the good comes the dearer/ and the sweeter after the bad,/ I do not ask, Love,/ for this greater blessing;/ bless others in such a way:/ let my nymph welcome me/ after brief prayers and brief service;/ and let the condiments/ of our sweetnesses/ be not grave torments/ but delicious huffs/ and delicious repulses,/ quarrels and wars followed by/ peace or truce, reuniting hearts.

3 14

Such easy, playful, sensual humanity was the way neither of the court decorum nor of the Church; and it provided neither paragon heroine nor heroic lover. Battista Guarino’s Pastor Fido, which followed at last, as it gradually circulated more widely during the decade following the Aminta’s publication in 1581, canonized, in its plot as in its very title, the supreme idea that amor vuol fé, that the happy outcome depended on the lover’s truth to his troth, and in terms of fame and influence soon left the Aminta behind. Its corresponding artificiality and abstraction, its eradication of the intimacy and sensuality with which Tasso oils ideas in the unrevisionist Aminta, is apparent not least in its setting, Arcadia rather than the here and now. Guarino regularized and counter-reformed the Aminta’s morals and sentiments, removing (or, more exactly, rendering remote) its dangerous hints of license. Arcadia is under a curse, which can only be lifted when “di donna infidel l’antico errore/ l’alta pietà d’un pastor fido ammende”|the erstwhile sin of an unfaithful women be set right by the high piety of a faithful shepherd| – a resounding recall of Eve’s fault, duly redeemed by her lover’s willing self-sacrifice. Though its scope is more limited, Guarino’s plot is fuller than Tasso’s; the Pastor fido is twice the length of the Aminta, implicating a greater variety of characterization among the greater number of players. Thus, more than Tasso, though following him (and, actually, to a greater extent, other writers), Guarino introduced into his play (which he called a “tragicomedia pastorale” rather than the vaguer ‘fabula’) elements from classical or classicizing theatre, thereby epurating the unease that had accompanied romantic drama just about since its inception, for such drama was neither the one nor the other but a bit of both, a hybrid ‘tragi-comedy’ (a term first used in the Renaissance for La Celestina [see Chapter 5 §18] but it had classical precedent in Plautus’s Amphytrio; the Celestina, however, was more a comi-tragedy, given its very unhappy ending). The late sixteenth-century debate over form and category tends, however, to mislead, for the terms of the debate over the propriety of Guarino’s play (which he ably defended when

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it was attacked) reveal little of the disturbance that stimulated it, the pressure for ‘modern’ r­ omance on the stage. The new wave in theatre was ‘modern’ because it represented feelings involving love in a way lacking classical precedent and, to tell the truth, needing none. Technically there might be heavy dependance on the ancients, who suggested rhetorical devices and mechanisms of narrative and plot, but its new subject-matter was wooing and the parade of emotion, its new hero the courteous lover, its heroine new in walking and talking and answering at all. Guarino was ambitious for his in so many ways new play: he virtually claimed that it superseded other forms of drama – certainly comedy, which was low anyway, but also tragedy – as not being able adequately to depict human realities.

3 15 Like a Roman comedy, which the Aminta little resembles, Guarino’s plot depends on the rediscovery of a lost infant swept away in a flood: the revelation of the true identity of hitherto misidentified lovers snatches the play’s happy fulfilment from the apparent disaster of their mismatch. However, Guarino’s play deliberately revisits Tasso’s frequently, from the first scene in which Silvio prefers hunting and Linco urges love, as opposed to Tasso’s first scene in which Silvia prefers hunting and Dafne urges love, to passages like his own ‘honour’ chorus (end of Act IV) revisiting Tasso’s ‘honour’ chorus (end of Act I: “S’ei piace, ei lice”). Possibly even the fact that the lover involved in the “antico errore” that has to be put right is called Aminta is meant to suggest that Guarino’s play is the new order superseding the old. One consequence of this challenge to Tasso is that Guarino may appear lame – for example his refrain (unnaturally introduced in any case) in the opening scene, “Lascia, lascia le selve/ folle garzon; lascia le fere, e ama”|leave the woods, leave them, foolish boy; leave the beasts, and love| beside Tasso’s “cangia, cangia consiglio/ pazzarella che sei”|change course, change course, foolish girl that you are|. The eroticism which threatens at any moment to erupt in Tasso’s Aminta is restricted in Guarino’s Pastor fido to the game of blindman’s buff that brings Mirtillo, in female disguise, the physical contact of Amarilli (II, i; though this became a scene favoured in art and illustrations just for its erotic potency; see Chapter 14 §10 and cf. fig. 8.1)and to the kiss with which he eventually claims his beloved (V, xi) . If you had seen it, Ergasto tells Corisca 14 Guarini/Whitfield; also Battista Guarini, Il Pastor fido, ed. Elisabetta Selmi, Venice 1999; Elisabetta Selmi, ‘Classici e Moderni’ nell’officina del ‘Pastor Fido’, Alessandria 2001. See also Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, pp. 45–46, for the prologue of Niccolò da Correggio’s Fabula di Caephalo (1487), which confesses its hybrid status though without using the word ‘tragicomedy’.

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in Guarino’s play, you would have died of sweetness – rather than its giver or recipient doing so; for them there is only the equivocation whether the kiss was bestowed or taken, more wordplay than foreplay (V, viii) – “un vietar ch’era invito/ sì dolce d’assalire,/ ch’a rapir chi rapiva era rapito”|a forbidding that invited so sweetly to assault, that the forcer was forced into forcing|. Tasso’s such figuration (for example “cui cieco a torto il cieco volgo appella”) is witty and pertinent, while in Guarino one sees manner overtaking – and distancing – all (the same comparison can be made between their famous rival erotic madrigals: see Chapter 10 §6). In the eyes of contemporaries, at least, Guarino matched the elegance of Tasso’s versification and wordplay, but, for all its wroughtness, for all its more than occasionally well-turned passages – but this opposition has been made many times. As Ben Jonson noted not kindly in Volpone (even if his real target was Samuel Daniel: see Chapter 13 §16n), Guarino “has so modern and facile a vein,/ Fitting the time, and catching the court-ear”; and Tasso ended up in prison.

3 16

There was no doubt of Guarino’s – eventual – success. In 1613 Lodovico Zuccolo could write in a pamphlet written in homage to it: “Chi non si commove fin nelle più viscere del cuore, mentre legge il Pastor Fido (credete a me) manca di sentimento, ò di intelletto”| Anyone who reads the Pastor Fido and is not moved to the utmost tissue of his heart, believe me, has neither feeling nor intelligence|. However, the play was a long time in the writing and still longer in the staging: by contrast to Tasso’s Aminta, it was published several years before it could be brought to the stage – and when it was first attacked in print, by Giason Denores (or Gioacchini De Nores) in 1586, it was still in manuscript. During the 1580s Guarino was having it ‘vetted’, resorting to print in 1589 perhaps because in preparations to stage it – which fell through – the text had been given to actors and was therefore effectively out of control. Efforts to stage it were made in the 1580s, notably at Mantua and Turin, and continued into the 1590s, but it seems almost certain that its first performance was in Crema in 1595 or 1596, without Guarino’s knowledge – until the local nobleman who took the initiative wrote, after the event, to tell him – and in the latter year in Ronciglione in a manner “proportionate to the facilities” of that very small place. Thus its first significant performance – at a court, with the author’s involvement – was in Mantua in 1598, but

15 See the classic opposition of Tasso and Guarino – not the latter’s advantage – in Marsan 1905, ch. II (as noted above, note to §2). Quotation from Jonson (Volpone, III, ii) in Guarino/Whitfield, p. 31.

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that was very significant. There it became part of the programme of events honouring the procession towards their respective marriages of Archduke Albert of Austria (to Philip II’s elder daughter, Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia) and Margaret of Austria (to his son the future Philip III), both making their way across the Alps towards Genoa to take ship to Spain. The pope wedded them by proxy in Ferrara; then in Mantua they enjoyed a grand performance of Guarino’s play, a triumph for their host the Duke of Mantua but also an indication of its complete official integration into Catholic approval and indeed expression (Guarino and his play had previously had a gratifying reception at the Habsburg court of Carlo Emanuele of Savoy, newly married to the Infanta Caterina Micaela, though there lacked the resources to put the play on in Turin). There could hardly have been a more momentous occasion: “Les personnes les plus signalées y assistèrent”|the most important people attended|; it was intended also to rival Medicean and French marriage celebrations. Such royal marriages were anyway greeted as inaugurating a new age of prosperity (see further below, Chapter 18 §1); with this also Guarino’s play chimed, not least in his rewriting of Tasso’s chorus: Oh bella età d’oro quand’era cibo il latte del pargoletto mondo e culla il bosco; e i cari parti loro godean le gregge intatte, né temea il mondo ancor ferro né tosco! Pensier torbido e fosco allor non facea velo al sol di luce eterna. Or la ragion, che verna tra le nubi del senso, ha chiuso il cielo, ond’è che il peregrino va l’altrui terra e ’l mar turbando il pino. Quel suon fastoso e vano, quell’inutil soggetto di lusinghe, di titoli e d’inganno ch’onor dal volgo insano indegnamente è detto, non era ancor degli animi tiranno. Ma sostener affanno per le vere dolcezze,

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tra i boschi e le gregge la fede aver per legge, fu di quell’alme, al ben oprar avezze, cura d’onor felice, cui dettava Onestà: ‘Piaccia, se lice’. Oh fair golden age,/ when milk was the food/ of the infant world and the wood its cradle;/ and their dear offspring/ the flocks enjoyed untended,/ and the world feared neither iron nor poison!/ Black, mulling thought/ had not yet veiled/ the sun of eternal light./ Now reason, wintering/ among the clouds of the senses, has shut out heaven,/ so that wanderers/ disturb foreign lands and ships the sea. That vain and pompous sound,/ that useless object/ of flattery, titles and deceit/ which the deluded masses improperly call honour,/ was not yet tyrant over minds./ But to suffer longing/ for the sake of the true sweetnesses,/ among the woods and the flocks/ to hold faith as law,/ was to those souls, accustomed to good works,/ the pursuit of happy honour,/ to which Honesty commanded: ‘Let it please, if it is allowed’.

The Pastor Fido perfectly reflected the occasion, and the ‘faith’ that love needs must have was enshrined as the great ideal not only because it was the key to Guarino’s plot but because the lovers’ redemption ran so deep. For it was the literal redemption also of the commonweal – Arcadia ‘restored’ – and the spiritual redemption of all mankind. Feminine-induced, unchaste, original sin is relieved by present male forebearance and self-sacrifice (as Guarino, too, claimed: “Ecco l’uomo perfetto figurato in Mirtillo”|Here is the perfect man in the figure of Mirtillo [his enduring lover]). A similar plot – the re-opening of the Fountain of Love, to take off the curse, by a true lover – underpins Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée, which can analogously be seen as a ‘national epic’ defining the culture of a French hegemony, in a manner of course more colourful and licentious and less puritan and black-suited than the Catholic Habsburg one.

3 17 As regards his plot, however, Guarino was more revisionary than original, and as regards the course of drama either in Italy or in Europe the effect of the Pastor Fido was negligible rather than the contrary. It was not influential by the yardstick of being imitated. It was an important text, especially as published in 1602 with detailed Annotazioni, and debate about it continued; in many quarters it was enjoyed and its verses were admired. Not insignificantly, it was widely used as a text from which to learn Italian, implicitly as a textbook of young girls’ amorous conversation (see fig. 8.1; the motto 

f eight  §16–§17 v

Ruris non infida Venus|The country’s Venus is faithful|emphasizes true faith, as found among shepherds). Though his Aminta is openly challenged, Tasso was certainly not the only predecessor from whom Guarino took material, even if in the copious discussion at the time and since his second major source is not often mentioned. Luigi Groto, ‘il Cieco d’Adria’, published his pastoral play in rhyming sdrucciole Il Pentimento Amoroso in 1576, and it contains a great number of elements that Guarino might have taken up. His Arcadia features two self-sacrificing figures, one the nymph Filovevia, who loves Ergasto but is scorned by him; indeed he orders his herdsman Melibeo to kill her, but she

16 Ludovico Zuccolo, L’Alessandro, overo La Pastorale, Venice 1613, f. 4. For the staging of the play see Vittorio Rossi, Battista Guarino e il Pastor Fido: Studio biograficocritico con documenti inediti, Turin 1886, esp. pp. 182–85, 188, 228–29; Sampson 2016, pp. 180–89; and further Francesco Pozzi, ‘La prima rappresentazione del Pastor Fido di Battista Guarini a Crema Carnevale 1595 o 1596’, Insula Fulcheria, xxxvi, 2006, pp. 265–82. The chronicler cited by Pozzi adds the interesting information, listing the actors, that Corisca was played by a man and that the actor who played the satyr was “excellentissimo”, which suggests that he played it for laughs. On the attempts to stage the play at Mantua, see Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-century Mantua, 2 vols., Cambridge 1980, I, pp. 146–57. The early editions were “dedicated” to Carlo Emmanuele of Savoy, “in” his marriage with Infanta Caterina Micaela, at whose court Guarino had been enthusiastically received: see Rossi 1886, pp. 85–86; Sampson 2016, p. 185. See further on all these matters Sampson 2006, especially pp. 129–68, ‘Guarini’s Pastor fido: The Establishment of an Ethical and Political Model of Pastoral Drama’. Quotation from Gilles du Faing, in Collection des voyages des souverains des Pays-Bas, ed. Louis-Prosper Gachard and Charles Piot, Brussels, 1874–82, vol. IV, pp. 458–523, at p. 487. Admittedly there is little mention of the plot in this or other accounts of the event, only the “invention” and the i­ntermedi, the scene changes, the sumptuous costumes and the wonderful music. What is more, the play was drastically cut for the performance. On the other hand, a synopsis of the play in German was provided for the Archduchess and her party, so the ‘message’ cannot have been lost: see Rossi 1886, pp. 229, 231. See further Fenlon 1980, pp. 146–57, and Lisa Sampson, citing Italian sources, ‘The Mantuan Performance of Guarini’s “Pastor fido” and Representations of Courtly Identity’, The Modern Language Review, 98, no. 1, January 2003, pp. 65–83. She asks why Vincenzo Gonzaga should have put the play on for such an occasion; considering that pastoral plays were commonly put on to accompany marriages, she perhaps overstates the significance of Vincenzo’s decision. Guarino’s commentary to the 1602 annotated edition, pp. 487–88, quoted in Nicholas J. Perella, The Critical Fortune of Guarini’s Pastor Fido, Florence 1973, p. 27. For Guarini outside Italy see Marsan 1905 for France; for England Il pastor Fido in Inghilterra, ed. Nicoletta Neri, Turin 1963 (introduction to an edition of Richard Fanshawe’s translation); for Holland, P.E.L. Verkuyl, Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido in de Nederlandse dramatische literatuur, Utrecht 1971; in Germany Leonardo Olschki, G.B. Guarinis Pastor Fido in Deutschland ..., Leipzig 1908; for Spain no such study is appropriate, since the Pastor Fido had relatively little impact on the comedia nueva, already established by the time it was staged or translated.

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fig. 8.1 Léonard Gaultier, Frontispiece to Battista Guarini, Il Pastor Fido, bilingual edn Paris 1622, etching

submits so meekly to her death for love of Ergasto that Melibeo spares her (IV, iii), making pretense of having killed her; then, when Ergasto is arraigned before Pan for her apparent murder – or conspiracy to murder – she offers her own life for his. Again, Menfestio steps in to rescue Panurgia from the ordeal by bear to which she has been condemned by Diana on Menfestio’s accusation (this itself was borrowed from Beccari’s Sacrificio, where it was a boar). Pan himself had stated at the beginning (I, ii) that he had returned

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(“sono ritornato dopo tanto spatio/ d’anni”) to restore the peace, justice and good conduct that there had been in previous, happy [golden] ages (“Ch’era a quei primi avventurosi secoli”). Cieco also introduced a sharp moralizing differentiation between the two lovers who quarrel over Dioromena in the first Act, the ultimate ‘winner’, Nicogino, overcoming Ergasto’s lineage and riches in her eyes by virtue of his “verità nativa, e semplice” (I, iv), his long service and his humility (II, v; “il maggiore merito del mio amato pastore è il suo non credere/ di meritare”|the greatest merit of my beloved shepherd is that he does not believe his deserving|). Refined, uncomicked – for Cieco, even if he had not introduced the ostentatiously crude Melibeo, frequently takes a jokey or irreverent stance: when Nicogino asks Dioromena (II, viii), “Dimmi, quando vuoi por l’ultimo termine/ Al mio dolore ... perch’io non vada solitario –”|Tell me, when will you put the final end to my suffering … so that I do not go solitary –|, she interrupts, “Per boschi, e monti più versando lagrime? Quando tempo sarà tel farò intendere”|Through the woods and hills pouring out tears? When it is time I will let you know| – and, given tone, the essence of Guarino’s ‘message’ was already there in Cieco; and Cieco’s play was in fact highly influential in its own right internationally in the first decade of the seventeenth century (see further Chapters 11 §19; 14 §2). There were numerous other, if inferior, pastoral plays coming off the presses in the later 1570s and 1580s which in many respects resemble Guarino’s, above all in the ‘intrigues’ of their various lovers.

3 18 A difficulty for some might be – should be – that all this has very little to do with what pastoral is meant to be – meaning an attachment to nature or countryside that accompanies or even determines the action or allegory; essentially they seek to define pastoral without including the Pastor Fido. But not only in Guarino but also in much that follows there is little interest in the pastoral decorum or apparatus (of which the country is an element): it 17 For the influence of Cieco see Luigia Zilli, La ricezione francese del “Pentimento amoroso”, pastorale di Luigi Groto, Cieco d’Adria, Udine 1984. Cieco 1576; Cieco 1599. A group of contemporary ‘intrigue’ plays is assembled and classified in Clubb 1973. She borrows a notion of Guarino’s (quoted p. 58 note 22 from his Verrato of 1588) that his play, epitomizing pastoral, was concerned with “la nostra natura, quasi vergine senza lisci, & senz’alcuno di quelli artifici, & di quelle finte apparenze che sono peccati propri della Città”|human nature, as if virginal, unpainted and without any of the artifices or false appearances which are sins belonging to the city|. She also remarks (note 45) that he removed this phrase from the later edition of the tract.

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is reduced expressly to a shell, in other words to convention, and pastoral becomes an entirely urbane school of love and manners. Although there are three great works set in Arcadia written in the late sixteenth century – Guarino’s Pastor Fido, Sidney’s Arcadia, Lope de Vega’s Arcadia – they are none of them pastoral in the sense the term is today commonly understood, although, in some ways like Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme Liberata or Spenser’s Faerie Queen, they might have pastoral (in this sense) episodes or moments within them. The so-called pastoral romances great and mediocre of the period have fringes and tassles that are ‘pastoral’ in the modern sense – for example Cervantes’s Galatea has an unusually rich description of a village festivity, and Sidney’s original Arcadia opened with a remarkable ecphrasis of an ideal countryside (embedded later on, though also expanded, in the second version: see Chapter 11 §23) – but these are arabesque adornment beside their signifying figuration, the poetry with which they are richly studded and the narrative ramifications in which they delight. However, if these works seem a long, long way from the intimations of real country life modern English critics look for (see, for example, Chapter 13 §2n) in fact they remain true to the essence and origin of all pastoral as I have claimed it to have been (Chapter 1 §1, 12), the coming together (or going apart) to make music, music devoted predominantly to the pains of love. Music and song were not only intrinsic to the performance of pastoral on the stage and consistently woven into the narrative of pastoral romance, but also the natural pastime of any young, happy and cultured society. Accordingly discussion of pastoral would not be complete without discussion both of the pastoral romance (see Chapter 9) and of the madrigal in particular (see Chapter 10); then there is the evolution of pastoral in European theatre (Chapters 11, 13 and 14).

18 See, for example, Lerner 1972, p. 37: “… Guarino’s Il Pastor Fido. It may seem perverse, in view of its reputation and influence, to deny that this is really a pastoral play, but it is a perversity that follows from our conception of pastoral …. Guarini’s Arcadia is Arcadia in name only: it does not contrast with the court.” On this contrast, in point of fact incidental to pastoral, see the conclusion of Chapter 12. One may set against this and other definitions in English cited in various places (apparently deriving from Greg 1906) the following much more accurate statement from Ferrone 2014, ‘Glossario’, s.v. ‘Pastorale’, p. 251: “Questo genere teatrale, capace di accogliere al suo interno tematiche amorose, drammatiche, tragiche e comiche, fu spesso il contenitore preferito dai comici professionisti che nel contesto di paesaggi agresti poterono conciliare recitazione, canto, musica, lazzi ed effetti scenotecnici sorprendenti”| This theatrical genre, which could accommodate themes of love and action, both tragic and comic, was often the vehicle favoured by professional actors, who in a countryside setting could combine speeches, song, music, lazzi [mots; ‘material’] and dramatic special effects|.

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Chapter 9 2 ONLY FAITH AND TROTH

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3 1 In written pastoral romance as in performed pastoral drama, amor vuol fé|love needs faith|: “only faith and troth, that’s shepherd’s wooing”, as Aliena remarks in Thomas Lodge’s pastoral romance, Rosalynde (§27 below). The pastoral romance is typically a long, sometimes almost endless, interwoven narrative, interspersed with numerous ‘songs’, that begins, usually, with the blighted love of a man (or boy) for a woman (or girl) but will ramify unconscionably. The corollary, dove non è fè non è amore|where there is not faith [or troth] there is not love|, demanding proof that the love really is love, and therefore will overcome all the obstacles and misunderstandings placed in its way by chance, rivals, greater powers or the woman herself, is then the keystone crowning the multitudinous blocks of which these edifices are composed. The pastoral romance was a form developed in the mid sixteenth century in the Iberian peninsula, though the greatest – at least in scope, range, plot and length – of all pastoral romances, Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée, was French, published in the first decades of the seventeenth century. There used to be complaint by later critics of the failure of the authors of these tracts, so one might almost call them, to drive their narrative forward, but it was not the purpose of these books to get on with the story; on the contrary, as I see it, the narrative was essentially retardative, a means of holding off the inevitable resolution and union almost as long as possible – inevitable, for faith will always win through. While the main narrative could usually be reduced to a short synopsis, it was spun out in subplots and in stories told by its characters but also, above all, by (leisurely – ‘otiose’) discussion: the pastoral became a ‘school of love’, in which manners and their morality were rehearsed. These romances, though they invariably contain verse compositions, said to be sung, have moved a long way from the model of Virgil’s ten eclogues, which were too limiting (as Giraldi, commenting earlier on pastoral plays, had already observed; Chapter 8 §2), and we find accordingly that, following the precedent of Roman comedy (or more exactly the scholiast to Terence) that was taken up in the late fifteenth century, these pastoral works were often divided into five ‘acts’ or ‘books’ – Tasso’s, Guarino’s, the anonymous (attributed to Nicolas de Montreux) Les Bergeries de Juliette, Sidney’s Arcadia, Lope de Vega’s Arcadia, and so on. Undoubtedly the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor (or in Portuguese Montemor), published in 1559, which has in fact seven books (and its plot left unfinished by its author), was the prototype for the sixteenth-century pastoral romance, rather than Virgil, or indeed Sannazaro, or Boccaccio, who seems to have been altogether overlooked, or the earlier Portuguese Bernardim Ribeiro (for whom see Chapter 5 §20; his hybrid work did not appear in print until 

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1554 in Ferrara and 1557 in Évora, but still before Montemayor, who in any case knew him). Montemayor set the narrative, plotted form of the genre, which was polished by others. Montemayor presumably knew of Sannazaro (indeed the publication of a translation into Castilian of the Arcadia in 1547 may have been a stimulus) but takes little from him. In fact at the end of Montemayor’s publication (in 1559) the path of true love looks very astray, but a happy ending was surely intended, and finally delivered, the author himself having died, in 1564 by Gaspar Gil Polo (whose sequel was preferred to another by Alonzo Pérez). Cervantes also never finished his Galatea, but its happy ending is implicit. However, Lope de Vega consciously upset the rule in his Arcadia by making the happy ending one of escape from love altogether, faith having been destroyed by jealousy.

3 2

A pastoral romance, it needs to be said, is a kind of romance, and the borderlines between kinds of romance are porous. Pastoral romances often incorporate chivalric material; indeed Sidney’s Arcadia, in its second version, clearly moves further away from pastoral towards chivalric, and English writers are in general only spottily pastoral; in the Astrée chivalric and pastoral happily co-exist. Pastoral, too, can enter an otherwise chivalric romance, and besides Ribeiro (see §3) an important and early ‘pastoral’, anticipating Montemayor as well as his successors, was the early part (before it became a rerun of the story of Troy) of Amadís de Grecia, Book IX of the chivalric series Amadís de Gaula, which was first published in 1530. The Amadís books continue by continuing the line, and Florisel (or the Knight of the Shepherdess), son of Amadís de Grecia, was fourth in direct line to Amadís de Gaula: he is out hunting and happens upon the shepherdess Silvia, the unknowing lost daughter of Emperor Lisuarte; he contemplates her from the bushes by the fountain which she regularly frequents, and falls in love with her. She is twelve and he is thirteen. She, innocent bergère that she is (I quote from the French translation; Amadis was as it were adopted by the French, who continued the cycle after Spanish writers had left it at Book XII), is highly impressed by his garb and mien. To woo her, however, he takes on a shepherd’s estate, furnishing himself with “… pannetière, houlette, roquet, & de tout ce qu’il convient à un pasteur”|scrip, crook, smock, and everything that belongs to a shepherd|, in which state, however, he is “autant enrichy & eslevé de pensees, come decheu & apauvry de magnificence”| as enhanced and uplifted in his thoughts, as demeaned and deprived of outward show|. Soon, however, he laments:

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1 For Spanish pastoral see the introduction, chronology, ‘catalogue’ and online texts, bibliography, texts of modern studies and links to modern studies at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/bib/ portalnovelapastoril/pcuartonivelf9e1html?conten=presentacion (frequently accessed). See also Javier Irigoyen-García, The Spanish Arcadia: sheep herding, pastoral discourse, and ethnicity in early modern Spain, Toronto 2014. There is a comprehensive study in English by H.A. Rennert, ‘The Spanish Pastoral Romances’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, VII, no. 3, 1892, pp. 2–119; republished as a book, Philadelphia 1912; see also Gerhardt 1950, pp. 172–99. On ‘interminability’ see notably Louise K. Horowitz, ‘Pastoral Parenting: L’Astrée’, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 36, The Pastoral Landscape, 1992, pp. 128–35. On five acts see Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, pp. 43–46; Sampson 2006, p. 13 and note 5, p. 52; more than one instance in the commentaries of Donatus on Terence; and five acts – no more or fewer – are stipulated by Horace, Ars Poetica, 189. If it is accepted that Montemayor’s Diana is the prototype of the pastoral romance, then the notion of a “cyclic structure” that English critics (essentially following Greg 1906) have found in pastoral – see Chaudhuri 1989, Ch. 12, ‘Pastoral Romance: The Cyclic Structure’, pp. 252ff. – should be regarded not as the norm but as a development that English writers in particular introduce (but one finds it also in scholarship elsewhere, for example Lohse 2015, p. 559). According to Chaudhuri, “This [Sannazaro’s Arcadia] foreshadows a pattern towards which many later plays and romances appear to strive. Characters escape from a corrupt or unhappy court into a pastoral or rural refuge. In this regenerative setting, they undergo a change in their nature and relationships; and, finally, their problems are resolved …. Such a structure captures and puts to organic use the basic pastoral contrast of court and country.” Subsequently (p. 255), Chaudhuri criticizes Montemayor for not providing “a genuinely different set of pastoral values and interests” – in other words, for not living up to his cyclic theory. And this theory can hardly be applied to a work like d’Urfé’s Astrée, either (see Chaudhuri himself on the Astrée at pp. 276–77), or Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess (which Greg 1906, pp. 264–82, regards as a “masterpiece”, but he does not get any such reading out of it), or even, properly, to Sannazaro’s Arcadia (as discussed Chapter 2 §14–15 and 3 §14–22). Obviously, individual writers can introduce such a cyclic structure – and there is clearly such a thing in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, developing its employment essentially for the first time by Thomas Lodge in his Rosalynde – but the idea that it is (or should be!) intrinsic to pastoral is not borne out across the larger field; it is a kind of moral position. Ultimately the idea is a development of W.W. Greg’s notion of “contrast between town and country” (Greg 1906, p. 7), but consequent on an investment in ‘pastoral’ that is unnecessary. Characters usually start in their pastoral setting rather than “escape” (p. 51) there; often, in seventeenth-century pastoral, the setting is exotic, and the transition from court to pastoral and back quick and easy (see further Chapter 14, for example §11: why the contrast to court was so recurrent in Dutch pastoral is there discussed). The contrast between court (or city) and country was actually an independent theme (discussed in Chapter 12, notably §13). That the Spanish romance does not stem from Sannazaro was clear to Gerhardt 1950, p. 185, and Bayo 1970, p. 15. The Astrée has been described as the “model on which to base their lives and behaviour” for the Paris salons and the précieux of the early seventeenth century, for instance by Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and court entertainments, Cambridge 1989, p. 16, though she moderates this view (necessarily) on p. 21. She quotes Gustav Lanson, Histoire de la littérature française, Paris, n.d. [first published 1894], p. 375, to better effect, claiming that “la société précieuse est la realité dont L’Astrée donne le roman”|Précieux society is the reality for which d’Urfé provides the novel|. D’Urfé himself claims a didactic purpose in his preface to the first volume (following Montemayor’s precedent). See further below, §32–35, for L’Astrée and French commentary upon it; also Chapter 19 §1.

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Mais qui m’a fait changer ce desir que i’avois d’estre Chevalier & suyvre les armes, pour tenir compagnie aux simples Bergerettes (sans bruit ou renom) delaissant l’usage de mes somptueux habits Royaux, pour prendre le vil roquet d’un pauvre pastoureau mercenaire? But who has made me change this desire I had of being a knight and following arms to keep company with simple shepherdesses (without fame or renown) relinquishing my sumptuous royal clothing to take up the vile smock of a poor wage-earning drover?

Previously she had been wooed by the local boy Darinel, a lusty enough fellow until, driven by her rejection, he went off into the woods to waste away like a melancholic or a hermit. Darinel in due course returns and joins forces with Florisel, many adventures ensuing. Silvie’s double lovers, one of a higher class and the other of a lower, perhaps determined the similar pairing of Montemayor’s opening (and then Cervantes’s Galatea). Whether or not Amadis IX was individually influential (Shakespeare undoubtedly knew it: see Chapter 13 §20), it brings together, before the sub-genre launches in its own right, the amorous conventions of pastoral romance.

33

A more complex example of a pastoral interlude set inside a chivalric romance occurs in Bernardim Ribeiro’s Menina e Moça, of which the elegiac setting and tone were noted in Chapter 5 §20. The story is claimed by the narratrix to be one of two friends, Narbindel and Tasbião, though Narbindel has much the greater role and they are friends only, apparently, because they love respectively two sisters, Cruélcia and Romabisa. Narbindel, however, does not really love Cruélcia, because, out on a quest on her behalf, he falls in love with Aónia (aged thirteen or fourteen [I, ch. 19]) – thus breaking his faith, from which his tragic death may be seen to stem. Like any other chivalric romance the book is about a knightly class who have a code of honour and a language to go with it, but this is told by a woman, writing to her “verdadeiro amigo”|true friend|, and its main subject is love. The text has not come down to us in a very good state; it first appeared in print in the 1550s, some years after the author’s death. It is either mutilated or, quite possibly, unfinished. Its title, Menina e Moça, is simply the incipit to Part I, and Part II 2 On the classes of romances see Gerli 2004. On Amadis de Gaule see O’Connor 1970; it is noted in Gerhardt 1950, pp. 172–73. Passages are cited from the French translation of 1551 (O’Connor 1970, p. 15), using Lyons, 1577: ch. III. For Darinel see also above, Chapter 7 §8.

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has its own title, ‘Da história das saudades de Bernardim Ribeiro, a qual é declaracão da primeira parte deste Livro’|Of the story of the mournings of Bernardim Ribeiro, which is a declaration of the first part of this book|, which may in fact mean, ‘Of the story of the sufferings of Bernardim Ribeiro, so declared in the first part’. For the work as a whole is also known as ‘Ribeiro’s “saudades”’, perhaps better translated ‘longings’ or ‘missings’ rather than ‘mournings’, and this introduces a very personal note (as if it were autobiographical – as such entirely consistent with pastoral) and connects it to his eclogues and other poetry, which are devoted to the pains of love (see Chapter 5 §19). However, Part II has a happy ending, or at least one in which two remaining characters, the rest having died tragically, are said to live happily, or at least content to escape the disasters that befell their friends – clearly an ending of a kind, but it leaves unresolved, or utterly forgotten, the two still unidentified women of the first Part. The second of these, who tells the story to the first, the one writing the book for a true friend, was herself told the story by her father, who appears as a character (unnamed) in the second Part, owning a castle, and very close to Avalor (if not identical!), who features large in this second Part but is not one of the two friends we had been told the story was about. Avalor nourishes an undeclared love for Arima, who is the daughter of Belisa, the sister of Aónia, Narbindel’s illicit beloved. This love takes its course, or rather lack of one (Avalor never declares his love), and after Avalor has moved on to various chivalric adventures we return to the ‘main’ story. It would appear that Ribeiro was in the process of adapting his originally more straightforward story but never finished it; certainly the framing of the story as told by one woman and written by another would plausibly have belonged, at least in part, to a subsequent reworking, never seen through. Marvellously, though, the melancholic attitude of the two like-minded women creates a patina that coats the whole narrative and even (as remarked in Chapter 5 §20) the land in which it takes, or took, place; they serve to set it in a still present past, its tragic events both predicted before their telling and pervading to this moment the distraught women’s conscience – or, as they see it, the very land itself (“Tudo quanto há neste vale é cheio de una lembranza triste para quem tiver ouvido o que dizem que aconteceu male”|Everything that there is in this valley is full of a sad remembrance for those who have heard what they say turned out ill [I, ch. 4]). 3 Ribeiro/Ribeiro and Braga 1972, I, pp. 1–24; II, pp. 2, 7–9, 12–13, and as cited. Discussion in Bayo 1970, pp. 235–46.

