Veronica Gambara:
Widowhood, Poetry, and Power in Italian Renaissance Court Culture
Molly M. Martin
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree
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in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
UMI Number: 3249109
Copyright 2007 by Martin, Molly M.
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Abstract
Veronica Gambara:
Widowhood, Poetry, and Power in Italian Renaissance Court Culture Molly M. Martin
This dissertation investigates how the poetry produced by Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) throughout her reign as the governing widow dowager Countess of Correggio (1519-1550) related in a meaningful way to her political status as a ruling widow dowager. Gambara’s poetry has been relatively overlooked by contemporary study. This is partly the result o f past critical approaches to Petrarchism, and especially to early modem female lyricists within the tradition, which generally disfavored a poet of Gambara’s attributes. This dissertation addresses the need for a critical study of
Gambara’s poetry by presenting the first historically contextualized analysis of a selection o f Gambara’s verse. Specifically, this study draws on the theoretical model provided by Ann Rosalind Jones, who argues that early modem female poets must be examined with an awareness of the cultural systems within which they operated. This dissertation sheds light on the social milieu within which Gambara functioned - that is, under a system o f widowhood ideologies, and within a set of ideologies specific to women as political agents in the Northern Italian princely court - and examines how Gambara negotiated, and even advanced, her status within the political and cultural realms o f sixteenth century Italy through her lyric production. My analysis
comprehensively investigates the connection between Gambara’s literary activity and her political status, and points the way toward a critical study of Gambara’s complete oeuvre.
Table of Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Dedication Preface Chapter One
Veronica Gambara’s Courtly Context:
A History o f Women in Relation to Education, Poetry, and Politics in the Northern Italian Renaissance Court
Chapter Two
1529 and the Re-emergence of Gambara’s Poetics:
Petrarchismo as a Site for Self-Fashioning
Chapter Three
Poetry as an Instrument o f Rule:
Gambara’s Diplomatic Verse to the Medici and d’Avalos Families
Chapter Four
Gambara’s Imperial Sonnets on Charles V
Conclusion Bibliography Appendix ii iii iv v p . l p. 44 p. 75 p. 108 p. 139 p. 146 p. 160
List of Figures
1. Piero della Francesca. Battista Sforza, Federigo da Montefeltro. c. 1465-72. (Uffizi, Florence).
2. Niccolo Fiorentino. Portrait Medal o f Caterina Sforza. c. 1488. (The British Museum).
3. Niccolo Fiorentino. Portrait Medal o f Caterina Sforza. c. 1498. (The British Museum). 4. Titian. Mary Magdalen, c. 1530-35. (Galleria Pitti, Florence).
5. Parmigianino. Allegorical Portrait o f Charles V. c. 1529-30. (Rosenberg & Steibel, New York).
6. Giovanni Britto after Titian. Charles V in Armor, c. 1532, xylograph. (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna).
7. Titian. Charles V with a Hound, c. 1533. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).
8. Jakob Seisenegger. Charles V with a Hound, c. 1532-33. (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Professor Virginia Cox, who first pointed me in the direction of Veronica Gambara and who has guided this project through all its
stages, especially to completion. She has been exceedingly generous with her knowledge and time over the years, and will always be a source of inspiration for my work in the future. I am especially thankful to Professor Teodolinda Barolini, for guiding my study of Italian letters and for opening up issues of gender to me, both inside the classroom and over the course of our many conversations together. My warmest thanks to Professor Jean Howard, for helping me deepen and broaden my knowledge o f gender studies and for her steadfast support. Special thanks also to Professor Tommasina Gabriele, for inspiring my study of Italian language and literature as an undergraduate and beyond.
My friends and family have been an infinite source of encouragement. I am especially grateful to my mother, for her love and inspiration.
Dedication
Preface
Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) was bom to a noble family on their feudal estate in Pratalboino outside o f Brescia. She was thoroughly educated in her youth, and by the turn of the century she demonstrated a natural literary talent with aspirations to circulate her verse. In 1509, Gambara’s father arranged her marriage to Giberto X (d. 1518), the Count of Correggio. Giberto was a military condottiere and the lord of a small fiefdom, which boasted a culturally vibrant atmosphere maintained by the learned women who married into the da Correggio family, including Gambara. Giberto died in battle in 1518, and upon his death, Gambara acceded to the position of leadership as the sole guardian of their two sons and exclusive ruler over her husband’s territory. During her sojourn as the widow dowager Countess of Correggio, Gambara patronized many artists, including the famous Antonio Allegri, more commonly known as Correggio (1489-1534); she
effectively implemented her husband’s political strategy of fostering alliances with the neighboring princely dynasties; she launched the professional military and church careers of her two sons; and, alongside the most famous literary and political figures of her day, she frequented the year-long celebration in honor of the imperial coronation o f Charles V (1500-1558) in Bologna. Gambara also produced venerable poetry from the third decade of the century until her death in 1550, and it is during this period that she ascended to the national literary landscape as one of the first celebrated female lyricists of the sixteenth century. The purpose of the present study is to investigate how the poetry Gambara produced throughout her ruling years related in a meaningful way to her political status as a ruling widow dowager.
Of Gambara’s lifetime production of poetry nearly seventy compositions are extant. A careful examination o f her manuscript tradition reveals a hiatus in the public circulation of her verse beginning sometime around 1519 - the year following the death o f her husband and her subsequent inheritance o f his political position as the ruler of Correggio - and lasting until 1529, when Gambara returned to the public circulation of her verse by sending a sonnet to Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). There is, of course, the possibility that Gambara continued to produce poetry throughout these years, but suppressed the public viewing o f this verse. In terms of the poetry that was circulated to the public, therefore, Gambara’s oeuvre sequentially - and thematically, as we shall see - forms two groups: her early poetry composed throughout her youth, marriage, and the period immediately following her widowhood; and her post-1529 verse written during her ruling years as a widow dowager until her death in 1550.
Gambara’s early verse, which we will review in the first chapter o f this study, is thematically centered on the drama of courtly love. Her post-1529 verse, in contrast, extends beyond the theme of love from her early poetry, and moves instead in relatively equal measure over a range of public themes and occasional verse: Gambara
sophisticatedly celebrates the imperial imagery o f Charles V through neo-Latin imitation; she praises her homelands, Brescia and Correggio, through pastoral meditations; and she produces the first female-authored Stanze poem in ottava rima. While Gambara never retreated to a spiritual or meditative life, she does address some pressing spiritual themes in her verse, such as the Virgin’s motherhood and the theme of predestination with distinct Reformist leanings.
