Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Paolo Giovio
Elogi degli uomini illustri
[Portraits of Illustrious Men]
Edited by Franco Minonzio
Translation from Latin by Andrea Guasparri and Franco Minonzio. Preface by Michele Mari. Notes to the images by Luca Bianco
Turin, Einaudi, 2006
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| Portrait of Paolo Giovio. Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Giovio Series Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[1] Text of the strip:
"Paolo Giovio was one of the most influential, admired and envied intellectuals in the early sixteenth century. Closely related to Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, i.e. Pope Clement VII from 1523, and then to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, he directly experienced politics and power at the highest levels (but also suffered the crisis of the Sack of Rome and its aftermath). His fame is mainly linked to the activity as historian, which resulted in the two volumes of Historiae (Histories) to which he worked for most of his life. But it is also linked to its legendary villa on Como Lake, where he set up a private museum, with paintings by great artists, and where it housed the most important people of the time, from Charles V down.
Just connected to his famous portrait gallery are the Elogia [n.d.t. literally: praises; commends; however, see below]: a literary supplement of his fully humanistic idea of representing the great men of history and literature in a comprehensive Pantheon. It consists of 146 portraits of writers and 134 men-at-arms, from Dante to Boccaccio, from Saladin to Charles of Anjou, from Poliziano to Ariosto, from Galeazzo Sforza to Cesare Borgia: the most complete 'who's who' of the medieval and Renaissance world, critical to understand what were the historical and cultural references at the time of Giovio, who were considered the masters of the distant past and what were the key figures of the recent past or the contemporary ones.
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| Portrait of the Emperor Charles V, Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Giovio Series Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Even more than in the Histories and minor works, in the Elogia fully emerge the great qualities of Giovio as a writer, his ability to grasp the essential features of the characters he described in a few strokes only, and also his "malice" in emphasizing, explicitly or between the lines, flaws and defects alongside the identified virtues of all the great men. Giovio is always a curious biographer: often mischievous, sometimes treacherous, never hagiographic. And it is also this that makes the reading of his portraits so compelling and immediate.
This first complete Italian translation of the Elogia also offers a historical, philological and biography framework of great importance, and an extensive commentary that highlights the many references to Giovio’s overall work, for the first time considered in its entirety. In addition, a selection of not purely ornamental illustrations illustrates the artistic journey of Giovio and his in-depth network of relationships with the major painters of his time."
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| Portrait of Francis I, King of France, Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Giovio Series Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[2] The original intention of Giovio was to publish the biographies of the famous men whose portraits were kept in his Museum in Borgovico (built between 1537 and 1543), dividing them into four classes (p. LVII): a) deceased literates; b) living writers; c) artists; d) popes, kings and captains of armies. The plan was observed only in part. In 1546 were published in Venice (in Latin) the praises of deceased writers (at the printing house of Michele Tramezzino) with the title Elogia veris clarorum virorum imaginibus apposita. Quae in Musaeo Ioviano Comi spectantur (Biographical notes annexed to the real portraits of famous men which may be seen in Giovio’s Museum in Como). The praises of men in arms were published in Florence in 1551, always in Latin, at the printing house of Lorenzo Torrentino (Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium veris imaginibus supposita, quae apud Musaeum spectantur – Biographical notes annexed to the real pictures of illustrious men with a war virtue, which may be seen in the Museum). Nothing remains of the Portraits of the artists, if not the three dedicated to Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, which however remained unpublished and were released only in 1781 by Girolamo Tiraboschi. The date in which they were drafted, probably around 1525, does not even allow to figure out if they were due to be an integral part of the work.
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| Portrait of Pope Alexander VI, Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Giovio Series Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[3] It must said - as many others did before - that the term Elogium has in the reality nothing to do with the literary genre of the praise, but it has a much more defined meaning: "strictly speaking... they are... biographical writings drafted on a membrane and materially hanging below the portrait of each personality" (p. LVI) in Giovio’s Museum. It must indeed be said, however, that in both first prints (principes) the Elogia were published without etchings reproducing the respective portraits. It is known that Giovio’s collection enjoyed particular fame among his contemporaries, so much so that it was reproduced five times in sixty years, before it ended dispersed or destroyed (see p. XLVIII-XLIX). Among these reproductions, the one by the Lucca publisher Pietro Perna was of particular importance, for it proposed the only complete edition - still today - of the drawings. It was published in Basel in the 1570s.
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| Portrait of Ezzelino da Romano, Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Giovio Series Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[4] This edition, edited by Franco Minonzio, is the first complete translation in Italian, as is completed by a commentary. Mind you: over the centuries various Italian translations of the Elogia were published, but never in their entirety: the first vernacular translation of the Elogia of literates dated back as already to 1551 (Giovio was still alive), thanks to Ippolito Orio. For the men-at-arms contemporaries did not have to wait for more than three years: they were translated by Ludovico Domenichi, always at the publishing house of Lorenzo Torrentino. In recent years, moreover, we are compelled to recall the full version (only in Latin) published in 1972 by Renzo Meregazzi as Volume VIII of the Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Paolo Giovio (National Edition of the Works of Paolo Giovio). That said, I feel needed to make a few further comments, perhaps indicating some limits. They are not so much due to the fact that the Latin text is, in fact, missing. This is a fact of which the same editor, while underlining the urgency, excuses himself (p. XCII): "Originally, a parallel text was planned, and I had prepared it on the basis of a new collation of both first editions, checked against a copy of the national edition [note of the editor: the one by Meregazzi]: on this text I conducted this translation.... Reasons of editorial opportunities have however prevented from publishing it here: while not constituting a real philological novelty, it would have doubled the already substantial number of pages of this volume." Less convincing is however the choice to fully translate the poems related to the Elogia of the literates, while completely suppressing those relating to the men-at-arms (for which reference is made to another essay to be published at a later date), because "the full translation of the poetic texts of both sets of Elogia would have resulted in a disruption of the balance foreseen under this publishing operation" (p. XCIII). Perplexing is also the decision not to reproduce the etchings of the Perna edition, to which the Elogia are however closely connected (it is obvious: this material was not published in first editions, but precisely because Minonzio’s text does not aspire to be a critical edition, he could have inserted them). More generally, the comment to the Elogia appears biased towards aspects of purely historical and literary nature, while with regard to artistic considerations they are almost always referring to Paola Barocchi’s pages in Scritti d’arte del Cinquecento (Art Writings in the Sixteenth Century) or to Paolo Giovio, Scritti d’arte. Lessico ed ecfrasi (Paolo Giovio. Art Writings. Lexicon and ecfrasis), edited by Sonia Maffei (Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Publishers, 1999).
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| Portrait of Anne Boleyn, Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Giovio Series Source: Wikimedia Commons |
[5] See also (published after this edition, vis-à-vis which the authoress was not particularly appreciative) Barbara Agosti, Paolo Giovio. Uno storico lombardo nella cultura artistica del Cinquecento - Paolo Giovio. A Lombard Historian in 1500 Artistic Culture (Florence, Leo S. Olschki Publishers, 2008).
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