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3 4 What further transforms this chivalric tale is that Ribeiro introduces himself into it – not just allegorically – when Narbindel, having fallen in love at first sight with Aónia, leaves the tent in which she is in tears for her sister Belisa, who has died in giving birth to the child that will be Arima, and examines his feelings (ch. 14): he witnesses a woodman accidentally burnt asked by another, “Queimado”|Burnt?|, replying in dialect Castilian “Bim’n’arder”|well[?] on fire|and from this takes his new name – an anagram of ‘Narbindel’ (‘l’ interchanging with ‘r’ and ‘m’ for ‘n’), an impresa (“Porque ele era aquele que também se fora arder, quis-se chamar assim dali avante”|Since he was one who also had been put on fire, he wanted to call himself so from then on|) and, most patently, an anagram of ‘Bernardim’ (Ribeiro). Then, unable to join the court of Lamentor, Belisa’s dolefully named husband, since his palace is still under construction (he is not native, but has settled here), Bimnarder takes lodging with the old “maioral” of the local shepherds, and becomes one – and soon is known as “o pastor da frauta”|the shepherd with the pipe| (of course it is soon noticed that he is not really a shepherd, of the kind who snore and sprawl when they sleep [ch. 16]). This transforms the remaining chapters of Part I (14–31) into an autobiography of a kind, in which there is a detailed description of the development of their affair, abruptly terminated by Lamentor’s decision to marry Aónia to another knight. (Bernardim is also in effect, the pastor de la fresta, or of the chink in the wall through he converses with Aónia – a reminiscence of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, just as his enamourment with Aónia during her grief may well derive from that of Hero and Leander). Why had Bimnarder not sought her hand? The question is later asked, and answered: the narratrix thought he could not bring himself to do so because he could not excuse his betrayal of Cruélcia (II, ch. 48). Despite her marriage, Aónia remains in love with Bimnarder, who fights her husband in a battle in which they all three die – this is after the episodes with Avalor, whom the narratrix’s father regards, by contrast, as a paragon of a lover, for he never declares his love, but goes questing (the song, a romance, that Avalor sings just before his departure is regarded as the most moving of all Ribeiro’s poems [II, ch. 11]). Having lost Aónia, Bimnarder reappears in the story leading a life not dissimilar to that of his shepherd days with a kindly hermit and his nephew, once again near his – and the narratrix’s? – ash-tree (see 5 §20), the nature of the landscape well according with his heavy thoughts (“… se foram para a ermida che perto estava, debaixo de umas grandes árvores e formosas, de tão saudosas ombras, que para o cuidado de Bimnarder era o que ele buscava”|… they went to the hermitage situated nearby, beneath some great trees, beautiful ones, of such mournful 

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shade that for the thoughts of Bimnarder were just what he was seeking|. Perhaps, even, the order of things had been upset by the death of ‘the knight of the bridge’ at the hands of Lamentor, just eight days before this unfortunate lover was due to finish the ordeal his beloved had ordered him to undertake, to challenge any comer who would cross the bridge he was to guard for a year. However it may be that its dooms came about, the work would be interesting as a particularly tragic chivalric romance with an unusual emphasis on women, but has still greater interest for its pastoral interlude that begins when Narbindel, who had arrived himself to fight ‘the knight of the bridge’ by order of Cruélcia, becomes enamoured of Aónia. It seems possible that ‘my father’, whom the narratrix cites in Part I, may in fact be (see II, ch. 17) the character Avalor who loves Arima, the daughter of Lamentor and Belisa; this at a point where in two of the three sixteenth-century editions the book breaks off mutilated. Though the two women with whom the romance begins are never re-introduced, ‘my father’ appears again as a figure separate from Avalor, though still closely connected, as later (II, ch. 22) in the tantalizing statement: “Dizia meu pai que, quando ouvia falar nas cousas de Avalor, lhe crescia em as ouvindo camanha mágoa que verdadeiramente lhe parecia ser ele mesmo que as passava, porque tinham em si uma tão nova maneira de sentimento, que se não podiam leixar de sentir muito suas tristezas, e que assaz de endurecido devia ter o coracão quem, ouvindo-as, o não desfizeese todo em lágrimas …. Mas eu direi o que lhe sucedeu, porque vejais quanto as tristezas se querem quem as favorece.”|My father said that, when he heard talk of the affairs of Avalor, there grew in him as he heard them so great a pain that really it seemed to him that it was he himself who suffered them, because they held in them such a novel way of feeling that he could not fail to feel his grief greatly, and that he had to keep his heart so very hardened that he should not, in hearing them, dissolve in tears …. But I will tell you what happened to him next, so that you should see how much one who receives them wants to receive the sorrows they are so fortunate to receive|, in which the speaker of ‘I will tell you what happened next’ must be the narratrix returning. This seems evidence that Ribeiro had written the story first and then framed or encased it in a feminine narrative, reworking the first part and possibly introducing the pastoral material at a later point. Its mutilated or unfinished state makes it difficult to assess in cold terms this spellbinding text.

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3 5 The elegiac features just as strongly in Montemayor’s Diana, indeed it dominates its first half, until the appearance or prospect of Felicia lightens the mood immensely. It starts dramatically with the descent of the “olvidado” (forgotten or spurned) Sireno from the hills of Léon, returning from some unspecified necessary business to find Diana, to whom he had been bound by mutual declaration, married by will of her father to someone else (Delius, killed off in Book IV of Gil Polo’s continuation): Baxaba de las montañas de León el olvidado Sireno a quien Amor, la fortuna, el tiempo tratavan de manera que del menor mal que en tan triste vida padecía, no se esperava menos que perdella …. Pues llegando el pastor a los verdes y deleitosos prados que el caudaloso río Ezla con sus aguas va regando, le vino a la memoria el gran contentamiento de que en algún tiempo allí gozado avía …. Considerava aquel dichoso tiempo que por aquellos prados y hermosa ribera apacentava su ganado … tomando a vezes su rabel que muy pulido en un çurrón siempre traía, otras vezes una çampoña, al son de la qual componía los dulces versos con que de las pastoras de toda aquella comarca era loado. Down from the hills of Leon came forgotten Syrenus, whom love, fortune and time did so entreate .... But the Shepherd comming to those greene and pleasant meades, which the great river Ezla watereth with his cristalline streams, the great felicitie and content came to his wandering thoughtes, which sometimes he had enjoyed there .... He went musing of that happie time, when in those medowes, and on those faire banks he fed his flocks ...

4 The text states: “Olhou o cavaleiro pelo barbarismo das letras mudadas na pronunciacão de B por V e R por M e pareceu-lhe mistério”|The knight saw [Bim’n’arder] through the barbarism of the letters changed in the pronunciation [by the woodman] of B for V and R for M and it seemed to him an emblem|. As the editor notes, the text as it stands does not work well; it may be corrupt. Aubrey F.G. Bell, Portuguese Literature, Oxford (1922) 1970, p. 135, notes that ‘Bernardim’ could also be spelled ‘Bernaldim’. I have assumed the possibility that ‘bim’ could be for ‘bem’ and the ‘bem’ would recall the ‘bem’ of bem-querer|to want well, idiomatic for ‘to love’|. For the sources of stories of unhappy love at this period see Morros Mestres 2017. Gerhardt 1950, pp. 174–76 and pp. 250–51, endorses the idea that Ribeiro’s tale reflects a personal experience in love of the kind that not long after they had published was assumed for Montemayor (see Bayo 1970, p. 248) and d’Urfé (see below, §31) – the beloved being married by force majeure to another. But Garcilaso’s Égloga I, in which both shepherds lament their beloveds, one as dead, the other as having abandoned him, may be recalled: it seems that the interest in lament (such as has already been seen in Chapter 5) was the driving force of the writing of this tragic generation (both Garcilaso and Montemayor died of their wounds).

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sometimes taking his rebecke, which he ever carried very neat in a scrip, and sometimes his bagpipe, to the tune of which he made most sweet ditties, which of all the Shepherdesses of those hamlets thereabouts made him most highly commended.

Sireno’s friend Silvano is also in love with Diana, though she has never shown him favour. In language and tenor Montemayor’s descriptions of the pleasant spot where the friends rehearse their predicament recall but shift and amplify Sannazaro; and Diana’s canción poignantly evoking her earlier bliss with Sireno (as overheard and relayed to Sireno by Silvano) strongly recalls Petrarch’s canzone cxxvi (see Chapter 2 §8, A4) – an amorous vision, a passionate sfogo or outburst of desire in a riverside setting: Sylvano le respondió sospirando: …. Devía ella entonces imaginar en su triste soledad, y en el mal que tu ausencia le hazía sentir, pero de ay un poco, no sin lágrimas, acompañadas de tristes sospiros, sacó una çampoña que en el çurrón traía y la conmençó a tocar tan dulcemente que el valle, el monte, el río, las aves enamoradas y aun las fieras de aquel espesso bosque quedaron suspensas y, dexando la çampoña al son que en ella avía tañido, començó esta canción: Ojos que ya no veys quién os mirava, quando érades espejo en que se vía, ¿qué cosa podreys ver que os dé contento? Prado florido y verde, do algún día por el mi dulce amigo yo esperava, llorad comigo el grave mal que siento. Aquí me declaró su pensamiento; oyle yo, cuytada, más que serpiente ayrada, llamándole mil vezes atrevido, y él, triste, allí rendido; parece ques aora y que lo veo, y aun esse es mi deseo. ¡Ay, si lo viesse yo, ay, tiempo bueno! Ribera umbrosa, ¿qués del mi Sireno? …. (saide Sylvanus [to Sireno] sighing) …. She should then be musing on her solitarie and sorrowfull life, and on the greefe that by thy absence she conceived: But a little after that, not without many teares (accompanied with as many painfull sighes) she tooke out her bagpipe which she carried in a fine scrip, and began to play on it so sweetly, that the hills, and dales,

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the rivers, the enamoured birds, and the rockie mountains of that thicke wood were amazed and ravished with her sweet musicke. And leaving her bagpipe, to the tune she had plaied, she began to sing this song following: Eyes that now do not see the one who looked into you when you were the mirror in which he saw himself, what can you ever see that contents you? Flowerly and verdant meadow, where one day I waited for my sweet friend, weep with me at the grave hurt that I feel. Here he declared to me his heart; I listened, wretched as I am, but, enraged more than a serpent, I many times called him overbold, and he, mortified, yielded right there; it seems that it is now and that I see him, and that is just what I desire. Ah! If I saw him now, what happiness! Shady river-bank, what of my Sireno?

However, this lament of the beloved for her lover is a significant amplification of the Petrarchan range. Still further goes Celio’s following song, which is an account of the parting conversation that he had overheard between Diana and Sireno, which was itself overheard and recalled by the nymph Dorida, one of three nymphs sent out almost as spies by Felicia (see below): this song (see A9) again recalls Petrarch’s canzoni sorelle, but recast as the discourse of two lovers actually together, requited, about to be parted (not the lover imprecating the distant or unresponsive beloved – though still elegiac, and still on a river bank). This was an influential vein, a central summary of the lovers’ predicament in Montemayor’s important romance, and explored thematically in later sixteenth-century Italian madrigals (see further Chapter 10 §8).

5 La Diana de Iorge de Monte Maior. Parte primera/ nuevamente corregida y reuisada por Alonso de Ulloa, edn Venice 1574; see https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/la-diana-de-iorge-de-monte-maior-parteprimera--0/. For the translation given see A Critical Edition of Yong’s Translation of George of Montemayor’s Diana and Gil Polo’s Enamoured Diana, ed. Judith M. Kennedy, Oxford 1968, pp. 20–21. I have used Yong’s translation for the prose, as being faithful to Montemayor and of the period, but I have translated the verse myself, in order to stay closer to the original: Yong tends to dissolve the pith of Montemayor’s poems. See further the discussion in Bayo 1970, pp. 248–61.

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A9

JORGE DE MONTEMAYOR, LOS SIETE LIBROS DE DIANA Y tomando Dórida su harpa comiença a cantar desta manera: CANTO DE LA NIMFA Junto a una verde ribera de arboleda singular, donde, para se alegrar otro, que más libre fuera, hallara tiempo y lugar, Sireno, un triste pastor, recogía su ganado, tan de veras lastimado, quanto, burlando el amor, descansa el enamorado. Este pastor se moría por amores de Diana … Esto Sireno cantava y con su rabel tañía, tan ageno de alegría que el llorar no le dexava pronunciar lo que dezía. Y por no caer en mengua, si le estorva su passión accento o pronunciación, lo que empezava la lengua acabava el coraçón. Ya después que uvo cantado, Diana vio que venía tan hermosa que vestía de nueva color el prado, donde sus ojos ponía. Su rostro, como una flor; tan triste, que es locura pensar que humana criatura juzgue quál era mayor, la tristeza o hermosura. Muchas vezes se parava, bueltos los ojos al suelo, y con tan gran desconsuelo otras vezes los alçava que los hincava en el cielo. Diziendo con más dolor que cabe en entendimiento:

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f A 9 : m on t e m ayo r , d i a na , c a n to d e la n i m fa v

And Dorida, taking her harp, began to sing in this manner: THE SONG OF THE NYMPH Near a river-bank green with a wondrous grove where to take delight one who might have more freedom would find time and place, Sireno, a sad shepherd, gathered his flock, as very truly wounded so little does love, making sport, spare a man in love. This shepherd was dying for love for Diana … This Sireno did sing and strum upon his rebec, so far from joy that his tears did not let him form his words. And so as not to fall short if his passion distorted his accent or pronunciation what his tongue had started his heart finished off. But after he had sung his song he saw Diana coming, so beautiful that she covered the meadow with new colour wherever she turned her eyes. Her face, like a flower, so sad, that the idea would be crazed that a mortal creature could judge which was greater, her sorrow or her beauty. Often she stopped, turning her eyes to the ground, and with such great desolation at other times raised them that with them she pierced heaven. She said with greater grief than understanding can grasp:

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f n i n e  o n ly f a i t h a n d t r o t h v

—Pues el bien trae tal descuento, de oy más bien puedes, amor, guardar tu contentamiento. La causa de sus enojos, muy claro allí la mostrava; si lágrimas derramava, pregúntenlo a aquellos ojos con que a Sireno matava. Si su amor era sin par, su valor no lo encubría, y si la ausencia temía, pregúntelo a este cantar que con lágrimas dezía: … Siendo Diana llegada, donde sus amores vio, hablar quiso, mas no habló y el triste no dixo nada, aunque el hablar cometió. Quanto avía que hablar, en los ojos lo mostravan mostrando lo que callavan con aquel blando mirar con que otras vezes hablavan. Ambos juntos se sentaron debaxo un mirtho florido, cada uno de otro vencido, por las manos se tomaron, casi fuera de sentido. Porque el plazer de mirarse y el pensar presto no verse, los haze enternezerse, de manera que, a hablarse, ninguno pudo atreverse. Otras vezes se topavan en esta verde ribera, pero muy de otra manera el toparse celebravan, que ésta fue la postrera. Estraño efecto de amor, verse dos que se querían todo quanto ellos podían, y recebir más dolor que al tiempo que no se vían. 

f A 9 : m on t e m ayo r , d i a na , c a n to d e la n i m fa v

“Since good comes at such a price from today, love, you can keep your contentment.” The cause of her pain she very clearly demonstrated: whether she poured out tears ask those eyes with which she slew Sireno. If her love had no equal, her demeanour could not conceal it; if she feared his going away ask this song which she tearfully sang: … Diana, having gone so far that her love came into her sight, tried to speak, but failed to speak, and he in grief said nothing, although he made utterance. How much they had to say they showed in their eyes, showing what they failed to say with the same sweet gazing with which on other occasions they had conversed. Together with one another they sat down beneath a flowering myrtle; each overwhelmed by the other, they took each other by the hands, almost out of their minds. For the pleasure of seeing each other and the thought of soon not seeing each other made them so tender that, to say a word, neither could manage. Other times they had met on this green verge but in quite different manner celebrated their meeting, because this was their last. Strange quirk of love, that, seeing each other, two people in love as much as they could possibly be, should feel more pain than when they were not with each other. 

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Vía Sireno llegar el grave dolor de ausencia; ni allí le basta paciencia, ni alcança para hablar de sus lágrimas licencia. A su pastora mirava, su pastora mira a él y con un dolor cruel la habló, mas no hablava que el dolor habla por él. «¡Ay, Diana!, ¿quién dixera que, quando yo más penara, que ninguno imaginara en la hora que te viera mi alma no descansara? ¿En qué tiempo y qué sazón creyera, señora mía, que alguna cosa podría causarme mayor passión que tu presencia, alegría? ¿Quién pensara que essos ojos algún tiempo me mirassen, que, señora, no atajassen todos los males y enojos que mis males me causassen? Mira, señora, mi suerte si a traido buen rodeo que, si antes mi desseo me hizo morir por verte, ya muero porque te veo. Y no es por falta de amarte, pues nadie estuvo tan firme, mas porque suelo venirme a estos prados a mirarte, y aora vengo a despedirme. Hoy diera por no te ver, aunque no tengo otra vida, esta alma de ti vencida sólo por entretener el dolor de la partida. …”

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f A 9 : m on t e m ayo r , d i a na , c a n to d e la n i m fa v

Sireno saw coming the great pain of absence: this he could neither support nor allow himself, in speaking, to give way to tears. He gazed at his shepherdess, his shepherdess gazed at him, and with great pain he spoke to her, but he was not speaking, because his pain speaks for him. “Ah Diana, who would have said, that, when I was in most pain […] because no one could imagine that at the hour when I should see you my heart should not be at rest? In what time or in what season would anyone believe, my mistress, that nothing in the world could cause me greater suffering than your presence, [my] joy? Who would think that those eyes should at any time see me and should not, mistress, put an end to all the ills and pains that my pains cause me? See, mistress, how my fate has gone so far awry that, if before my desire made me die to see you, now I am dying because I see you. And it is not for want of loving you, since no one has been so firm but because I am used to coming to these meadows in order to see you, and now I am coming to say farewell. Today I would have given up, so as not to see you, even though I have no other life, this soul of mine, by you conquered – just to delay the pain of parting. …”

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Lleno de lágrimas tristes, y a menudo sospirando, estava el pastor hablando estas palabras que oístes, y ella las oye llorando. A responder se ofreció, mil vezes lo cometía, mas de triste no podía, y por ella respondió el amor que le tenía: … «¿Qué sentiré, desdichada, llegando a este valle ameno, quando diga: ¡a tiempo bueno!, aquí estuve yo sentada hablando con mi Sireno? Mira si será tristeza no verte y ver este prado, de árboles tan adornado, y mi nombre en su corteza por tus manos señalado. O si avrá ygual dolor que el lugar a do me viste, velle tan solo y tan triste, donde con tan gran temor tu pena me descubriste. … Ambos a dos se abraçaron, y ésta fue la vez primera, y pienso que fue la postrera, porque los tiempos mudaron el amor de otra manera. Y aunque a Diana le dio pena raviosa y mortal la ausencia de su zagal, en ella misma halló el remedio de su mal. La Diana de Iorge de Monte Maior. Parte primera, Libro II, ‘Canto de la Nimfa’, edn Venice 1574

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f A 9 : m on t e m ayo r , d i a na , c a n to d e la n i m fa v

Replete with sad tears, and sighing frequently the shepherd stayed saying these words that you have heard, and she heard them in tears. She attempted to reply, a thousand times she started, but from sorrow could not, and for her replied the love that she had: … “What will I feel, in my misery, arriving at this pleasant valley, to say: O the good times! Did I once sit here talking with my Sireno? Think how sad it will be not to see you but to see this meadow, so pretty with its trees, and my name on their bark spelled out by your hands. Or if there will be a grief equal to seeing the place where you see me so solitary and sad, where with great trepidation you uncovered your pain to me. … They both embraced each other, and that was the first time and I think it was the last time because times changed their love in another manner. And although Diana felt frenzied and deadly pain from the absence of her shepherd, in that very absence she found the remedy of her ills. (“Yet in the same she found again A remedie, as did appeere, For after he the seas did passe, She to another married was”)*

*Added by Yong

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3 6 The three nymphs sent out by Felicia are disturbed by savages, whom

it requires the appearance of Filismena to rout. Filismena herself turns out to be suffering from her love for Don Félis, which has led her to don “shepherd’s weedes”. The group that is formed in this manner then sets out to journey to the palace of Felicia, who, with that name, will surely be able to put them all right (and the name was also borne by a daughter of the Sibyl, medieval mistress of magic). So the inscription above the portal of her palace robustly declares – once they (eventually) get there – so long, that is, as they keep their plighted troths: Quien entra, mire ben como ha bivido y el don de castidad, si le ha guardado, y la que quiere ben, ó le ha querido, mire si á causa de otro se ha mudado y si la fe primera no ha perdido, y aquel primer amor ha conservado entrar puede en el templo de Diana cuya virtud y gracia es sobrahumana Who enters here, look hard at how she has lived and whether she has guarded the gift of chastity and she who loves, or has loved, see whether she has changed, because of another, and whether she has not lost her first troth, but preserved that first love – she may enter into the temple of Diana, whose virtue and grace are divine.

Chastity is here redefined: a girl’s ‘honour’ permits her not merely acknowledgement but committal; while the boys who woo them – and may woo them on these terms – have to show not only martial mettle but the virtues of constancy and courtesy. After the interlude, the characters of the romance discuss love, concluding it is reasonable. Once again the highest kind of love (Neoplatonic or not) is undistinguished from blatant lust: “desenfrenada afición”|“un­bridled desire”|may be aroused “por solas sus virtudes”|“her onely virtues”|, though as courteous love it is “sin esperar otro interesse ni galardón de sus amores”|“without hoping for other guerdon or effect of his true, and sincere love”|, which is “por ella misma”|“for her own sake”|.

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f nine  §6–§7 v

3 7 In the text as we have it, once the pilgrims have been shown the palace of Felicia, the nymph Felismena embarks on a long chivalric tale of two Moorish lovers, Xarifaes and Abyndaraes, that interconnects in no obvious way with anything else – unless there is method in the displacement, because this is a story of love not merely requited but explicitly consummated, though its transgressions are duly followed by tragedy, and in any case the lovers were Moors. This often treated story did not appear in the first issue of the Diana and, though plausibly by Montemayor himself, seems to have been inserted in the wrong place in the 1561 edition: it might have been more suitably inserted during the journey to the palace, when it would have whiled away the time rather than held up the action. Now Sireno’s problems are to be resolved, but only for the moment, since Felicia merely has him drink from a fountain of oblivion: it is the sequel, not the present work, that returns him to his proper destined state by contriving the death of Diana’s (unworthy) husband – but of course that event is not sufficient, for now Sireno has to be re-enamoured. In Montemayor’s own seven books, the group returns to their village, various diversions and digressions are introduced, and new characters; Diana is portrayed now as upset first by Sireno’s indifference and secondly, even more, by the happiness that Silvano now enjoys with Selvagia. Celos|jealousy|is a psychology explored especially in Spanish romance, in Montemayor also in the story of Filema and Amarillis in the sixth book; and correspondingly outside Spain there is little sign of the desengaño|disillusion| that is often its consequence and is pervasive in Spanish literature. Meanwhile Felismena rediscovers her own Don Félis, and they go back again to Felicia’s palace, where “Allí fueron todos desposados con las que bien querían, con gran regozijo y fiesta de todas las nimfas y de la sabia Felicia, a la qual no ayudó poco Sireno con su venida, aunque della se le siguió lo que en la segunda parte deste libro se contará”|they were all married with great joy, feasts and triumphs … but more shall be said of Syrenus …|. While ending happily, the romance characteristically puts off its real resolution to a still happier ending.

6 For the Sibylline Felicia see Antoine de la Sale, La Salade, and the anonymous Wartburgkrieg, discussed in Philip Stephan Barto, Tannhäuser and the Mountain of Venus, New York 1916, pp. 11, 47–48. Passages are cited as in §5 note, early in the 4th book; Montemayor/Yong/Kennedy, p. 133; late in the 4th book shortly after long Orfeo’s long song, Montemayor/Yong/Kennedy, p. 158.

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38

Montemayor had continued a fundamental tradition of Renaissance pastoral in declaring his work to be allegorical: … muy diversas hystorias de casos que verdaderamente an sucedido, aunque van disfraçados debaxo de nombres y estilo pastoril … divers histories of accidents, that have truly happened, though they go muffled under pastorall names and style;

even apart from the long exposition of the numerous images and examples to be found in Felicia’s palace, a rollcall of local and contemporary worthies, male and female, there are numerous hints of the writer’s real circumstances in the text (for instance, regarding the wandering Felismena, it is remarked [Book VII], “… doliéndose de su destierro, cosa muy natural de aquella nación y mucho más de los habitadores de aquella provincia”|“they being very sorry for her exile, a common thing to that nation, and more proper to the inhabitants of that province”|: Montemayor was Portuguese-born, but spent his life in Castilian service). Whether or not Montemayor had himself suffered similar, when Sireno comes down from the hills of Léon he immediately hits a contemporary problem – to which the pastoral romance is significant testimony – the arranged marriage. Often quite explicitly the authors claim that their works were moralizing: as Gil Polo puts it and Yong translates, “Mas los que desde aparte miramos las penas que les costó su contentamiento … es razon que vamos advertidos de no meternos en semejantes penas …”|“But we, that a farre off beholde and marke the paines and troubles that their contentment cost them … must … take good heed, that we put not ourselves into like inconveniences …”|. Admittedly he goes on: “Pero dejado esto aparte, vengamos a tratar de las fiestas que por los casamientos …”|“But leaving this aside, let us entreate of these feastes and pastimes …”| for the marriage.

8 Primera parte de Diana enamorada: cinco libros que prossiguen los siete de la Diana de Iorge Monte Mayor compvestos por Gaspar Gil Polo, Valencia 1564; http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/la-dianaenamorada-cinco-libros-que-prosiguen-los-vii-de-jorge-montemayor--0; Montemayor/Yong/Kennedy, p. 133; this is discussed as an independent work in Bayo 1970, pp. 264–82. On the question of conflicts occasioned by arranged marriages, of which there is much evidence in early modern Europe, consider, notably, the early sixteenth-century case of Guidobaldo della Rovere, prevented by his f­ather from marrying Clarice Orsini: see Andrea Bayer, ‘From Cassone to Poesia: Paintings of Love and Marriage’, in New York 2008 (Art and Love), p. 232, with further reference.

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f nine  §8 v

8 (cont.) A general picture of the issues involved is provided, for France and more generally, by JeanLouis Flandrin, Les Amours Paysannes: Amour et sexualité dans les campagnes de l’ancienne France (XVIe­– XIXe siècle), Paris 1975. Marrying against the wishes of one’s parents, for instance, was a mortal sin (Flandrin 1975, p. 40); in France, in addition, an edict of Henri II of 1566, reinforced on later occasions, stripped those did so of all rights and benefits (Flandrin 1975, pp. 42ff.). Often enough husband and wife had never seen each other before their wedding (pp. 48–54). In an economy so greatly dependant on inherited possessions, there was an imperative to arrange marriages. On the other hand, the Church had always upheld the principle that marriage should be consensual, and once again at the Council of Trent ( J.L. Flandrin, Familles, parenté, maison, sexualité dans l’ancienne société, Paris 1976, pp. 129–30). For England, see the several works notably of Lawrence Stone and of R.B. Outhwaite; the situation was somewhat freer owing to a Protestant failure or reluctance to institutionalize marriage. “Marry thy daughters in time, lest they marry themselves”, Lord Burghley advised his son, Robert Cecil (quoted R.B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–1850, London 1995, p. xvi, from Burghley’s Advice to a Son, ed. L.B. Wright, Ithaca 1962, p. 11). See further, discussing the subject in relation to the literature of love, Laurence Lerner, Love and Marriage: Literature and its Social Context, London 1979, esp. pp. 65–75; and, juxtaposing literature and court records, Loreen L. Guise, Courtship, Marriage Customs, and Shakespeare’s Comedies, New York 2006. For Italy, see Guido Ruggiero, ‘Marriage, love, sex and Renaissance civic morality’, in Turner 1993, pp. 10–3o; this is broader and less specific in regard to arranged marriage. I do not know of scholarship confronting the mores of pastoral literature with those of the real world, in so far as they can be typified. I recall only one case in pastoral in which the vital question of dowry is even hinted at – in Raffaello Borghini’s Diana pietosa (see Chapter 11 §13), in which Silveria rejoices that, now she has come into some money from her uncle, she may pursue Ismenio with new hope (I, ii) – and she wins him. But there is widespread acknowledgement in Italian, French, Spanish and English pastoral of conflict between parental and personal choice of partner: for instances see above in this chapter and below, A11 and §15 (Cervantes, Lope de Vega) and Chapter 11 §20 (Alexandre Hardy); and a Midsummer Night’s Dream (13 §8). A notable passage criticizing parents who force marriages on their children occurs in John Weever, Faunus and Meliboea (1600; ed. A. Davenport, London 1948, ll. 633–72). I have suggested above (Chapter 8 §10) that the arranged marriage was a prime target of Tasso’s attack on honour in the ‘Golden Age’ chorus of the Aminta. There are instances (see below, Chapter 18 §11) where an attack on honour echoing Tasso accompanies ‘unauthorized’ love-making; the same author (18 §12) condemns marriages “made for temporal conveniences”. Mothers rather than fathers intervene with their daughters in Puget de la Serre’s roman of the Albert and Isabella’s Brussels court (see Chapter 18 §21). Of course the topic is wider spread than pastoral, for example in the conflict between father and daughter in the opening scenes of Shakespeare’s Othello. There the fait accompli of her marriage to Othello, because consensual, ends her father’s argument, but this ‘impiety’ on Desdemona’s part can be seen, taking the play as whole, as a flaw contributing to the tragedy. Consider also Hendrick’s Goltzius’s vehement print series of the three kinds of marriage – for “unstable” carnal reasons, for riches, and for “amor verus, castumque cubile”, joined in Christ (Norbert Michels, ed., Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617): Mythos, Macht und Menschlichkeit, Petersberg 2017, nos. X. 1–3). Since many pastoral plays revolve around the issue, it is perhaps surprising that Tasso’s assault remained unusual in its vehemence. In fact, though the subject is insistent, it is seldom confronted. In the classic tale of mixed lovers that is Pasqualigo’s Intricati (printed 1581; see Chapter 8 §4 and 11 §10), Danteo loves Dorida (III, v) but is forced by his father to marry Palma (a name perhaps allegorical for glory), who very promptly dies, but Dorida is not prepared to see him again, after his betrayal. She is now happy to enjoy her ‘liberty’. Retirement to the cloister is often advocated when a girl’s love is thwarted (Flandrin 1975, p. 26, even suggests that one reason for the Church’s insistence on consent to marriage was to facilitate such recruitment).

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3 9 Montemayor is more profuse in his descriptions of his countryside than Sannazaro (whose peculiar style he does not adopt) or others, entering into an unprecedented (and not much later followed) interest in agricultural economy, for example the problem of sheep getting into the corn and as a consequence being impounded (Book VII); at another point (Book II) it is stated, “los pastores, a petición de las nimfas, se fueron a la aldea a buscar de comer, porque ya era tarde y todos lo avían menester”|“the Shepherds, at the nymphs’ requests, went to the next towne to provide some victuals, because it was now somewhat late, and they all had an appetite to eat”|. Montemayor also shows considerable interest in dress, as worn, not as pastoral costume. There is a comparable ‘realism’ in his setting, for the nucleus of the romance is a gang or troupe of shepherds who meet regularly under the shade of the sycamore trees that surround a fountain outside their village – surely behaviour typical of leisured adolescents in almost any society until quite recently. The ‘sycamore gang’, which travels in due course to the palace of Felicia, gives Montemayor’s book (by contrast to Sannazaro’s Arcadia) overall coherence because all subplots or other, though entirely unrelated, stories or figures pass through it, told or heard by members of the group. At the same time it returns this and other similarly coherent romances to the essence and origin of all pastoral, coming together to make song, in a katagoge: Virgil’s ‘community’ (see Chapter 1 §6, 28) lives on – and its potential to be deciphered. Social hierarchies are clearly mirrored, as in many subsequent romances: the protagonists of the Diana are able to delegate their shepherding tasks when occasion requires (this useful innovation is not present in Sannazaro’s Arcadia, though it had appeared very rapidly after its circulation in the Venetian patrician Giovanni Badoer’s Phylareto; writers quite punctiliously observe that their protagonists, responsibly, do not neglect the sheep – except when they themselves are no longer responsible, through the onset of love). Shepherds and shepherdesses remain inferior to a character like Felismena, “que el amor le avía hecho dexar su hábito natural y tomar el de pastora”|whom love has induced to “take upon her the weedes and life of a shepherdess”|, and again to the nymphs, who are ruled by Felicia, a regal as well as a magical queen. Bottom of the scale are the wildmen who attempt to rape some of the nymphs, but are driven off by the warrior-like Felismena (Book II): the wildmen, like the satyrs in Ferrarese pastoral plays, complain for their part of the nymphs’ unjust indifference to their very strong sexual desire. The reader herself or himself, reader, therefore passes the time much as the characters do, whether gathered beneath the sycamores or on their way somewhere else – making or listening to music, talking or singing of love, meeting or telling tales of other 

f nine  §9–§10 v

lovers, thwarted or triumphant, spying and eavesdropping. I think it is fair to say that, though the context is modernized, over and above the undoubted continuance of a number of motifs – notably that of eavesdropping (Eclogue IX, 21: quae sublegi tacitus tibi carmina”|the songs I silently overheard|) – the parameters of this social and literary space were created by Virgil; and further that modern writers knew this, and took up pastoral therefore, steering a path between convention and verisimilitude; and that they deliberately and unconflictedly rehearsed new material sometimes of some modern urgency in a still identifiable classical shell.

3 10 Cervantes’s Galatea, its first part published in 1585, patently takes as

its base Montemayor’s Diana. It opens with two shepherds, the pastor Elicio and Erastro, who, like Montemayor’s Sireno and Silvano, are in love with the same shepherdess, in this work “la sin par Galatea”|the non-pareille Galatea|, and are able to sing of her antiphonally. Erastro, being “un rustico ganadero”|a rustic drover|, even “aunque rustico era, como verdadero enamorado, en las cosas de amor tan discreto”|although he was a rustic, as a true lover, very understanding in matters of love|, has no hope of any recognition from her, while Elicio’s position lingers suspended: “il gallardo Elicio [loved her] con tan puro y sincero amor, quanto la virtud y honestidad de Galatea permitia”|the gallant Elicio [loved her] with so much pure and sincere love as the virtue and good name of Galatea permitted|, and “Non era las buenas partes y virtudes de Elicio para

9 On Badoer see Grignani 1973. Even in the midst of the fantasy there can be realism, for example in Book VII the “pastor portugués”|Portugal shepherd| calls upon Duarda in his own language: “Pentea, Hermosa pastora, os tues cabellos d’ouro iunto a aquella clara fonte donde ven ho ribeyro que çerca este fremoso prado, que eu irey en tanto em tanto a repastar teu gado, y ter y conta com que as ovelhas não o entran nas searas que ao longo d’esta ribeyra estão”|“Kembe and adresse (lovely Shepherdess) thy silke soft hair upon the brinke of this cleere fountaine, from whence issueth out the running brook, that round about watereth this sweete meadow: And in the meane time I will carrie thy fair flocks to feed, and keep thy sheepe from going in the corne, that growes along the river side”|; and she replies, “As vacas que tú guardavas erão mays que minhas, muytas mays vezes (reçelosa que as guardas d’este deleytose campo lhes nam impedissem ho pasto) me punha eu desde aquella outeyro, por ver se pareçião do que minhas ovelhas erão por mi apasçentadas, nem postas em parte onde sem sobresalto pasçessen as ervas d’esta fermosa ribeyra”|”The bullocks that thou didst keep, were of more account to me, and I had greater care of them, then of mine owne. And (for the most part) fearing, least the keepers of this delightful Champaine might hinder their feed, I went to the top of this little hill, to see if I could espie them, whereas I brought mine in place, when they could not feed the grasse of these faire river bankes, without fear of being impounded”| – admittedly in his 1598 translation Yong somewhat expands “sem sobresalto”|without upset| to obtain “without fear of being impounded”, but the reference to “guardas” justifies him (Montemayor/Yong/Kennedy, p. 236).