The tradition of criticism surrounding Gambara weighs heavily on representing her biographical history.1 Gambara’s poetry, however, has been relatively overlooked by contemporary study. In part, this is the result of past critical approaches to Petrarchism, and especially to early modem female lyricists within the tradition, which generally disfavored a poet o f Gambara’s attributes. Petrarchism was mainly viewed as imitative and derivative by post-Romantic approaches to the genre. This view, when combined with the emphasis on Petrarchism as a masculine literary idiom, led to a critical understanding of Petrarchan imitation as doubly inauthentic for women. Within this
1 Gambara’s first biography was written by Rinaldo Corso, six years after her death. Rinaldo Corso, Vita di
Veronica Gambara in Vita di Giberto III da Correggio (Ancona, 1566), located in the Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale, Florence. For further biographical and historical studies on Gambara see: Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Ennio Sandal, eds. Veronica Gambara e lapoesia del suo tempo n e ll’Italia settentrionale (Florence: Olschki, 1989); Antonia Chimenti, Veronica Gambara: gentildonna del rinascimento: un
intreccio di poesia e storia (Reggio Emilia: Magis Books, 1995); Clementia de Courten, Veronica Gambara: Una gentildonna del cinquecento (Milan: Casa Editrice “Est,” 1935); Riccardo Finzi, Umanita di Veronica Gambara (1485-1550). Commemorazione pronunciata a Correggio, n e llV centenario della morte della Poetessa, I I 28 maggio 1950 (Reggio Emilia: Tipolitografia Emiliana, 1969); Baldassare
Camillo Zamboni, Vita di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759). For a collection o f Gambara’s letters see: Felice Rizzardi, ed. Rime e lettere di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759). Katherine A. Mclver provides an excellent overview o f Gambara’s patronage activity at Correggio: Katherine A.
Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” Explorations in
Renaissance Culture 26.1 (2000): 25-44.
2 For a contemporary Italian edition o f Gambara’s poetry see: Allan Bullock, Veronica Gambara: Rime (Florence: Olschki, 1995). Gambara is discussed in the seminal scholarship o f the twentieth century on Italian women writers o f the early modem period, see: Mary Prentice Lillie, Laura Anna Sortoni, eds.
Women Poets o f the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Ithaka Press, 1997);
Letizia Panizza, Sharon Wood, eds. A H istory o f Women’s Writing in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Rinaldina Russell, ed. Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994); Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and
Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Natalia
Costa-Zalessow, Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al X X Secolo (Ravenna: Longo, 1982). For further twentieth century critical discussions o f Gambara’s poetry see: Irma B. Jaffe, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives
and Loves o f Italian Renaissance Poets (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Maud F. Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1969); William J. Kennedy, Authorizing Petrarch
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Giovanni Macchia, “Quattro poetesse del Cinquecento,” Rivista
rosminiana 31.20 (1937): 152-157; Richard Poss, “Veronica Gambara: A Renaissance Gentildonna,” in Women o f the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University o f Georgia
Press, 1987): 47-66. This dissertation follows in the footsteps o f the critical discussions o f Gambara’s verse by Virginia Cox. See: Virginia Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna,” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early M odem Women Writers and Canons in
England, France, and Italy, eds. Pamela Joseph Benson, Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University o f
Michigan Press, 2005): 14-31; “Sixteenth Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy o f Laura,” Journal
paradigm, scholarship highlighted lyricists that creatively departed from customary Petrarchan imitation. In the female tradition, for example, critical attention centered on the more boundary-crossing poets o f the sixteenth century, such as Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) and Veronica Franco (1546-1591). Gambara, in contrast, was relatively conservative in her engagement with the Petrarchan model. Indeed, as we shall see in the second chapter of this study, Gambara’s thematic transformation o f Petrarchan
conventions was oriented toward fashioning herself an icon of feminine virtue. Further contributing to the oversight of Gambara by past critical approaches to female
Petrarchists was the focus on the category o f “love lyric” in women’s writing. In Gambara’s case, her amorous-themed poetry comprises only a portion o f her extant verse; thus, a critical focus on love lyric necessarily ignores almost half of her oeuvre. A final analytical tendency that complicated critical attention to Gambara was to read women’s poetry in a biographical light. This approach favored poets whose thematic consistency yielded the imposition o f a biographical reading on their verse, while it also favored poets whose lyric was suggestive of alluring amorous narratives.4 I address this phenomenon as it occurs in the cursory studies of Gambara’s amorous verse in the first chapter of this study.
These approaches to Petrarchism transformed upon the emergence o f new historicism, which raised a critical awareness for the important role social and historical
3 This is observed by Gordon Braden in his work on Gaspara Stampa (p. 115): “When practical criticism deals with a poem’s relation to Petrarchan conventions, it often puts its energy - as if this were mere common sense - into detecting deviation from those conventions and interpreting that deviation
agonistically. The usual way in our profession to appreciate a specimen o f Renaissance Petrarchism is to celebrate its attempt to break out o f that category.” See: “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender o f Petrarchism,”
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.2 (1996), 115-139.
4 The title o f Irma B. Jaffe’s work, Shinning Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves ofItalian
contexts played in lyric production.5 In this critical light, Petrarchism came to be viewed as a lyric practice that was socially embedded, and, as such, critics approached the genre as a particularly rich site for literary as well as historical interpretation. Within this critical context, the theoretical methodology formulated by Ann Rosalind Jones offered a ground-breaking approach to women’s writing within the Petrarchan tradition.6 Jones argues that early modem female poets must be examined with an awareness of the cultural systems within which they operated. She reveals how early modem gender ideologies and male-authored literary conventions excluded women from the world of letters, and then, by working with the Marxist-feminist concept of “negotiation” and the Gramscian theory of “hegemony,” Jones constructs a model for reading women’s writing as an instrument to negotiate, and overcome, their marginalization. Jones identifies this negotiation strategy as it was implemented by poets of various classes, and she reveals the rhetorical strategies developed by these poets as they related to their particular social and historical contexts.
The current scholarship on early modem female poets has richly expanded these approaches to the subject.7 These studies consider the crucial role the female writer’s
5 For example, see: Braden; William J. Kennedy, Rhetorical Norms in Renaissance Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); “Petrarchan Textuality: Commentaries and Gender Revisions,” in Discourses
o f Authority in M edieval and Renaissance Literature, eds. Kevin Brownlee, Walter Stephens (Hanover:
University Press o f N ew England, 1989): 151-168; “Petrarchan Authority and Gender Revisions in
Michelangelo’s Rime,” in Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives, ed. Antonio Toscano (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1991): 55-66; Amadeo Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato: p e r una critica
della form a antologia (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974).
6 Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency o f Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
7 For example, see: Fiore A. Bassanese, “Male Canon/Female Poet: The Petrarchism o f Gaspara Stampa,” in Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives: 43-54; Abigail Brundin, Vittoria Colonna:
Sonnets fo r Michelangelo, a Bilingual Edition (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 2005); Cox; Victoria
Kirkham, “Creative Partners: The Marriage o f Laura Battiferra and Bartolomeo Ammannati,” Renaissance
Quarterly 55 (2002): 498-558; Laura Battiferra and her Literary Circle (Chicago: University o f Chicago
Press, 2006); Margaret F. Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in
socio-historical experience played in her lyric production, while they have also forged new critical territory by opening up the contemporary discourse to consider female authorship of occasional poetry as well as o f spiritual and political verse. One important outcome of this scholarly progress is that the universal category of “Italian Renaissance Women Writers” - a grouping that considered female writers as a collective whole, and which placed writers alongside each other without regard for the variances in their social standing and specific historical experiences - is now considered misleading and
homogeneous. More significantly, these critical developments have opened up a critical space in which proper analysis of Veronica Gambara’s poetry may now take place.
