The Sword and the Pen

Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena

Konrad Eisenbichler

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780268027766
• eBook ISBN: 9780268078652
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria italiana

In The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena, Konrad Eisenbichler analyzes the work of Sienese women poets, in particular, Aurelia Petrucci, Laudomia Forteguerri, and Virginia Salvi, during the first half of the sixteenth century up to the fall of Siena in 1555. Eisenbichler sets forth a complex and original interpretation of the experiences of these three educated noblewomen and their contributions to contemporary culture in Siena by looking at the emergence of a new lyric tradition and the sonnets they exchanged among themselves and with their male contemporaries. Through the analysis of their poems and various book dedications to them, Eisenbichler reveals the intersection of poetry, politics, and sexuality, as well as the gendered dialogue that characterized Siena's literary environment during the late Renaissance. Eisenbichler also examines other little-known women poets and their relationship to the cultural environment of Siena, underlining the exceptional role of the city of Siena as the most important center of women's writing in the first half of the sixteenth century in Italy, and probably in all of Europe.

This innovative contribution to the field of late Renaissance and early modern Italian and women's studies rescues from near oblivion a group of literate women who were celebrated by contemporary scholars but who have been largely ignored today, both because of a dearth of biographical information about them and because of a narrow evaluation of their poetry. Eisenbichler's analysis and reproduction of many of their poems in Italian and modern English translation are an invaluable contribution not only to Italian cultural studies but also to women's studies.

NOTES

Abbreviations Used in the Notes

BN	Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
FI-BNCF	Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Florence, Italy
RISM	Répertoire international des sources musicales (superscript indicates RISM number from the volume Recueils imprimés xvie-xviie)
SI-ASS	Archivio di Stato di Siena, Siena, Italy
SI-BCI	Biblioteca Municipale degli Intronati di Siena, Siena, Italy

Introduction

1. Dionisotti, Geografia e storia, pp. 227–54.

2. V. Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, pp. xx–xi. But see also Cox’s comment later in her volume: “Even if the 1540s and 1550s in Italy did not constitute quite the isolated great age of women’s writing we encounter in Dionisotti’s historical construction, it cannot be denied that it was in many ways a breakthrough period for the nascent tradition [of women’s writing]” (p. 118). Add to this Marie-Françoise Piéjus’s comment that “même si l’écriture féminine n’est pas née en 1538, elle ne devient un phénomène public qu’à cette date, lorsque paraissent les Rime de Vittoria Colonna.” Piéjus, “Création au féminin” (1994), p. 80.

3. Shemek, Ladies Errant, p. 6.

4. Ruggiero, “Marriage, Love, Sex,” p. 10.

5. Ross, Birth of Feminism, p. 315.

6. “Ma io non posso andar cercando minutamente ogni cosa, e mi conviene perciò passar sotto silenzio più altre che o come coltivatrici della volgar poesia vengon lodate dagli scrittori di que’ tempi, benchè non ce ne siano rimaste rime, o ci hanno lasciata solo scarsa copia di rime.” Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana [1805–13], vol. 7, pt. 2, p. 1174. Tiraboschi is incorrect in saying that “none or few of their poems survive”—in fact, there are plenty of manuscript and sixteenth-century editions of their poems.

7. “Che è questo vano cicaleggiare intorno ad amore, e questa seguela monotona e fredda di versi, che sembrano tante proposizioni messe l’una dietro l’altra senza un sentimento? Vuoto: quel vuoto ch’era nell’anima. I medesimi caratteri naturalmente offre la poesia della Brambatti Grumelli piena di sottigliezze e d’immagini oscure e strane, un altro labirinto; e così la poesia di Lucrezia Marcelli che fa descrizioni insipide ed inefficaci, e quella di Virginia Salvi che pare imiti addirittura la già citata Andreini: ‘Dolci sdegni e dolc’ire / Soavi tregue e paci / Che dolce fate ogni aspro e rio martire, / O d’amor liete faci, / Che ad ambo il petto ardete / Con così grato foco, / Che m’è caro il penar, la morte gioco . . . / Ci sentite dentro una rilassatezza ed una monotonia, che dovean finire per annoiare loro medesime.’” Magliani, Storia letteraria delle donne italiane, pp. 174–75.

8. M. Cox, “Earliest Edition of the ‘Rime,’” p. 266. None of the collections of Colonna’s poetry published in her lifetime was ever authorized or otherwise approved or checked by her.

9. But see Robin, Publishing Women, who does argue for the existence of a virtual salon of literate and literary women in Italy, of which Vittoria Colonna formed a part, on the island of Ischia as early as the 1520s–30s. I would point out, however, that, as Robin herself states, each of the four Colonna-D’Avalos women who formed the nucleus of this salon served more as “an influential patron” to contemporary and future writers (p. 2) than as a producer of cultural wares (except for Vittoria Colonna, who would, in later years, devote herself to poetry).

10. Buonarroti, Rime, G.235.

ONE. At Petrarch’s Tomb

1. In “Création au féminin” (1994), Piéjus gives 1538 as the year of Piccolomini’s visit to Arquà (p. 81), but this is clearly a slip-up; she corrects herself in “Venus bifrons” ([1980], p. 96), coming in line with scholars such as Salza (“Da Valchiusa ad Arquà,” p. 755) and Cerreta (“Tombaide,” p. 162).