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aborrecerse, ni la hermosura, gracia y bontad de Galatea para no amarse. Por lo uno Galatea no desechava de todo punto a Elicio; por lo otro, Elicio non podia, ni devia, ni queria olvidar a Galatea”|Nor were the good parts and virtues of Elicio to be rejected, any more than the beauty, grace and virtue of Galatea were not to fall in love with. For the one Galatea did not wish for one moment to turn Elicio away, and for the other Elicio could not, rightly should not and would not pass on from Galatea|. So they sing songs, until, melodramatically, their peace (the landscape in which they sit is described by Cervantes in overtly Sannazaran manner, every noun bearing its familiarizing predicative) is broken by the murder of Carino by Lisandro; this is for love; Lisandro would then turn his dagger on himself, but Elicio will have his story out of him first. Selfconsciously, Cervantes refers to Pyramus and Thisbe. But nothing further is said of the corpse or of the murder. The next subplot, which develops as soon as the new day has dawned and Elicio and Galatea have led out their flocks (but Galatea will not join Elicio as she has arranged to accompany her friend Florisa), is occasioned by the arrival of Theodolinda: her story will take much longer, although it is resolved within the six books that Cervantes first published, in the hope of encouragement, as the last lines beg, to continue his story, a hope which he apparently never abandoned but for which sufficient encouragement never arrived. Theodolinda’s story tells, word for word, of her courtship with Artidoro (see A10): it is worth quoting at such length (there being anyway, as we have had occasion to remark, no hurry in a pastoral romance) because it is a classic exposition of shepherd enamourment. All begins promisingly, or as far this excerpt goes, but it turns out that after his departure Artidoro had come across Theodolinda’s identical sister, Leonarda, whom he had mistaken for her, and who had sent him off scornfully. Also, Artidoro has an identical brother, Galercio, occasioning further similar confusion. It looks as if all will be resolved once Theolinda has come across her sister and explained, and Artidoro reappears, but Leonarda has inveigled herself into the affections of Artidoro, and at the end of Book VI Theolinda has to face the fact that, despite her floods of tears, it is Leonarda whom Artidoro will marry. The reader might suppose, from the other important subplot that is taken up and put down during the course of the shepherds and shepherdesses’s wanderings, that Theolinda might find satisfaction with Galercio (though he is occupied with Gelasia): in another major subplot, initiated by the arrival of Silerio, so overcome by grief that he has determined to spend the rest of his life as a hermit in the woods, but prevailed upon to explain how and why by Elicio and also Tyrsi and Damon, two shepherds held in great esteem for their accomplishment and education – in this story, Silerio acts as messenger for Timbrio’s love for Nisida

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and falls in love with her himself, but nobly forbears to betray his friend, but then forgets to tell Nisida, waiting for news, that Timbrio has won his ordeal, so these two are not reunited; however, Nisida’s sister Blanca has fallen in love with Silerio and in the end the four become two pairs. There are more such situational chiasmi: the shepherd Lenio insists on making his condemnation of Love heard already in Book I, while Lauso, later, is introduced singing praises for his beloved Silena; later still Lenio is fascinated by the scorn that Gelasia shows for Galercio, and goes off after her, to reappear having fallen in love with her himself; Lauso receives “desden”|disdain| from Silena, and rejoices at the consequent liberation.

3 11

Another subplot, introduced early in Book IV, is the relationship between the nobles Grisaldo and Rosaura: Grisaldo had given up on Rosaura, who had taken up with Artandro, and he had decided to marry someone else as arranged by his father, but she recalls him back to his faith, claims to have dallied with Artandro only to test his resolve, and threatens suicide, at which he yields, promising to renounce his engagement (this is an important discussion of ‘faith’: see A11; it is an outstanding portrait of a lover’s quarrel in the language of love of the age). But in Book V Rosaura is suddenly kidnapped by Artandro (we learn no more, since the next volume was never written).

3 12 Book VI of the Galatea is dominated by the funereal ceremony for the “pastor” Meliso, identifiable as the diplomat and poet Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503–1575), over whose tomb the Muse Calliope appears in a flash of lightning and devotes an octave each to one hundred contemporary men of letters whom Cervantes esteemed. This is followed by a series of five antiphonal poems on the theme of faith: five shepherds ‘dispute’ among themselves, adopting different mottos expressing their steadfastness: Elicio: “mayor fe en lo mas dudoso”|greatest faith in the greatest doubt|; Marsilio: “sola la fe permanece”|faith alone endures|; Erastro: “fe viua, esperança muerta”|faith lives, hope is dead|; Crysio: “no es fe la fe que no dura”|faith is not faith that does not endure|; Damon: “sola es fe la fe que os tengo”|the only faith is the faith I hold for you|. Eventually Aurelio, father of Galatea, declares that he has had enough of these songs about love, and proposes that they give each other in turn rhymed riddles (in this Cervantes followed precedent by Gil Polo). Now in the closing pages of this book and of the first part Artidoro’s engagement to 10 Cervantes/Schevill and Bonilla; an English translation was made by H. Oelsner and A.B. Welford, ed. Jas Fitzmaurice Kelly, The Complete Works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, vol. II, Glasgow 1903.

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Leonarda is revealed to Theolinda, and the news breaks that Galatea has been matched by her father with a distant, Portuguese shepherd, which causes her to write to Elicio: while still she guards her honour, it is a significant move towards commitment. In stating, within the narrative, his plan for a sequel Cervantes says he will resolve the situations of Galercio (he might line up with Theolinda after all), Lenio and Gelasia, Arsindo and Maurisa, Grisaldo, Artandro and Rosaura, and Marsilio and Belisa; he does not need to say that he will continue the story of Elicio and Galatea, or may not have wanted to promise it would be all over by the end of the second volume, either.

3 13 In Cervantes Montemayor’s exploration of the more local specifics of

his setting and grounding of his narrative in a ‘gang’ of characters is developed to a still more smoothly rehearsed fluency and happier richness in a distinctly ‘pastoral’ style (its plenitude developed directly from Sannazaro’s Arcadia), also introducing narrative incident and dialogue as vivid as that of a play; it is now wholly unmagical, apart from the irruption of the Muse Calliope. A couple of more well-turned examples are (early in Book I; the action of the sheep recalling both Sannazaro and Theocritus: see Chapter 10 §1): Luego los dos se sentaron sobre la menuda yerua, dexando andar a sus anchuras el ganado despuntando con los rumiadores dientes las tiernas yerbezuelas del heruoso llano Then the two sat on the close-cropped grass, letting their sheep wander as they wanted, blunting with their ruminating teeth the tender shoots of the grassy plain

and (some way further into Book I): Con este pensamiento, y con los muchos que sus amores le causauan, despues de auer dexado en segura parte su rebaño, se salio de su cabaña, como otras vezes solia, y, con la luz de la hermosa Diana, que resplandeciente en el cielo se mostraua, se entró por la espessura de vn espesso bosque adelante, buscando algun solitario lugar adonde en el silencio de la noche con mas quietud pudiesse soltar la rienda a sus amorosas imaginaciones, por ser cosa ya aueriguada que, a los tristes imaginatiuos coraçones, ninguna cosa les es de mayor gusto que la soledad, despertadora de memorias tristes o alegres. Y assi, yendose poco a poco gustando de vn templado zefiro que en el rostro le heria, lleno del suauissimo olor que de las olorosas flores, de que el verde suelo estauacolmado, al passar por ellas blandamente robaua embuelto en el ayre delicado, oyo vna voz como de persona que dolorosamente se quexaua ….

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With this thought, and with the many that his love occasioned, having left his flock in a safe place, he set out from his hut, as he had done often before, and, with the light of the lovely Diana, showing herself resplendent in the sky, he entered into the thickness of a thick wood, seeking some solitary place where in the silence of the night with greater quiet he could give rein to to his amorous imaginings; for it is an established fact that, for sad dreaming hearts, nothing is of greater delight than solitude, releaser of memories happy or sad. And so, as he went slowly forward, enjoying a light breeze that blew into his face, heavy with the wonderfully sweet smell which, as it passed through, it stole, wrapped in its delicate air, from the scented flowers of which the verdant ground was full, he heard the voice of a person dolorously lamenting …

and so on. More Sannazaro than Sannazaro himself is the habit found in Cervantes of the adjectival coddling (an un-‘heroic epithet’) also of his characters, for example “el desdichado Mireno”, “el ausente Crysio”, “el celoso Orfenio”|unfortunate Mireno, ‘absent’ Crysio, jealous Orfenio|. Distantly, and mutatis mutandis, it might recall the ‘characterology’ of Virgil’s Eclogues (see Chapter 1 §27). Often, particularly towards the main male character, the narrator takes a rather indulgent, slightly mocking tone, continuing the age-old recognition of the lover as an outcast, a melancholic, one suffering from sinrazon|madness|. There are a number of such Spanish special terms, inadequately rendered in English but essential to pastoral language – for further example olvidado|forgotten, or thrown over|, ausencia|absence, or its consequence of not being kept in mind|, pensamiento| thought, specifically amorous, so a kind of conceit of the heart|, locura|madness, specifically the delirium induced by love|, celos|jealousy, of a particularly consuming kind|, disden|disdain, rejection|, and of course desengaño|disillusion, recognition of the true state of things (bad)|.

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A10

CERVANTES, GALATEA, ‘THEOLINDA’

[Theolinda relates:] “En las riberas del famoso Henares, que al vuestro dorado Tajo, hermosissimas pastoras, da siempre fresco y agradable tributo, fuy yo nascida y criada, y no en tan baxa fortuna que me tuuiesse por la peor de mi aldea. Mis padres son labradores, y a la labrança del campo acostumbrados, en cuyo exercicio les imitaua, trayendo yo vna manada de simples ouejas por las dehesas concegiles de nuestra aldea, acomodando tanto mis pensamientos al estado en que mi suerte me hauia puesto, que ninguna cosa me daua mas gusto que ver multiplicar y crecer mi ganado, sin tener cuenta con mas que con procurarle los mas fructiferos y abundosos pastos, claras y frescas aguas que hallar pudiesse. No tenia ni podia tener mas cuydados que los que podian nascer del pastoral officio en que me occupaua. Las seluas eran mis compañeras, en cuya soledad muchas vezes, combidada de la suaue armonia de los dulces paxarillos, despedia la voz a mil honestos cantares, sin que en ellos mezclasse sospiros ni razones que de enamorado pecho diessen indicio alguno. ¡Ay, quantas vezes, sólo por contentarme a mi mesma y por dar lugar al tiempo que se passasse, andaua de ribera en ribera, de valle en valle, cogiendo aqui la blanca açucena, alli el cardeno lirio, aca la colorada rosa, aculla la olorosa clauellina, haziendo de todas suertes de odoriferas flores vna texida guirnalda, con que adornaua y recogia mis cabellos, y despues, mirandome en las claras y reposadas aguas de alguna fuente, quedaua tan gozosa de hauerme visto, que no trocara mi contento por otro alguno! … “Con la libertad que os he dicho, y en los exercicios que os he contado, passaua yo mi vida tan alegre y sossegadamente, que no sabia que pedirme el desseo, hasta que el vengatiuo amor me vino a tomar estrecha cuenta de la poca que con el tenia, y alcançóme en ella de manera que, con quedar su esclaua, creo que aun no está pagado ni satisfecho. Acaecio, pues, que vn dia – que fuera para mi el mas venturoso de los de mi vida, si el tiempo y las occasiones no vuieran traydo tal descuento a mis alegrias – viniendo yo con otras pastoras de nuestra aldea a cortar ramos y a coger juncia y flores y verdes espadañas para adornar el templo y calles de nuestro lugar, por ser el siguiente dia solennissima fiesta, y estar obligados los moradores de nuestro pueblo por promessa y voto a guardalla, acertamos a passar todas juntas por vn deleytoso bosque que entre el aldea y el rio está puesto, adonde hallamos vna junta de agraciados pastores, que a la sombra de los verdes arboles passauan el ardor de la caliente siesta,

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[Theolinda relates:] On the banks of the famous river Henares, which to your golden Tagus, most beauitful shepherdesses, renders perennially fresh and pleasant tribute, I was born and brought up, and in not such humble circumstances that they counted among the worst of the village. My parents are labourers, accustomed to the labour of the fields, in which practice I followed them, taking a flock of silly sheep through the common pastures of our village, so far suiting my thoughts to the state in which my lot had placed me that nothing gave my greater pleasure than to see my flock multiply and grow, taking no account of anything more than to obtain for them the most fertile and copious pastures [and] clear and fresh water that I could find. I had not nor could have had greater troubles than those to which the pastoral task with which I was engaged might give rise. The woods were my companions, and in their solitude often, accompanied by the suave harmony of the sweet birds, I used to unleash my voice in a thousand honest songs, in which there was nothing mixed of those sighs and sentiments that might give an indication of an enamoured breast. Ah, how many times, just in order to give myself pleasure and to enable the time to pass, did I wander from bank to bank, from valley to valley, gathering here the white lily, there the purple iris, here the red rose, there the scented pink, weaving with all sorts of fragrant flowers a twined garland, with which I adorned and bound up my hair, and then, regarding myself in the clear and peaceful waters of some stream, I was so happy to have seen myself, that I would not have traded my contentment for any other! … With the freedom of which I have told you, and in the pursuits I have recounted, I lived my life so cheerfully and in such tranquillity that desire had nothing to ask of me, until such time as vengeful love came to take strait account of the little in which I held him, and so took it out on me that, though I have ended up his slave, I do not believe he is yet paid or satisfied. It happened, then, that one day – which would have been for me the most exciting of my life, if time and fortune had not come to bring such a penalty for my joys – I went with other shepherdesses of our village to cut branches and gather reeds and flowers and green lilies with which to decorate the temple and the streets of our area, since the next day there was a very holy festival, which the inhabitants of our village were bound by promise and prayer to honour, and it chanced that we all passed together by a delightful grove situated between the village and the river, where we found a group of courteous shepherds, who were letting pass the heat of the burning siesta

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los quales, como nos vieron, al punto fuymos dellos conoscidas, por ser todos, qual primo, y qual hermano, y qual pariente nuestro; y saliendonos al encuentro, y entendido de nosotras el intento que lleuauamos, con corteses palabras nos persuadieron y forçaron a que adelante no passassemos, porque algunos dellos tomarian el trabajo de traer hasta alli los ramos y llores porque yuamos. Y assi, vencidas de sus ruegos, por ser ellos tales, huuimos de conceder lo que querian, y luego seys de los mas moços, apercebidos de sus ozinos, se partieron con gran contento a traernos los verdes despojos que buscauamos. Nosotras, que seys eramos, nos juntamos donde los demas pastores estauan, los quales nos recibieron con el comedimiento possible, especialmente de vn pastor forastero que alli estaua, que de ninguna de nosotras fue conoscido, el qual era de tan gentil donayre y brio, que quedaron todas admiradas en verle; pero yo quedé admirada y rendida. No se que os diga, pastoras, sino que, assi como mis ojos le vieron, senti enternecerseme el coraçon, y començo a discurrir por todas mis venas vn yelo que me encendia, y, sin saber cómo, senti que mi alma se alegraua de tener puestos los ojos en el hermoso rostro del no conocido pastor; y en vn punto, sin ser en los casos de amor experimentada, vine a conoscer que era amor el que salteado me auia …. “El acabar el pastor su canto, y el descubrir los que con los ramos venian, fue todo a vn tiempo; los quales, a quien de lexos los miraua, no parecian sino vn pequeño montezillo que con todos sus arbores se mouía, segun venian pomposos y enramados; y llegando ya cerca de nosotras, todos seys entonaron sus vozes, y començando el vno y respondiendo todos, con muestras de grandissimo contento, y con muchos plazenteros alaridos, dieron principio a vn gracioso villancico. Con este contento y alegría llegaron mas presto de lo que yo quisiera, porque me quitaron la que yo sentía de la vista del pastor. Descargados, pues, de la verde carga, vimos que traya cada vno vna hermosa guirnalda enroscada en el braço, compuesta de diuersas y agradables flores, las quales con graciosas palabras a cada vna de nosotras la suya presentaron, y se offrecieron de lleuar los ramos hasta el aldea. Mas, agradeciendoles nosotras su buen comedimiento, llenas de alegria, queriamos dar la buelta al lugar, quando Eleuco, vn anciano pastor que alli estaua, nos dixo: ‘Bien será, hermosas pastoras, que nos pagueys lo que por vosotras nuestros zagales han hecho, con dexarnos las guirnaldas, que demasiadas lleuays de lo que a buscar veniades; pero ha de ser con condicion que de vuestra mano las deys a quien os pareciere’. ‘Si con tan pequeña paga quedareys de nosotras satisfechas,’ respondio la vna, “yo por mi soy contenta.’ Y tomando la guirnalda con ambas manos, la puso en la cabeça de vn gallardo primo

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in the shade of the green trees, and these, when they saw us, immediately recognized us, since they were all cousins, or brothers, or kinsmen of ours, and coming out to meet us, and having understood from us the business we were about, with kindly words they persuaded and prevented us from going any further, because some of them would take on the task of bringing there the branches and flowers for which we were going. And so, won over by their demands, and the way that they made them, we were moved to grant them what they wanted, and straightaway six of the youngest, equipped with their billhooks, departed very happily to gather the green spoils that we were seeking. We, six in number, came to the place where the remainder of the shepherds were, and they received us with greatest possible grace, especially one shepherd who was there, a stranger, whom none of us knew, who was of such gentle bearing and spirit that everyone who saw him was struck by it; and I too stood struck and overcome. I do not know what to tell you shepherdesses, except that, as soon as I laid eyes upon him, I felt my heart grow tender, and to run through all my veins an ice with which I burned, and, without knowing how, I felt that my soul rejoiced at my having set eyes on the handsome face of the unknown shepherd; and in an instant, without being experienced in the affairs of love, I came to realise that it was love that had assaulted me …. No sooner had the [stranger] shepherd finished his song than the youths carrying the branches came into view, who, to anyone looking at them from a distance, appeared like nothing but a small hill with all its trees in motion, as they came grandly embranched; and coming near us, all six raised their voices, and beginning one to answer another, with signs of the greatest content, and with many merry shouts, started on a beautiful hymn. With the same contentment and joy they came closer than I would have wanted, because they deprived me of the pleasure of the sight of the shepherd. When they had deposited, finally, their green burden, we noticed that each one wore a beautiful garland entwined around his arm, made up of a variety of lovely flowers, which with gracious words each presented each his own to each one of us, and offered to carry the branches all the way to the village. We, expressing gratitude for their kind conduct, full of joy, were going to return to that place, but Eleuco, an old shepherd who was there, said to us: ‘It would be well, lovely shepherdesses, that you pay us for what our boys have done for you by leaving us those garlands that you are taking away over and above the ones you came to find; but it must be on the condition that you hand them to the one who pleases you’. ‘If you will be satisfied with so small a payment from us,’ replied one, ‘I for one am content.’ And taking the garland with both hands, she placed it on the head of a handsome 

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suyo. Las otras, guiadas deste exemplo, dieron las suyas a differentes zagales que alli estauan, que todos sus parientes eran. Yo, que a lo vltimo quedaua, y que alli deudo alguno no tenia, mostrando hazer de la desembuelta, me llegué al forastero pastor, y puniendole la guirnalda en la cabeça, le dixe: ‘Esta te doy, buen zagal, por dos cosas: la vna, por el contento que a todos nos has dado con tu agradable canto; la otra, porque en nuestra aldea se vsa honrar a los estrangeros’. Todos los circunstantes recibieron gusto de lo que yo hazia; pero ¿que os dire yo de lo que mi alma sintio viendome tan cerca de quien me la tenia robada, sino que diera qualquiera otro bien que acertara a dessear en aquel punto, fuera de quererle, por poder ceñirle con mis braços al cuello, como le ceñi las sienes con la guirnalda? El pastor se me humilló, y con discretas palabras me agradecio la merced que le hazía; y, al despedirse de mi, con voz baxa, hurtando la occasion a los muchos ojos que alli hauia, me dixo: ‘Mejor te he pagado de lo que piensas, hermosa pastora, la guirnalda que me has dado: prenda lleuas contigo que, si la sabes estimar, conoceras que me quedas deudora.’ Bien quisiera yo responderle; pero la priessa que mis compañeras me dauan era tanta, que no tuue lugar de replicarle. “Desta manera me bolui al aldea, con tan diferente coraçon del con que auia salido, que yo mesma de mi mesma me marauillaua … porque yo ya no viuia en mi, sino en Artidoro – que ansi se llama la mitad de mi alma que ando buscando …. En considerar la nueua Theolinda que en mi hauia nacido, y en contemplar las gracias del pastor, que impressas en el alma me quedaron, se me passó todo aquel dia y la noche antes de la solemne fiesta, la qual venida, fue con grandissimo regozijo y aplauso de todos los moradores de nuestra aldea y de los circunuecinos lugares solemnizada. Y, despues de acabadas en el templo las sacras oblaciones, y cumplidas las deuidas ceremonias, en vna ancha plaça que delante del templo se hazía, a la sombra de quatro antiguos y frondosos alamos que en ella estauan, se juntó casi la mas gente del pueblo, y haziendose todos vn corro, dieron lugar a que los zagales vezinos y forasteros se exercitassen, por honra de la fiesta, en algunos pastoriles exercicios …. Venida la mañana del dia despues de la fiesta, antes que la fresca aurora perdiesse el rocio aljofarado de sus hermosos cabellos, y que el sol acabasse de descubrir sus rayos por las cumbres de los vezinos montes, nos juntamos hasta vna dozena de pastoras, de las mas miradas del pueblo, y, asidas vnas de otras de las manos, al son de vna gayta y de vna çampoña, haziendo y deshaziendo intricadas bueltas y

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cousin of hers. The others, guided by her example, gave their own to the different youths who were there, who were all their relations. I, whose turn was the last, having no relative there, with apparent negligence went up to the stranger shepherd, and placing the garland on his head, said to him: ‘I give you this, fine boy, for two reasons: one, for the joy that you have given all of us with your beautiful song; the other, because it is the custom in our village to honour strangers.’ Everyone there was pleased with what I had done; but what I shall say to you of what I felt in my soul finding myself so close to the one who had robbed me of it, except that I would given up every other good that I might manage to want at that point, except that of loving him, in order to be able to encircle his neck with my arms as I had encircled his temples with my garland? The shepherd bowed to me, and with appropriate words thanked me for the kindness that I had done him; and, in saying farewell, in a low voice, stealing the opportunity from the many eyes that the situation occasioned, told me: ‘I have paid you better than you thought, beautiful shepherdess, for the garland that you have given me: what you take with you is a pledge which, if you know how to value it, you will realise that you have an obligation to me.’ I would dearly have liked to respond to him, but the pressure my companions put on me was such that I did not have a chance to reply. In this state I returned to the village, with a heart so different from the one I had set out with that I myself was at myself amazed … because I did not live in myself, but in Artidoro (for this was the name of the other half of my soul that I go seeking) …. In contemplating the new Theolinda who had been born in me, and in meditating on the qualities of the shepherd which remained impressed on my soul, I passed the whole day and night before the solemn feast, which, when it came, was celebrated with the greatest rejoicing and applause of all who lived in the village and in the surrounding district. And, after the sacred offerings in the temple had been completed, and the appropriate ceremonies performed, in an ample plaza that had been made in front of the temple, in the shade of four ancient and leafy poplars that stood there, there assembled virtually all the people of the village, and, forming themselves into a circle, left space for the local and stranger youth to disport in honour of the festival in some pastoral games …. Came the day after the festival, before the fresh dawn had lost the pearly dew from her beautiful hair, or the sun had fully uncovered his beams on the ridges of the nearby mountains, we came together, up to a dozen shepherdesses, the most admired of the village, and, linking hands with one another, at the sound of a flageolet and a bagpipe, making and unmaking intricate turns and flounces, we left the village for a green meadow which 

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bayles, nos salimos de la aldea a vn verde prado que no lexos della estaua, dando gran contento a todos los que nuestra enmarañada dança mirauan; y la ventura, que hasta entonces mis cosas de bien en mejor yua guiando, ordenó que en aquel mesmo prado hallassemos todos los pastores del lugar, y con ellos a Artidoro …. No se cómo os encarezca, amigas, lo que en tal punto senti, si no es deziros que me turbé de manera que no acertaua a dar passo concertado en el bayle; tanto, que le conuenia a Artidoro lleuarme con fuerça tras si, porque no rompiesse, soltandome, el hilo de la concertada dança; y tomando dello occasion, le dixe: ‘¿En que te ha offendido mi mano, Artidoro, que ansi la aprietas?’ El me respondio, con voz que de ninguno pudo ser oyda: ‘Mas, ¿que te ha hecho a ti mi alma, que assi la maltratas?’ …. Luego nos sentamos todos los pastores y pastoras sobre la verde yerua, y auiendo reposado vn poco del cansancio de los bayles passados, el viejo Eleuco, acordando su instrumento, que vn rabel era, con la çampoña de otro pastor, rogo a Artidoro que alguna cosa cantasse, pues el mas que otro alguno lo deuia hazer, por auerle dado el cielo tal gracia, que seria ingrato si encubrirla quisiesse …. [He sings an accomplished sestine] Estos fueron los versos, hermosas pastoras, que con marauillosa gracia y no menos satisfaction de los que le escuchauan aquel dia cantó mi Artidoro, de los quales, y de las razones que antes me hauia dicho, tomé yo ocasion de imaginar si por ventura mi vista algun nueuo accidente amoroso en el pecho de Artidoro auia causado; y no me salio tan vana mi sospecha, que el mesmo no me la certificasse al boluernos al aldea.” [Here Theodolinda is interrupted by a noise of shepherds and dogs.] Obras completas de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: La Galatea, ed. Rudolph Schevill and Adolfo Bonilla, 2 vols., Madrid 1914, I, pp. 51ff.

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was not far away, giving great contentment to all those who watched our complex movements; and good fortune, which until that time had been guiding my affairs from good to better, ordained that in that same meadow we should find all the shepherds of the place, and with them Artidoro …. I do not know how to explain to you, my friends, what I felt at that point, except to say that I was so disturbed that I failed to keep in step in the dance, so that it was necessary for Artidoro with force to draw me behind him, in order that I should not, if he were to have let me go, break the thread of the concerted dance; and taking advantage of the opportunity I said to him, ‘In what way has my hand offended you, Artidoro, that you should press it so hard?’ And he replied to me, in a voice that could be heard by no one, ‘But, what has my soul done to you, that you should maltreat it so?’ …. Then we all sat down, shepherds and shepherdesses, on the green grass, and had taken a little rest from the fatigue of the completed dance, when the ancient Eleuco, tuning his instrument, which was a rebec, with the bagpipe of another shepherd, asked Artidoro to sing something, since he better than any other ought to do it, as heaven had bestowed on him such grace that it would be ungrateful if he were to wish to hide it …. [He sings an accomplished sestine.] Those were the verses, beautiful shepherdesses, that with such marvellous grace and no less satisfaction on the part of those who listened on that day Artidoro did sing, from which, and from the sentiments that he had voiced to me before, I took occasion to imagine that perchance the sight of me had been the cause of some novel amorous episode in Artidoro’s heart; and my suspicion did not turn out to be so very vain that he himself did not assure me of it as we made our way back to the village. [Here Theolinda is interrupted by a noise of shepherds and dogs.]

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A11

CERVANTES, GALATEA, ‘ROSAURA AND GRISALDO’

Galatea y sus compañeras se llegaron tan cerca, que, sin ser vistas ni sentidas, veyan todo lo que el cauallero y las pastoras hazian y dezian; las quales, hauiendo mirado a vna y a otra parte, por ver si podrian ser vistas de alguno, asseguradas desto, la vna se quitó el reboço, y a penas se le huuo quitado, quando de Theolinda fue conoscida, y llegandose al oydo de Galatea, le dixo con la mas baxa voz que pudo: “Estrañissima ventura es esta, porque, si no es que con la pena que traygo he perdido el conoscimiento, sin duda alguna aquella pastora que se ha quitado el reboço es la bella Rosaura, hija de ­Roselio, señor de vna aldea que a la nuestra está vezina, y no se que pueda ser la causa que la aya mouido a ponerse en tan estraño trage y a dexar su tierra, cosas que tan en perjuyzio de su honestidad se declaran. Mas, ¡ay, desdichada!”, añadio Theolinda, “que el cauallero que con ella está es Grisaldo, hijo mayor del rico Laurencio, que junto a esta vuestra aldea tiene otras dos suyas.” “Verdad dizes, Theolinda,” respondio Galatea, “que yo le conozco; pero calla y sossiegate, que presto veremos con que intento ha sido aqui su venida.” Quietóse con esto Theolinda, y con atencion se puso a mirar lo que Rosaura hazía, la qual, llegandose al cauallero, que de edad de veynte años parecia, con voz turbada y ayrado semblante le començo a dezir: “En parte estamos, fementido cauallero, donde podre tomar de tu desamor y descuydo la desseada vengança. Pero aunque yo la tomasse de ti tal que la vida te costasse, poca r­ ecompensa sería al daño que me tienes hecho. Vesme aqui, desconocido Grisaldo, desconoscida por conoscerte; ves aqui que ha mudado el trage por buscarte la que nunca mudó la voluntad de quererte. Considera, ingrato y desamorado, que la que a penas en su casa y con sus criadas sabia mouer el passo, agora por tu causa anda de valle en valle y de sierra en sierra con tanta soledad buscando tu compañia.” Todas estas razones que la bella Rosaura dezia, las escuchaua el cauallero con los ojos hincados en el suelo, y haziendo rayas en la tierra con la punta de vn cuchillo de monte que en la mano tenia. Pero, no contenta Rosaura con lo dicho, con semejantes palabras prosiguio su plática: “Dime: ¿conoces, por ventura, conoces, Grisaldo, que yo soy aquella que no ha mucho tiempo que enxugó tus lagrimas, atajó tus sospiros, remedió tus penas, y, sobre todo, la que creyo tus palabras? ¿O, por suerte, entiendes tu que eres aquel a quien parecian cortos y de ninguna fuerça todos los juramentos que imaginarse podian, para assegurarme la verdad con que me engañauas? ¿Eres tu acaso, Grisaldo, aquel cuyas infinitas lagrimas ablandaron la dureza del honesto coraçon mio? Tu eres, que ya te veo, y yo soy, que ya me conozco. Pero si tu eres,

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Galatea and her companions approached so close that, without being seen or heard, they could see everything that the gentleman and the shepherdesses did and said; and after they had looked around in every direction, to see if they could be seen by anyone, and had been reassured, one of them removed her veil, and hardly had she removed it than Theolinda recognized her, and moving close to Galatea’s ear, told her as quietly as she could: ‘This is an incredible stroke of fortune, because, unless with the pains I suffer I have lost all knowledge, without any doubt that shepherdess who has lifted her veil is Rosaura, the daughter of Roselio, the lord of a village that is close to ours, and I do not know what can be the cause that has induced her to put on such strange garb and to leave her homeland, things that are patently very prejudicial to her good name. But, ah the wretch!’, added Theolinda, ‘because the gentleman who is with her is Grisaldo, the elder son of the wealthy Laurencio, who next to your village owns two parishes.’ ‘You are right, Theolinda, because I know him, too; but be quiet and be still, because we shall soon see the reason for her coming here.’ Theolinda kept quiet, and concentrated on watching what Rosaura did; and she, reaching the horseman, who appeared to be about twenty years of age, began to speak to him in a troubled voice and with an angry countenance: “We are in a place, you traitor to faith, where I may take the revenge I seek for your unlovingness and your neglect. However, although I might wreak that on you to the extent of taking your life, that would be little recompense for the harm that you have done me. You see me here, unrecognizant Grisaldo, in disguise in order to discover you; you see here in changed apparel the woman who has never changed her will to love you. Just consider, you ungrateful and fickle man, that one who in her own house and among her own retainers hardly knows how to take a step, now because of you roams from valley to valley and from ridge to ridge all alone seeking to be with you.’ To all the arguments that the fair Rosaura gave, the rider listened with his eyes cast down to the ground, and making marks in the earth with a hunting knife that he held in his hand. Rosaura, however, not content with what she had said, pursued her diatribe with the following words: ‘Tell me: do you by any chance know, do you know, Grisaldo, that I am the one who not long ago dried your tears, calmed your sighs, remedied your agonies and, above all, who believed what you said? Or, by chance, do you realise that you were the one who regarded all the oaths that can be imagined as short-lived and of little force as you assured me of the truth of that with which you deceived me? Was it you, by chance, Grisaldo, whose infinite tears softened the resistance of my honourable heart? You it was, the one I see, and I am she,