On a large scale, this dissertation addresses the need for a critical study of Gambara’s poetry by presenting the first historically contextualized analysis of a
selection of Gambara’s verse from the third and fourth decades of the century. This study offers primary critical readings of a number o f Gambara’s poems, paying attention to the models and sources with which Gambara worked, and offering a detailed account of Gambara’s lyric production during these decades. Specifically, this dissertation centers on Gambara’s post-1529 verse. The establishment of this parameter is not to reduce the importance of Gambara’s early verse; rather, I have limited my analysis of Gambara’s oeuvre to the compositions she produced throughout her ruling years, which allows me to comprehensively investigate the connection between Gambara’s literary activity and her political status.
Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice (Ravenna: Longo, 2006). I would also like to note the
influence Teodolinda Barolini’s article on Francesca da Rimini had on my scholarship, especially as I considered the role o f history in gender studies. Teodolinda Barolini, “Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender,” Speculum 75.1 (2000): 1-28.
Gambara’s historical significance was literary as well as political in its
dimensions, and this dissertation sets out to explore the correlation between these two realms. Gambara’s socio-historical status as the governing Countess of Correggio offers a compelling case study of a particularly rich, and relatively under-studied, category of female agency within the realm of the Northern Italian Renaissance court: the ruling
o
widow dowager. This dissertation points to the tradition of dynastic widows who ascended to positions of political rule upon the deaths of their ruling husbands, and my analysis explores the important role the ruling widow’s cultural positioning played in facilitating her political well-being at court. My methodology draws on scholarship in art history, and the recent studies that approach art patronage by women as a cultural
practice that was socially embedded. These studies offer important models for extracting cultural as well as historical insights through an analysis of women’s patronage activity. By expanding the compass of my research to consider the self-fashioning o f ruling women in all cultural arenas, with a special focus on Gambara, my analysis
comprehensively evaluates the interrelationship between the cultural and the political realms in the historical experience of the ruling woman of the Italian governing elite.
This dissertation suggests that Gambara’s cultural activity as a producer, and as a patron, of art played a crucial role in fostering her political prosperity as the governing Countess of Correggio. I argue that Gambara’s literary activity was inextricably linked to her political status as a ruling widow dowager in three distinct areas: I parse meaning from Gambara’s literary output by considering her political context as a shaping
influence on the fictional literary persona she created for herself; I explore Gambara’s use o f poetry as an instrument o f rule in her compositions oriented toward political ends; and
I show how Gambara utilized her literary skill to publicly fashion her fitness for rule, as well as to herald her affiliation with powerful political figures - such as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
*
The first chapter o f the dissertation addresses the tradition of women’s
participation in the political realm of the Northern Italian signorial courts. This chapter delineates the practice of educating daughters of ruling families; it illustrates how these women applied their erudition to the political arena by both their diplomatic and cultural endeavors; and, lastly, it disinters the rise of the widow ruler within the court context, and examines the crucial role the widow ruler’s cultural activity played in buttressing her political stature. The first chapter also reviews Gambara’s early poetic activity so as to provide a foundation for the analysis that takes place in the subsequent chapters: that is, an examination o f the transformation of Gambara’s literary voice upon her ascent to her political position as the governing Countess o f Correggio.
The second chapter of the dissertation explicates the process whereby Gambara emerged as a lyricist o f national recognition in the return to the public circulation of her verse in 1529.1 consider the crucial role Gambara’s political context played in actuating her emergence on the national literary scene, and I offer a rounded portrait of Gambara’s cultural positioning in this year by viewing her literary activity comparatively with her patronage activity in her collaborations with the artist Correggio. The sonnets examined in this chapter represent Gambara’s innovative re-working of the Petrarchan paradigm to suit her particular self-fashioning agenda as a widow ruler.
Chapter Three considers Gambara’s use o f her literary talent as an instrument of rule: this chapter uncovers the political ambitions behind her poetry for the Medici and the d’Avalos families, respectively, and reveals the pioneering literary devices Gambara developed to impart political meaning in her verse through both her thematic expression as well as her stylistic innovation. Chapter Four further expounds Gambara’s use of poetry for political purposes in examining Gambara’s collection of sonnets devoted to celebrating Charles V’s imperial imagery. This chapter delineates the complex creative framework informing Gambara’s imperial-themed verse, while it also uncovers the multi layered self-fashioning stratagem underpinning her lyric sophistication.
CHAPTER 1
Veronica Gambara’s Courtly Context:
A History of Women in Relation to Education, Poetry, and Politics in the Northern Italian Renaissance Court
The purpose of this chapter is to describe the historical framework from which Veronica Gambara emerged as an educated gentildonna of the Northern Italian court environment with early literary aspirations, and, later in her life, as a ruling widow dowager. First, I review the tradition o f educating the daughters bom o f governing families as preparation for their adult lives at court, and then illustrate how these women applied their erudition to the political operation o f their husbands’ ruling houses by both their diplomatic and cultural endeavors. I then examine Gambara’s early lyric voice and consider her strategies for circulating her talent at the turn of the century. My aim is to point to the transformation of Gambara’s poetic voice upon her ascent to her political function as the widow ruler of Correggio come 1529. Lastly, in this chapter I explicate how the Northern Italian court system proved favorable to women’s participation in the political realm as consorts to rulers and as ruling regents in their own right upon their husbands’ deaths, and I unpack the crucial role self-fashioning played in the ruling widow’s fostering of her political well-being at court.