2. “Andando Ms. Alesandro Picc.mi da Padova alla Tomba del Petrarca, che è in Arqua, egli vi fece sopra il presente Sonetto qual’è. / Giunto Alesandro à la famosa Tomba / sopra il quale molte Gentildonne Senesi, et altri belli Spiriti fecero il rimanente de’ Sonetti, et infiniti altri pigliando il soggetto del sonetto allegato, e le proprie rime.” SI-BCI, MS H. X.2, fol. 21v. Also: “andando egli a visitare il Sepolcro del Petrarca ad Arquà, luoco vicino a Padova poche miglia, spinto dalla riverenza di quell’ossa, mettesse insieme, prima che d’intorno a quelle si partisse, il nobil sonetto. / Giunto Alessandro a la famosa tomba / Del gran TOSCAN che ’l vago amato alloro con quello che seguita. / Et a quei marmi l’affissasse.” S. Bargagli, “Orazione,” p. 556; Fabiani, Memorie, pp. 29–30.

3. The sonnet survives in manuscript in FI-BNCF, MS Palat. 256, fols. 71v–72r and SI-BCI, MS H.X.2, fol. 65r. It is not transcribed in FI-BNCF, MS Palat. 228, or in SI-BCI, MS H. X.2 (in the first of two sets of transcriptions that starts at fol. 21v), or in SI-BCI, MS H. X.45, which instead carry the responses the sonnet elicited from five Sienese women and Piccolomini’s answers to them. The sonnet was published several times in those decades: first in Domenichi, Rime diverse di molti eccellentiss. auttori (1546), p. 247, and (1549), p. 247; then in 1549 in A. Piccolomini, Cento sonetti, sonnet 86, sign. Giijv, where, however, it displays significant variants from the manuscript records. My edition is based on the FI-BNCF, MS Palat. 256 rendition, which is the version on which the Sienese women based themselves in echoing Piccolomini’s rhyme words. Here as elsewhere in this volume I have rectified the punctuation and the u/v, i/j variance in line with modern practice.

4. Petrarch, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, 187; hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as RVF.

5. Petrarch, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, p. 333. The translation is mine.

6. “E se Alessandro ebbe invidia ad Achille non de’ suoi fatti, ma della fortuna che prestato gli avea tanta felicità che le cose sue fosseno celebrate da Omero, comprender si po che estimasse più le lettre [sic] d’Omero, che l’arme d’Achille. Qual altro giudice adunque, o qual altra sentenzia aspettate voi della dignità dell’arme e delle lettere, che quella che fu data da un de’ più gran capitani che mai sia stato?”; Castiglione, Libro del Cortegiano 1.45.

7. Procaccioli, Lettere scritte a Pietro Aretino, letter 116, vol. 2, pp. 130–31; see the transcription below in this chapter.

8. I take the idea of “patriotic issues” from Virginia Cox’s Women’s Writing in Italy, p. 6.

9. “E come per a lui gradire spàrtesi di quello d’ognintorno le copie, niun bello spirito nell’ACCADEMIA non rimanesse, nè fuore, nè in quella, od altre nobil città d’Italia, che non dettasse versi sopra il medesimo concetto da lui spiegato, e sopra le da lui medesime rime usate. Perche andarono intanto multiplicando i componimenti presso a tal materia distesi, e d’un tal volume se ne fè conserva, che ne meritò sotto ’l titol de la TOMBAIDE di esser desiderosamente ricevuto dal Mondo.” S. Bargagli, “Orazione,” p. 556.

10. FI-BNCF, MS Palat. 228, fols. 76v–81r (formerly 65v–70r), includes the sonnets by the five Sienese women and Piccolomini’s responses to them but not the original sonnet by Piccolomini or the sonnets by the three men (Orsini, Grimaldi, and Varchi); SI-BCI, MS H.X.2, fols. 21v–25v, includes the sonnets by four of the five Sienese women (it lacks Eufrasia Marzi’s—though it does have Piccolomini’s response sonnet to her) and Piccolomini’s responses but not his original sonnet or those by/to the other men (Orsini, Grimaldi, Varchi); SI-BCI, MS H.X.2, fols. 65r–66r, includes only Piccolomini’s original sonnet, Marzi’s sonnet, and Piccolomini’s response to Marzi’s sonnet; SI-BCI, MS H.X.45, fols. 95v–98r, includes the sonnets by all five Sienese women but not Piccolomini’s original or those to/by the other three men (Orsini, Grimaldi, Varchi). Orsini’s sonnet survives in manuscript in BN, MSS italiens, 1535, fol. 73r, and is published in Flamini, “Canzoniere inedito di Leone Orsini,” pp. 652–53, Salza, “Da Valchiusa ad Arquà,” p. 757, and Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, p. 247. Grimaldi’s sonnet has not been located in manuscript and survives in Cerreta, “Tombaide,” p. 166, and Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, p. 246. Varchi’s sonnet also is not extant in manuscript but is published in Cerreta, “Tombaide,” p. 166, and Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini, p. 247.

11. V. Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy, p. 84.

12. It is not clear which of two different “Eufrasia Venturi” might be the woman in question. In the dedicatory letter to his translation of Xenophon’s La Economica (8 January 1538/9), Alessandro Piccolomini refers to her as “Eufrasia Placidi de’ Venturi,” thus indicating that she was born a Placidi and married a Venturi (fol. 2r). The only Eufrasia Placidi at that time was Eufrasia Caterina di Aldello Placidi, who was baptized on 4 April 1507 (SI-ASS, Biccherna 1134, fol. 115v; SI-ASS, MS A 51, fol. 309r). However, there is no record of this Eufrasia Placidi, or any other Placidi woman, marrying into the Venturi family at any time in the first half of the sixteenth century, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Texts and Translation
• Introduction
• One. At Petrarch’s Tomb: The First Bloom of a Short Springtime
• Two. Aurelia Petrucci: Admired and Mourned
• Three. Laudomia Forteguerri: Constructions of a Woman
• Four. Virginia Martini Salvi: An Indomitable Woman
• Five. Epilogue
• Appendix
• Notes
• Works Cited