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Grisaldo, el que yo creo, y yo soy Rosaura, la que tu imaginas, cumpleme la palabra que me diste; darte he yo la promessa que nunca te he negado. Hanme dicho que te casas con Leopersia, la hija de Marcelio, tan a gusto tuyo, que eres tu mesmo el que la procuras; si esta nueua me ha dado pesadumbre, bien se puede ver por lo que he hecho por venir a estoruar el cumplimiento della; y si tu la puedes hazer verdadera, a tu consciencia lo dexo. ¿Que respondes a esto, enemigo mortal de mi descanso? ¿Otorgas, por ventura, callando, lo que por el pensamiento sería justo que no te passasse? Alça los ojos ya, y ponlos en estos que por su mal te miraron; leuantalos, y mira a quien engañas, a quien dexas y a quien oluidas. Verás que engañas, si bien lo consideras, a la que siempre te trató verdades, dexas a quien ha dexado a su honra y a si mesma por seguirte, oluidas a la que jamas te apartó de su memoria. Considera, Grisaldo, que en nobleza no te deuo nada, y que en riqueza no te soy desigual, y que te auentajo en la bondad del ánimo y en la firmeza de la fe. Cumpleme, señor, la que me diste, si te precias de cauallero, y no te desprecias de christiano. Mira que, si no correspondes a lo que me deues, que rogaré al cielo que te castigue, al fuego que te consuma, al ayre que te falte, al agua que te anegue, a la tierra que no te sufra, y a mis parientes que me venguen. Mira que, si faltas a la obligacion que me tienes, que has de tener en mi vna perpetua turbadora de tus gustos en quanto la vida me durare; y aun despues de muerta, si ser pudiere, con continuas sombras espantaré tu fementido ­espiritu, y con espantosas visiones atormentaré tus engañadores ojos. Aduierte que no pido sino lo que es mio, y que tu ganas en darlo lo que en negarlo pierdes. Mueue agora tu lengua para desengañarme de quantas vezes la has mouido para offenderme.” Calló diziendo esto la hermosa dama, y estuuo vn poco esperando a ver lo que Grisaldo respondia; el qual, leuantando el rostro, que hasta alli inclinado hauia tenido, encendido con la verguença que las razones de Rosaura le hauian causado, con sossegada voz le respondio desta manera: “Si yo quisiesse negar, ¡o Rosaura!, que no te soy deudor de mas de lo que dizes, negaria assimesmo que la luz del sol no es clara, y aun diria que el fuego es frio y el ayre duro. Assi que en esta parte confiesso lo que te deuo, y que estoy obligado a la paga. Pero que yo confiesse que puedo pagarte como quieres, es impossible, porque el mandamiento de mi padre lo ha prohibido, y tu riguroso desden impossibilitado; y no quiero en esta verdad poner otro testigo que a ti mesma,

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who indeed knows who she is. But if you, Grisaldo, were the one I believed you to be, and I am Rosaura, the one you think I am, follow though on the word that you gave me; I am ready to give you the promise on which I have never reneged. They tell me that you are marrying Leopersia, the daughter of Marcelio, which was so much to your taste that it was you yourself who made the match; and if that news upset me, you can well see why I had to come here to prevent it happening; and if you can grant the truth of it, I leave the matter to your conscience. What have you to reply to that, mortal enemy of my peace? Do you admit, by any chance, by your silence, a thing that should never even have passed through your mind? Raise your eyes at last, and set them on those that were cursed to see them; lift them up, and look at the woman whom you are deceiving, whom you are abandoning and whom you are forgetting. You will see that you are deceiving, if you consider it well, one who has always been true to you, that you are abandoning one who has abandoned her honour and her own self in order to follow you, that you are forgetting one who has never let you leave her mind. Consider, Grisaldo, that in lineage I owe you nothing, and that in wealth I am your equal, and that in goodness of heart and firmness of faith I am your superior. Keep the promise, my lord, that you gave me, if you prize yourself as gentle, and do not disdain to be a Christian. Consider that, if you do not fulfil the obligation you have towards me, I will ask heaven to punish you, fire to consume you, air to fail you, water to drown you, earth not to bear you, and my family to revenge me. Consider that if you fail in the duty that you owe me, you will have in me a perpetual scourge of you enjoyment as long as my life may last, and even after death, if it it were possible, I will terrify your faithless spirit with ceaseless gloom, I will torment your deceitful eyes with frightful visions. Consider that I ask for only what is mine, and that you gain in giving what you lose in reneging on. Now use your tongue to reveal to me how many times you have used it to injure me.’ With this the beautiful girl was silent, and stood waiting for a while to see what Grisaldo should reply; and he, raising his head, which until this point he had kept lowered, incensed with the shame that Rosaura’s words had occasioned in him, in a low voice replied to her in the following manner: ‘If I were to seek to deny, oh Rosaura, that I am not indebted to you for more than what you say, I would deny at the same time that the light of the sun has no brightness, or I would say that fire is cold and air is hard. So in that I admit what I owe to you, and that I am obliged to redeem it. But to admit that I can pay you what you want is impossible, because my father’s command forbids it, and your own unyielding disdain has made it impossible; and to the truth of that I would not wish to call any other witness than you yourself, 

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como a quien tambien sabe quantas vezes y con quantas lagrimas rogue que me aceptasses por esposo, y que fuesses seruida que yo cumpliesse la palabra que de serlo te hauia dado; y tu, por las causas que te imaginaste, o por parecerte ser bien corresponder a las vanas promessas de Artandro, jamas quisiste que a tal execucion se llegasse: antes de dia en dia me yuas entretiniendo y haziendo prueuas de mi firmeza, ­pudiendo assegurarla de todo punto con admitirme por tuyo. Tambien sabes, Rosaura, el desseo que mi padre tenia de ponerme en estado, y la priessa que daua a ello, trayendo los ricos honrosos casamientos que tu sabes, y como yo con mil escusas me apartaua de sus importunaciones, dandotelas siempre a ti para que no dilatasses mas lo que tanto a ti conuenia y yo desseaua; y que, al cabo de todo esto, te dixe vn dia que la voluntad de mi padre era que yo con Leopersia me casasse; y tu, en oyendo el nombre de Leopersia, con vna furia desesperada me dixiste que mas no te hablasse, y que me casasse norabuena con Leopersia o con quien mas gusto me diesse. Sabes tambien que te persuadi muchas vezes que dexasses aquellos celosos deuaneos, que yo era tuyo, y no de Leopersia, y que jamas quisiste admitir mis disculpas ni condescender con mis ruegos: antes, perseuerando en tu obstinacion y dureza, y en fauorescer a Artandro, me embiaste a dezir que te daria gusto en que jamas te viesse. Yo hize lo que me mandaste, y, por no tener occasion de quebrar tu mandamiento, viendo tambien que cumplia el de mi padre, determiné de desposarme con Leopersia, o, a lo menos, desposaréme mañana, que assí está concertado entre sus parientes y los mios; porque veas, Rosaura, quan disculpado estoy de la culpa que me pones, y quan tarde has tu venido en conoscimiento de la sinrazon que conmigo vsauas. Mas porque no me juzgues de aqui adelante por tan ingrato como en tu imaginacion me tienes pintado, mira bien si ay algo en que yo pueda satisfazer tu voluntad, que, como no sea casarme contigo, auenturaré por seruirte la hazienda, la vida y la honra.” En tanto que estas palabras Grisaldo dezia, tenia la hermosa Rosaura los ojos clauados en su rostro, vertiendo por ellos tantas lagrimas, que dauan bien a entender el dolor que en el alma sentia; pero viendo ella que Grisaldo callaua, dando vn profundo y doloroso sospiro, le dixo: “Como no puede caber en tus verdes años tener, ¡o Grisaldo!, larga y conoscida experiencia de los infinitos accidentes amorosos, no me marauillo que vn pequeño desden mio te aya puesto en la libertad que publicas; pero si tu conoscieras que los celosos temores son espuelas que hazen salir al amor de su passo, vieras claramente que, los que yo tuue de Leopersia, en que yo mas te

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since you know how many times and with how many tears I have begged you to accept me as your husband, and that it should be your pleasure that I should keep the word I gave you that I would be just that; and you, for the reasons that you managed to find, or seemed good ones to you, to listen to the empty promises of Artandro, never wanted that that should come to be; rather, from day to day you kept me in suspension and looked for proof of my firmness, while being perfectly able in every way to accept me as yours. You also know, Rosaura, that my father wanted me to get married, and the urgency he gave to it, suggesting the rich and honourable alliances that you know, and how I with a thousand excuses turned a deaf ear to his entreaties, always relaying them to you so that you should not delay any more what was appropriate for you and what I desired; and that, after all this, I told you one day that my father’s wish was that I should marry Leopersia, and you, hearing Leopersia’s name, fell into a desperate rage and told me never to speak to you again, and that I should marry Leopersia or anyone I liked for all you cared. You know also that I called upon you on many occasions not to fall into these jealous fits, because I was yours, and not Leopersia’s, and that you never were willing to accept my denials nor to accede to what I begged of you: instead, persevering in your obstinacy and unyieldingness, and in favouring Artandro, you send to tell me that it would be your pleasure never to see me again. I did what you told me to do, and, so that there should be no chance of failing to do your bidding, and seeing also that it was doing what my father wanted, I determined to marry Leopersia, or, at least, I will marry her tomorrow, which is what has been agreed between my parents and hers; so you see, Rosaura, how far I am entirely blameless in what you blame me for, and how late you are in coming to realise that you have acted unreasonably towards me. But so that you should not judge me from now onwards for an ingrate of the kind you have painted me in your imagination, consider well if there is anything in which I can satisfy your will, which, so long as it is not to marry you, I will undertake to do for the better preservation of your estate, life and honour.’ All the while that Grisaldo was speaking, the lovely Rosaura remained with her eyes fixed on his face, letting fall from them plenty enough tears to make manifest the pain that she felt in her soul; but seeing that Grisaldo had fallen silent, letting forth a deep and painful sigh, said: ‘Grisaldo, since in your tender years it is impossible that you should any great or informed experience of the infinite contingencies of love, I am not surprised that some small disdain of mine should have put you in the liberty that you proclaim; but if you knew that jealous fears are spurs which set love further on its course, you would see clearly that those I had of Leopersia had the corollary 

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quisiesse redundauan. Mas como tu tratauas tan de passatiempo mis cosas, con la menor occasion que te imaginaste, descubriste el poco amor de tu pecho y confirmaste las verdaderas sospechas mias, y en tal manera, que me dizes que mañana te casas con Leopersia. Pero yo te certifico que, antes que a ella lleues al talamo, me has de lleuar a mi a la sepoltura, si ya no eres tan cruel que niegues de darla al cuerpo de cuya alma fuyste siempre señor absoluto. Y porque claro conozcas y veas que, la que perdio por ti su honestidad y puso en detrimento su honra, tendra en poco perder la vida, este agudo puñal que aqui traygo pondra en effecto mi desesperado y honroso intento, y será testigo de la crueldad que en esse tu fementido pecho encierras.” Y diziendo esto, sacó del seno vna desnuda daga, y con gran celeridad se yua a passar el coraçon con ella, si con mayor presteza Grisaldo no le tuuiera el braço y la reboçada pastora su compañera no aguijara a abraçarse con ella. Gran rato estuuieron Grisaldo y la pastora primero que quitassen a Rosaura la daga de las manos, la qual a Grisaldo dezia: “¡Dexame, traydor enemigo, acabar de vna vez la tragedia de mi vida, sin que tantas tu desamorado desden me haga prouar la muerte!” “Essa no gustarás tu por mi occasion,” replicó Grisaldo, “pues quiero que mi padre falte antes a la palabra que por mi a Leopersia tiene dada, que faltar yo vn punto a lo que conozco que te deuo. Sossiega el pecho, Rosaura, pues te asseguro que este mio no sabra dessear otra cosa que la que fuere de tu contento.” Con estas enamoradas razones de Grisaldo resuscitó Rosaura de la muerte de su tristeza a la vida de su alegria, y, sin cessar de llorar, se hincó de rodillas ante Grisaldo, pidiendole las manos en señal de la merced que le hazía. Grisaldo hizo lo mesmo, y, echandole los braços al cuello, estuuieron gran rato sin poderse hablar el vno al otro palabra, derramando entrambos cantidad de amorosas lagrimas. Obras completas de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: La Galatea, ed. Rudolph Schevill and Adolfo Bonilla, 2 vols., Madrid 1914, II, pp. 6ff.

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of making me love you more. But because you have been used to treating my concerns as playthings, with the least imaginable excuse you have revealed the small love in your heart and confirmed my justified suspicions, and in such a manner – telling me that you will marry Leopersia tomorrow! But I assure you that, before you take her to your bed, you will have to take me to my tomb, unless you were to be so cruel that you would not stoop to bury the body of the woman over whose heart you were always absolute lord. And so that you should clearly know and see that a girl who for your sake has lost her virtue and compromised her honour will think little of losing her life, this very dagger that I bear with me will put into effect my desperate and honourable intent, and will be witness of the cruelty that you enclose in that faithless heart of yours.’ And while saying as much she took from her breast a naked dagger, and without hesitation was going to run it through her heart, if not with still greater speed Grisaldo had not taken her arm and the still veiled shepherdess with her had not rushed to wrestle with her. It took quite some time before Grisalso and the shepherdess could force the dagger from Rosaura’s hands, who then told Grisaldo: ‘Leave me, you fiendish traitor, to finish at one stroke the tragedy of my life, without my having to undergo death by your loveless disdain time and time again!’ ‘You will not enjoy that benefit on my account,’ replied Grisaldo, ‘since I prefer that my father should break the word he has given on my behalf to Leopersia than that I should fail in any point in what I know I owe you. Rest easy in your heart, Rosaura, for I assure you that mine cannot desire anything else than whatever may be your pleasure.’ With these loving words of Grisaldo Rosaura came round from the death of her sorrow to the life of her joy, and, without ceasing to weep, fell to her knees before Grisaldo, begging for his hands as a pledge of the favour he gave her. Grisaldo did the same, and, throwing their arms around their necks, remained for a long time without being able to say a word to each other, each of them letting fall quantities of amorous tears.

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3 14

Characters are also identified by their place or specifically ribera| riverbank|of origin – the Tagus (whence Galatea and Elicio), the Betis, the Henares, etc. In most respects Cervantes’s Galatea is a complete mirror of the Spanish polity (except the king), including among its inhabitants not only Diego Hurtado de Mendoza but even, if in mention only, “el valoroso y nombrado pastor Astraliano”, or Don John of Austria (Book IV). If these are shepherds, however (not, of course, ganaderos, the actual herdsmen), it is not clear why Darintho, the “cavallero” who happens to be passing through in Book IV, including in his company Silerio’s missing friend Timbrio and their two brides to be, should not also be a pastor, and what the metaphysical basis may be of the discussion between Timbrio and Elicio and his companions Tyrsi and Damon on the difference between court and shepherd life (see further Chapter 12 §8). The contradiction is the greater because in Book II, when the pastores Damon and Tyrsi had first appeared on the scene, their courtly clothing, “vizarros”|gallant| to shepherd eyes, had been described in some detail, and because it is probable that several pastores, most conspicuously Tyrsi and Damon, represent Cervantes’s living acquaintances, and Lauso quite possibly Cervantes himself. The explanation is simple, however – that Cervantes, perfectly conscious of the conventions of the mode he had adopted, would not permit them to prevent him from making his own comment on the ‘dialogue’ between court or city and country for which the European textbook had long since been his co-native Antonio de Guevara’s ‘Monosprecio’ of 1539 (see Chapter 12 §4); this opposed the court more to the georgic than the pastoral, but the pastoral had always been a department of the georgic (see further Chapter 11 §5 and 11).

3 15

It might strike the present reader (were there any present readers of this literature) as peculiar that the main ‘gang’ of shepherds spend some considerable time in the last book in the company of Aurelio, father to Galatea, and yet Elicio’s courtship appears not to register with him; the ‘father’ they prepare to approach regarding his daughter’s marriage appears to be a completely different figure, a remote authority unlikely to be bent to their will. This oddity is even greater in Lope de Vega’s Arcadia of 1598, in which Belisarda’s father is a cosy figure with whom she is intimate but at the same time her “padres” |parents|are hostile to her love for Anfriso. Early in the book Lope de Vega had inveighed bitterly against such tyranny:

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Y con todas estas fortunas, era su [Belisarda’s] humilidad de suerte, que non contradezia la rigurosa obedencia de sus padres: cegoles el interes de sus [her prospective husband’s] muchas possessiones, y labrancas: porque como ellos non han de sufrir la importunidad, y trabajos del estado, a disgusto de los hijos, sino descansar, y preciarse del yerno caudaloso, danles ocasion, para que aborrecidos hagan contra su nobleza y opinion, lo que hazienda non encubre, ni calidad disfraça And in all these conditions her [Belisarda’s] humility was such that she would not oppose herself to rigorous obedience to her parents: and they were blinded by the attraction of his [her prospective husband’s] many possessions and lands: for there is good reason, since they are not the ones who have to suffer the demands and difficulties of her married state, [while] at the expense of their children they take their ease and preen themselves over their rich son-in-law, why, despite their nobility and good name, they should be hated for what property does not hide or quality disguise.

Cervantes, too, later expressed the view, in the mouth of Pedro the goatherd in chapter XII of Don Quijote, that the uncle of the independent Marcela (see Chapter 7 §26) “decía … y decía muy bien, que no habían de dar los padres a sus hijos estado contra su voluntad”| said, and said very well, that it was not up to the parents to impose their condition on their children against their will|.

3 16 Lope de Vega’s Arcadia is a pastoral beyond any other, first of all by virtue of the hyperbole of its language. It develops and melds both Sannazaran prose chicanery and Petrarchan and neoplatonizing conceits into a hyper-operatic amorosa visione, for example Belisarda, on her first appearance, … desassiendo del cuello un pequeño instrumento, que de una cinta leonada traya assido, a pessar de los cabellos, que rebueltos en el se lo estorvavan, y por acompañar su regalada voz, querian servir de cuerdas, enmudeciendo el ayre, moviendo las piedras, parando el rio, y enamorando il cielo, cantò ansi …

15 Lope de Vega Carpio, Arcadia, Prosas y Versos, in Obras completas de Lope de Vega, ed. Joaquín de Entreambasaguas, I, Obras no dramáticas, 1, Madrid, 1965. Cervantes/Rico, p. 107, with the note “dar estado: give in matrimony or make enter a convent”. On parental control of matrimony see above, §8.

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… removing from her neck a small instrument, which she carried with her on a tawny string, to the sorrow of her tresses, which suffered it ill to be coiled up in themselves, wishing to be used as strings to accompany her delicate voice – silencing the air, moving the stones, stopping the river in its course and enamouring the heavens, [she] sang as follows …

and Apenas se començo a mover el ayre, se detuvieron las piedras, corrio el apazible rio, y cessò la delicada voz de Belisarda, quando por la fresca orilla, entre los verdes arboles, baxava el pastor Anfriso, tras unas biancas ovejas; dichoso ganado, de hombre tan bien perdido: y como el alegre son de l agua; el murmurar de las hojas, y la templança del ayre, y aun el diferente olor de las flores, le traxessen al alma ciertas nuevas, de que tales efetos, solo procederian de ser la causa Belisarda, desciñendose una honda, guiò las esparcidas ovejas aquel pino, lugar en que otras vezes solian esperarse: y como antes de llegar, los rayos que de sus ojos herian el agua, como el sol en el espejo, bolviessen luz a los suyos, certificose de todo punto, y el alma que de sola imaginacio se sustentava; hizo lugar a la verdad, y ocuparonse los sentidos de gustos presentes, como antes lo estavan de glorias imaginadas. Llegando en fin distancia de quatro pasos, miraronse el uno al otro, y sin mover los ojos, se retrataron en ellos por largo espacio …. Hardly had the air begun to move, the stones to come to a halt, the gentle brook to begin flowing, and Belisarda’s delicate voice to have ceased [its song] than along the cool bank, between the green trees, down came the shepherd Anfriso, behind several white sheep – fortunate flock, for a man so utterly lost: and as the cheerful sound of the water, the murmuring of the leaves, the temperance of the air, and even the different odour of the flowers brought to his soul the certain news, since such effects could only proceed from Belisarda’s being their cause, coming down a dip, he guided his scattered sheep [to] that pine, the place where on other occasions they had been accustomed to wait for each other: and as, before he arrived, the rays that from her eyes struck the water, like the sun in the mirror, turned light to his own, he was entirely sure in every regard, and his soul, which had been sustained on imagination alone, made room for the truth, and his senses were filled with present sensations as before they had been with imagined glories. Arriving finally at a distance of four paces, they gazed at each other, and without moving their eyes made portraits of themselves in themselves for a long period ….

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The work had opened with a remarkable ‘est locus’ echoing Sannazaro’s but involving now reference to the colours of the prism on the one hand and Leon Battista Alberti’s neo-Latin fable of the invention of painting on the other. As one would expect from him, Lope’s Arcadia is full of activity, switching later into a narrative of rapid pace, and is for this period well developed in characterization and psychology. All this is laid down on the established bed of Montemayor’s pastoral – witness for instance the familiar trysting place – “aquel pino” (one may also recall “ἁ πίτυς … τήνα”|that pine|of Theocritus, Idyll I, 1) – of Anfriso and Belisarda.

3 17

Lope’s prologue plays a complicated game both with the notion of the pastoral ‘veil’ under which a true story is concealed and with the humility proper to pastoral: Estos rusticos pensamientos, aunque nacidos de occasiones altas, pudieran darla, para yguales discursos, si como yo fui el testigo dellos, alguno de los floridos ingenios de nuestra Tajo lo huviera sido; y si en esto (como en sus amores) fue desdichado su dueño ser agenos y no proprios, de no aver acertado me disculpe, que nadie puede hablar bien en pensamientos de otro, si alguno advirtiesse, que a bueltas de los agenos he llorado los mios, tal, en efeto, como fui, quise honrarme de escrivirlos, pues era impossible honrarlos, acomodando a mis soledades materia triste, como quien tan lexos bive de cosa alegre, y que pudo dar una Vega tan esteril, que no fuesse pastores rudos, que assi lo pareceran, a quien los imaginare mios, sin penetrar el alma de sus dueños. Si yo fuera sobervio monte, pudiera dezir alguno, que este era el parto ridiculo del moral filosofo de que tambien se burla Horacio, pero antes es conforme a la esperança de una vega humilde, el fruto de pastores que lo parezcan tanto, y mas tratando amores con desdichas, que cayeron en mi, como en su mismo centro, no porque sono tan barvaros, que algun vez non se suban, de pastores a cortesanos, y de rusticos a filosofos, y a quien preguntare la causa, respondale Virgilio, con los sagrados versos, que hurtò de la Sibila, para sus pastoriles eglogas; avendo sido estupendo pronostico, de la venida de nuestra salud al mundo. [Regarding] these rustic thoughts (though born from high occasions) to which I have been witness, as well might another of the flourishing talents of our Tagus have been, so as to produce similar discourses; and if in this, as in his loves, their author has been unfortunate that they

16 For Alberti’s Virtus see Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, ed. Eugenio Garin, Milan and Naples 1952, pp. 640–45.

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were the thoughts of another and not his own, I excuse myself for this failure, for no one can speak well in the thoughts of another – but that someone might point out that instead of another’s I have lamented my own. Such as I was, I wanted to bring myself honour in writing them, because it was impossible to gain honour by shaping sorrowful material to my solitary [musings], as being one who lived so far from happy things – which might have produced such a sterile plain [vega] that it would not be rude shepherds (as they would appear to be) who I would imagine to be mine, because I would not have penetrated the soul of their owners. And if I were a proud mountain, someone might say that it was the ridiculous birth of the moral philosopher at whom Horace also scoffed [Ars Poetica, 139: “parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus”|the mountains labour, a ridiculous mouse is born|], but rather it is in conformity with the expectation of a humble plain, the fruit of shepherds who appear to be such, and treating rather of love with the misfortunes that fall to me as to their natural direction – not that they are so barbarous that they may not sometimes rise from shepherds to courtiers, and from rustics to philosophers; and to any who ask the reason, Virgil will respond, with the sacred verses that he stole from the Sibyl for his pastoral Eclogues, having been a stupendous prophet of the coming of our salvation to the world.

Apart from the ‘true’ story, there is a claim that the book is sincere, notwithstanding the potentially comic dimension of its hyperbole and its ‘diminuitives’ – most diminuitive of all are perhaps Belisarda’s ducks: she takes ducks with her to walk about rather than sheep. That is perhaps typical of Lope’s exuberance, but it seems that the complexity of this play on the idea of the pastoral veil derives from its claim for a double truthfulness – that Anfriso represents Lope’s patron the young Duke of Alva, to whom undoubtedly Anfriso’s pre-eminence as the most accomplished and handsome of all the shepherds corresponds; and at the same time it represents Lope’s own amours (Lope had taken refuge at the Tormes court after his expulsion from Madrid for excesses due to passion; this is what ‘Celia’ in a verse at the very end claims). In his pastoral plays (see below, Chapter 11 §15) Lope had repeatedly treated of love – love is always their centre, and it is again always love threatened by celos|jealousy| – but the Arcadia is not, like those, a comedy: Lope treats of it ambitiously, and then explicitly in the fifth Book – when love is lost to desengaño – moves to higher things. The work of course deliberately recalls Sannazaro’s Arcadia, for example in its appeal to a community of poets – the “pastores del dorado Tajo”|the shepherds of the golden Tagus|, whom he breaks off his narrative more than once to invoke, and in the ‘shepherd’ poets who feature 

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in the story itself, transposed but hardly otherwise altered in ‘Arcadia’, “el teatro de mi historia”|the theatre of my story| – but it consciously rivals it as well: Lope’s work, too, ends in despair in the fourth Book, but the fifth Book opens up a kind of Parnassus where letters replace love. Moreover it is presented in five ‘books’ which might, like those of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, as well be called ‘acts’, as they are logical chunks of development. However, as the setting of the scene at the beginning echoes the opening of Sannazaro’s Arcadia, so the last book correspondingly closes with a ‘Belardo a la Çampoña’ echoing Sannazaro’s concluding ‘A la Sampogna’ – Belardo, echoing Sannazaro’s Sincero in his work, is Lope de Vega’s own figure in the metachronic mirror theatre that is this Arcadia.

3 18 The plot concerns troth, as in other romances, as in Lope’s plays, but

this one (as also happens in Lope’s plays) has no happy ending; one might say it critiques the romance’s happy ending. Just before their meeting Belisarda has a dream, in which she sees Anfriso with another girl; she is profoundly upset by this, and tells Anfriso; he reassures her, and it seems that they return to their perfect love for each other, blighted by nothing between them but externally by the will of her “padres”. “Aqui con un abraço honesto ligava Belisarda el venturoso cuello del enternecido Anfriso”|At this point Belisarda entwined the fortunate neck of the softened Anfriso with an honest embrace|, when Galafron and Leriano are heard singing – with praise of Belisarda, although these are lesser lovers, apparently like Silvano in Montemayor and Erastro in Cervantes but actually more like Garinder in Amadis de Grèce – the source of future trouble. Isabella then sings an ominous song, with lines such as “No diga que ama,/ Quien ama sin celos”, “No ay fuerça amor,/ que el tiempo no acabe”, and “Porque el desengaño,/ Me ha de dar la vida”|Let him not say he loves who loves without jealousy; Love has no force that time does not end; Because it is disillusion, that will give me life|. She converses of love with further characters, but is interrupted by the incursion of “Celio il loco”, Celio driven mad by the marriage of his beloved to another; he is accompanied by a group

17 I am grateful to José Luis Colomer for helping me with this far from easy passage. Ducks rather than sheep, led around by Belisa, had figured in Lope’s earlier pastoral play El Ganso de Oro (see further Chapter 11 §15). For the theme of jealousy in this period, there is Steve Wagschal, The Literature of Jealousy in the Age of Cervantes, Columbia, mo, 2007, but its pastoral manifestations hardly feature in his discussion. On Lope’s Arcadia and its relation to Sannazaro’s work see Michele Ricciardelli, L’Arcadia di J. Sannazaro e di Lope de Vega, Naples 1966.

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of artist shepherds – including Tirsi, Benalcio “il sabio matematico”|the sage astrologer| and Cardenio el Rustico, “cuyos donayres e inocencias se celebravan per unices”|whose charm and innocence were famous as unique|– who manage to restrain him. These no doubt could be deciphered as figures of Lope’s acquaintance. During this episode, Naturaleza (dico Benalcio) nos da el llato per la primera leccion de nuestra miseria, y entonces, sin que se entienda, lloramos de secreto las ansias, trabajos, penas, y persecuciones que nos esperan. O lagrimes, que bien os llaman sangre blanca del coraçon, quando soys verdaderas Nature, said Benalcio, gives us weeping as the first lesson of our misery, and then, without understanding, we weep for the anxieties, travail, pains and persecutions that await us. Tears, you are well said to be the white blood of the heart, when you are true.

After this acknowledgement of life’s carmen bucolicum elegiacum, a song on the happiness of simple rural life concludes the first book.

3 19

Because Galafron has spread scandalous rumours, the “padres” of Anfriso decide that he must leave the village for a while. He declares to Belisarda, Bien pensé que en llegando al triste passo, en que agora me veo, los ojos se hizieran fuentes, un mar el pecho, un hielo el coraçón, y un sueño los sentidos, y que todo transformado en el dolor de ver presente la gloria che tan presto non podre ver: el alma desanudára los lazos miserabiles deste afligado cuerpo, y que a los ojos de la causa de mis bienes, hizieran fin mis males. Pero es tan poderosa la luz, con que tu objeto bivifica mi enferma vida, que los ojos, que avian de llorar, mientras te veen se alegran, y el alma, que sintiendo perderte, avia de desamparar esta carcel, anima descansadamente el cuerpo, que en presencia di tu gloria non puede penar, porque la imaginacion del mal por venir, apenas le puede vencer I thought that on arriving at the sad pass at which I now find myself, my eyes would become fountains, my chest a sea, my heart a block of ice, my senses a dream, and that all transformed in the pain of seeing present the glory that so soon I would not be able to see, my soul would strip away the miserable bonds of this afflicted body, and that before the eyes that had been the cause of my happiness my ills would be put to an end. However, the light with which your actuality vivifies my weak soul is so powerful that those eyes that should have been weeping are happy while they see you and the soul which, on feeling your loss, should have quitted

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this prison freshly animates my body, which in the presence of your glory cannot feel pain, because the imagination of the evil to come can scarcely conquer it.

This specious but brilliant rhetoric enables Anfriso finally to depart. Silvio sings a disperata that further saddens him, said to have been written by “un pastor de Taxo” – Belardo (Lope’s persona) – whom no friend ever helped in any way and whom no enemy failed to persecute in every one. Galafron and Leriado make holiday, near a temple, el tempio de la silvestre diosa|the temple of the woodland goddess|(recalling that of Pan in Sannazaro), with decorations including “la historia de Siringa, y el cornigero Pan, tan biva, que parecia a los ojos de quien la mirava, que el Satiro sin duda la alcanzara”|the story of Syrinx and horned Pan, so vivid, that it seemed to the eyes of those who looked on it that the satyr would without doubt reach her| (recalling the irony of Sannazaro’s descriptions of the paintings of his temple: see Chapter 6 §24). A sacrifice is duly held, and the celebrants settle down for the night, Tirsi taking the opportunity to discourse on the stories painted on the walls, “ya declarando las mal entendidas, ya encareciendo los unicos pinzeles”|now explaining things difficult to understand, now praising the unique brushes [artists] responsible|. Belisarda, meanwhile, remains unconsolable, but Leonisa requests a discussion of “celos”. Then Gaseno tells Lidia her beauty is lost, you should have used it when you had it; Celso attacks cosmetics; Danteo delivers misogynistic spite. Before leaving the temple Benalcio’s troupe find three tombs of future heroes, Don Gonzales Hiron, the Marqués de Santa Cruz and the Duque de Alva: the Arcadian Benalcio “Admirava el artificio y nuevo labor de los tres sepulcros, tanto como que siendo españoles, estuviessen en region tan apartada de la suya, pero a donde no llegarà el nombre de tan famosos varones illustres …”|admired the skill and workmanship of the three tombs, as much because, being Spanish, they stood in a region so far from his own, but where would the name of such famous and illustrious heroes not reach?|. Meanwhile Belisarda returns home, where her father suggests they go to claim an inheritance in Cilene, which pleases her: first she goes off to her favourite pine and addresses the woods, finding a letter in her bag from Anfriso. Galafron and Leriano discuss life in a stilted exercise in sdrucciole verse; Anfriso in his exile is kept informed; Olimpio despairs of his love for Isabella and sets off for Cilene also – ending Book II.