2
I. A Learned Dynastic Daughter
Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) was bom in Pratalboino outside of Brescia to noble parents, Count Gianffancesco da Gambara (d. 1511) and Alda Pia da Carpi. Together, the Gambara and Pia families boasted a rich heritage o f erudite women in the humanistic milieu of the Northern Italian Renaissance courts. Gambara’s paternal great- aunt was Ginevra Nogarola (1417-1468), the female humanist and sister of the even more famous Isotta Nogarola (1418-1466).1 Ginevra and her sisters were learned in Latin and Greek, and she had made a public name for herself by her writing before her marriage to Brunoro da Gambara at the age of twenty three. Gambara’s maternal aunt was Emilia Pia, the famous gentildonna who was praised for her wit and grace as one of the four signorial ladies presiding over the discourses of Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478-1529) Libro del
cortigiano (1524). Gambara’s genealogical link to the first generation of female
humanists in the Italian tradition, as well as to one of the celebrated women of Northern
1 On the women o f the Nogarola family, and on female humanists o f fifteenth century Italy in general, see: Phyllis R. Brown, Laurie J. Churchill, Jane E. Jeffrey, eds. Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to
Early M odem Europe, Volume 3: Early Modern Women Writing Latin (New York: Routledge, 2002);
Silvia R. Fiore, “The Silent Scholars o f Italian Humanism: Feminism in the Renaissance,” in Interpreting
the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives, ed. Antonio Toscano (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1991):
15-27; Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, Charles Platter, eds. Sex and Gender in Medieval and
Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition (Albany: State University o f N ew York Press, 1997); Lisa Jardine,
‘“ O decus Italiae Virgo’, or the Myth o f the Learned Lady in the Renaissance,” The Historical Journal (1985) 28 n. 4: 799-819; “Women and Humanists: An Education for What?” in Feminism & Renaissance
Studies, ed. Loma Hutson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 48-81; Margaret L. King and Albert
Rabil Jr., eds. H er Immaculate Hand (Asheville: Pegasus Press, 1997); Margaret L. King, “Thwarted Ambitions: Six Learned Women o f the Italian Renaissance,” Soundings 59 (1976): 267-304; “The Religious Retreat o f Isotta Nogarola (1418-1466): Sexism and its Consequences in the Fifteenth Century,”
Signs 3 (1978): 807-822; “Book Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance,” in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women o f the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Lablame (New York: N ew York
University Press, 1980): 66-90; Women o f the Renaissance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991); Holt Parker, “Latin and Greek Poetry by Five Renaissance Italian Humanists,” in Sex and Gender in
M edieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition: 247-285; Jane Stevenson, “Women and Classical
Education in the Early Modem Period,” in Women's Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 1500-
1800, ed. Barbara J. Whitehead (New York: Garland Publications, 1999): 83-109; “Female Authority and
Authorization Strategies in Early Modem Europe,” in This Double Voice: Gendered Writing in Early
Modern England, eds. Danielle Clarke, Elizabeth Clarke (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000): 16-40; Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford
Italian Renaissance court culture, may have influenced her desire to emerge as a cultural presence through her lyric activity, while it certainly provided Gambara with a pedigree that reinforced her legitimacy as an intellect in her own right.
Gambara’s father, Gianfrancesco Gambara, operated as a condottiere for the Venetian forces against the French throughout the latter half of the fifteenth century, when they successfully drove Charles VIII to retreat back to France and thwarted his ambition to impose a French hegemony on Italy. In the first decade of the sixteenth century, however, the fortune of the Gambara family radically turned. Gianfrancesco betrayed his alliance with Venice in 1509 at the battle of Agnadello and fled to Brescia, where he surrendered to the victorious French forces and subsequently fought in the King
r\
of France’s imperial army. Gianfrancesco’s reversal of his position with Venice situated Brescia in a perilous position as a target for Venetian invasion, and one year after
Gianfrancesco’s death in 1511, the Venetians indeed attempted a sack of the city. Gambara was visiting her family’s court at the time of the invasion, and watched
alongside her mother as French forces came to their aid and drove the Venetians from the city. The political disorder set in motion by Gianfrancesco substantially factored into the lives of the next generation of Gambara rulers. In the same year of Gianfrancesco’s division with Venice, for example, he completed the arrangement of Gambara’s marriage to Giberto X (d. 1518) o f the da Correggio ruling house. The union was politically motivated by Gianfrancesco’s desire to bolster the Gambara family’s ties with the ducal houses of Northern Italy through Correggio, who was strongly allied with the d’Este and Gonzaga princely courts, as he severed his link with Venice. Later in the century, upon
2 For an account o f this episode see: Carlo Dionisotti, “Elia Capriolo e Veronica Gambara,” in Veronica
Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo n ell’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno
4
the alliance between the King of France Francis I and Venice, the Gambara family’s alliance with Spain’s Charles V became the most secure means of protection against the Venetians, and much o f the political activity by Gambara’s brothers Uberto and Brunoro as well as by Gambara herself as the governing Countess of Correggio was oriented toward this crucial goal.
Returning to Gambara’s adolescence at her family’s court, she was raised under a classic studia humanitatis program of instruction alongside her brothers and sisters. She was highly competent in Latin, and there exists at least one document suggesting
Gambara was learned in Greek as well.3 In addition to Latin and Greek, Gambara studied philosophy, literature, Scripture, and theology.4 The educational program Gambara underwent in her adolescence was one provided to many daughters bom into ruling families of Renaissance Italy. This was partly due to the establishment o f the courts as cultural centers that competed for the admiration of the cultural elite, which led court rulers to seek out prominent humanists to establish educational programs for their
children.5 The Gambara family’s Pratalboino court fostered a learned humanist climate of its own throughout Gambara’s childhood, and was especially active within the
developing literary culture through the interest of Gambara’s father in book printing.6 The tradition of educating dynastic daughters o f certain ruling families was also a product o f the political environment of the ruling houses in which fathers sought to prepare their daughters for adult lives at court upon their marriage with other ruling dynasties. Marital
3 In the library collection o f Filippo Garbelli, abate di Pontevico, a Greek text published by Aldo Manuzio bears the inscription on the frontispiece: ad usum Veronicae Gambarae. In Baldassare Camillo Zamboni,
Vita di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759), 35.
4 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 168.
5 Margaret Franklin, B occaccio’s Heroines: Pow er and Virtue in Renaissance Society (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 116.
6 Ennio Sandal, “Casa Gambaresca, i libri e la tipografia,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo
alliances among the Italian governing families of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were crucial to political survival: they solidified existing rule, made future allies,
expanded familial territory, and produced legitimate heirs for generations of the dynasty’s rule.7 Thus daughters bom into the political families of Italy’s city states were likely to marry with the political interests of their family in mind, as exemplified by Gambara’s marriage to the da Correggio family to foster her family’s political ties with the princely powers o f Northern Italy. The most famous document attesting to the importance of a humanist education for dynastic daughters is a letter by the famous humanist Leonardo Bruni (1369-1446) to Battista Montefeltro Malatesta (1383-1450). Bruni’s letter may have regarded Battista’s own education, or, depending on the date of the letter, it may address the education o f her daughter, Elisabetta Malatesta Varano (1407-1449).8 Bmni proposes a well-rounded program of study in which the pupil should devote herself to the Latin works of the poets, orators, and historians, while at the same time she should formulate an ethical-religious persona through the study of the Church fathers and moral philosophy. Bmni highly recommends that she develop her literary skills by keeping a notebook to record notes on style and vocabulary, which will assist her in the
composition of her own original works, and he lays great emphasis on the study o f poetry as a crucial component to her program.
7 For a study o f marriage within the Italian princely court see: Anthony F. d’Elia, The Renaissance o f
M arriage in Fifteenth Century Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
8 For the date o f Bruni’s letter to Battista as early as 1405, see: King and Rabil, H er Immaculate Hand, 13. For a date o f the letter as late as 1424, see: Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, David Thompson, eds. The
Humanism o f Leonardo Bruni (Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987), 124.
Clough dates the letter around 1419: Cecil H. Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro:
Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” Renaissance Studies 10.1 (1996): 38. For the Latin text o f Bruni’s letter see: Craig W. Kallendorf, ed. and trans. Humanist Educational Treatises (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 92-125.
6
Bruni’s suggestions outline an educational program in line with the traditional curriculum Elisabetta’s male counterparts would have followed.9 This education, for men and women of the signorial courts alike, was not ornamental nor an end in itself.10 A humanist edification was deemed practical training to prepare young girls for the political duties they would perform as consorts to rulers11 - a role that often necessitated their involvement in the political affairs o f the court in their husbands’ absences, and one that could potentially lead to the rule o f a woman in her own right as a widow regent
dowager, as was the case for Veronica Gambara. Bruni was explicit in advocating the necessity for rulers to attain a humanist education; the study of letters and history in
19
particular were the fields Bruni believed to spur good government. In his letter to Battista, for example, Bruni emphasizes the efficacy o f history in preparing one to counsel in government - a role many consorts to ruling husbands performed:
“Knowledge o f the past gives guidance to our counsels and our practical judgment, and
9 Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 38. 10 For scholarship on women’s humanistic studies that views this education as ornamental see: Jardine and King, in note 1 o f the current chapter. These studies address “learned Renaissance women” as a collective group, and do not sufficiently distinguish the historical experience o f dynastic women o f the signorial courts from women o f lower social rank. These studies also evaluate women’s application o f their education to the humanist profession - that is, the recovery o f Classical texts - and do not consider other outlets for women’s education, such as the political arena o f the ruling courts. The research presented in this chapter endeavors to give proper definition to the historical experience o f women from the dynastic ruling elite. I follow in the footsteps o f Cecil Clough’s research on the women o f the Montefeltro/Malatesta ruling dynasty (“Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the
Quattrocento”), where he delineates the tradition o f educating women from this family as preparation for rule, and I address the practice o f this tradition in other ruling families - mainly the Gambara, Sforza, and Gonzaga. Later in this chapter, I delineate women’s application o f their humanist erudition to the political operation o f the court by both their political as well as their cultural endeavors.
11 For studies that discuss education o f women for rule in the Italian tradition see: Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento”; Anthony F. d’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations o f Fifteenth Century Italy,” Renaissance
Quarterly 55 (2002): 379-433; Fiore; Werner L. Gundersheimer, “Women, Learning, and Power: Eleonora
o f Aragon and the Court o f Ferrara,” in Beyond Their Sex: 43-65; Stephen Kolsky, “Bending the Rules: Marriage in Renaissance Collections o f Biographies o f Famous Women,” in M arriage in Italy, 1300-1650, eds. Trevor Dean, K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 227-248; Dorothy M. Robatham, “A Fifteenth-Century Bluestocking,” M edievalia et humanistica 2 (1944): 106-111; Stevenson. 12 Bruni’s philosophy that princes should be accomplished in the humanities, especially history, is the theme o f another letter written by Bruni to King John II o f Castile. See Griffiths, 253-254.
7
the consequences of similar undertakings [in the past] encourages or deters us according to our circumstances in the present.”13 In a poem by Antonio Comazzano (1432-1484), a prominent humanist employed by the Este court of Ferrara, he shares Bruni’s view on the importance of leaders, both men and women, to be equipped with an education in letters and history to rule effectively: “Vogliono anchor che sia laudabile arte / In homo e in donna chi si sia che rega, / Dottrina haver di lettre e de le carte.” (They also say that it is a praiseworthy art / in a man or a woman who rules / to have knowledge of letters and writing).14 Anthony d’Elia’s elaborate study o f wedding orations in fifteenth century Italy uncovers multiple instances of praise allotted to women of the signorial courts, not only for their intellectual ability, but also for their effective application of this capacity towards government. One noteworthy example is an oration Ludovico Carbone (1430-
1485) delivered on the marriage of a Ferrarese couple in which he lays out a catalogue of learned courtly wives who were effective in the political affairs o f their husbands’
courts:15
Our time is not lacking in outstanding women who deserve praise. Who has not heard of Battista Malatesta, who delivered a fine oration before Pope Martin? Or Paula, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga’s wife, who was so generous and high-spirited that advice was sought from her on the most important matters? We saw her daughter Margarita, who married Leonello [d’Este] ... she was so prudent and well read that all were astounded. Who does not know that in Barbara, Ludovico Gonzaga’s
13 Kallendorf, 109.
14 See Diego Zancani, “Writing for Women Rulers in Quattrocento Italy: Antonio Comazzano,” in Women
in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (London: Legenda, 2000): 57-74. Further
discussion on Comazzano below.
15 d’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations o f Fifteenth Century Italy,” 414-423. Unfortunately, d’Elia does not specify the identity o f the couple Carbone is addressing.
8
wife, there was such great constancy, magnanimity, and wisdom that she shared the concerns of the kingdom with her husband and governed like a prince?16 Indeed, we may lengthen Carbone’s list of learned women engaged in government by surveying the lives of a select number o f courtly daughters, wives, and widows who employed their studia humanitatis education in the public, and political, arena. Battista Montefeltro Malatesta’s active role in shaping a proper educational program to prepare her daughter and granddaughter for their lives at court was perhaps inspired by her own prominent participation in the government of Pesaro. As the consort to a weak ruler, Battista found herself at the helm of many of Pesaro’s political affairs: she successfully negotiated the release of her husband and brother-in-law upon their capture by Braccio da Montone; she delivered a congratulatory oration to Martin V at the request of her father-in-law as noted by Carbone above; and she delivered a Latin oration to the Emperor
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Sigismund to request the restoration o f Pesaro to her husband’s rule. Battista oversaw the education of her granddaughter, Costanza Varano Sforza (1426-1447), who followed in her grandmother’s footsteps in delivering Latin orations in support of her family’s political causes, mainly in the restoration of Camerino to the rule of her mother Elisabetta and her brother Rodolfo. Costanza’s first effort to this end was her address o f the Latin oration, Pro adventu dominae Biancae in picenum oratio, to Bianca Maria Visconti
1 R
Sforza (1422-1468) during her visit to the Pesaro court, while later she sent a carmen to the newly appointed duke of Urbino Oddantonio Montefeltro (d. 1444) in which she
16 Ibid, 419-420. Latin text also included.
17 Gino Franceschini, “Battista Montefeltro Malatesta signora di Pesaro,” in Figure del rinascimento
urbinate, ed. Gino Franceschini (Urbino: Stabilimento Tipografico Edit. Urbinate, 1959), 178.