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3 20 Book III opens with a double sestine, that standard Petrarchan/ Sannazaran pastoral exercise, “Amargas horas de los dulces dias”|Bitter hours of sweet days|, by Anfriso: he begins to feel jealousy. Taking out an old letter from Belisarda, he also contemplates her miniature, which gives rise to its comparison and reflection on the image of her in his soul. Learning of her removal to Cilene, he goes to find her there in disguise; there is discussion in the group formed there of the nature of beauty and there is poetry on faith and on love and jealousy (in which sighs are described as the letters that lovers write to one another when they are together). Unfortunately Belisarda’s father decides that this has to come to an end, for fear of scandal. Anfriso, in despair, wanders into the wilderness, until during a thunderstorm he is given shelter by the magician Dardanio: he tells him his story and that he intends to go to fight in the wars of the “Caesars” in Italy: this occasions Dardanio’s exposition of a gallery of statues of heroes both old and unborn. He then offers Anfriso what he most wants, which is, alas, to sneak a look at Belisarda: Dardanio flies him to Cilene, where he witnesses, unseen, Belisarda at length yielding to Olimpio’s insistence that she give him a token. Anfriso would break in but Dardanio whisks him off, a changed man: he returns home, where he surprises all by showing signs of being free (“desenfado”). Taking counsel with Silvio, Anfriso decides that, to take revenge on Belisarda and his enemies he will court Anarda, and duly “se transformava in ella”|he ‘transformed’ himself in her|(the high Neoplatonic concept being reduced to a specious deceit). There is a gathering of Benalcio’s crew, who are each to perform two fables, one prose and a riddle, and together “representar una Egloga” – clearly a courtly conceit directed at the Duke of Alva: Lucindo and Montano together love Albania (thus a pastoral within a pastoral). More compositions follow, and by the time they retire Anarda believes that Anfriso loves her. 3 21 Belisarda returns, to discover Anfriso’s unfaithfulness, against which

she rails; she believes that he has given Anarda her letters, and that Anfriso’s and Anarda’s flocks have got mixed up. Companions fail to mitigate the jealousy of either party. Anfriso and Belisarda meet, pretending not to see each other, and hide: the author comments: “O amor, y qual estan aqui los cuerpos escondidos, y los pensamientos descubiertos; tanto pueden unos zelos, y una desesperacion amorosa”|O Love, and how do they stand now, with bodies hidden and thoughts laid bare; so much can be achieved by a few suspicions, and amorous desperation|. The author is malign. Anarda is not happy, either: she remarks to Anfriso that, for women, confessing to being in love is

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a bigger thing than being in love, for it is the end of their “verguenza”, of their chastity or honour. When Olimpio is greeted warmly by Belisarda, “lo que Anfriso sentia, no me pidais que lo rifiera pastores di Mançaneres”|what Anfriso felt, do not ask me to repeat, shepherds of Mançaneres [the river in Madrid whence Lope de Vega came]|; he also asks them to consider that Belisarda loved more truly, as women may do, outmatching men: “… aunque muger, tenelda por una, de las que con firmeza amaran, que ya sabeis que quando quieren con verdad, nos hazen ventaja, bien que esto es pocas vezes”|though a woman, believe her to be one of those who loved with constancy, because you already know that, when they love truly, they [women] have the advantage over us [men], even if this is not very often|. Especially given that the address is to ‘shepherds’ of Madrid, this is surely a reference to Lope’s own escapades. There are exchanges, getting quite bitchy, between Leonisa and Belisarda and Anarda; Anarda on leaving, leaping a stream, shows a leg, “que es muy de zelosos agradar mas el competidor, que non los mismos oyos que se ama”|because it is typical of the jealous to please the competitor rather than the eyes of the one who they actually love|. Belisarda walks off with Olimpio; Anfriso is maddened, bounding up the mountain, tearing up trees like another Orlando (Furioso) and singing a song entitled ‘Anfriso desesperado’; he is bound by el Rustico and others and eventually comes to his senses: they recommend that he visit Polinesta, the most famous sorceress of Arcadia. Meanwhile Belisarda (for women, the author declaims, once decided can act very quickly) decides to marry as her “padres” command: “Oyd selves, oyd cosa tan nueva, y espantosa … Belisarda se casa per zelos”|Hear, woods, hear this terrible unheard of thing … Belisarda is marrying out of jealousy| – but the author declares her “desculpada”|not to be blamed|. Anfriso has his first consultation with Polinesta: she explains she is not going to use art or magic but teach him “artes liberales, cuya honesta ocupacion, divierta de manera tu fatigada memoria, que no te acuerdes si en tu vida viste a Belisarda”|the liberal arts, in which the honest occupation will divert your tired memory so that that you do not remember that you ever set eyes on Belisarda|. This she will proceed to do in the fifth and last book. The present book is concluded with a series of pageants organized in celebration of the wedding, elaborately described, and climaxing in a thunderstorm so well timed it might have been staged …. Anfriso retires to his “choça”|hut|, “la corporal salud, derrivada de una mortal melancolia”|his bodily health prostrated by a mortal melancholy|. The next day he and Belisarda meet, he weeps, she upbraids his womanliness; after further altercation, they exchange pathetically:

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Es possible (dixo Anfriso) Belisarda mia, che no amavas a Olimpio, y que por desesperacion de verme con Anarda, te has casado con Salicio. Es possible ingrato (respondio Belisarda) que creyendo que favorecia a Olimpio, fingeste amar a Anarda, y diste ocasion a mi vergança, para que aceleradamente me casasse con Salicio. Cayeron los dos amantes en este punto en su engaño, y cayeronseles tambien infinitas lagrimas de los ojos: fue tanto su sentimiento, que no es possible, pastores del Tajo, poder escriverosle, presumo que os embiara su relacion en verso Albanio desde el Tormes …. Fue forçado dividerse los cuerpos, dexando juntas las almas … porque ya venia Salicio en busca de Belisarda, y Frondoso di Anfriso Is it possible, said Anfriso, my Belisarda, that you did not love Olimpio, and that out of desperation in seeing me with Anarda you married Salicio? Is it possible, heartless one, replied Belisarda, that, believing that I favoured Olimpio, you pretended to love Anarda, and gave cause to my honesty that I should rapidly marry Salicio? The two lovers at this point realised their misunderstanding, and there fell also from their eyes infinite tears: such was their feeling, that it is not possible, shepherds of the Tagus, to be able to describe it to you, I presume that Albanio [Alva] will send you his account in verse from Tormes …. They were forced to divide their bodies, leaving their souls conjoined … because Salicio was already coming in search of Belisarda, and Frondoso of Anfriso [to take him to Polinesta],

where he will be instructed. In this last book he is ready to move to “el templo santo de desengaño”|the holy temple of disillusion|. As Anfriso is enabled by this means almost to forget Belisarda’s name, so the author expects that his shepherd audience will hear him sing “no pensamientos de pastores groseros sino empresas de capitanes illustres”|not the thoughts of gross shepherds but the feats of illustrious captains|. Anfriso declares verses announcing himself an “exemplo”. Belardo addresses his “çampoña”|pipe|, swiping at “las academias de cortesanos sutiles”|the academies of subtle courtiers|that it cannot join, “donde el ornamento del hablar casto, desprecia la utilidad de sentencia”|where the ornament of the polished speech disdains the utility of the meaning|, and claiming it cannot be as miserable as he is. The last word goes to “Celia”, his own mistress, who (picking up the theme of the prologue) accuses him of hiding his own loves under the false pains of ‘others’: Estime Belisarda tus memorias, Y tus concetos su pastor gallardo, Oygate el mundo a ti, y amor castigue Belisarda appreciated your record [of her] and her gallant shepherd your ideas [for him] The world listens to you, and love punishes. 

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3 22 Tame stuff compared to these predecessors, but Christobal Suarez de Figueroa’s La constante Amarilis of 1609 enjoyed a certain reputation and might claim better than these others to typify the pastoral romance. Everything is lovely. It opens indeed with a paraphrase of the description of the clearing with which Sannazaro’s Arcadia unfolds, though it is set three leagues from Madrid. The mayoral of the shepherds of the district – a fairly considerable list, each of them paired off with a shepherdess – is Menandro, chafing with prudence at waiting to marry his ‘constant’ Amarilis. Beside him is the wise Clarisio, who has been a soldier and a courtier, and is frequently called upon to discourse, for example on poetry. The book presents a panoply of clichés: the combined Spanish and French edition of 1614 even lists them in the prelims – among them (given only in French) “… Proprietez de l’eau; Excellence de la femme; Desespoir amoreus; Contemplation sur l’incertitude de notre vie; Mépris de la vie de la Cour …; Du siecle d’or …”|The properties of water; the excellence of woman; a lover’s despair; contemplation on the uncertainty of our life; disdain for the life of the court; the Golden Age|. The Golden Age is not their present one, to which there has been a decline over the ages, perhaps because of mingling with cities (a sentiment expressed in Tasso’s Aminta). Woman, in the climax of the book (Menandro at last possessing his Amarilis), is upheld as a creation making evident the existence of God. 3 23

Sidney’s (much earlier) Arcadia is by contrast dystopic. Though it starts off as if it were a pastoral, even in its first version it is not by most standards a pastoral romance. As other pastoral romances veer easily into the chivalric, so this is a chivalric one dabbling with the pastoral. In the second version, ‘the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia’, it is even less pastoral. While the first version is remarkable for the punctilio with which the plot is concluded, the second version, unfinished at Sidney’s death, introduces a series of events and characters who remain errant – even in the transition provided posthumously to link the new first part to the old second part – and, even further than the first, exercises a range of argument significantly exceeding the more limited debates of the school of love. Having been both written and rewritten without influence from any other pastoral romance except perhaps Montemayor’s (for Sidney’s dependence on Sannazaro see below) it shares only so much common ground with the general pastoral 22 La Constante Amarilis. Prosas y versos De Christoval Suarez de Figueroa … Valencia 1609; a dual French and Spanish edition appeared in Lyon in 1614, and the romance was among the three Spanish romances noted in Guillaume Colletet, Discours du poëme bucolique, où il est traitté, de l’eclogue, de l’idyle, et de la bergerie, Paris 1657 (the others being Montemayor’s and Lope de Vega’s).

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vogue of its age – for all that Sidney himself was honoured posthumously as a ‘shepherd’ poet inhabiting an “Arcady” in such works as Spenser’s ‘Astrophel’, and his house, Penshurst in Kent, became a kind of pastoral meme. Not least, his Arcadia is not a manifestation of amor vuol fé or of its related celos. Two princes (who are not shepherds!) love two princesses and gain them in due course; they do not have to demonstrate their faith. Indeed at the end of the third book Pyrocles possesses Philoclea (in the first version); in the rest of the plot he has only to get away with it. However, while neither Pyrocles nor his companion Musidorus are paragons of virtue, the women they pursue, Philoclea and Pamela, are (and the book is addressed to female readers). There is a characterology alien to pastoral – for example in the adulterous lusts of the older characters (who seem better to belong to tragedy, especially Gynecia) – Basilius’s for Pyrocles in his feminine manifestation and his wife Gynecia’s for him in the masculine; even though mocking lustfulness in the aged can be a theme in Italian pastoral, these figures are unusually grotesque, and Gynecia recalls, for instance, Phaedra. But in another respect Sidney’s Arcadia could be seen as ‘pastoral’ in contrast to other romances, in being regarded as a kind of allegory (his own discussion of pastoral in his Defence of Poetry might encourage this view; guesses were made as to the persons enciphered), though it is unlikely to have been intended as one (see further Chapter 18 §16).

3 24 While there can be no doubt that Sidney knew Sannazaro’s Arcadia

(but to what degree had he read it?), it is equally clear that he imitated it only superficially or, perhaps more exactly, that he determined to give his modern Hellenistic romance the setting that Sannazaro had conveniently created – convenient because it offered the opportunity for poetry – the ‘Eclogues’ – and for rhetorical, even virtually legal, discussion. He began in the same way (in the first version), with an ‘est locus’ description (for which see Chapter 2 §15, and further 11 §3, 4) and he punctuated his succeeding prose narrative with a series of ‘eclogues’, but that prose narrative, with its trailing eclogues, was divided into five “books or acts”, announcing a drama or tragi-comedy, and the eclogues themselves have little to do with Sannazaro’s, looking to other lyric forms and material. However, each of the sets of eclogues with which the “books or acts” conclude (except the fifth, for which they are nonetheless announced) is in itself a little Sannazaran 23 Sir Philip Sidney, The Old Arcadia, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones, Oxford (1985) 1999; Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, ed. Maurice Evans, Harmondsworth (1977) 1987.

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‘Arcadia’, composed of transitional prose between exercises in verse forms and involving characters who happen simply to be there or to be passing, including a figure of the author. The actors of the books or acts to which the eclogues are appended look into these performances only as spectators, not themselves being shepherds – with the partial exception of Musidorus when disguised as a shepherd (the other hero, Pyrocles, is disguised as a girl). Like Sannazaro’s own metachrononym in his Arcadia, Philisides, Philip Sidney’s in his, is deep in grief for love: before being called to recite he had “neither danced nor sung with them, and had all this time lain upon the ground at the foot of a cypress tree, leaning on his elbow, with so deep a melancholy that his senses carried to his mind no delight from any of their objects” (recalling Ergasto’s carmen bucolicum elegiacum when he first appears in Sannazaro).

3 25 Perhaps rather typical of Sidney’s interests in the first Arcadia is the episode at the end of the first book when the company is disturbed by the onrush of a couple of wild beasts. It was, indeed, a place of great delight, for through the midst of it there ran a sweet brook which did both hold the eye open with her beautiful streams and close the eye with the sweet purling noise it made upon the pebble-stones it ran over; the meadow itself yielding so liberally all sorts of flowers that it seemed to nourish a contention betwixt the colour and the smell whether in his kind were the more delightful …. In most part of which trees there had been framed by art such pleasant arbours that it became a gallery aloft, from one tree to the other, almost round about, which below yielded a perfect shadow, in those hot countries counted a great pleasure. In this place, under one of the trees, the ladies sat down, inquiring many questions of young Dorus [Musidorus] …. Dorus, keeping his eye still upon the princess Pamela, answered with such a trembling voice and abashed countenance, and oftentimes so far from the matter, that it was 24 On the sources of the Arcadia, see Samuel Lee Wolff, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, New York 1912; Walter R. Davis and Richard A. Lanham, Sidney’s Arcadia, New Haven and London 1965, with other earlier bibliography. On the figures of Claius and Strephon, see Katherine Duncan-Jones, ‘Sidney’s Urania’, The Review of English Studies, new series, vol. 17, no. 66, May 1966, pp. 123–32. ‘Urania’ might refer to Sidney’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, since Spenser so refers to her in his lament for ‘Astrophel’, and so does Mary Wroth in her Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (for which see mention in Chapter 18 §16). The very considerable literature around Sidney’s Arcadia need not be listed here, but see the further discussion of its ‘message’ in Chapter 18 §16.

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some sport to the ladies, thinking that it had been want of education which made him so discountenanced with unwonted presence. But Cleophila [Pyrocles] (that saw in him the glass of her [his] own misery), taking the fair hand of Philoclea, and with more than womanish ardency kissing it, began to say these words: ‘O love, since thou art so changeable in men’s estates, how art thou so constant in their torments?’ – when suddenly there came out of the wood a monstrous lion, with a she-bear of little less fierceness, which, having been hunted in forests far off, had by chance come to this place where such beasts had never before been seen …. There might one have seen at one instant all sorts of passions lively painted out in the young lovers’ faces – an extremity of love shining in their eyes; fear for their mistresses; assured hope in their own virtue; anger against the beasts; joy that occasion employed their service; sorrow to see their ladies in agony. For, indeed, the sweet Philoclea no sooner espied the ravenous lion but that, opening her arms, she fell so right upon the breast of Cleophila, sitting by her, that their faces at unawares closed together, which so transported all whatsoever Cleophila was that she gave leisure to the lion to come very near them before she rid herself from the dear arms of Philoclea …. But Cleophila, seeing how greedily the lion went after the prey she herself so much desired, it seemed all her spirits were kindled with an unwonted fire …. But therewithal he [the lion] fell down, and gave Cleophila leisure to take off his head to carry it for a present to her lady Philoclea, who all this while, not knowing what was done behind her, kept on her course, as Arethusa when she ran from Alpheus, her light nymphlike apparel being carried up by the wind, that much of those beauties she would at another time have willingly hidden were presented to the eye of the twice-wounded Cleophila; which made Cleophila not follow her over hastily lest she should too soon deprive herself of that pleasure.

In the second version he makes some improvements to the description of the meadow (removing the unoriginal “contention betwixt the colour and the smell whether in his kind were the more delightful”), adds after “counted a great pleasure” the more Baroque “a pleasant refuge then from the choleric look of Phoebus”, eliminates such faults as the repetition of “gave leisure”, but above all better concentrates and directs the narrative – notably regarding the awareness of Gynecia that Pyrocles is male beneath his disguise – which means discarding the whole passage beginning, “There might one have seen at one instant all sorts of passions lively painted out in the young lovers’ faces …”. For the later Sidney it seems to have been too 

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glib and quick: it has nothing of psychology, or of internal development, rather freezing the action and introducing distancing external comment. It was too much a vignette and too little organic. Perhaps most significantly, the lion and bear in the first Arcadia (whose attack was borrowed perhaps from Jorge Montemayor’s earlier pastoral romance Diana and is certainly what we would call ‘unlikely’) turn out in the second Arcadia to have been released by a new character, Cecropia, either accidentally or on purpose …. increasing verisimilitude.

3 26 Thus the epic that is the revised Arcadia contains only pastoral bits

or aspects, while the greater bulk of the main story makes the eclogues at the end of each book seem now redundant appendices (it is not clear what Sidney intended to do with them; they are much changed around from the first version and perhaps should not be there at all). And yet, even over and above the more strictly pastoral elements, the Arcadia has a number of motifs in common with pastoral romance – its climax of mistaken identity in a grotto, as in Ferrarese pastoral (already before Tasso and Guarini); its crossdressing, as in Montemayor, also in Guarino, and later in Honoré d’Urfé’s Astrée. Its beginning (in the revised version) with the lament of the shepherds Claius and Strephon for their dismissal by their beloved Urania is specifically pastoral because they are shepherds, but both her reported departure and their departure from the book – though it must have been intended that they should return – indicate its distance from high-mindedness and the sublunary nature of its actual characters and goings-on. The influence of mainstream romance, whether Greek (such as Heliodorus’s Aethiopica – the violently in medias res opening of the revised version immediately suggests the catastrophic scene opening the Aethiopica) or more recent (such as Amadis de Gaule, especially Book IX) is evident, not least in the detached narration, for all that the author sometimes addresses his female readers in the vocative. Honoré d’Urfé, by contrast, holds down his plots and subplots, like Montemayor, to his central group of of gossiping shepherds (whom alone he describes) by having them meet others who serve to digress or expand the story. Had Sidney written rather later, it seems unlikely he would have wanted to christen his novel ‘Arcadia’, since the Italian conception would have had greater force (see Chapter 11).

3 27 Other Elizabethan romances were not much more consistently or coherently pastoral (in the way of Cervantes’s Galatea or d’Urfé’s Astrée). Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde (1590), for example, neither by its proper title, 

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‘Euphues’s Golden Legacy’, nor by its opening, could be taken to be a pastoral romance, even though a central pastoral interlude takes over most of the chivalric text. Even within that text it is more than usually preoccupied with country life as the converse of the court, an issue in itself (see above §1 and Chapter 12, especially §4, 5 and 14) congruent but not to be confused with pastoral. On the death of John of Bordeaux his eldest son, Saladyne, humbles and expropriates his two younger brothers, Rosader and Fernandyne; he would even have Rosader killed by a wrestler whom he manoeuvres him to challenge. Thanks to his vision of Rosalynde, however, the daughter of the deposed Gerismond, Rosader is inspired to overcome the wrestler; Rosalynde is equally smitten with Rosader. Torismond, Gerismond’s usurper, takes against the affection Rosalynde inspires not only in Rosader, and banishes her; his own daughter Alinda opts to follow her into exile. After finding the verses of a shepherd, Montanus, “graven” on a tree bewailing his love, they find themselves in a clearing where two shepherds sit on ground “diapered with Flora’s riches”, etc., and from his companion Corydon buy a farm (which he “tills”) and a flock, Alinda/Aliena “meaning to live low, and content me with a country life; for I have heard the swains say, that they drunk without suspicion, and slept without care”. Indeed Corydon confirms that Here, mistress, shall not fortune thwart you, but in mean misfortunes, as the loss of a few sheep, which, as it breeds no beggary, so it can be no extreme prejudice: the next year may mend all with a fresh increase. Envy stirs not us, we covet not to climb, our desires mount not above our degrees, nor our thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot harbour in our cottages, nor do our homely couches know broken slumbers: as we exceed not in diet, so we have enough to satisfy: and, mistress, I have so much Latin, Satis est quod sufficit |Enough is enough|.

For his part the shepherd Montanus is recognizably a bourgeois (he is rich) Neoplatonic lover, entirely selfless (much after the Italian model), and Phoebe, though now more bodily, the unyielding mistress of Petrarchan lament; but Corydon is not only rustic (in accordance with his Virgilian label), but actually a countryman, and remains one even at the end of the romance, when Rosader marries Rosalynde and becomes the restored Gerismond’s heir. Saladyne marries Alinda and Phoebe marries Montanus (having promised as much when beguiled by Rosalynde, with whom she had meanwhile become enamoured while she was disguised as a boy, ‘Ganymede’ – because she has felt love’s pangs herself Phoebe is able to take pity on Montanus). Corydon becomes, or remains, “master of Alinda’s flocks”. Although in changing their

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costume and unfolding and folding their sheep morning and night (which otherwise Corydon has to look after; they do this only “for pleasure sake”) Alinda/Aliena and Rosalynde/Ganymede are acting out pastoral decorum, Corydon is truly a rustic. He is truly a rustic just as the nobles are truly nobles, for example at the end when “Corydon came in with a fair mazer full of cider, and presented it to Gerismond with such a clownish salute that he began to smile, and took it of the old shepherd very kindly”; and Corydon concludes the ceremonies with a proper rustic ditty, A blithe and bonny country lass, heigh ho! the bonny lass …

in which “a smicker boy, a lither swain” “his arms about her body twined”.

3 28 Telling a good story, introducing to good effect proverbs and phrases

that have occasionally since stuck in the language – “repent at leisure”; “Faint heart never won fair lady” – Lodge’s romance is more colloquial than its allegiance to ‘Euphues’ might suggest. He makes both ironic and sentimental play with the contrast between court and shepherdry on which he so insists, summing up the conceit of ‘shepherd’ love (that it is genuine, and has no conceit; that it is constant) in the teasing words of Aliena to Saladyne (who does not know that she is a princess who has resolved to “live quiet, unknown, and contented”): as Alinda explains, But sir, our country loves are not like your courtly fancies, nor is our wooing like your suing; for poor shepherds never plain them till love pain them, where the courtier’s eyes is full of passions, when his heart is most free from affection … we here love one and live to that one so long as life can maintain love, using few ceremonies because we know few subtleties, and little eloquence for that we lightly account of flattery; only faith and troth, that’s shepherd’s wooing; and, sir, how like you of this?’ ‘So,’ quoth Saladyne, ‘as I could tie myself to such love.’ ‘What, and look so low as a shepherdess, being the son of Sir John of Bordeaux? Such desires were a disgrace to your honours.’

27 Lodge/Greg, “Flora’s riches” p. 39; quotations pp. 37, 47, 150, 161. See Chaudhuri 1989, pp. 309–11. Chaudhuri recognizes Lodge’s innovations, which he regards primarily as the more successful fulfilment than achieved by others of his “cyclic” understanding of pastoral, as a reversion from court to country and vice versa. In my view, as stated above in the note to §1, Lodge makes particular and individual weather of this contrast (see also §28), which is by no means so essential to pastoral (as supposed by many others as well): see further Chapter 12 §13.

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The marriages are duly made, and thereafter, for “Corydon had made all things in readiness”, “homely cheer they had, such as their country could afford, but to mend their fare they had mickle good chat, and many discourses of their love and fortunes”; his song follows; then in a very few pages the story is wrapped up, everything being returned to its original, natural order.

3 29 Another English work that shows pastoral handled in comparatively straightforward fashion is Robert Greene’s Pandosto, not itself a pastoral but incorporating a large pastoral incident in which the prince Dorastus woos the shepherdess Fawnia, herself a princess, but cast away and brought up by a shepherd. Dorastus, making no headway against her modesty and chastity (she is “content” in her way of life, despite her stirring feelings), resolves (in the pattern set by Florisel in Amadis de Gaule IX) to court her as a shepherd: “Well said Dorastus [to himself], thou keepest a right decorum, base desires and homely attires: thy thoughtes are fit for none but a shepheard, and thy apparel such as only become a shepheard … he made himself a shepheard’s coate, that he might go unknown.” Like Lodge’s Rosalynde, Greene’s Pandosto was written in the 1580s, before the publication of (the Countess of Pembroke’s) Arcadia, and seemingly without knowledge of Sidney’s work as it circulated in manuscript. It is clear, however, that Greene subsequently wrote his Menaphon not only with knowledge of Sidney but to some degree in reaction to it, and its subtitle, Camilla’s Alarm to Slumbering Euphues, in his Melancholy Cell at Silexedra, with reference to Lyly’s character Euphues, is misleading; more to the point is a second subtitle, at the beginning of the book itself after the metatexts, Arcadia: The Reports of the Shepherds. Greene presents an Arcadia similar to Sidney’s, or rather the same Arcadia at a different time, ruled by a different king, with a different set of personages, implicitly opposed to his but not dissimilar in their disorder. In narrating the exploits of the child Pleusidippus, tyrannizing his peers and therefore said to be showing signs of his innate suitability as ruler (this is Sidneyesque dystopia), he breaks off to refer to “the annals of the Arcadians that dilate not a little of this ingenious argument”; and again with reference to Pleusidippus, “Much other circumstance of prattle passed between them, which the Arcadian records do not show, nor I remember”: evidently the records are the records of Pleusidippus, who at the end of the book becomes heir to throne of Arcadia. Thus Greene with the bizarre turns of his own plot and characters meant to recall Sidney (or perhaps replicate his success by writing in a similar vein, though in an easier, lighter tone: 

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“temperatum dicendi genus” Thomas Nashe calls it in his preface, accurately or inaccurately, but showing consciousness of the issue).

3 30 Menaphon, though “chief

shepherd” to the king, Democles, is clearly aiming above his station in falling in love with the noble Sephestia, who is shipwrecked with her baby son one day on his shore. This is immediately clear from his range of comparison: “He noted her tresses which he compared to the colored hyacinth of Arcadia …”. Or, in another way, after soliloquizing his passion, he “took a sound nap, sleeping out fancy with a good slumber” and the next day, for all his malaise, “went roundly to his breakfast”. Or again, when his sister Carmela offers Menaphon in his dumps a posset, and he in his pain refuses it, they become still more comic: “To be short, she blubbered and he sighed, and his men, that came in and saw their master with a kercher on his head, mourned”. The gradations of birth are inviolable, as Sephestia tells Menaphon: “‘Hath love, then, respect of circumstance?’ ‘Else it is not love but lust. For where the parties have no sympathy of estates, there can be no firm love fixed’” (essentially, no faith). And this is notwithstanding her more than once declaring her “content” in her role as shepherdess. When Sephestia comes across Melicertus, moreover, who similarly has taken up shepherd garb, but is of the same status (indeed he is actually her lost husband), she is not deceived: “But his face is not inchased with any rustic proportion. His brows contain the characters of nobility … his voice is pleasing, his wit full of gentry.” Again, Melicertus and Menaphon vie in poetry, but Melicertus is the clear winner. Greene also takes on from Sidney for his plot, which involves Democles (her father), Melicertus (her husband), Menaphon and Pleusidippus (her son) all enamoured of Sephestia, happily resolved by exposition of the oracle with which the romance began; by contrast, he extends his happy ending to the unaristocratic, Menaphon becoming reconciled to his earlier love, in his own class, Pesana, and also the good Doron marries Carmela (for their affair see Chapter 10 §12).

29 Greene/Grosart, IV, pp. 225–337, Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, quotations at pp. 282 and 287. Robert Greene, Menaphon …, ed. Brenda Cantar, Ottawa 1996; reference to “annals” on p. 136 of her edition and “records” on p. 153. See Chauduri 1989, p. 308, on Menaphon: “Pastoral becomes the organizing principle of the work” (not exactly how I would put it). But as the following paragraph makes clear I do not agree with his claim that “The shepherds set out by speaking as fine euphuism as the courtiers; but they descend to a rustic crudity treated with condescension if not contempt”. See also below, Chapter 10 §12, 13 for indications of sympathy for the peasant figures. 30 Quotations from Greene/Cantar, pp. 106, iii, 109, 114, 157–63, 174.

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3 31 Before writing L’Astrée, Honoré d’Urfé had reworked Montemayor’s

Diana in a pastoral poem, Le Sereine (1596), and was later (but first in 1669, it seems) said himself to have been in love with the woman, called Diane, whom his elder brother had married by arrangement. Indeed on his brother’s death he married her, but this was quite some time after, and may just as well have been in order to retain her part of their estate. On the other hand Montemayor had claimed his own Diana to be a story of “muy diversas hystorias de casos que verdaderamente an sucedido, aunque van disfraçados debaxo de nombres y estilo pastoril”|“divers histories of accidents, that have truly happened, even though disguised beneath pastoral names and style|, and the habit of reading realities into romances was still strong in the seventeenth century (see in particular Chapter 18 §28). D’Urfé, too, sets his Astrée in his own native region, accurately mapped and enthusiastically appreciated. His protagonists, however, meet at a fountain beneath sycamore trees – the very same sort of trees as in the Diana. As in the Diana, all things else spin out from this central point of departure – all the stories that the protagonists tell one another or overhear from one another, their own love affairs and those of others, encompassing the broad wide world and all its kings and queens and states and wars. The river Lignon and the region of Forez are central also to the plot, since it is here, in this place that might otherwise be of little interest to the great world, that the Fountain of Love is located, the Fountain of Love that (recalling Guarino’s oracle and curse) has been rendered inaccessible after a broken troth except that it should be approached by the most constant lover and loving beloved there has ever been – Céladon and Astrée. Although, unlike the Diana, the Astrée is set not implicitly in the present but in a Gaul of the late Roman Empire or early Dark Ages, with a Druid priesthood, it is equally a parallel ‘world’ (to borrow the term from Shakespeare’s As You Like It [see Chapter 13 §13, 14]), being topographically and in other ways identical to d’Urfé’s France (the convent of nuns at his local village of Bonlieu appears instead as a college of Vestals; there is a battle around Calais; and so on).

31 D’Urfé/Vaganay; Honoré d’Urfé, L’Astrée, textes choisis, ed. Jean Lafond, Paris (1984), 2nd edn, ­revised, 2007. See also Chaudhuri 1989, ch. 14, pp. 272–80; Sarant 2005 [I], passim, and for a resumé and index of characters, pp. 250–306; [IV] a catalogue of illustrations in various media; and again for texts, resumé, further discussion see https://astree.tufts.edu. D’Urfé’s love for his brother’s wife seems to be a tale elaborated by Pierre Daniel Huet in his ‘Traité sur l’origine des romans’, published in 1669 (ed. F. Gégou, Paris 1971, at p. 147); see Sarant 2005, [I], p. 159, referring also to a letter Huet had earlier written to Mme de Scudéry (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Mss. fr. 15191, ff. 78–79.

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3 32 In all the Astrée contains subplots that proliferate like polyps and a bewildering number of characters – Céladon, Célidée, Calidon, Célion, Cléon (this last a girl, as also Célidée; the others boys, though Céladon spends not far short of half the action dressed as a girl, bearing the name Alexis); Lycidas, Lydias, Ligdamon (the latter two looking so similar that each is frequently taken to be the other), Lindamor; and many, many more (with names usually of this apparently Greek derivation). It is a very large book, running to five parts (parties) each of twelve books (livres), which make five volumes ranging from just under 500 pages to more than 800 each in the 1925–28 edition by Hugues Vaganay, the only complete modern edition that there is; d’Urfé himself died two years before the publication by his secretary Balthazar Baro of the fourth Partie in 1627 (the earlier parts had been 1607, 1610, 1619), followed by Baro’s fifth part, Conclusion et Dernière Partie d’Astrée, in 1628 (history has tended to ignore the earlier alternative volumes by Robert Fouet). Each book tends to contain, at least, one substantial love story that has nothing to do with the main plot, one substantial discussion of love, and one narrative of the movements and conversations of the principal characters. Its main plot, perhaps better called its lead plot, starts from the rebuff by Astrée of her lover Céladon on the banks of the river Lignon in Forez, where they live, which rebuff, as is not explained until the twelfth book of the fourth Partie, has been caused by the calumny of Sémire, who, now about to send the two lovers to a certain death, repents, confesses and, himself dying, receives Astrée’s forgiveness. It requires another Partie, and magical intervention at the fountain of Love, both to induce Astrée to forgive Céladon’s deceit (she had forbidden him to come near her, an injunction he had scrupulously followed until persuaded by the Druid Adamas to pretend to be Alexis, who she then takes up as her boon companion; however, this was a breach of his troth) and to resolve the difficulties in the way of their companion lovers.

32 For criticism of the Vaganay edition see d’Urfé/Lafond, pp. 401, 403; also www.astree.tufts.edu, s.v. On the Astrée the classic texts of criticism are Magendie 1927 and Gaume 1977; Lafond’s edition has a modern bibliography. Among the works discussing the intersection of the Astrée with contemporary French culture are Linda Timmermans, L’acces des femmes à la culture (1598–1715), un débat d’idées de saint François de Sales à la marquise de Lambert, Paris 1993, and notably Jean-Pierre van Elslande, L’imaginaire pastoral du XVIIe siècle, Paris 1999. For plays deriving from the Astrée see Marsan 1905, pp. 313ff.; also Françoise Lavocat, ‘Playing Shepherd: Allegory, Fiction, Reality of Pastoral Games’, in Pastoral and the Humanities: Arcadia Re-inscribed, ed. Mathilde Skoie and Sonia Bjørnstad Velázquez, Exeter 2006, pp. 65–77, esp. the section ‘Literary and extra-literary games’, pp. 74–78.

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3 33 D’Urfé’s work is the greatest of all pastoral romances for a variety of reasons besides its size and its scope, encompassing everything its predecessors devised in plot or trope and more – though in its lead plot resembling the pastoral Italian play. D’Urfé consistently shows invention and ingenuity both in the stories that he has his participants enact or tell and in their extended conversations and discussions. He greatly stimulated further pastoral in France, and his work penetrated cultural discourse very widely (see here, for example, Chapter 19 §1). His language is rather jejune and repetitive, however, notably by contrast to the rich vocabulary and rhetoric arrayed by Sidney; though always courteous and in this sense contrived, elaborate, qualified, clausular, subjunctive-ridden, it is conversational and plain, and the verse to which his lovers have regular resort has no particular merit. D’Urfé nonetheless expounds and expresses a panoply of ideas of and about love. Despite the sprawl of his compass, ranging across Gaul and all Europe, the action is tightly plotted (all the more remarkable since crucial details are often revealed, like Sémire’s tale-telling, after many intervening episodes) and the entire ‘novel’ (or roman-fleuve) takes place within five months, indications of time having consistently been given. D’Urfé’s central ‘gang’ – shepherds living by the banks of the river Lignon in his native Forez, conceived as a kind of shepherd republic bordered by fiefdoms, one ruled by Galathée, who holds Céladon there before he escapes, these in turn subject to kings – contains a differentiated, though certainly schematic, characterology (no longer bearing any relation to that of Virgil’s Eclogues, however): Céladon is the perfect lover (as the twelfth book of the first Partie concludes, “Ah ! si Astrée l’eust veu en tel estat, que de joye et contentement luy eust donné la peine de son fidèle berger cognoissant par un si asseuré tesmoignage, combien elle estoit vrayement aimée du plus fidèle et du plus parfait berger de Lignon”|Ah! if Astrée had seen him in that state, how much joy and contentment would the pain of her faithful shepherd have given her by such an assured witness of the degree to which she was truly loved by the most faithful and perfect shepherd of Lignon|; Silvandre is the aristocratic philosopher of love (frequently expounding Neoplatonic ideas; these otherwise feature notably in a question and answer session on love held with the Druid Adamas: see Chapter 7 §27); Hylas, Silvandre’s frequent opponent, defies the rules of love, above all that of fidelity (he is often referred to as “l’inconstant”); Damon, his boorishness banished by love, is a perfect knight. No girl or lady, even Astrée, so clearly represents a type, though they differ in rank and (to a limited extent) beauty – with the slight exception of Stelle, indifferent to the love of Ligdamon, who 

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makes a compact of inconstancy with Hylas. Calidon is a pale shadow illustrating what Céladon is not, a perfunctory lover, who goes through the motions and the words but does not feel it. These are not characters in any psychological sense, just as nothing very much more than its topography in the Astrée is realistic: it is a world of chivalry, where, for example, all those listening felt (Partie I, Book XII) that “cette seule fille [Mélandre, who has valorously shown her devotion to her lover and is now in the hands of their enemy, Lypandas] méritait que cette grande armée allât attaquer Calais. ‘En verité’, dit Merovée [the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, no less], ‘je lairrai plutôt toutes choses en arrière que je ne fasse rendre la liberté à dame si vertueuse; aussi bien nos armées ne sauraient être mieux employées qu’au service de semblables’”|That girl alone merited that this great army should go to attack Calais. ‘In truth,’ said Merovée, ‘I would rather leave everything else behind than not attain her liberty for such a virtuous lady; just as our armies could not be better employed than in the service of such women’|.