18 B. Felicangeli, “Notizie sulla vita di Costanza Varano Sforza (1426-1447),” Giornale storico della
letteratura italiana 23 (1894), 24. For the text o f the oration in translation see: King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand, 39. See also Pia Mestica Chiappetti, Vita di Costanza Varano Sforza (Jesi: Tipografia
9
hopes for the day when the Varano and Montefeltro families might govern Camerino again.19 She also wrote a letter to Alfonso d’Aragona (d. 1504), the king of Naples, expressing a similar sentiment.20 Costanza’s daughter, Battista Sforza Montefeltro (1446- 1472) also drew upon her education as the Duchess of Urbino in her marriage to Duke Federigo III da Montefeltro (1422-1482), and she delivered an oration to Pope Pius II.21 The Sforza ducal house o f Milan led by Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza and Francesco I
22
Maria Sforza (1401-1466) was also invested in the education of its daughters, the most famous of whom was Ippolita Sforza (1446-1484), who was renowned for her abilities in Latin: Ippolita famously delivered an oration to Pius II; she publicly addressed her mother Bianca Maria in Latin; and she also delivered an ode to Tristano Visconti and Beatrice d’Este (1475-1497).23 The Gonzaga ruling family of Mantua housed a famous school o f learning for its court children led by Vittorino da Feltre (1397-1446) called la
casa giocosa,24 as this family also boasted a number of learned women who actively participated in court government. Carbone alloted praise to Paula Gonzaga and Barbara Gonzaga (1455-1503), who “governed like a prince,” while from this family there was also elevated the famous Cecilia Gonzaga (1525-1551), as well as Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471-1526), who was noted as a political figure in her function as the Duchess of Urbino.25
19 Felicangeli, 31. 20 Ibid, 29.
21 Marinella Bonvini Mazzanti, Battista Sforza Montefeltro: una ‘principessa' nel rinascimento italiano (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 1993), 96-101.
22 See Monica Ferrari, ‘P er non manchare in tuto del debito mio L ’educazione dei bambini Sforza nel
Quattrocento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000).
23 King and Rabil, H er Immaculate Hand, 44.
24 See William Harrison Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905).
25 Elisabetta also ruled for her husband throughout his absences and illnesses. Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 50.
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These select examples demonstrate how the political arena of the court provided women with a public outlet for their humanist erudition. Indeed, this was expected of them: a poem by Costanza Varano to Giovanni Gonzaga beginning “often my father and
0f%
my lord commands me to write” clearly attests to this duty. This point may be
developed in considering the intellectual abilities of the women who married into the da Correggio family. The lords of Correggio were almost all prominent military generals and thus needed wives who were capable of governing the fiefdom in their place during their extended absences. Three o f these women - Cassandra Colleoni (d.1519), the wife of Niccolo Postumo da Correggio (1450-1508), her daughter-in-law Ginevra Rangone (d.
1540), and Veronica Gambara - were proficient in Latin verse, which suggests that these women were selected as wives in part due to their erudition and, in turn, their ruling
on
ability. Proficiency in Latin was thus a prominent feature of a humanist education that prepared court daughters for their participation in the political sphere, and the use of Latin by women throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth century often indicated their proximity to political power.281 will return to this point in the final chapter of this study through a discussion of the place of Latin in Gambara’s correspondence with Charles V (1500-1558) as well as in her neo-Latin poetry in celebration of the emperor. Beyond the use of Latin, however, women drew upon their humanist education as participants in the cultural life o f the court, which was in itself a claim to political power and prestige within the Italian Renaissance milieu.
The Correggio court into which Gambara married offers a rich portrait of active female intellects whose cultural projects effectively advanced the public repute o f the
26 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 167. 27 Ibid, 169.
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small seat o f power. The first Renaissance church of Correggio was a project initiated by Gambara’s mother-in-law, Agnese Pio (d. 1474), in her building of the San Francesco church with her husband Manfredo di Correggio in 1469. Cassandra Colleoni extended Agnese’s project by building a family chapel o f her own in the San Francesco church called the Capella Colleoni, while she also donated two pieces o f property to the convent of the San Domenico church called the Corpus Domini and was responsible for its construction. Francesca da Brandenburg (d. 1512), who was the sister-in-law to
Gambara’s husband, also invested in a religious patronage project in her commission of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the monastery church of Corpo del Cristo in Correggio. These devotional patronage projects were a mode of political discourse: religiously centered patronage activity suited courtly tastes as most all of the princely houses put on display their piety through such projects.30 Moreover, the construction of funerary tombs served the important dynastic function of enshrining the burial sites for the lords of Correggio - Manfredo’s funerary tomb was housed in the San Francesco church, while Borso da Correggio, Francesca’s husband, located his tomb in the Corpo del Cristo church - thus serving as prestigious monuments to Correggio’s ruling legacies.
In addition to the chapel and funerary tomb constructions, the women of Correggio participated in transforming the architectural layout of the city. This process began with Francesca da Brandenburg’s dedication of her dowry to the construction of the Palazzo dei Principi in 1507 to serve as the principle residence of Correggio’s signori.
29 For an extensive overview o f Gambara’s patronage activity see: Katherine A. Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f
Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 26.1 (2000): 25-44; “Two Emilian Noblewomen and Patronage Networks in the Cinquecento,” in Beyond
Isabella: Secular Women Patrons o f A rt in Renaissance Italy, eds. Sheryl E. Reiss, David G. Wilkins
(Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001): 159-176.
30 Alison Cole, Virtue and Magnificence: A rt o f the Italian Renaissance Courts (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995), 131-132.
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The Palazzo shifted the political orientation of the city by replacing the Castelvecchio as the seat of its rulers, echoing the layout of a Northern Italian princely court whose rulers resided in prestigious central residences. The Palazzo was also elaborately decorated by a fresco project under Francesca’s management that appears to have emulated the paintings of the Gonzaga’s camera picta in the ducal palace of Mantua, as well as the Palazzo
•3 -I
Costabili of the Este family in Ferrara. This marked emulation o f the neighboring princely courts provided a means to convey Correggio’s eminence as a political and cultural center in its own right. Such flattering imitation also functioned to situate Correggio in the political favor o f these surrounding powers. Gambara’s activity as a patron upon her arrival at Correggio appears to have extended this political ambition: she elaborated on Francesca da Brandenburg’s Palazzo dei Principi construction by building her own studiolo called the “Camerino Deurato” in the spirit o f the famous studiolo of Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) in Mantua. Gambara further enhanced the cultural prestige of Correggio by founding a literary academy in 1511 presided over by the professor
Giovanni Battista Lombardi. The academy attracted many well known letterati of the day, and may have served as the center for the education of her two sons as well as her stepdaughter Costanza. Collectively, this cultural activity situated Correggio as a distinct presence on the cultural map of Northern Italy, and confirmation of this ascent may be found in Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474-1533) mention of “The Ladies of Correggio” in the first edition o f his Orlando furioso in 1516.
The patronage activity by the “Ladies o f Correggio” required a certain degree of humanistic erudition. Gambara’s foundation o f a literary academy naturally heralded her
31 Mclver, “Ladies o f Correggio,” 33-34. 32 Ibid, 29.
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expertise of letters, but even in ecclesiastical architecture and in the decoration o f these structures, one was required to possess knowledge of sacred and Classical texts so as to be able to appropriately manipulate imagery and convey proper meaning. Upon
Francesca of Brandenburg’s death in 1512, for example, Gambara inherited funds to complete the decoration of her chapel project in the Church of San Domenico, which she fulfilled by commissioning a painting of Christ Handing the Veil to Veronica (artist and whereabouts unknown) for its interior. The veil of Veronica was a legendary Christian relic, but the alignment of Veronica’s name with the story of Saint Veronica33 offered a new, intimate display of Correggio’s spiritual eminence. In this same chapel, Gambara also commissioned a painting of Saint Jerome to decorate the site for the funerary tomb of her husband Giberto X. Gambara’s choice of the saint served the dynastic function of promoting the future generations of da Correggio men, as Jerome was the patron saint of Gambara’s son, Ippolito; even more, the saint also provided Gambara an ideal icon to emblematize her devotion to piety and chastity in her widowhood, which Jerome came to represent through his epistles to widows espousing such a lifestyle.34 Further public fashioning of Gambara’s chastity was expressed through Classical allusions, most
33 Saint Veronica was the recipient o f a miracle when the image o f Jesus appeared on her cloth after wiping his sweat o ff his face.
34 On Saint Jerome and widowhood see: Caroline Murphy, Lavinia Fontana: A Painter and her Patrons in
Sixteenth Century Bologna (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), especially Chapter 5 ‘“ La Vita
Vedovile’: The Art o f Widowhood”; Eugene F. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Mary Vaccaro, “Dutiful Widows: Female Patronage and Two Marian Altarpieces by Parmigianino,” in Beyond Isabella: 177-192; Carolyn Valone, “Roman Matrons as Patrons: Various Views o f the Cloistered Wall,” in The Crannied Wall, ed. Craig A. Monson (Ann Arbor:
University o f Michigan Press, 1992): 49-72; “Piety and Patronage: Women and the Early Jesuits,” in
Creative Women in M edieval and Early M odem Italy, eds. E. Ann Matter, John Coackley (Philadelphia:
14
famously in her inscription of the verses spoken by Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid (Book 4,
28-■ i r
29) over her bedchamber door, which I discuss further below.
Altogether, we see how Gambara’s status as an educated gentildonna enabled her contribution to Correggio’s political operation by way of her participation in its
developing cultural enterprises. The projects listed above took place over the course of Gambara’s first decade at Correggio, and, even in this brief period, she drew heavily upon her humanistic erudition in piecing together an iconography cycle from both Christian and Classical sources to convey layered personal, dynastic, political, and spiritual messages to the public. In the years following, Gambara’s education naturally came to extensive use upon her ascent to her political role as the governing Countess of Correggio. In addition to Gambara’s use of her education to fulfill various facets o f her ruling responsibility, Gambara continued to participate as a patron, and especially as a producer, o f art as a symbolic channel to position herself on the cultural landscape and convey specific meaning to the public.
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II. A Young Lyricist
As a young girl in her family’s court, Gambara exhibited an innate literary talent and veritable aspirations to develop it. One of Gambara’s more famed poems from her youth, Or passata e la speranza, was also one o f her earliest publications as it was
printed in Venice in 1505. The composition’s success rests in part by Gambara’s thematic sophistication in conveying the popular Petrarchan theme of the transience of amorous desires. In the poem, she contemplates how “nulla cosa aver costanza” (no thing to have constancy) in a form consistent with the lyric fashions of the day, composed as it is in the
frottola-barzaletta style. Such a form allowed the possibility of adapting the composition
to a musical arrangement, which was a developing vogue of the northern Italian courts, especially of Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) in Mantua. Gambara in fact shared an
epistolary correspondence with Isabella in the year 1503. This correspondence may have been facilitated by Gambara’s familial connection with Isabella’s elite pedigree: Gambara’s paternal uncles married into the d’Este and Gonzaga families respectively- Galasso Gambara to Margherita d’Este, and Niccolo Gambara to Lucrezia di Francesco Gonzaga - while from her maternal family, Gambara’s cousin Giberto Pio married Elisabetta d’Este. Gambara’s letter conveys her desire to participate in the cultural life of Isabella’s court as she couches this self-advancement in a laudatory and appropriately reverential tone:
Pur meritando essere nel numero de le piu infime serve de la Ex. V., come spero, per la deita infusa in quella, se mai mi dolsi per adietro de la fortuna com ogni studio mi sforzaro da hora inanci laudandola di tal benifitio ringratiarla. Cosi
36 Letter may be found in Luigi Amadduzzi, ed. U ndid lettere inedite di Veronica Gambara e un ’ode
16
humilmente a li piedi di V. Ex. mi raccomando: el simile fanno il S.r Conte mio padre et Madonna mia madre, e la Isotta non mancho serva de la Ex. V. di quel sono io.
Even though I am deserving to be among the number of your lowest servants, as I hope, because of the divine nature which you embody, if I have ever complained o f fortune in the past, I will put all my effort from this day forward to praise you for this benefit and to thank you. Thus in all humility I commend myself to the feet o f Your Excellence, as does similarly my father the Signor Count, and my mother, and Isotta no less a servant o f Your Excellence than I am.
The letter displays Gambara’s refinement in her mature address to an elevated and relatively senior member of a princely court (Gambara was seventeen years old at the time while Isabella was twenty nine). In the letter, we also begin to see Gambara’s approach to eminent members o f the signorial community: that o f aligning herself with her familial context - rather than fashioning herself as independent from it - making use o f a recognized platform that may have facilitated the reception of her literary talent.
Another such figure before whom Gambara drew upon her family’s connections to an even greater extent in seeking to advance her literary ambitions was Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). Bembo was affiliated with the Gambara family and its court at the time Gambara initiated their correspondence in 1504. Gianfrancesco Gambara’s service in Venice put him in relation with Bembo’s father, Bernardo (d. 1519), and Bembo had developed a friendship with Gambara’s brother Uberto upon a visit to the Gambara
17
court. While Bembo’s national fame as a literary authority came later in the century upon his landmark publication, the Prose della volgar lingua (1525), Bembo was already
a prominent participant in literary circles o f 1504 through the publication o f his edition of the vernacular works of Petrarch featuring a commented edition of the Canzoniere. He had also published a Neoplatonic dialogue, the Asolani (1505), and he was closely connected to the Venetian publishing circuit through his ties with Aldus Manutius (1449- 1515). Gambara circulated her literary talent to the Venetian poet by sending him the following sonnet:
Non t ’ammirar, s’a te, non visto mai, Ardisco di mandar queste mie carte,
Che tue virtu, per tutto ‘1 mondo sparte, Mi fan far quel ch’ancor non feci mai.
E so che tal ardir non biasmerai Se quelle ben misuri a parte a parte;
Lor fan ch’a forza e ognun constretto amarte, Pero per questo me excusata arrai.
Quelle m ’han spinta a far ch’io ti palesi Quant’io t ’amo ed onoro, e quanto ancora Miei spiriti omai sian di servirti accesi;
E l’alta umanita, che ‘n te dimora, Mi porse ardir assai piu che non cresi Di far quel ch’ho tardato infin ad ora.
38 See Giorgio Dilemmi, ‘“Ne videatur strepre anser inter olores:’ Le relazioni della Gambara con il Bembo,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell ’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno Sandal (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 23-35.