3 34 Hylas, however, has attracted the attention of later commentators,

for the ‘modernity’of his apparent cynicism. It is perhaps significant that he can mock, criticize and spurn the values attached to love, yet still be accepted as honnête, a member of their society – indeed he makes them laugh; he is, however, only ever a foil. He hesitates for long (Partie II, Book V) to enter Céladon’s temple to Astrée – this (to explain) is a grove dedicated to Astraea, goddess of justice, that Céladon, exiled from Astrée’s presence, turns into a temple to her; it is a tour de force (see A12) – for its portal forbids any to enter there but Love’s devotees (of course it recalls the entrance of Felicia’s palace in Montemayor: §6); nevertheless he sneaks in while the others go further on and makes subverting alterations to the twelve tables of the rules of love left there by Céladon, one more trick he plays on Silvandre and his high-minded, neoplatonizing ways. One of the most piquant – especially given Céladon’s cross-dressing – of his punctures of their conceits is his incomprehension of that established mystic concept, that two lovers become one (Partie II, Book VI): “si vous disiez [says Silvandre] qu’en aymant Diane, je me transforme en elle, vous diriez fort bien. Et quoy ? dit Hylas, vous estes donc Diane ? Et vostre chapeau aussi n’est-il point changé en sa coiffure, et vostre jupe en sa robe ? – Mon chapeau, dit Silvandre, n’aime pas sa coiffure. – Mais quoy ? dit l’inconstant, vous devriez donc vous habiller en fille ….” |If you were to say that, in loving Diane,

33 On Hylas see for example, Gérard Genette, Figures 1, Paris 1966, pp. 109–23.

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I transform myself into her, you would be quite right. What, said Hylas, you are Diane, then? And your hat hasn’t changed into her hair, and your tunic into her dress? My hat, said Silvandre, does not love her hair. What? said the fickle one, you should then dress as a girl|. Everybody, as usual, laughs. Silvandre goes on to argue that it is the soul that loves the soul and so is transformed; Hylas objects that he loves the body; Silvandre claims that the body is only the instrument of the soul; “S’il est vray, dit Hylas, que le corps ne soit que l’instrument dont se sert Phillis, je vous donne Phillis, et laissez-moy le reste, et nous verrons qui sera plus content de vous ou de moy”|If it is true, said Hylas, that the body is only the instrument that Phillis uses, I give you Phillis, and leave me the rest, and we will see who will be the better off, you or me|. Besides such free discourse, there is also a certain amount of titillation – not unusually – above all when Céladon (as Alexis) spends two days and two nights in close proximity, enjoying sisterly kisses, with Astrée, but also on other occasions, for example when fair female bodies are by accident open to gaze. At the centre of the temple to Astrée stands a work of art in which two putti wrestle (see A12): these are Eros and Anteros, Love and Reciprocal Love, wrestling in an equal contest.

3 35 The Astrée has a typical ending not only in the reunion of Céladon

and Astrée but also, for instance, in the discovery that Silvandre is really the Druid Adamas’s lost son Paris, displacing the so-named Paris believed from the beginning to be Adamas’s son, and resolving anew the oracle which had declared that it was Paris that Diane must marry; Paris as we have known him, as Silvandre’s rival for Diane’s love, is discovered in his turn to be Diane’s brother (of course d’Urfé had had Diane remark as early as Partie III that she loved him only as a sister would). The salvation paradigm of Guarino’s Pastor Fido is echoed in the faithfulness of the characters being ultimately proven at the Fountain of Truth. And there persists stronger than ever the attachment to the local ribera, so that the river Lignon in Forez becomes a material vehicle of the author’s highest feelings, stemming back through Montemayor to Petrarch’s devotion to the “chiare, fresche, dolci acque” of the river Sorga as the shrine of the memory of his enamourment (see Chapter 2 §8 and above §5). Indeed, besides exalting local landscape in a way that many others were or would be doing, d’Urfé heralds the construction of landscape itself as a leading and defining constituent of pastoral, that is to say a countryside embodying the continuity of happiness remembered: see the frontispiece by Daniel Rabel to a 1632 publication of the first Partie (fig. 9.1) and the opening of Partie III (A16) in Chapter 17 §9.

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fig. 9.1 Daniel Rabel, Frontispiece to Les figures de l’Astrée de Mr d’Urfé, première partie, Paris (Melchior Tavernier), 1632

34 Robert V. Merrill, ‘Eros and Anteros’, Speculum, vol. 19, no. 3, 1944, pp. 265–84, provides classical and sixteenth-century sources, and various meanings; d’Urfé’s is fixed by the nature of the work of art he describes (without naming its figures). 35 Sarant 2005, [IV], pp. 46–47.

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3 36 Although there is much more behind the Astrée than has here been

indicated, for example the French tradition of the bergerie, un-classicizing and un-humanist, or again the tradition of the courtly love allegory, above all the Roman de la Rose (another way, in a different frame, to the base fact that amor vuol fé) it remains the case that, though Montemayor’s example was essential, d’Urfé’s prime inspiration was Italian pastoral drama, and his characters, accordingly, were and are patently actors. However, among d’Urfé’s predecessors worthy of note are not only Nicolas de Montreux’s less strictly pastoral Bergeries de Juliette (five volumes from 1585) but also Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, who sought to rouse the woods of France to the unaccustomed sound of his voice in his Foresteries of 1555 – claiming in his preface his river Orne would rival the Sicilian Arethusa, the Virgilian Mincio and the Neapolitan Sebeto. Vauquelin insists on being a country poet, a poet properly of the French forests; his foresteries are in fact a collection of short poems, culminating, however, in a passage of prose (Book II, Foresterie 9) describing a journey through a landscape whose trees are emblazoned with poems carved in their bark – in some sense a model for the ‘temple’ to Astraea adorned by Céladon with little poems (see A12). He intimates some of the strength of feeling aroused by the Astrée, expressed, many years later, in the opening eclogue of the Pastorales of Fontenelle, whom the ticklings of modernity had not yet pestered from such succulent rêveries: Quand je lis d’Amadis les faits inimitables, Tant de châteaux forcés, de Géans pourfendus, De Chevalier occis, d’Enchanteurs confondus, Je n’ai point de regret que ce soient-là des Fables. Mais quand je lis l’Astrée, où dans un doux repos L’Amour s’occupe seul de plus charmans Héros, Où l’Amour seul de leurs destins décide, Où la sagesse même a l’air si peu rigide Qu’on trouve de l’Amour un zélé partisan Jusques dans Adamas, le souverain Druide, Dieux! que je suis fâché que ce soit un Roman! J’irois vous habiter, agréable Contrée, Où je croirois que les Esprits Et de Céladon et d’Astrée Iroient encore errans, des mêmes feux épris;

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Où le charme secret, produit par leur présence, Feroit sentir à tous les cœurs Le mépris des vaines grandeurs, Et les plaisirs de l’innocence. O rives du Lignon! ô plaines de Forez! ... When I read of the inimitable feats of Amadis [the Gaul; standing for all the great ‘matters’ of medieval romance] – so many castles fallen, or giants o’erthrown, or knights a-dying, or warlocks defied, I feel no regret that these are fables. But when I read the Astrée, in which, in sweet retreat, Love alone is the occupation of the most charming heroes, in which Love alone decides the course of their destiny, and in which wisdom itself seems so little stern that one finds a zealous follower of Love even in Adamas, the ruling Druid – ye gods! how frustrated I am that this is a romance! I would go to live in you, pleasant land, where the spirits of Céladon and Astrée would still go about, lit by the same fires; where the discreet charm of their presence would make every heart feel suspicion of vain greatness and pleasure in innocence. O ye banks of the river Lignon! O ye plains of Forez …

36 Jean Vauquelin, Sieur de la Fresnaye, Les Foresteries, ed. P. Blanchemain, Caen 1869. Fontenelle (Bernard Le Bovier), Œuvres complètes de Fontenelle (Corpus des Œuvres de Philosophie en langue française Fayard), 9 vols., 1990–2001, II, Poèmes pastorales, pp. 319–79, at p. 325. For a wide survey of French pastoral taken in the mid seventeenth century, see Colletet 1657.

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A12

HONORÉ D’URFÉ, L’ASTRÉE, II, V, ‘La tonne’

Ils ne marchent pas un demi-quart d’heure le long de quelques prés que Silvandre leur montra du doigt le bois où les voulait conduire, et, peu après, ayant passé quelque haies, ils entrèrent dans un taillis épais, et parce que le sentier était fort étroit, ils furent contraints de se mettre à la file, et continuèrent de cette sorte plus d’un trait d’arc. Enfin Silvandre, qui comme conducteur marchait le premier, fut tout étonné qu’il rencontra des arbres pliés les uns sur les autres en façon de tonne, qui lui coupaient le chemin. Toute la troupe, passant à travers les petits arbres, s’approcha pour savoir ce qui l’arrêtait, et voyant qu’il n’y avait plus de chemin: “Eh quoi, Silvandre (dit Phillis), est-ce ainsi que vous conduisez celles qui vous prennent pour guide?” – “J’avoue,” dit le berger, “que j’ai laissé le chemin par où j’ai passé ce matin, mais c’est qu’il m’a semblé que celui-ci etait le plus court et le plus beau.” – “Il n’est point mauvais, ajouta Hylas, si vous nous voulez conduire à la chasse, car je crois bien que voici le plus fort du bois.” Silvandre, qui était fâché d’avoir perdu le chemin, fit tout le tour de cette tonne avec quelque peu de difficulté; et étant parvenu à l’autre côté, fut plus étonné qu’auparavant, parce que ces arbres, qui étaient ainsi pliés les uns sur les autres, faisaient une forme ronde qui semblait un temple, et qui toutefois n’était que l’entrée d’un autre plus spacieux, dans lequel on entrait par celui-ci. A l’entrée il y avait quelques vers que Silvandre s’amusa à lire, dont toute la troupe qui l’attendait, se sentant ennuyée, l’appela plusieurs fois. Lui, tout étonné, après leur avoir répondu, s’en retourna vers eux, sans entrer dans le temple, afin de les y conduire, et tendant la main à Diane: “Ma maîtresse, lui dit-il, ne plaignez point la peine que vous avez prise de venir jusques ici; car, encore que vous vous soyez un peu détournée, toute-fois vous verrez une merveille de ces bois.” Et lors, la prenant d’une main et de l’autre pliant les branches de arbres le plus qu’il pouvait pour lui faire passage, il la conduisit au-devant de l’entrée. Les autres bergers et bergères suivirent à la file, désireux de voir cette rareté dont Silvandre avait parlé. Au-devant de l’entrée, il y avait un petit pré de la largeur de trente pas ou environ, qui était tout environné de bois de trois côtés, de sorte qu’il ne pouvait être aperçu que l’on n’y fût. Une belle fontaine qui prenait sa source tout contre la porte du temple ou plutôt cabinet serpentait par l’un des côtés, et l’abreuvait ce lieu très agréable. De tout temps ce bocage avait été sacré au grand Hésus, Teutatès et Tharamis. Aussi n’y avait-il berger qui eût la hardiesse de conduire son troupeau ni dans le bocage ni dans le préau ; et cela était cause que personne n’y fréquentait guère, de peur d’interrompre la solitude et le sacré silence des Nymphes, Pans et

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They had hardly walked for ten minutes beside some meadows than Silvandre pointed out the wood he wanted to take them to, and, soon afterwards, passing some hedges, they entered a thick grove, where, because the path was narrow, they were forced to go in single file, and they continued in this way for more than the distance of a bowshot. Finally Silvandre, who as their guide was walking in front, was astonished to find some trees pleached one with another as in a bower, cutting across the path. The rest of the troupe, threading through the saplings, came up close to know what had stopped him, and seeing that the path came to an end: “What, Silvandre”, said Phillis, “is this the way you lead people who rely on your guidance?” “I admit,” said the shepherd, “that I have left the path which I took this morning, but this one seemed to me shorter and prettier.” “It’s no bad thing,” interjected Hylas, “that you are not taking us on a hunt, since I believe we are right in the thickest part of wood.” Silvandre, angry that he had lost the path, went right round the arbour without too much difficulty, and, having reached the other side, was even more surprised than before, because these trees that had been pleached made a round form resembling a temple, which, however, was no more than the approach to another, larger one, into which it led. At the entrance there were some verses that Silvandre was pleased to read, at which the whole troupe, waiting on him, became annoyed, and called him several times. Still amazed, he eventually replied and went back to them without going into the temple, so as to lead them to it, and held out his hand to Diane, saying: “Mistress, do not complain of the trouble you have had coming here, because, even though you may have come out of your way, you will see a marvel of these woods.” Then, leading her with one hand and bending back the branches with the other to create a passage for her, he brought her before the entrance. The other shepherds and shepherdesses followed their path, curious to see the rare thing of which Silvandre had spoken. In front of the entrance, there was a little meadow about thirty yards wide, entirely surrounded by woods on three sides, which made it impossible to see if anyone was within. A fine spring that rose just by the door of the temple, or cabinet, wound down one side, watering this beautiful place. From time immemorial this grove had been sacred to the great god Hésus, to Teutatis and to Theramis. Naturally no shepherd had ever been so bold as to bring his flock into the grove or the meadow; and that was the reason that scarely anyone came here, lest they disturb the solitude and holy silence of the Nymphs, Pans and Egipans. The grass, which had never been trodden 

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Egipans. L’herbe, qui n’était point foulée, le bois, qui n’avait jamais senti le fer, et qui n’était froissé ni rompu par nulle sorte de bétail, et la fontaine, que le pied ni la langue altérée de nul troupeau n’eût osé toucher, et ce petit taillis agencé en façon de tonne, ou plutôt de temple, faisaient bien paraître que ce lieu était dédié à quelque divinité. Cela fut cause que tous ces bergers, s’approchant avec respect de l’entrée, avant que de passer outre, y lirent des vers qui, écrits sur une table de bois, étaient attachés au milieu d’un feston, qui faisait le tour de la voûte de la porte. Les vers étaient tels: Loin, bien loin, profanes esprits: Qui n’est d’un saint amour épris En ce lieu saint ne fasse entrée. Voici le bois où, chaque jour, Un cœur qui ne vit que d’amour Adore la déesse Astrée. Ces bergers et bergères demeurèrent étonnés de voir cette inscription, et se regardaient les uns les autres, comme se voulant demander si quelqu’un de la troupe ne savait point ce que c’était, et s’il n’avait point vu ceci autrefois. Diane enfin s’adressant à Silvandre: “Est-ce ici, berger,” lui dit-elle, “où vous nous voulez conduire?” –– “Nullement,” répondit le berger, “et je ne vis de ma vie ce que je vois.” –– “Il est aisée à connaître,” ajouta Paris, “que ces arbres ont été pliés comme nous le voyons depuis peu de temps, car les lieures en sont encore toutes fraîches. Si faut-il que nous sachions ce que c’est; mais de peur d’offenser la déité à qui ce bocage est consacré, n’y entrons point qu’avec respect, et après nous être rendus plus nets que nous ne sommes.” Chacun s’y accorda, sinon Hylas, qui répondit que, quant à lui, il n’y avait que faire, et, encore qu’il pensât de bien aimer, que toutefois Silvandre lui avait tant dit le contraire qu’il ne savait qu’en croire. “Et puis,” disait-il, “qu’il est défendu d’y entrer à ceux qui ne sont point épris d’amour, mais qu’il soit saint ou non, certes je n’en sais rien.” –– “Comment,” dit Phillis en souriant, “faute d’amour, ô mon serviteur, fera-t-il que vous nous faussiez compagnie?” –– “Quant à moi,” réponditil, “j’en ai bien très grande quantité à ma façon, mais que sais-je si elle est comme l’entend celui qui a écrit ces vers? J’ai toujours ouï dire qu’il ne se faut point jouer avec les dieux.” –– “Or regarde, Hylas,” ajouta Silvandre, “quelle honte tu reçois de ton imparfaite amitié en cette bonne compagnie.” –– “Vraiment,” répondit Hylas, “tu as raison; tant s’en faut, si tu prenais mon action comme elle doit être prise, tu m’en louerais. Car ne voulant point contrevenir au commandement de la divinité qui s’adore en ce bocage, je ne fait paraître que je lui porte en un grand respect, et que je la révère comme je dois, au lieu que toi, méprisant son ordonnance, t’en vas plein d’outrecuidance profaner ce saint lieu, sachant bien en ton âme, quoique tu veuilles feindre, que tu n’as pas ce saint amour qui est requis.”

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on, the wood, which had never felt iron, or been crushed or broken by any sort of livestock, the spring, which neither foot nor the unclean tongue of any flock had dared touch, and this little coppice worked in the manner of a bower, or rather a temple, certainly made it apparent that this place was sacred to some divinity. For this reason all the shepherds, entering and approaching with all due respect, before moving further, read the verses which were written on a wooden tablet attached to a garland which ran all the way round the arch of the entrance. And these were the verses: Away, away, profane spirits:/ Who is not seized with holy love/ Should not enter in this place./ This is the grove where, each day,/ A heart which lives only for love/ Adores the goddess Astraea. These shepherds and shepherdesses remained astonished to see this inscription, and looked at one other as if wanting to ask if anyone in their troupe had any idea what it was, and if they had ever seen this before. Diana at last turned to Silvandre and asked him: “Shepherd, is this where you want to lead us?” “Not at all,” replied he, “and I have never in my life seen what I see [now].” “One can easily recognize,” added Paris, that the trees have been bent in the way we just a moment ago saw them, for the ties are quite raw. We have to know what it is; but for fear of offending the deity to whom this wood is sacred, let us not enter except with respect, and after we have rendered outselves purer than we presently are.” Everyone agreed, except for Hylas, who replied that, as far as he was concerned, he had nothing to do, and, although he believed that he loved rightly, Silvandre neverthess had told him so much to the contrary that he did not know what to believe. “And furthermore,” he said, “[I do know] that it is forbidden for those to enter who have not been seized by love, but as to whether it is sacred or not, I really do not know.” “ How then,” said Phillis smiling, “my servitor, can it be that you should keep us company, if not for love?”. “In my view,” he replied, “I have a great deal of it in my fashion, but I do not know whether that is the way the writer of these verses understands it.” “See, Hylas,” added Silvandre, “what shame on you comes from your imperfect lovingness in this good company.” “Truly,” replied Hylas, “you are right, except that, if you took my behaviour in the way that it should be taken, you would commend me. Because, not wanting to contravene the commandment of the divinity who is venerated in this wood, I make it quite clear that I hold it in great respect, and revere it as I should, unlike you, who, mistaking his commandment, go in full of presumption to profane this sacred place, knowing well in your heart, whatever you pretend, that you do not have the sacred love that is required.”

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Silvandre alors le laissant: ”Je te répondrai,” lui dit-il, “bientôt.” Et lors, avec toute la troupe, après avoir puisé de l’eau en sa main, et s’être lavé, ils laissent tous leurs souliers et, les pieds nus, entrent sous la tonne. Et lors, Silvandre se tournant vers Hylas: “Ecoute, Hylas,” lui dit-il, “écoute mes paroles, et en sois témoin.” Et puis, relisant les vers qui étaient à l’entrée, il dit, ayant les yeux contre le ciel, et les genoux en terre: “O grande déité ! qui es adorée en ce lieu, voici j’entre en ton saint bocage, très assuré que je ne contreviens point à ta volonté, sachant que mon amour est si saint et si pur que tu auras agréable de recevoir les vœux et supplications d’une âme qui aime si bien que la mienne. Et si la protestation que je fais n’est véritable, punis, ô grande déité, mon parjure et mon outrecuidance.” A ce mot, les mains jointes et la tête nue, il entra dans la tonne, et tous les autres après, hormis Hylas. Le lieu était spacieux, de quinze ou seize pas en rond, et au milieu y avait un grand chêne, sur lequel s’appuyait la voûte que faisaisent les petits arbres, et même ses branches tirées contre-bas en couvraient une partie. Au pied de cet arbre étaient relevés quelques gazons en forme d’autel, sur lequel y avait un tableau où deux amours étaient peints, qui essayaient de s’ôter l’un à l’autre une branche de myrte, et une de palme, entortillées enemble. [there follows a description of this representation of Eros and Anteros, and beneath it the ‘twelve tables of the laws of love’. These Silvandre reads out; Hylas, outside, claims Silvandre has invented them; at which Silvandre mocks him for not being able to enter.] Toute la troupe se mit à rire, et quoique l’inconstant voulût répliquer, si ne fut-il point écouté, parce que, Silvandre ayant remis le tableau sur les gazons, et baisé les deux coins de cet autel rustique, chacun suivit Paris qui, trouvant une porte faite d’osier, passa de ce lieu en un autre cabinet beaucoup plus ample. Il y avait au-dessus de la voûte de la porte un feston oû pendait un tableau dans lequel ces vers étaient écrits. Madrigal Le Temple d’amitié Ouvre sans plus l’entrée Du saint temple d’Astrée, Où l’amour qui m’ordonne De la servir toujours, Comme jadis je lui donnai mes jours, Veut qu’ores je lui donne Les tristes nuits De mes ennuis

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Silvandre then left him, telling him, “I will reply to you shortly”. Then, with all the troupe, after drawing water in their hands, and washing, they left off their shoes and, with bare feet, entered under the bower. At this point Silvandre turned to Hylas and said: “Listen, Hylas, listen to what I say, and bear witness.” Then, reading the verses at the entrance again, with his eyes to heaven and his knees to earth, he cried: “O great deity who is adored in this place, I enter in your holy wood, confident that I do not act against your will, since I know that my love is so sacred and so pure that you will be glad to receive the prayers and supplications of a soul that loves as rightly as mine. And if the declaration I make is not true, great deity, punish my perjury and my presumption.” With these words, his hands joined in prayer and his head bared, he entered the bower, as did all the others after him, except for Hylas. Inside the place was spacious, fifteen or sixteen feet round, and in the middle was a great oak, against which the vault that the smaller trees made leant, and also the branches of the oak, drawn downwards, covered it partly. At the foot of the tree there were some some small grass mounds in the form of an altar, on which there was a painting of two cupids who were trying each to take from the other a branch of myrtle and one of palm, entwined together. [omission: see opposite] The whole troupe laughed, and, although ‘the inconstant’ wanted to reply, they would not listen to him, because, when Silvandre had put the picture back on the mounds, and kissed the two corners of this rustic altar, they all followed Paris, who had found a portal made of willow and went through into another room that was much more spacious. Above the arch of the portal there was a garland, from which there hung a table on which were written these verses: Madrigal The temple of loving/ opens immediately to the entrance/ of the holy temple of Astrée,/ where Love that commands me/ to serve her always,/ as I had formerly I given her my days,/ wishes that now I give her/ the sad nights of/ my pains

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Astrée fut celle qui s’y arrêta le plus: fut qu’à cause de son nom, il lui semblât qu’elle eût le plus d’intérêt, ou qu’oyant parler de la vie et des ennuis, elle pensât que cela se dût entendre de la fortune du pauvre et infortuné Céladon. Tant y a qu’elle considéra longuement cette écriture; et cependant le reste de la troupe étant passé plus outre et trouvant une voûte faite comme la première, mais beaucoup plus ample, d’abord tous se jetèrent à genoux et, ayant avec silence adoré la déité à qui ce lieu était consacré, Paris, comme il avait déjà fait, offrit pour toute la troupe un rameau de chêne sur l’autel. Il était de gazons comme l’autre, sinon qu’il était fait en triangle, et du milieu sortait un gros chêne qui, se poussant un pied par-dessus les gazons avec un tronc seulement, se séparait en trois branches d’une égale grosseur, et se haussant de cette sorte plus de quatre pieds, ces branches venaient d’elles-mêmes à se remettre ensemble, et n’en faisaient plus qu’une qui s’élevait plus haut qu’aucun arbre de tout ce bocage sacré. Il semblait que la nature eût pris plaisir de se jouer en cet arbre, ayant d’un tige tiré ces trois branches, et puis si bien réunies (sans aide de l’artifice) qu’une même écorce les liait, et les tenait ensemble. En la branche qui était à côté droit on voyait dans l’écorce, HÉSUS; et en celle qui était à côté gauche, BÉLÉNUS, et en celle du milieu, THARAMIS. Au tige d’où ces trois branches sortaient, il y avait TAUTATÈS, et en haut où elles se réunissanient, il y avait de même TAUTATÈS. Ces choses, qui étaient selon la coutume de leur religion (car ils adoraient Dieu sous les types des chênes) ne les étonnèrent point, mais si fit bien ce qu’ils aperçurent à main gauche. C’était un autre autel qui était aussi de gazons, avec deux grands vases de terre dans lesquels étaient deux tiges de myrte. Au milieu, l’on voyait un tableau, par-dessus lequel les deux myrtes, pliant les branches, semblaient lui faire une couronne; et cela était bien reconnu pour n’être pas naturel, mais entortillé de cette sorte par artifice. Le tableau représentait une bergère de sa hauteur, et au plus haut du tableau il y avait: C’est la déesse Astrée, et au bas on voyait ce vers: Plus digne de nos vœux, que nos vœux ne sont d’elle. Sitôt que Diane jeta les yeux dessus, elle se tourna vers Phillis: “N’avez-vous jamais vu (lui dit-elle), mon serviteur , personne à qui ce portrait ressemble?” Phillis le considérant davantage: “Voilà,” lui répondit-elle, “le portrait d’Astrée. Je n’en vis jamais un mieux fait, ni qui lui ressemblât davantage; mais,” continua-t-elle, “vous semble-t-il qu’on ne l’ait pas voulu rendre reconnaissable? N’a-t-elle pas en la main la même houlette qu’elle porte.” Et lors prenant celle qu’Astrée tenait: ”Voyez, ma maîtresse, ces doubles C, et ces doubles A, entrelacés de même sorte tout à l’entour, et comme l’endroit où elle la prend, quand elle la porte, est garni de même façon, et les fers d’en bas de cuivre, avec les mêmes chiffres; et le sifflet qui est en haut, représentant

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Astrée was the one who was the most shocked: perhaps because it was her name, it seemed to her that she was the most involved, or, hearing talk of life and its pains, she thought that that must be understood as regarding the fate of poor, unfortunate Céladon. In any case she ruminated on these verses for a long time; meanwhile the rest of the troupe had proceeded further and found another arbour made in the same way as the first, but much larger: at first they threw themselves to their knees, then, once they had adored the deity to whom the place was sacred, Paris, as he had done before, offered on behalf of them all a branch of oak on the altar. This was of turf like the other, but was made in the shape of a triangle, and from the middle of it there arose a great oak, which, rising about a foot above the level of the mounds as a trunk, then separated into three branches of equal thickness and rose in this way for more than four feet, at which point the branches, of themselves, came together again and, remaining together as one, rose higher than any other tree of the whole sacred wood. It looked as though nature had taken pleasure in amusing herself with this tree, having from one stem drawn three branches and then reunited them so well (without any manmade aid) that one bark bound them and held them together. On the branch on the right-hand side one could in the bark HÉSUS; on that on the left-hand side BELENUS; and on that in the middle THARAMIS. On the trunk from which the three branches rose, one read TAUTATIS, and higher up where they rejoined once again TAUTATIS. These things came as no surprise to them, since they conformed to the practice of their religion (for they worhsipped God under the form of oaks), but they were struck by what they saw on the left. There was another altar, once more of turf, with two great earthenware vases in which there were two sprigs of myrtle. Between them, they saw a picture, above which two myrtles bent their branches to make a crown; and this could easily be seen as not being natural, but entwined in this way by human hand. The picture represented a shepherdess in full length, and at the top of the picture it said: ‘This is the goddess Astraea’; and at the bottom they saw this verse: More worthy of our prayers than our prayers are worthy of her. As soon as Diane caught sight of this, she turned to Phillis, and enquired: “Have you ever seen, my servitor, anyone whom this portrait resembles?” Phillis first of all considered it, and replied: “This is the portrait of Astrée. I have never seen a better one, or that resembled her better; but,” she continued, “do you not think that it was meant to be recognizable? Does she not have in her hand the same crook that she carries?” And taking the one which Astrée was holding, she said, “See, mistress, these double Cs, these

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la moitié d’un serpent, comme il se tourne de même.” –– “Vous avez raison,” dit Diane, “même que je vois ici Mélampe couché à ses pieds. Il est bien reconnaissable aux marques qu’il porte. Voyez la moitié de la tête, comme il l’a blanche et l’autre noire, et sur l’oreille noire la marque blanche. Si l’autre oreille n’était cachée, il y a apparence que vous y verrions la marque noire, car le peu qui s’en voit au haut de la tête et au-dessus paraît être blanc. Voyez aussi cette marque blanche autour du col en façon de collier, et l’échancrure du poil noir qui se tournant en demi-lune dessus les épaules finit de même sur la croupe où le blanc recommence. On n’y’a y pas même oublié cette bande noire et blanche tout le long des jambes.” Silvandre s’approchant d’elle: “Et moi,” dit-il, “j’y reconnais entre ce troupeau la brebis qu’Astrée aime le plus. La voilà, toute blanche sinon les oreilles qu’elle a noires, le nez, le tour des yeux, le bout de la queue et l’extrémité des quatre jambes ; et afin qu’elle ne fût pas méconnue, regardez les nœuds que je lui ai vu porter plusieurs fois à l’entour des cornes en façon de guirlande.” Astrée, oyant tous ces discours, demeurait étonnée et muette, sans faire autre chose que regarder avec admiration ce qu’elle voyait. Toute-fois s’avançant près de l’autel, et voyant plusieurs petits rouleaux de papiers épars dessus, elle en prit un, et, le déliant toute tremblante, y trouva ces vers: Privé de mon vrai bien, ce bien faux me soulage. Passant, si tu t’enquiers qui, dedans ce bocage, M’a donné ce portrait, Sache qu’Amour l’a fait, Qui, privé du vrai bien, d’un bien faux me soulage. [more verses with this refrain] Astrée, étant retirée à part, lisait et considérait ces vers, et plus elle regardait l’écriture, et plus il lui semblait que c’était de celle de Céladon ; de sorte qu’après un long combat en elle-même, il lui fut impossible de retenir ses larmes, et pour les cacher elle fut contrainte de tourner le visage vers l’autre autel. Mais Phillis qui était aussi étonnée qu’aucune de la compagnie, ayant pris un autre de ces rouleaux, l’alla trouver, se doutant bien que ce qui faisait séparer Astrée de cette sorte n’était que ces peintures et ces écrits qu’elle-même reconnaissait fort bien pour être de ceux de Céladon. Honoré d’Urfé, L’Astrée, textes choisis et présentées par Jean Lafond, revised edn, Paris 2007, pp. 128–32, 140–44 (Partie II, V Livre)

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double As, interlaced in the same way all round, and how the place where she takes hold of it, when she carries it, is decorated in the same fashion, and the iron beneath the leather, with the same letters; and the whistle that is at the top, representing half of a serpent turning back on itself.” “You are right,” said Diane, “and I even see Melampe sitting at her feet. He is certainly identifiable by the markings he bears. See how half his head is white and the other half black, and the white mark on the black ear. If the other ear were visible, it looks as if we would see the black marking, becasue the little that one sees at the top of the head and above seems to be white. Look also at this white mark running round the neck like a necklace, and the strip of black skin which forms a crescent over the shoulders and ends up right on the rump where the white starts again. Even this black and white band all down the legs has not been forgotten.” Silvandre came up to her, and said: “And I recognize among this flock of sheep the lamb which Astrée loves the most. There it is, all white except the ears, which are black, the nose, around the eyes, the tip of the tail and the extremities of the four legs; and, so that there can be no mistake, look at the knots that I have seen many times around its horns in the fashion of a garland.” Astrée, hearing this discussion, remained amazed and dumb, unable to do more than marvel at what she saw. Nevertheless she went up to the altar, and saw several little scrolls of paper scattered on top of it, so she took one, and, opening it up with trembling hands, found in it these verses: Deprived of my true good, this false good comforts me. Passer-by, if you ask who, in this wood,/ Gave me this portrait,/ Know that it was Love that made it,/ Since, deprived of my true good, this false good comforts me. Astrée, having withdrawn a little apart, read these verses and meditated on them, and the more she looked at the writing, the more it seemed to her that it was like that of Céladon, so that after a long struggle with herself she found it impossible to withhold her tears, and in order to hide them she was obliged to turn towards the altar. But Phillis, who was as amazed as any of the company, took up another of these scrolls, and went to find her, very much suspecting that what had made Astrée go apart in this way was that she had very clearly recognized the paintings and writings to have been made by Céladon.