Do not wonder if to you, never having seen you, I dare send my writing, since your virtues that spread throughout the world inspire me to do that which I have never done before. I know you will not disapprove of this ardor if you survey these writings line by line; they [the lines] make it so that each one is forced to love you, but for this you would excuse me. Your virtues impelled me to make clear how much I admire and honor you, and how much more already my spirits are enflamed to serve you; and the elevated humanity that resides in you impels my ardor enough to do that which I have delayed to do until now.
In a similar reverential tone displayed in Gambara’s letter to Isabella d’Este, she asks Bembo not to marvel at her audacity in writing him without ever having seen him, but in light o f his universally noted virtue and acute sensibility, she professes to have been sincerely inspired and infused with the courage to send the lyric master one o f her poems for the first time ever. Gambara’s sonnet elaborates an originally crafted posture of feminine modesty: she posits the sending o f her sonnet to Bembo as a deep-seated desire at the sonnet’s opening and then proclaims this desire to be a transgression in the second quatrain, hoping Bembo will excuse it; at the same time, however, Gambara situates Bembo’s virtue and humanity as the catalyst to her actual fulfillment o f this desire in lines 4 and 12. Thus it is Bembo’s “virtu” (virtue) that increases her boldness in fulfilling her longstanding ambition to circulate her writing. Through this rotation, Gambara tempers her self-proclaimed transgression by framing the gesture more as evidence of Bembo’s inspiration than of her own ambition. This sonnet offers an early example of Gambara’s sophisticated aptitude for maneuvering the public literary landscape from a weak position as a young female writer, only eighteen years old at the time, in lyric
19
discourse with distinguished cultural figures such as Bembo. Here, as a young lyricist with aspirations to circulate her talent, and later, as we shall see, as a widow dowager who came to utilize her literary skill to achieve political ends, Gambara meticulously crafts an unassuming posture in her public positioning among the Italian cultural and political elite. Here, as elsewhere, we see Gambara acutely aware of the benefit of bestowing apposite praise to her sonnet’s addressees, and of fashioning her literary persona within the conventions of feminine modesty and virtue.
Bembo responded to Gambara with a letter as well as a sonnet o f his own in the same year:
Certo ben mi poss’io dir pago omai D ’ogni tuo oltraggio, Amor, e se a colparte Distretto il verso, o le prose consparte Ho pur talora, or me ne pento assai.
Che le note onde tu ricco mi fai, Di quella che dal vulgo mi diparte, Ancor mai non veduta, e scorge in parte Ove tu scorto pochi, o nessun hai;
Son tali, che quetar ben mille offesi Possono, e di mille alme scacciar fora Desir vili, e ingombrar d’alti e cortesi.
Pensar quinci si pud qual sia quel’ora Ch’io vedro gli occhi che or mi son contesi, E la voce udiro, che Brescia onora.
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I may now say for certain that I have been satisfied with every one o f your offenses, Love, and if I have now and then dispersed my verse or scattered my prose in order to blame you, now I deeply regret it. That the sounds with which you make me rich of the one woman who separates me from the crowd, still never seen by me, and who sees in part where you have noticed very few or no one; these sounds are such that they can appease even a thousand offenses and to chase out base desires from a thousand souls and fills them up with high and gentle ones. From this one can think what will be that hour when I will see the eyes that are being withheld from me and will hear the voice that honors Brescia.
Bembo responded favorably to Gambara’s sonnet by complimenting her expression, and he mollifies any potential offense on Gambara’s part by expressing the satisfaction he received from her sonnet. Bembo describes the power of Gambara’s “note” (music) to bring about tranquility and repel the pains caused by Love, and he returns to Gambara’s theme of never having seen each other in person in turning his thoughts to the day when he will “vedro gli occhi” (will see the eyes) so that he may hear the voice that Brescia honors. While Bembo’s sonnet endorses Gambara’s participation in the literary culture by making an overt reference to her already attained regional fame in the final line, Bembo’s letter, which most likely accompanied the sonnet as it was dated 11 September 1504, illuminates the larger political context governing their correspondence:
Che dove dite per l’infinita ubbligazione, che avete al mio padre, che difende il vostro, ed a me; quanto a me appartiene, veggo io che voi per abbondanza della vostra umanita cosi parlate, o forse d’amore, che perawentura mi portate,
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quanto poi al mio padre aspetta, lasciero il rispondere a lui, che ha lette le vostre lettere medesimamente, come ho io, vago di vedere alcuna delle vostre scritture. Where you speak o f the infinite obligation that you have to my father, who defends your father, and to me; as far as I am concerned, I see that you speak this way because of your abundant humanity, or maybe by your love, which you daringly bring to me, knowing how much is that love that I offer to your magnificent and illustrious house; as for my father, I will leave it to him to respond to you, as he has also read your letters, as I have, and I long to read some of your writings.
Though there is no record of Gambara’s letter to which Bembo is here responding, we may extract one significant feature of Gambara’s approach to Bembo through his response, that is, her declaration o f an “infinita ubbligazione” (infinite obligation) towards the Bembo family, including his father. Gambara may be referring here to
Bernardo Bembo’s role in defending Gianffancesco in a legal matter in Venice. Thus, it is significant that Gianffancesco was still fighting with the Venetians against the French at the time o f Gambara’s communication with Bembo, as this clearly allowed Gambara to capitalize on the good standing of this familial connection in her effort to attract Bembo’s attention to her poetry.
In part, then, the familial and political context governing this first correspondence between Gambara and Bembo informs to some degree Bembo’s favorable reception of Gambara’s verse; at the same time, however, female authors o f lyric poetry were beginning to emerge as a cultural presence at the turn of the century and Gambara’s alignment with this movement may have also attracted Bembo’s interest. This cultural
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transformation originated in the fourteenth century’s recovery of the culture of Antiquity as it correspondingly brought to light an awareness of women’s writing of this time. Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) catalogue of famous women De claris mulieribus (1361, revised up to 1375), for example, celebrates the examples of the writers Sappho,
I Q
Comificia, Proba, and Hortensia for her ability in public speaking, while in the following century Leonardo Bruni’s letter to Battista da Montefeltro, discussed above, introduces the topic of the value o f women’s education o f letters by laying out examples o f female writers of Antiquity. Bruni’s introductory paragraph not only poses these examples as sources of inspiration for modem women, but he also lays particular emphasis on the fact that these women were honored and celebrated by their contemporary culture:
There is, indeed, no lack o f examples o f women renowned for literary study and eloquence that I could mention to exhort you to excellence. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio, wrote letters in the most elegant of styles, which letters survived for many centuries after her death. The poetical works of Sappho were held in the highest honor among the Greeks for their unique eloquence and literary skill. Then, too, there was Aspasia, a learned lady o f the time of Socrates, who was outstanding in eloquence and literature, and from whom even so great a philosopher as Socrates did not blush to admit he had learned certain things. I could mention others, but let these three stand sufficient as examples of the most renowned women. Be encouraged and elevated by their excellence!40
39 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 142. 40 Kallendorf, 93.