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Chapter 10 2 THE PASTORAL VIGNETTE

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3 1 If it is a large task to survey pastoral drama and romance it is no easier to chart a history of the pastoral vignette. A pastoral vignette – a short, perhaps only a partial, step into pastoral – may arise anywhere, in any foreign context – in the midst of an epic, most obviously. A ringing example is Tasso’s story of Erminia and the shepherd in the midst of his Gerusalemme Liberata (see Chapter 12 §1). Or, in his prose romance Tully’s Love, Robert Greene inserts into this narrative of the Roman senatorial class first a song of innocent shepherd love, heard by his characters, and then a close translation of Boccaccio’s Cimon (for which see Chapter 7 §5). This has the purpose of introducing love, into which Cicero will shortly fall. Pastoral vignettes are generally erotic; usually the choice of erotic determines the pastoral. From the early sixteenth century we find independent short pieces. Good examples, anticipating in many ways many others, occur among the neo-Latin Lusus|Jeux| of the Venetian Andrea Navagero (died 1529). For example, the elegiac miniatures with which the Lusus begin, vota to accompany invisible ex-votis or sacrificial scenes (which figured large in the imagination of the Italian Renaissance, notably being represented in the friezes decorating palace rooms), are close to pastoral, or actually so: the first is devoted to Ceres, the next to the breezes, the third to Pan – and this is signed, it is from Iolas (the name of a passing character in Virgil’s Eclogues). The next is from Damis to Bacchus. But there are also epitaphs, of a hunting dog, or on the death of Louis II of Hungary, a lament for the sack of Padua, an ‘invitatio ad amoenum fontem’, a description of spring, a composition dedicated to a laurel growing where once buildings, now thrown down, had obstructed the sun and air (Navagero cultivated a famous garden, and in letters home described the Alhambra in Granada), another addressed to Pietro Bembo admitting that Love had so diminished his Muse that “hoc vix exiguo male audax/ carmine serpo”|Scarcely and with difficulty I crawl impertinent with this tiny song| (the audax recalls Virgil himself looking back to the Eclogues, in Georgics, 565). Among those compositions properly pastoral, qualifying as such by the use of a Virgilian phrase or by the profession of shepherdhood, notable is another entitled ‘Iolas’. In sentiment it is abreast with the vernacular; as a humanist production it is abreast with Theocritus: Iolas first addresses his sheep, urging them to eat their grass, for it will grow again in the night, Pascite, oves, teneras herbas per pabula laeta, Pascite, nec plenis ignavae parcite campis: Quantum vos tota minuetis luce, refectum

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Fecundo tantum per noctem rore resurget: Hinc dulci distenta tumescent ubera lacte, Sufficientque simul fiscellae et mollibus agnis Graze, sheep, the tender grass through the happy meadows Graze, and do not from timidity spare the lush fields: As much as you diminish in the day, re-made It will rise up again during the night with the fertile dew: And so your udders will swell and strain with sweet milk, And there will be enough for my basket and the soft lambs too,

echoing Idyll VIII, 67–70: ταὶ δ᾽οἴες, μηδ᾽ὔμμες ὀκνεῖθ᾽ἁπαλᾶς κορέσασθαι ποίας· οὔτι καμεῖσθαι ὃκκα πάλιν ἃδε φύηται. σίττα νέμεσθε νέμεσθε, τὰ δ᾽οὒθατα πλήσατε πᾶσαι, ὡς τὸ μεν ὤρνες ἔχωντι, το δ᾽ἐς ταλάρως ἀποθῶμαι,

translated into English anonymously in Sixe Idillia, that is sixe small, or Petty Poems, or Aeglogues, chosen out of the right famous Sicilian Poet, appearing in 1588: My sheepe, fear not to eate the tender grasse at will, Nor when it springeth up againe, see that you faile; Goe to, and feed apace, and al your bellies fill, That part your Lambes may have; and part my milking paile,

and one may assume Sannazaro was consciously adapting Theocritus in the opening prosa of his Arcadia: Giace nella sommità di Partenio, non umile monte de la pastorale Arcadia, un dilettevole piano, di ampiezza non molto spazioso però che il sito del luogo nol consente, ma di minuta e verdissima erbetta sì ripieno, che se le lascive pecorelle con gli avidi morsi non vi pascesseno, vi si potrebbe di ogni tempo ritrovare verdura. There lies on the summit of Parthenius, no small hill of pastoral Arcadia, a delightful plain, in size not very spacious since the situation of the place does not permit it, but so covered with such a delicate and very green grass that, had not the frolicsome flocks with their greedy munching grazed on it, one would have been able to find it every time green anew.

However, whereas within the Arcadia shepherds worry a lot about wolves, and in the lines just before in Idyll VIII Menalcas complains that his dog

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should be fast asleep, Iolas is confident that his own dog Teucron will take care of the wolves – so now he can turn to sing of his Amaryllis: Interea hic ego muscoso prostratus in antro Ipse meos solus mecum meditabor amores, Atque animi curas dulci solabor avena. Meanwhile here, lying down in a mossy cave Myself alone will meditate my love And console the cares of my heart with a sweet reed

echoing Virgil in the Eclogues (I, 2: “meditaris”) but also perhaps the eleventh line of the first sonnet of Petrarch’s Canzoniere: di me medesmo meco mi vergogno I feel shame for my own self with myself

but here again with significantly different intent: here there is neither shame nor higher aspiration. Iolcas continues with a Naturentzug (see Chapter 5 §18), follows with the trope of Eclogue III, 82–83, and elsewhere (‘Sweet is this to that, this to that … you to me’), nothing being sweeter than to hold her bound in his arms and to spend his life with her in the woods – or specifically in a cave he knows, Est mihi praeruptis ingens subrupibus antrum, Quod croceis hederae circum sparsere corymbis I have a a huge cave in steep rocks, which ivies have spread with yellow berries

with a stream rising nearby, with an excellent view over the sea: this recalls Theocritus’s Idyll XI, 42–49, the Cyclops calling Galatea into such a cave, but there is no joke on Iolas. They would lead their flocks together out in the morning and in at night; he would often sing to her, or they would sing in harmony, or mix sweet kisses and “veneris … gaudia”| Venus’s joys| with their song. If he had this, he would think himself richer than Croesus. Then he recalls how he was caught, “mollibus in pratis”|in the soft meadows| belonging to Lycidas, near Daphnis’s orchard, and he confessed his love (this passage recalls ‘popular’ or frottola episodes: see Chapter 3 §8–10): she laughed, but deliberately let fall her garland, which he has kept even though it has withered, as if it were her gift. He has rejected the advances of Alcippe and the idea of loving another leads into impossibility figures (adynata). In another Virgilian trope, she exceeds others in beauty as a range of other things exceed other things. The woods are his witness, and the poplar on

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which he has inscribed his declaration of immutable love. But now the day is ending, and he still burns with heats no ice can moderate: Fors tamen hos illa ipsa, potest quae sola, levabit But perhaps she herself will relieve them, as only she can.

In that hope he calls his flocks into their folds. Classicizing not only in the reprise of Virgilian and Theocritan passages and tropes but overall in its correct, elegant and unforced Augustan style, Navagero’s poem nevertheless includes the expressions of modern courtship, especially in its coup de foudre moment, its confession of love and its love-token garland, crowning with which was an expression of commitment, indeed the floral garland became a sexual symbol (see below, §14). And, though taking the classical form of the solitary shepherd venting the pains of love, like Corydon in Eclogue II (and despite its further recall of one of the Theocritan Cyclops Idylls on which Eclogue II is largely based), this is in effect a song about a plighted couple, representing the boy’s ‘service’, which involved suffering if it was to incite the pity by which the girl was to be moved.

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This is a tendency that becomes stronger in Renaissance pastoral verse, and by the end of the sixteenth century the loving pastoral couple had become quite established – even though there is the scarcest courtship in the Eclogues or very little more in those poems of Theocritus that have a country setting. These pastoral songs of requited love that begin to appear, however, are invariably set in the third person or rather persons, in this differing from the non-pastoral sonnet or other forms of love poetry (though vocative love poetry may appear inset in pastoral romance). Of the early sixteenth century, Navagero’s ‘Iolas’, with its strong vision of love but love presented still in a monologue of longing, is of a piece as well as a period with Titian’s Three of Ages of Man (see Chapter 5 §10). A large landscape with lovers by Dosso Dossi in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (fig. 10.1),

1 Greene/Grisart 1881–83, VII, pp. 95–216, at pp. 177–89. Andrea Navagero, Lusus, from www.thelatinlibrary.com/navagero. html. For a brief context see Chaudhuri 1989, p. 76. Sixe Idillia …, from English Pastoral Poetry from the Beginnings to Marvell, ed. Frank K ­ ermode, London 1952, pp. 61–64, at p. 63. Virgil, Georgics, II, 210–11, says that the dew “reponet”|will replace| what the cattle “carpent”|crop|, so there is other precedent than Theocritus, besides the phenomenon itself. On Sannazaro’s knowledge of Greek see Vecce 2006 and 2007.

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fig. 10.1 Dosso Dossi, ‘The Three Ages of Man’, oil on canvas, 77.5 × 111.8 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

undated and of unknown context, has in recent times been dubbed ‘The Three Ages of Man’ by analogy with Titian’s picture, but not very plausibly: the role of Dossi’s central two peeping boys is different from that of Titian’s putti, it is rather one of distancing, pushing the lovers into the background and into a cynosure or an object of mockery. While the goats behind the pair might declare the couple to be pastoral, they will also connote by contrast their beastly sexuality (see again §6 below). The most likely precedent for the lovers seems to be northern prints of soldiers and molls canoodling in the forest, in the wilderness (see Chapter 4), if precedent were sought. It might be sought because such scenes were new, introducing undisguised, even uncastigated, erotics, though admonitory signs are still frequently present.

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Third-person amorous pastoral lovers lack classical precedent in verse (Gallus’s vision in Eclogue X is entirely unfulfilled) – but not in prose. Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, written probably in the second century AD (the date is uncertain; the best evidence for it seems to be the likely value of the 3,000 drachma promised as the lovers’ dowry, which would have been rendered derisory by the inflation of the following century), is entirely centred on the loving couple Daphnis and Chloe, who are very young, newly

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adolescent. Its main matter, or the main motivation to turn the page, is not their love itself or even the obstacles placed in its way, but the problem they have in putting their desire into carnal action. This is treated sympathetically rather than coarsely, as an innocence – to modern eyes, that is. However, the book failed to fit into a suitable category or to offer interesting ingredients to Renaissance or Baroque readers. Its particular angle failed to subtend pastoral in the Theocritan or Virgilian tradition; indeed Daphnis is called “ποιμενικός”|shepherd| rather than “βούκολος”|bucolic|and the book is entitled “ποιμενικὰ [or once αἰπολικά] τὰ περὶ [or κατὰ] Δάφνιν και Χλόην”|the shepherdry (or goatherdry) concerning Daphnis and Chloe|or indeed “ποιμενικὰ τὰ περὶ Δάφνιν και Χλόην Λεσβιακὰ ἐρωτικά”|shepherd love in Lesbos concerning Daphnis and Chloe|). Although Daphnis seems a quasi-mythical lover (and so also Chloe), cared for by the nymphs, actually they are merely foundlings whose parents, once identified, are no more than wealthy burghers; Daphnis has nothing more than his name to link him to his distant folkloric counterpart or to the subject of Theocritus’s first Idyll. The author declares he is explaining a series of scenes he saw painted in a sacred grove on Lesbos; thus the divine intervention that there may apparently be was introduced by a human hand. In fact there is not very much divine intervention, except in so far as the unheroic Daphnis himself is not capable of altering events; neither he nor Chloe is anything but a plaything of the gods, like the rest of humanity. Though inevitably grouped with other Greek romances, Daphnis and Chloe is much less dramatic than these; the pirates who appear are nothing like as fearsome as those who apparently decapitate Leucippe in Achilles Tatius’s work; rather than ranging the Mediterranean the action remains in Lesbos; it shares with other romances a happy ending and marriage between the lovers but there is not much peripateia or reversal of circumstances along the way to that end – and it was their kaleidoscopic situations that made the other romances influential. There is very little sign of Daphnis and Chloe in sixteenth- or seventeenth-century literature or art. It is very unlikely that its introduction inspired Sannazaro’s painted scenes in prosa 3; it is not at all certain that Carino’s tale of adolescent love in prosa 8 owes anything to it – on the contrary Sannazaro’s failure to include motifs such as the bee sting which becomes an excuse for a kiss argues his ignorance of the work (Tasso, however, used it in the Aminta, as noted in Chapter 8 §10n; also Suarez de Figueroa in La Constante Amarilis, for which see Chapter 9 §22). 2 On Dossi’s painting see chiefly Dosso Dossi, Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara, ed. Andrea Bayer, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, et alibi, 1998–99, no. 10; see further www.met museum.org/art/collection/search/436208.

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About the earliest evidence of the work being known in the Renaissance are letters from Annibale Caro of 1538 indicating that he was working on a translation into Italian. This, however, remained in manuscript until the late eighteenth century; Jacques Amyot’s translation into French, printed in 1559, following his earlier translation of Heliodorus’s Aethiopica, seems to have enjoyed nothing like its success (though Angel Day published an English translation, from Amyot, in 1587). It seems that it was only in the eighteenth century, when editions proliferated, that this little book perhaps altered the course of pastoral. However, a Cloe and a Daphnis appear in John Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess, printed c. 1608–10: Cloe enters eager for a lover, and finds Daphnis, “that modest shepherd, he/ That only dare salute, but ne’er could be/Brought to kiss any, hold discourse, or sing,/ Whisper, or boldly take that wished thing/ We are all born for”. That seems clearly enough to establish the reference to Longus, but Daphnis is presented unsympathetically as a dullard, while Cloe remains predominantly “unsound” or unchaste in character throughout the play. Whether Daphnis and Chloe was otherwise instrumental in the construction of Fletcher’s undoubtedly unusual play (see further Chapter 13 §15) is more moot: did Fletcher, using Angel Day, take over the kindness of nature that is essential to Longus’s tale into his own play, enabling him to break stereotype and introduce a satyr who is servant and devotee of the chaste Clorin and, to show it, presents her with nature’s bounty? Clorin inhabits a sacred grove, perhaps indebted to the grove where the infant Chloe is found, though it seems to be her own chastity and loyalty to her dead lover, her own powers, that make it magical and beneficent to others. It was surely this kindness of nature that aligned Longus’s work so much better with the taste of the Enlightenment: what could appeal more to sensibility than the goat who suckles the abandoned Daphnis, which carefully places its feet over the child, so as not to harm it with its hoofs (I, ii, 2)? Longus’s lovers were congenially soft, fey and perfect – suitable figures for Rococo porcelain or for smooth, ephebic marble statuary; or as “sanft”|mild| as Salomon Gessner’s Daphnises and Chloes (see Chapter 19 §13). Daphnis’s naivety and Chloe’s unshyness, read by Fletcher as clownish and sluttish, in the later period could be seen rather as natural in their naivety, pious, gentle in manner and feeling, or, as an eighteenth-century commentator put it, “pas corrompus par les préjugés ou par l’affectation du sentiment”|not corrupted by prejudices or by the affectation of sentiment|. This is almost precisely what Gessner claimed his Idyllen to be (see Chapter 19 §17), and the resurgence of Longus’s work seems to accompany the publication and success of Gessner's work in the third quarter of the eighteenth century (though not to inspire it).

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3 4 A picture attributed to Niccolò Pisano in the Wallace Collection shows two figures identified as Daphnis and Chloe who seem to correspond to this porcelain mood (fig. 10.2), but it seems only this mood that justifies the title. In fact one should read the pair as Cimon and Efigenia, especially since she is sleeping, and in any case his gesture is one of reverence appropriate to a lover entranced in the pattern discussed in Chapter 7 §5. A couple in a picture by Paris Bordone in the National Gallery, London (fig. 10.3), have also been seen as Daphnis and Chloe, and she at least holds a pastoral attribute, perhaps added in rather later (today one can see through it to her hand); indeed there are two workshop versions of the composition in which she holds a bow instead. He, however, wears what must be an animal skin, whether goat or sheep; and so again in a similar picture in the Louvre, with no Cupid, but again with a wreath, and now flowers. Paris painted other, compositionally similar, usually but not always better identifiable mythological lovers; and this one may be a Daphnis, but, rather than Longus’s Daphnis, Theocritus’s, or one of them, the one who married Naias in Idyll VIII – but it is unlikely the artist intended to be so precise. The picture recalls earlier compositions of lovers entirely in the vernacular, such as Paris’s own earlier Lovers in the Brera (fig. 10.4), which is plausibly a deliberately ‘giorgionesque’ work of the 1520s; or one attributed to Titian in the British Royal Collection or another 3 See Hunter 1983. On the book’s fortuna in the Renaissance and later see Paul Joannides, ‘Titian’s Daphnis and Chloe. A Search for the Subject of a Familiar Masterpiece’, Apollo, June 1991, pp. 374–82, and Giles Barber, Daphnis and Chloe: The markets and ­metamorphoses of an unknown bestseller (The Panizzi Lectures, 1988), London 1989. Joannides’s article, though surely not correct in his reading of Titian’s Three Ages of Man, inversely confirms the point that otherwise in the classics pastoral lovers are alluded to rather than presented. Kegel-Brinkgreve 1990, p. 335, asserts that elements in Carino’s tale (prosa 8) show Sannazaro’s knowledge of Daphnis and Chloe. Suarez de Figueroa 1609, pp. 277–79. Annibale Caro, Gli amori pastorali di Dafni e di Cloe, ed. Goffredo Binni, introduction by Edoardo Sanguineti, Macerata 1991. John Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, I, iii; II, iv; III, i; V, ii; ed. Cyril Hoy, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, general editor Fredson Bowers, 11 vols., Cambridge 1961–96, III, 1976, pp. 485–612. The editors of Alexandre Hardy’s Filismène (see Chapter 11 §20) suggest that Don Félix’s idea that he and Filismène should have a picture painted “de nos chastes Amours conservant leur mémoire” (line 1650) derives from Longus (presumably through Amyot); but it is an isolated instance, if accepted. Antoine Le Camus, preface to his translation published in 1757; quoted after Barber 1989, p. 39. It is argued below (19 §13 note and 17) that, contrary to supposition, Gessner did not draw upon Longus.

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fig. 10.2 Attr. Niccolò Pisano, Two lovers (Cimon and Efigenia?), c. 1500, oil on canvas, 85.9 × 62.2 cm, Wallace Collection, London

in the Detroit Institute of Arts (fig. 10.5) – ‘giorgionesque’ because featuring both a face that looks out at the viewer and creates an innuendo and a hand reaching out or round a shoulder, a further illusionist motif, suggesting movement; in Bordone’s National Gallery picture essentially the same format, no longer giorgionesque, though still representing a movement, is now given classical garb, of some kind. Indeed ‘Daphnis and Chloe’ were not properly mythological but a boy and girl in a story and therefore never a likely alternative to the loves of the gods. From the next century, two early pictures by Poussin of exactly the same size and making a pair when first recorded, in the eighteenth century (figs. 10.6 and 10.7), seem to evoke Longus’s work: the entry of a putto on a goat led by a nymph and a satyr into a cave recalls the cave of the nymphs where the baby Chloe was found; the amorous pair in the other picture, the girl drinking in the music played by the boy on panpipes, recall the couple when they have got together. On the other

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fig. 10.3 Paris Bordone, Two lovers, crowned by Cupid, c. 1500, oil on canvas, 139 × 122 cm, National Gallery, London

fig. 10.4 Paris Bordone, Two lovers and a witness, c. 1520, oil on canvas, 80.5 × 86.0 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

fig. 10.5 Unknown artist, Two women and a pilgrim, c. 1520–30?, oil on canvas, 84.5 × 69.2 cm, Detroit Institute of Arts

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figs. 10.6, 10.7 Nicolas Poussin, Country figures approach a cave and Two lovers, c. 1626, both oil on canvas, 74 × 97.8 cm, private collection

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hand the pictures clearly do not depict the story directly or recognizably; the second would have to be regarded as a generic representation of a loving couple, and the boy is more exactly a man, with a beard. This is, however, an apparently unprecedented example of an image in which pastoral classical lovers, treated sympathetically as these are (neither crude nor ‘genre’), are the principal figuration of a picture, even though it is closely coeval with the untroubled lovers that such as Honthorst were painting when they returned from Italy to Holland (see Chapter 14 §10). However, even though this pendant pair belongs to a larger group of pagan or even ‘allegoresque’ landscapes of the period (see further Chapters 6 §25, 15 §10), Poussin himself does not repeat it. In Poussin’s wake there followed similar works, for example one by Francisque ( Jean-François Millet) in the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ at Winterthur (fig. 10.8), in which again there can be no association with Daphnis or Chloe. Indeed, given the looseness or absence of reference in other early works by Poussin (see Chapter 15 §11) it seems redundant to seek a specific classical subject here.

fig. 10.8 Jean-Francis Millet, called Francisque, Landscape with lovers, c. 1665–70, oil on canvas, 94 × 130 cm, Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur

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35

In literature, we find lovers at their most intense when they are on the point of parting, on the pattern of the doubly reported – doubly distanced, highly third personal – dialogue of Sireno and Diana in Montemayor’s Diana (see Chapter 9 §5 and A9). Contemporaneously, in the 1550s and onwards (the Diana was published in 1559), the so-called partenza|departure|becomes a dominant theme in Italian madrigal writing; the heyday of Luigi Cassola (see Chapter 7 §20) is over but in the partenza his obsession with the sensation of dying is vibrantly developed. Partenza-like sentiment can be found, for instance, in a ditty in Giovanni Nasco’s first book for four voices (1554): Su la fiorita riva Dell’Adige sedea mesto Hiacintho E poi che vidde priva Di pietà Cintia, e sè da morte vinto Alle chiare e fresche acque Così parlar gli piacque: ‘Fiume cui già cotanto Lagrimando ho cresciuto il vago seno Prendi l’ultimo pianto! O chi mi porge, ninfa, il rio veneno Chi ’l duro ferro o laccio Da darmi il crudo spaccio?

4 Ingamells 1985–92, I, pp. 215–17, P2, with an earlier attribution to (Giovanni Battista) Bertucci. Andrea Donati, Paris Bordone: Catalogo ragionato, Soncino 2014, no. 121, also no. 125; Penny 2004, pp. 56–61. For the costume, see also Donati nos. 49 (John the Baptist, Rennes), in camel hair, and 117 (Apollo between Midas and Pan?, Dresden), in a truer nebris. I confess I cannot see the recorder noted by Penny on the water-butt beside ‘Daphnis’; there seem to be only its spout and stopper. For the Brera picture see Donati 2014, no. 158; Paris Bordone, exh. cat. ed. Eugenio Manzato, Palazzo del Trecento, Treviso 1984, no. 2 (Giordana Mariani Canova). For the Detroit picture see Holberton 2008, pp. 62–63; for the Royal Collection picture London 2007, no. 60. pp. 191–93. An example of the ‘moving’ hand is Giorgione’s ‘Giustiniani’ portrait in Berlin. Titian’s ‘Allegory of the Marchese del Vasto’ in the Louvre (see Chapter 14 §10; fig. 14.10) may be regarded as a picture of similar type, even though the man does not turn to the spectator. Timothy Standring, ‘Poussin’s “Infancy of Bacchus” once owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds: A New Addition to the Corpus of His Early Roman Pictures’, Artibus et Historiae, xvii, 1996, pp. 53–68; Nicolas Poussin: Works from his First Years in Rome, exh. cat. by Denis Mahon, Jerusalem 1999, no. 28 and related fig.; Poussin and Nature, exh. cat. ed. Pierre Rosenberg and Keith Christiansen, Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao, and Metropolitan M ­ useum, New York, 2007–08, nos. 18 and 19. Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ Winterthur, ed. Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice, Basle and London 2005 New York, 2008, no. 40 (entry by Oskar Bätschmann).

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E tu, nemica ria, Ch’unque non mosse lagrime o sospiri Godi la morte mia, Gradisch’almeno questi ultimi sospiri Ond’io per tuo contento Gioisca del tormento.’ Così disse e di speme Al tutto privo e colmo d’aspre doglia Pel gran duol che lo preme Drizzossi in piè cingendosi di foglia Dal più mortal fronde, E si gittò nell’onde On the flowery bank/ of the Adige sat Hyacinthus/ and when he saw/ Cynthia without pity, and himself overcome by death/ To the clear and fresh waters/ was moved to speak:/ ‘River whose fair bosom I have already/ swollen with my tears/ receive my last complaint:/ O who offers me, nymph, the foul poison,/ who [offers me] the hard steel or the noose/ to give me cruel release? And you, my foul enemy,/ whom tears and sighs have not moved,/ enjoy my death,/ take pleasure at least in these last sighs/ so that I seeing your content/ may take joy from my torment./ So he spoke and utterly without hope/ and surfeited with hard pain/ for the great grief that oppressed him/ rose to his feet wrapping himself with leaves/ from the most deadly plant/ and threw himself into the waves.

The suicide of a lover, with precedent in Virgil (Eclogue VIII), had soon become a cliché (see Chapter 3 §11), but what had been earlier a solo, firstperson disperata has been reframed into narrative, being set beside a river (Petrarch’s canzone 126, of which Montemayor’s parting scene, as noted, was an elaboration, is directly evoked in the fifth line) and presented as a climax. The third person is not yet plural, but it will be an easy step to place his nymph beside him; the death is not yet overtly sexual, even if it should probably be read that way (consider Petrarch’s sonnet, ‘Una candida cerva sovra l’erba’, ending “quand’io caddi nell’acqua, et ella sparve”|and I fell into the water, and she disappeared|); the protagonists are classicized but do not yet bear pastoral names. A proper third-person dialogue partenza appears in 1563 in Giaches de Wert’s third book of madrigals: ‘Come viver potrò,’ dicea Damone,

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‘Filli mea, senza te se pur in questa Partita aspra il mio cor teco si resta?’ Quando Filli rispose Con parolette accorte e amorose, ‘Quanto più grave noia ci porta ad or della partita il giorno Tanto il felice tuo presto ritorno Ci reca più cara e dolce gioia. Però vive Damon e ti conforti Che se ’l tuo cor mi lasci, il mio ti porti’ How will I live,’ said Damon,/ Phyllis mine, without you, if in this/ bitter parting my heart remains with you?/ When Phyllis replied/ with sweet, wise and amorous words,/’The worse the pain/ the day of our parting brings us now,/ So much your swift and happy return/ brings us dearer and sweeter joy./ Therefore live, Damon, and take comfort/ that if you leave your heart with me, you take my heart with you’.

Even though not in this form, some of the most popular madrigals of the middle sixteenth century had this sort of tone, for instance Cipriano de Rore’s ‘Ancor che col partire’ and Arcadelt’s ‘Il bianco e dolce cigno’ – elegant and refined laments. Soon afterwards, though the sentiment and indeed the vocabulary remain little changed (indeed this is the persistent carmen elegiacum), the Petrarchist cake seems to require a pastoral icing; and this, though icing, changes the nature of the cake, because it has become a dialogue, though framed in the past tense and in the third person and in alienated names (the three voices, of narration and first and second speaker, obviously also provided a musical armature). There is a further shift, too: sex is clearly intimated to have happened.

5 ‘Sulla fiorita riva’: Giovanni Nasco (Maistre Ihan), first book for four voices, 1554, reprinted 1555, text from Einstein 1949, I, p. 456. Canzoniere no. cxc. The midday sun as well as the insatiate gaze suggest sexual lust. ‘Come viver potrò’: Giaches de Wert, third book of madrigals, 1563, text from Gerbino 2009, pp. 269–70. ‘Il bianco e dolce cigno’ by Arcadelt was the “most frequently set, imitated and parodied madrigal of the century”: Gerbino 2009, p. 267; however, this claim is also made for ‘Tirsi morir volea’, see §6.

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3 6 At some point during the 1570s, that is, about during the time that Tasso was writing the Aminta or slightly later, he and Battista Guarini are supposed to have competed in the composition of madrigals, Tasso producing one, ‘Nel dolce seno de la bella Clori’, which Guarini replicated with another, ‘Tirsi morir volea’. The latter became one of the most popular madrigals of the sixteenth century, on the criterion of the number of settings written for it, amounting to 27 at least; Tasso’s was also repeatedly set, but not at all so frequently. In this and in other ways the two madrigals parallel the characteristics and critical fortune of these two authors’ pastoral plays, although Guarino began the Pastor Fido only some years after the Aminta had first been performed. On this occasion it was Guarino who wrote the shorter piece, following more quickly on Tasso’s, but the pattern of vision and revision, of the daringly sensual preceding the masticated and wrought, is otherwise anticipated. Tasso’s madrigal was as follows: Nel dolce seno de la bella Clori Tirsi, che del suo fine già languendo sentia l’ore vicine, Tirsi, levando gli occhi ne’ languidetti rai del suo desio, ‘Anima,’ disse, ‘omai beata mori’, Quand’ella, ‘Oimé! ben mio, aspetta’, sospirò dolce anelando: ‘Ahi, crudo, ir dunque a morte senza me pensi? Io teco, e non men pento, morir promisi, e già moro, e già sento le mortali mie scorte perché l’una e l’altr’alma insieme scocchi.’’ Si stringe egli soave e sol risponde con meste voci a le voci gioconde. O fortunati! l’un entro spirando ne la bocca de l’altra, una dolce ombra di morte gli occhi lor tremanti ingombra: e si sentian, mancando i rotti accenti, agghiacciar tra le labra i baci ardenti.

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On the sweet breast of the fair Chloris/ Thyrsis, who in his languour now felt his final moments to be close by,/ Thyrsis, raising his eyes/ into the lovely languishing rays of his [heart’s] desire,/ ‘My soul,’ he said, ‘now die in beatitude.’/ When she, ‘Oh no, my love,/ wait’, she sighed panting sweetly:/ ‘Ah, cruel, so you think to go to death/ without me? I promised, and I do not regret it, to die with you, and I am already dying, and already feel/ the harbingers of my death/ that your soul and mine may be released together.’/ He shudders softly and replies only/ with groans to her joyous murmurs./ O happy couple! One breathing into the/ the mouth of the other, a single sweet shadow/ of death hangs over their trembling gaze:/ and they felt, as their hoarse cries gave out,/ their burning kisses turn to ice between their lips.

This was Guarino’s madrigal: Tirsi morir volea, gli occhi mirando di colei ch’adora, quand’ella, che di lui non meno ardea, gli disse: ‘Oimé! ben mio, deh! non morir ancora, che teco bramo di morir anch’io’. Frenò Tirsi il desio c’hebbe di pur sua vita alor finire. Ma sentia morte in non poter morire e mentre il guardo pur fisso tenea ne’ begli occhi divini e ’l nettar amoroso indi bevea, la bella ninfa, che già vicini sentia i messi d’Amore, disse con occhi languidi e tremanti: ‘Mori, ben mio, ch’io moro’. ‘Ed io,’ rispose subito il pastore, ‘e teco nel morir mi discoloro.’ Così moriro i fortunati amanti di morte sì soave e sì gradita che per ancor morir tornaro in vita.

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Thyrsis wanted to die,/ gazing into the eyes of the one he adores,/ when she, who burned for him no less,/ said to him: ‘Oh no, my love,/ ah, do not die yet,/ because I too desire to die with you’./ Thyrsis braked the desire/ that he had of finishing his life just then./ But he felt death in not being able to die/ and while he kept his gaze fixed/ on her beautiful, divine eyes,/ and drank from them their amorous nectar,/ the fair nymph, who already felt close/ the messengers of Love,/ said with languid and trembling eyes:/ ‘Die, my love, as I die’./ ‘I, too, am dying,’ immediately returned the shepherd,/ ‘and grow pale with you in dying.’/ So they died, the happy lovers,/ such a soft and pleasing death/ that to die again they returned to life.

3 7 These third-person pastoral couples enact at last the erotic overtones

of the Petrarchist ‘desire-death’ felt by Cassola and others, introducing into explicit narrative sexual fulfilment in mutual love – for in fact very rarely is that ‘normal’ condition stated to have obtained. Happy love may be the expected goal, it is frequently the ending, but its physical enjoyment is thwarted by powers, circumstances, rules, magic, villainy or takes place after the ending. For example, in Sidney’s Old Arcadia, at the end of Book III Pyrocles clearly beds Philoclea, but their congress is not straightforwardly reported, let alone described; analogously, perhaps, in the revised Arcadia, III, 12, Argalus and Parthenia are a happy, loving couple, but once Argalus has honourably responded to the summons to war their union predictably will be severed by his death. An exception to this reticence can be found in Montemayor’s Diana, in the inserted story of Abindarráez and Jarifa, who marry, lie down on a bed and “con la nueva esperiencia encendiron el fuego de los corazones”|with the new experience set alight the fire of their hearts|: here the fact that the lovers are not Christian but Moors suggests how the rule came to be broken:

6 On this contest (and the form of the madrigal in general) see Schulz-Buschhaus 1969, pp. 199–206; also Elio Durante and Anna Martellotti, ‘Tasso, Luzzaschi e il principe di Venosa’, in Tasso, la musica, i musicisti, ed. Maria Antonella Balsano and Thomas Walker, Florence 1988, pp. 17–44, esp. p. 29. In the latter article the suggestion is made that the two authors composed their rival versions (Tasso’s preceding) in 1576; however, Franco Piperno, ‘Pastori e pastoralità nel madrigale musicale, in Il mito d’Arcadia: Pastori e amori nelle arti del Rinascimento, Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Turin, 14–15 March 2005, ed. Danielle Boillet and Alessandro Pontremoli, Florence 2007, pp. 127–42, claims (p. 135) that Meidert must have composed his setting (the earliest known, printed in 1578) during his years at the court of Guidobaldo II della Rovere, that is, 1572–74. For settings of ‘Tirsi morir volea’ see Antonio Vassalli and Angelo Pompilio, ‘Indice delle rime di Battista Guarini poste in musica’, in Guarini, la musica, i musicisti, ed. Angelo Pompilio, Lucca 1997, pp. 185–225: 27 versions from 1578 till 1633.

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the lovers are displaced. In madrigal writing similar displacement is achieved by wrapping the couple in a pastoral envelope, in which the protagonists are further distanced by bearing Greek names – not those used by Virgil – and therefore occupy a less specific quasi-mythological limbo (Tasso’s favourite ‘Clori’, indeed, seems to have been selected from Ovid’s Fasti, in which she is taken sexually by Zephyr, even if ‘Tirsi’ is Thyrsis, the singer of Daphnis in Theocritus, Idyll I). Ultimately, however, the precedent of the vision of Gallus in his agony in Eclogue X, 37–43, with Phyllis and Amyntas beside the gelidus fons, is unavoidable, and the continuity pleasing; thus one can speak almost correctly of these Renaissance lovers’ being in Arcadia – one might call it a ‘little’ Arcadia, as involving a ‘little death’.

3 8 In the wake of Tasso’s and Guarino’s prototypes other such madrigals followed: they are often transmuted into the ‘partenza’ type, which typically is a dialogue taking place at dawn, when one lover has to leave (after they have spent the night together: an exquisite example is the ‘Non si levava ancor l’alba novella’ attributed to Tasso, set notably by Monteverdi as the first offering in his second book of madrigals, for five voices, 1590); the setting is often explicitly beside a stream – that continuity to Petrarch through Montemayor (see Chapter 9 §5; A9) is strikingly maintained. (It was firmly embedded: George Herbert, in renouncing allegorical pastoral in his ‘Jordan (I)’, published 1633, objected “Must purling streams refresh a lover’s loves?”) A noted example from Andrea Gabrieli’s second book of madrigals for six voices (of 1580) demonstrably follows in Tasso’s wake: Clori a Damon dicea: ‘Dolce ben mio, Fia mai ch’un tanto amor vada in oblio!’ Et ei: ‘No, ch’il tuo nodo è in me sì forte Che non si sciorrà mai se non per morte’. Così detto stringea l’un l’altro tanto Che non può stringere o l’edera o l’acanto

7 For death as a metaphor for orgasm in Tasso’s Italy see A. Benedetto, ‘“Gioir morendo”’, in Tasso, minori e minimi a Ferrara, Pisa 1970, pp. 77–80. These are not absolute rules: among the partenze of I lieti amanti (see following), for instance, in XV there is a Titiro (paired with Citarea, however, which negates the continuity) and in just one of the madrigals (III) the first person is used (but Dafne and Tirsi speak to each other).

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Said Chloris to Damon: ‘My sweet all, Can it ever be that such love should vanish away?’ And he to her: ‘No, because the knot is so strong in me that it will never be loosed except by death’. This said they clung to each other to such a degree as neither ivy nor acanthus [round a tree].

A collection entitled I lieti amanti, published in 1586, unusual among madrigal prints for its programmatic organization, contains ten such erotic partenze, composed by Ferrarese musicians, paired with as many sdegni, rejections of their female partner by the male lover, composed by musicians from the rest of Italy. The sdegni are in the second person, that is, addressed to the “donna” by the lover – partings of a different kind. While the pastoral lovers frequently claim, or embroider on the notion, that one takes the other’s heart away, the sdegnanti are glad to have their life back, without any pastoral displacement. An example of each may suffice: XI Setting by Lodovico Agostini ‘Dolce e vaga mia Clori a dio’. ‘Silvano, a dio,’ dicean partendo ne’ più freschi albori due boscherecci amanti versando amari pianti. Egli dicea, ‘Il partire qui te lasciando mi farà morire’. Ed ella rispondea: ‘Sarà finita col tuo partir la mia vita’. Alfin egli partisse e rimase ella né so ben dir se più dolente o bella. ‘My sweet pretty Chloris,/ Goodbye.’ ‘Silvanus, goodbye,’/ they said as they parted in the very early dawn –/two country lovers/ weeping bitter tears./ He said, ‘Parting/ while leaving you here will make me die’./ And she replied,/ ‘My life when you depart will be over’./In the end he departed and she remained/I cannot say whether more sad or more beautiful.

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XII Setting by Costanzo Porta Donna, ben v’ingannate che di vita i’ sia privo, quando a voi mi ritolgo ed a me vivo. Anzi vivo son io dal dì che vi lasciai, però che morto fui mentre v’amai. Fu morte il viver mio, che ’l vivere al martire un modo veramente è di morire. Lady, you deceive yourself/ that I am deprived of life/ when I take myself back from you to myself alive./ In fact I became alive/ from the day I left you, because when I loved you I was dead./My life was death,/ because living in pain/ is truly a way of dying.

The words “né so ben dir se più dolente o bella”, distancing the woman extremely, rendering her a work of art, epitomize the detachment, the ‘vignettism’, of Mannerist pastoral, more metal than flesh, more beautiful than reality; if these partenze were to be regarded as set in Arcadia, then this ‘little’ Arcadia would be a mirage to be sought and seized (if it could be), appreciated for its emotional power and exquisite refinement. It is quintessentially pastoral, echoing Montemayor’s own highly distanced (reported and remembered) “Su rostro, como una flor;/ tan triste, que es locura/ pensar que humana criatura/ juzgue quál era mayor, /la tristeza o hermosura”|Her face, like a flower, so sad, that the idea is crazed that a mortal creature could judge which was greater, her sorrow or her beauty|(A9). The sentiment extends back to the dying Daphnis and forward to Wagnerian Liebestod, but this late sixteenth-century iconization is an important stopping-point.

39

The shaping power of the musical side of this taste – and the pleasure in the performance, for these are not songs to be heard but to sing with friends – should be acknowledged. The ecclesiastic (therefore disapprobationary) Pietro Cerone, in his musical survey El Melopeo of 1613, remarked on the trend of the time to “muy lindos y muy suaves passos chromaticós, o per dezirlo más propriamiente, passos moles, lacivos, y affeminados”|more pure and soave chromatic progressions or, to say it more exactly, soft, lascivious and effeminate progressions|. For these the main influence is nowadays regarded as Andrea Gabrieli, though the composers Cerone specifically mentions are Filippo di Monte and Luca Marenzio, and Marenzio has been regarded as

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“pre-eminently the musician of the pastoral, of the pastoral in every sense”. Marenzio set a few pastoral pieces to music, but more importantly he was the leading composer of a kind of ‘hovering’, lingering, ‘pathetic’ music that seems perfectly to express the sentiments of erotic song or verse in ‘dying’, partenza vein. Cerone’s feminization might also be called swooning or fainting or dying.

3 10 Towards the end of the century manifestations of erotic intimacy increase, and extend their forms. In England, the late classical tale of passionate lovers, Musaeus’s sixth-century ‘epyllion’ of Hero and Leander, not pastoral, but similarly remote – the story that probably inspired the epochal Celestina (see Chapter 5 §18) – was taken up by Christopher Marlowe. Left off at his untimely death in 1593, the two ‘books’ of Marlowe’s Hero and Leander were first published in 1598 (and reissued in the same year completed with a further four books by George Chapman and again with an alternative completion by George Petowe). Except in Petowe’s continuation, this otherwise perfect love – both Leander and Hero paragons of their sex’s beauty, their love instant and mutual, physical as well as tender, virginal (Marlowe dwells a little on Hero’s scruples over the unofficialized loss of her virginity) – ended in death, as it always had done in the legend, otherwise 8 Le rime di Torquato Tasso, ed. Angelo Solerti, Bologna 1898, vol. II, Rime d’amore, no. 379. On Herbert’s poem see Donald Freeman, ‘Pastoral Conversions’, in George Herbert’s Pastoral: New Essays on the Poet and Priest of Bemerton, ed. Christopher Hodgkins, Newark 2010, pp. 35–51, at pp. 35–38. While Herbert’s poetry is not pastoral (although this poem, uniquely, refers to pastoral), there is much discussion of ‘pastoral’ in the introduction and in Freeman’s essay, demonstrating the broad compass of the term’s current usage. On Gabrieli’s madrigals in this vein see also Einstein 1949, II, pp. 545–49; Gerbino 2009, p. 256. Brown 1992 distinguishes a “formulaic” mode which might be deemed to correspond to the pastoral habit of refrain. See I lieti amanti: madrigali di venti musicisti ferraresi e non, ed. M. Giuliani, Florence 1990, and further James Chater, ‘“Such Sweet Sorrow”: The dialogo di partenza in the Italian Madrigal’, Early Music, vol. 27, no. 4 (Luca Marenzio 1553/54–99), November 1999, pp. 576–99, and Gerbino 2009, ch. 12, pp. 256–91; for context also Anthony Newcomb, The Madrigal at Ferrara, 1579–1597, Princeton nj 1980. It is obvious that the wordplay of the poetry – amare/ amaro/ amor/ morire/ morte, etc. – is taken up by the musicians, and this more exaggerated wordplay in Tasso and Guarino must be linked to song from the beginning. Exemplifying this point, there was a notable performance of just these kinds of madrigals by the Soloists of Les Arts Florissants at the Wigmore Hall in London on 16 January 2017: see the programme notes by John Whenham, notably on ‘Non si levava ancor l’alba novella’. 9 Cerone (I, 33), quoted Einstein 1949, II, p. 511; this description of Marenzio is Einstein’s, II, p. 613. It is obviously impressionistic; see Brown 1992 for the specifics of Marenzio’s handling of pastoral.

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known chiefly through Hero’s ‘letter’ in Ovid’s Heroides. Musaeus’s elegant poem gives frequent intimation from the start that this was how it would end, indeed in his version it ends with Hero’s simultaneous death, casting herself from her tower at the sight of Leander’s body. Meanwhile (published in 1594) Shakespeare had ingeniously used the subject of Venus and Adonis to carry on an extended erotic dialogue, though the passion is all and only Venus’s. There is also requited passion in John Weever’s “woodborne” Faunus and Meliflora (1600), a pastoral aetiological epyllion drawing on Shakespeare and Marlowe for its erotic passages. In the field of art we have Paolo Fiammingo’s series of representations of Love in the Golden Age and Reciprocal Love, subsequently engraved by Agostino Carracci (it is difficult to suppose these would not have recalled the Golden Age of Tasso’s ‘Honour’ chorus; Annibale also depicted lovemaking in his Venus and Adonis in the Museo del Prado and his Venus in the Uffizi – alone but with highly salacious putti). Netherlandish artists during this period – Goltzius, Wtewael, Bloemaert – made a speciality of scenes displaying nude bodies erotically, in feasts of the gods, usually The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis, in Mars and Venus discovered, in The Golden Age; and ‘sine Cerere et Libero [Baccho] friget Venus’ (Terence, Eunuchus, IV, v, 732)|without bread or wine love grows cold|, became a subject for art.

3 11 The arrival, seemingly out of nowhere, of ‘Come live with me and be my love’, first appearing in print in 1599 (when it was composed is not known), marked a new shift, apparently without precedent elsewhere. ‘Come live with me and be my love’ is in effect an erotic poem in the first person plural (see A13) – as opposed to third person plural or first or second person singular. The shepherd invites his female respondent directly into their own ‘Arcadia’ – not simply to the country but to the “pleasures” that the country yields, made “for thy delight each May morning”, and so to a transfigured experience (“buckles of the purest gold” evoke the rich costumes of pastoral drama, in which shepherds dressed in gilt taffeta and bore silvered houlettes: see Chapters 11 §20 and 14 §3). In the absence of a relationship with the very different tone, as well as persons, of the Italian pastoral erotic madrigal, the precedents appear to be pre-Renaissance – such as Bernart Marti’s ‘En boscermita m. vol faire’ (see Chapter 2 §2) or Franco Sacchetti’s fourteenthcentury ballata ‘O vaghe pastorelle montanine’ – or oral or ‘popular’ – such as ‘E quando andaré tu al monte, bel pegoraro’|And when will you get upstream, pretty shepherd?| – or, closer to home, the similar sources from which were drawn the other vocatives in the pastoral miscellany England’s 

f ten  §10–§11 v

Helicon, in which ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ was republished the following year, now under the name of Christopher Marlowe. The attribution to Marlowe seems assumed to be correct very generally, but he died on 30 May 1593 and the six-year gap and original anonymity are suspicious, also the existence of an early variation. However that may be, the innuendo of sexual congress is arguably present in the last verse, “each May morning” not being an annual occurrence but the transfigured morning after lovemaking, following on the transfiguring wooing gifts. One might compare the use of ‘May’ in one of Nicholas Breton’s contributions to this miscellany (quoted

10 The so-called “hedonistic turn” of the late Cinquecento is nothing new; it is accepted notably by Gerbino 2009 (pp. 91 and 291). He refers (p. 336) to Einstein 1949, II, p. 536, using the term for a new direction in madrigal writing, but obviously its compass at this stage was much more limited. It had been preceded in the earlier sixteenth century by a “sensuous turn” (see Hérica Valladares, ‘Eros Visible: Art, Sexuality and Antiquity in Renaissance Italy’, reviewing Turner 2017 (Eros Visible), Print Quarterly, xxxvi, December 2019, pp. 474–78, at p. 474), coming to an end with the CounterReformation; this was perhaps a revival in the wake of the Council of Trent. The Collected Poems of Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney and Brian J. Striar, New York and Oxford 2006, pp. 193–287; the editors remark: “Marlowe’s late epicist return to the Ovidian amatory mode in Hero and Leander produces early modern England’s first great poem of consensually lost virginity” (their italics; p. 17). Weever/Davenport. Faunus is entirely ungoatish and wholly fair, though the offspring of the couple, as a consequence of Diana’s wrath, is unexpectedly, except as anticipated in the name ‘Faunus’, a satyr – in the sense also of ‘satire’. For the lost curtained “Nackhenden Bilder” of Hans Fugger’s castle, and The Golden Age in the series of ‘Ages’ by Paolo Fiammingo (Pauwels Franck) for the Fuggers, see Venice 1999–2000, pp. 618–19; for Paolo’s four Allegories of Love, the first two being influentially engraved by Agostino Carracci – Love in the Golden Age, Reciprocal Love, Love being extinguished and Unrequiting lovers being castigated – see (for the iconography) Otto Kurz, ‘“Gli Amori de’ Carracci”: Four Forgotten Paintings by Agostino Carracci’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xiv, nos. 3/4, 1951, pp. 221–33, also Passion, Leidenschaft: Die Kunst der großen Gefühle, exh. cat. ed. Hermann Arnhold and Petra Marx, LWL – Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster 2020–21, no. 75; for Rudolf II, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, L’Ecole de Prague: La peinture à la cour de Rodolphe II, Paris, 1985, nos. 7.19, 20, 29, 34, 43–45, 50, 51 (Heintz); 16.4–6, 11–13 (Quade van Ravensteyn); 20.3–10, 36–42, 48, 49, 57–59, 61, 63, 67–84 (Spranger). See Pleasure and Piety: The Art of Joachim Wtewael, exh. cat. ed. James Clifton, Liesbeth Helmus, Arthur K. Wheelock, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, et alibi, 2015, cat. 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32; The Bloemaert Effect: Colour and Composition in the Golden Age, exh. cat. ed. Liesbeth Helmus and Gero Seelig, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, and Staatliches Museum, Schwerin, 2011, nos. 43–47; and Röthlisberger and Bok 1993, nos. 11, 12, 24, 70. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine_Cerere_et_Baccho_friget_Venus; Goltzius, in Laurence W. Nichols, The Paintings of Hendrick Goltzius, 1558–1617, Doornspijk 2013, nos. A-31, A-32, and in Michels, ed., 2017, no. I. 14; Bloemaert, in Röthlisberger and Bok 1993, nos. 10, 59.

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below, Chapter 13 §5), and there are other songs in the miscellany resembling ‘Come live with me’, such as ‘Come away, come sweet Love’, and other ditties by Nicholas Breton (and then those published in 1604 in his own collection, The Passionate Shepherd). They represent an alternative English ‘country world’ showing little connection to Italian madrigal: instead of fey, fading couples we have more physical, buxom and clownish ones, who nevertheless are also seen as representing a native antiquity (see further Chapter 13 §4 and 5). More than to Marlowe, it is to the same loam as Breton’s ‘The Plowman’s Song’ from England’s Helicon that one should look for the seeds of ‘The Passionate Shepherd’.

11 See Marlowe/Cheney and Striar, pp. 157–58; comment pp. 10–11. The poem is discussed notably by R.S. Forsythe, ‘The “Passionate Shepherd” and English Poetry’, Publications of the Modern Language Society of America, vol. 40, 1925, pp. 692–742. For the use of the first and second persons also in Shakespeare’s sonnets, which may contribute to a better sense of the importance of the shift made by Marlowe’s poem, see Brian Vickers, ‘“Mutual render”: I and Thou in the Sonnets’, in his Returning to Shakespeare, London and New York 1989, pp. 41–88. For the costume of French drama see Alison Kettering, The Dutch Arcadia: Pastoral Art and its Audience in the Golden Age, Totowa and Montclair nj 1983, pp. 115–16, citing Loys Papon’s ‘Pastourelle’, a manuscript in the British Museum, c. 1588, and the stage and costume indications in Nicolas de Montreux (Ollenix du Mont-Sacre), L’Arimène, printed 1597; see now Nicolas de Montreux, Pastorales: Athlette (1585), Diane (1594), Arimène (1597), ed. Mathilde Lamy-Houdry (Classiques Garnier), Paris 2020, pp. 299–670. There seems to be no continuity between the Italian ‘partenza’ madrigal and the English madrigal, despite the known Italian influence on England. In English Madrigal Verse, ed. E.H. Fellowes, Oxford 1929, featuring a very considerable number of texts, one finds only ‘Thyrsis on his fair Phyllis’ breast reposing’ (Thomas Bateson, first set, 1604; p. 16). Evidence of this failure to transmit or to catch in England can be found in the lack of any Elizabethan or Jacobean example given in Lerner’s discussion (1979, pp. 53–59) of ‘Love and Death’. See, however, and also for the influence of ‘The Passionate Shepherd’, Chapter 18 §11, referring to Thomas Carew’s ‘A Rapture’, which has reference to ‘love death’. For ’E quando andaré tu al monte’ and similar see Pirrotta and Povoledo 1982, pp. 92–99; also Greg 1906, pp. 34–35. See England’s Helicon, 1600, 1614, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, Cambridge away, come sweet Love’ is p. 160 in this edition.

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ma

1935 edn 1935. ‘Come

f § 1 1 – A 1 3 , ‘ pa s s i o n at e s h e p h e r d ’ v

A13

ATTR. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his love’ Come live with me, and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields. And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. And I will make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle; A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair-lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw and ivy-buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: An if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me, and be my love. The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my love.

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3 12 Similar enjoyment, similar recourse to a shepherd world, but one of real shepherds as real shepherds really are, is to be found in an interlude like that of Doron and Carmela in Robert Greene’s Menaphon, Carmela having earlier been mentioned as the sister and housekeeper to Menaphon and now brought forth again when the vaunting Menaphon, though “chief shepherd”, has had his baseness proven. Doron, patently a swain, and she sing a song of love-making (Carmela: “… Even with this kiss, as once my father did,/ I seal the sweet indentures of delight …. I love you, Doron, and I will wink on you./ I seal your charter patent with my thumbs,/ Come kiss, and part for fear my mother comes”), and Greene intervenes: “Thus ended this merry eclogue betwixt Doron and Carmela, which, gentlemen, if it be stuffed with pretty similes and far-fetched metaphors, think the poor country lovers knew no further comparisons than came within compass of their country logic” (referring to Servius, quoted here Chapter 3 §2). The jest is condescending but the gist is sympathetic – “taking hand in hand, they kindly sat them down” – and the contrast is there to be made to the often evil-minded and tyrannical figures also wandering Greene’s Arcadia; the depiction is naturalistic, even while satirical: “After they had thus amorously ended their eclogues, they plighted faith and troth, and Carmela, very briskly wiping her mouth with a white apron, sealed it with a kiss”; the eroticism is open. 3 13 One has seen peasants mocked before, as well as peasants perceived as

superior in moral value to sinful citizens or courtiers (see Chapter 12 §1, 11, 14), but earlier representations do not appear to combine realism and sympathy. (One might except the interest taken for a short period in the Veneto under Venetian rule, although the backlash there from the local feudal classes was among the most virulent anywhere.) A kind of exception which may, if it is one, prove the rule is Lucas van Valckenborch’s rare little landscape in Frankfurt (fig. 10.9) of a milkmaid undergoing the attentions of a fellow rustic: this has an intimacy and concentration that might have been highly sympathetic, if the coarse joke of the spilt pail did not insist that despite the beautiful setting (the greens are finely preserved) these are peons. But sympathy and realism can be found together also in Holland, among the considerable production of songbooks in the early seventeenth century, which often contain pastorals. Beside what is essentially the rousing, concluding song of Boudewijn Wellens’s

12 Greene/Cantar, pp. 167–71.

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fig. 10.9 Lucas van Valckenborch, Milkmaid and cowherd in a meadow, 1573, oil on panel, 34.8 × 46.8 cm, Städel Museum, Frankfurt

’t Vermaeck der ieught|The delight of the young|, printed 1612, we find a “Liedt waer in t’samen-spreken Coridon een Herder, en Silvia een Nymphe”|Song in which there converse Coridon a shepherd and Silvia a nymph|: Ay Louderlijcke Silvia, Wat siedy dus rontomme? … De wulpse liefd’ is teder. Ay Coridon // schuylt voor de son En sit wat ny my neder. Ah lovely Silvia, What do you see around? … Wanton love is tender. Ah Coridon, keep out of the sun And sit a bit nearer me.

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fig. 10.10 After Hendrik Goltzius Coridon and Silvia, c. 1601–11, engraving, 480 × 348 mm

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Though as a consequence of their tryst Silvia’s untended sheep fall prey to wolves, the conventional ‘bad end’ little vitiates the relish with which their encounter is related. It was possibly with reference to this song that Goltzius named the protagonists of one of his prints – with little precedent or parallel, though both are entirely generic – Coridon and Silvia (fig. 10.10). They are in my view sympathetically represented: his love for her seems sincere, and she, though attached and receptive, is not whorish. ‘Coridon’ was the patronizing name given to a bumpkin lover since Virgil and through the Middle Ages, and in the print he is characterized as a peasant or clown by the comically enormous animal-skin busby he carries on his head, by the pathetically inadequate panpipes he holds in his lap, by his ignoble profile and by the lack of any classicism in his stance or pose. Silvia is not so much a peasant – in the song she is called a “Nymphe” – but she is surely to be read as feckless and gauche in her upward gaze, in the twist of her hand holding a flower looking ready to be cast aside, in her crossed legs. Their love seems to me to be celebrated in a jocular, finger-pointing manner, but also appreciatively – they are figures of fun but human and as starstruck as any ‘higher’ lover; in the song he ‘gives’ her “all Spain”, for which she would not exchange her crown of flowers; she ‘gives’ him “France’s crown”, which he would not swap for his shepherd’s staff. 13 For this sympathy see (glancingly) above, Chapter 3 §6, and for the backlash below, Chapter 11 §12, and the notes thereto; Ruzante had at least the opportunity to raise peasant issues, but his patron Alvise Cornaro was perhaps more a zamindar than a supporter of the peasants, whom he indebted and dispossessed. Alexander Wied, Lucas und Marten van Valckenborch (1535–1597 und 1534–1612), Das Gesamtwerk mit kritischem Œuvrekatalog, Freren 1990, no. 16, signed and dated 1573. Goltzius’s image is noted in Kettering 1983, fig. 125; it is discussed more fully by Eric Jan Sluitjer in Het Gedroomde Land: Pastorale schilderkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat., Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 1993, pp. 33–48, and valuably; but he does not entertain my kind of reading. He dates the print to the first lustrum of the seventeenth century, which (if justified) might strain the connection to this song; but there is no precedent, as far as I know, for this pairing of Coridon and Silvia. I would not claim, either, that Goltzius’s print was intended to illustrate the song, but only that he may have appended the names to his print in order to make the reference. Above all the reference to the song tells the viewer how to take the image – not altogether seriously, and sympathetically. I note that Jan de Bray drew on the print for the relationship between the two more classicized figures, now representing Daifilo and Granida, in a drawing of his in the British Museum (reproduced Kettering 1983, fig. 154): for Daifilo and Granida see Chapter 14 §5–9. Peasants frequently feature in the work and workshop of Pieter Bruegel, but there has never been any question that they are pastoral; and the artist’s attitude towards them is predominantly factual, or neutral, and perhaps never sympathetic (see further Chapter 12 §9); by contrast Goltzius’s print seems to enter into the pair’s psychology.

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fig. 10.11 Pieter Lastman, Paris and Oenone, 1610, oil on panel, 65.4 × 111.1 cm, High Museum of Art, Atlanta

fig. 10.12 Pieter Lastman, Lovers beside a classical temple, c. 1612, oil on panel, 38.5 × 54 cm, private collection

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fig. 10.13 Pieter Lastman, Two lovers, 1619, oil on panel, 108.9 × 71.4 cm, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Adam, Jr. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester ma

3 14 A milking scene in its background relates Pieter Lastman’s treatment of an erotic scene to Valckenborch’s painting, though Lastman’s peasant protagonists are mythological, discreetly identified by an inscription on the tree behind as Paris and Oenone (fig. 10.11). As an erotic subject Paris and Oenone was well chosen, bridging and combining different classes and contexts – she, soon to be abandoned, therefore punished, might be taken as beneath his rank, while his noble destiny is not yet revealed; the inscription on the tree is classical pastoral, the garlands traditional vernacular (penetrated by the crook, also coarse), the landscape and background scene georgic, the goats both appropriate to a herdsman and a gross innuendo – and Paris’s pose, central, both classicizing and erotic in reference (it derives by one means or another from the pair of Jupiter and Ganymede in one of the fields in Raphael’s Farnesina frescos, counter-foreshortening against the backward curve of the pendentive). This work, dated 1610, was followed by similar paintings in following years (c. 1612 and 1619; figs. 10.12, 10.13) in which the identification has to be assumed – or abandoned, though the male must be

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assumed to have remained similar to Paris in character. In the c. 1612 version of the (non-)subject Lastman showed the herdsman unequivocally between the legs of the shepherdess, although the picture is lighter, more peaceful, with a calm and pleasant landscape, and there is even a temple on a hill in the background, but the guarding goat proclaims the lewdness. In the 1619 version the youth wears a nebris or goatskin, but the same couple previously courting in the background (she has the same bonnet) are in modern dress, there are bagpipes, and above all the five outward gazes – of the girl, the boy, the two goats and the dog – emphasize the grossness of the indecency.

3 15 These earlier northern examples serve to illustrate the idyllic in Poussin’s pendants discussed above, their tranquil, unmoralized, unsinful classicism, in some contrast even to Poussin’s own earlier erotic works (see Chapter 15 §11). Idylls of the kind were not beyond the reach of northerners, such as Abraham Bloemaert, who in his middle age worked both in a vein of classicism and in a generally humane realism; and notably on one occasion he switched one of his rustic subjects (see Chapter 12 §9, fig. 12.10) into a pastoral idiom, changing very little except her attributes (fig. 10.14) – from a spinner with a distaff she becomes a shepherdess with a floral hat and an houlette; he then re-worked this composition again in a painting of 1630 into an idyllic vision (fig. 10.15), on a par with Poussin’s above (fig. 10.7). I say idyllic, because it is a highly artificial picture, with two nudes (now) incongruous 14 Kettering 1983 (p. 88) mentioned and illustrated these paintings by Lastman (figs. 114–17); they are also discussed at greater length in Utrecht 1993, pp. 48–56 (Sluijter) and under no. 34 (van den Brink); Sluijter’s article there is translated in Sluijter, Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age, Zwolle 2000, pp. 160–97, 321–29; see further Christian Tico Seifert, Pieter Lastman: Studien zu Leben und Werk …, Petersberg 2011, pp. 104–05, no. A2; (he does not mention the second); p. 146 (the third); p. 209: in this last version the right-hand side of the picture, with the sheep and dog – not goats – is recycled from another work and so probably should be left out of the series. The milking scene in the background of the first two is referred to Titian’s Milkmaid woodcut (here fig. 15.1) but the resemblance is by no means exact: this is dubious. For the significance of the garland see above, §1–2; see also Alison McNeil Kettering, ‘Rembrandt’s “Flute Player”: A Unique Treatment of Pastoral’, Simiolus, vol. 9, no. 1, 1977, pp. 19–44, at pp. 36–37, and further images she reproduces (also discussed in §15 following). A more immediate precedent for Lastman’s out-thrusting leg might be local Dutch works such as Abraham Bloemaert’s Mercury and Argus in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (Utrecht and Schwerin 2011, no. 41), or Pourbus’s Allegory of Love in the Wallace Collection, London (Ingamells 1985–92, IV, pp. 271–75, P531). In Goltzius’s unusually erotic depiction of The Fall of Man (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), there is also an unusually prominent goat (Nichols 2013, no. A-2). See further again Kettering 1977, p. 38.

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fig. 10.14 Abraham Bloemart, Shepherdess and shepherd boy, 1627, oil on canvas, 59.7 × 74.3 cm, Niedersächsische LandesmuseumHanover

fig. 10.15 Abraham Bloemart, Shepherdess and shepherd boy, signed and dated 1630, whereabouts unknown

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in a landscape, her hair in a Raphaelesque acconciatura. In fact this is more a Petrarchist fantasy in the manner of Titian’s drawing (fig. 7.16) than a loving couple of the kind presently being discussed. Bloemaert also produced a small pendant pair of a full-length shepherd and a shepherdess, each beneath a tree, dated 1634 – a novelty in respect of the half-lengths that had recently come into vogue. His Dordrecht pupil Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp, remarkable otherwise for his stolid depictions of peasants, animals and local sitters (see Chapter 12 §10), also occasionally introduced the idyllic, notably in a work in the Musée Ingres of about 1639–40 (fig. 10.16), in which the landscape was probably provided by his son Aelbert: to assist the effect he used contre-jour, though not here against the sunlit sky as his son would habitually do (see further Chapter 12 §10). Very shortly afterwards Rembrandt took up the theme in his etching of a Flute-player (fig. 10.17), borrowing his brutish peasant and the transverse flute from Titian’s Herdsman (fig. 15.2) – and this again can be read as Petrarchist, but as a caricature of Petrarchism imputing obscene prurience to the male lover. There are more straightforward loving couples by Rembrandt’s pupils, such as Govaert Flinck. Rubens, too, had taken up the theme, shortly before his death in 1640, translating his early composition of a Soldier and Moll (see §4n) into a full-length Shepherd and Shepherdess (Alte Pinakothek, Munich), in which he presses one leg firmly between hers, and she seems, too, to squeeze it there. One more significant painting to be added to this group – equivalent to Poussin’s touching lyricism on the one hand and Goltzius’s sympathetic humanity on the other – was produced by Peter Lely probably in Haarlem, just before he made his way to England in 1641 (fig. 10.18). The lovers are not quite in modern dress, but it is certainly not wholly classical, either: although his outer garment sweeps across his chest like classical drapery, and he is barefoot, he is undoubtably wearing a shirt with a collar; her overdress, though not un-classical, does not fall in any such classical pattern and features modern slashed sleeves; thus the work is lifted out of ‘genre’ – he is not a clown nor she a nymph. They are as real as actors on the contemporary stage, even if not really real. There are also moralizing elements, the satyrs on one side who appear to reprimand Cupid (as if they were any ones to point the finger) and on the other a temple, perhaps indicating recall of Lastman’s landscape love scene (fig. 10.12) and anticipating Adriaen van der Werff ’s neoclassical pastorals (see Chapter 19 §4; fig. 19.1). Perhaps one may also discern here the makings of a bower – in the great rock beside which the lovers seem to nestle, with Cupid – this newish idea (though ultimately recalling the cave of Dido and Aeneas or Tristan and Isolde) of an erotic bower seemingly forming in the later seventeenth century (see Chapter 19 §4).

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fig. 10.16 Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp, Shepherd and shepherdess in a landscape, c. 1639–40, oil on canvas, 110 × 166 cm, Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

fig. 10.17 Rembrandt van Rijn, ‘The Flute-player’, 1642, etching and drypoint (4/4), 114 × 142 mm

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15 For Bloemaert’s paintings see Röthlisberger and Bok 1993, nos. 449, 480; Utrecht and Schwerin 2011, no. 72; Utrecht 1993, p. 56. Röthlisberger indignantly rejects Christopher Brown’s idea (Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Paintings, Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1984, p. 140) that the boy in the 1627 picture is thrusting his flute in a lewd way under her skirt; but Ghislain Kieft in Utrecht and Schwerin 2011, no. 72, supports it, and Carlo van Oosterhout in Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp, exh. cat. ed. Sander Paarlberg, Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht, 2002, under no. 26, takes it for granted, even though the Cuyps’ picture he supposes deriving from it (fig. 10.16) he says diminishes or removes the innuendo. In fact there is no sign in the original c. 1625 composition that it even reaches her skirt, and in the later composition, too, it would have a long way to travel if it were heading between her thighs. In the c. 1625 composition his movement makes some sense, if he is reaching out in a friendly gesture; in the 1627 version it could make sense if he were reaching it out and she were pointing to it, but, now in his right hand rather than his left, and pushed out into mid air, it looks implausible and a bit of a mistake. Bloemaert does not seek any phallic capital from the pipe in his nude essay (fig. 10.15). Even in the Rembrandt etching (fig. 10.17) the pipe is not in a suggestive position: the lewdness is all in the gaze of the piper looking up her skirt. See also Bloemaert’s print of a loving couple and three goats comparable with Lastman’s series, dated 1611: Utrecht 1993, fig. 40. The pendant pair Röthlisberger and Bok 1993, nos. 505 and 506, Earl Spencer collection. For the Rembrandt and further examples see Kettering 1977 and Kettering 1983, p. 89; Cafritz in Washington 1988–89, p. 133; see again H. Rodney Nevitt, Jr, Art and the Culture of Love in S­ eventeenthcentury Holland, Cambridge and New York 2003, pp. 190ff. One may also compare with both the Cuyp and the Rembrandt Watteau’s ‘L’Indiscret’ (Emile Dacier and Albert Vuaflart, Jean de Jullienne et les graveurs de Watteau au XVIIIe siècle, 4 vols., Paris 1921–29, no. 121). A coy couple by Govaert Flinck, signed and 1654, once again with flute and garland, is now in the Leiden Collection, USA (www.leidencollection). For Rubens’s Munich picture see Nils Büttner, Rubens: Genre Scenes (Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, XVII), 2019, no. 8, pp. 170–88. He lists a great number of copies. For the Lely see Dutch Classicism in Seventeenth-Century Painting, exh. cat. ed. Albert Blankert, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main, 1999, no. 42; Peter Lely, exh. cat. ed. Caroline Campbell, Courtauld Gallery, London, 2012, no. 2. I mention also a late sixteenth-century drawing by Paulus van Vianen of lovers in a landscape: these are not peasants but rather of the artist’s own society inserted, it seems, in a study of the city of Salzburg: see The Dawn of the Golden Age, exh. cat. ed. Ger Luitjen et al., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1993, no. 191.

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fig. 10.18 Peter Lely, Couple in a landscape, c. 1640, oil on canvas, 88 × 96 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

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fig. 10.19 Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp, Boy offering his shepherdess a ring, c. 1628, oil on canvas, 91 × 109.5 cm, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest

3 16 There are occasionally representations, too, not of lovers loving, but of couples joining, demonstratively and by evident choice, for clearly not all marriages were arranged. The good Jacob Cuyp produced a relatively monumental painting of a shepherd proffering a ring to a maid (fig. 10.19), preferring this more correct representation to an overt pass or innuendo; this is still undoubtedly a ‘genre’ scene, since the boy is derived from a print by Bloemaert and the girl is a paste-in recurring in Cuyp’s compositions – a scene of ‘buxom’ country life (for this term see Chapter 12 §10) in which happy love also features. However, in another instance it seems more than likely that Cuyp made a joint portrait of a bourgeois pair with shepherd attributes, a garland and an houlette (fig. 10.20) respectively, in order to express their mutual love, much as others personated Daifilo and Granida to similar effect (see Chapter 14 §9) – each happy to “like my choice” (the motto found on a number of posy rings), their shepherdhood expressing their sincerity and freedom to choose. 

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fig. 10.20 Jacob Gerritz. Cuyp, Unknown man crowning his shepherdess, also unknown, art market, 2016

16 For the Budapest picture see Dordrecht 2002, no. 10, entry by Yvonne Bleyerfeld, which identified Bloemaert’s engraving Youth with cooking pot (Röthlisberger and Bok 1993, no. 561; there fig. 47) as the source for the man and the figure of the woman in more than one other work (there fig. 69, cat. 5); the Budapest museum and previous literature maintain the picture to be a portrait. This second painting does not feature in Alan Chong’s catalogue raisonné in Dordrecht 2002, but seems convincing as Jacob Gerritz.’s work: sold Lempertz, Cologne, Auction 1067, ‘Alte Kunst’, 21 May 2016, lot 127. “I like my choice” is the posy found on six rings in the Griffin collection: see Diana Scarisbrick, I like my choyce: Posy Rings from the Griffin Collection, London 2021, section VIII, nos. 73–78. On shepherds’ proverbial freedom to choose their partner (as opposed to the usual arranged marriage; see 9 §8), see further Chapter 18 §33.

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