Konrad Eisenbichler 356 DIANA ROBIN PUBLISHING WOMEN. SALONS, THE PRESSES, AND THE COUNTER- REFORMATION IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. 416 pp., Ill. 13. Konrad Eisenbichler Victoria College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario hile much fascinating work has been carried out in the past twenty years on women in early modern Italy, Diana Robin s book reveals that there is a lot of exciting research still to be done and very different ways of looking at Italian women of the time. By focussing on five cities Naples, Rome, Siena, Florence, and Venice and on the literary efforts (mostly poetry) of certain groups of women (but also men) in those cities, Robin has brilliantly illustrated how, with their interest in literature and writing, some women from powerful Italian families were not simply indulging in literary diversions and salon pastimes, but actually participating in the rough and tumble politics of their city while working for their family s survival in the tempestuous waters of Renaissance Italian life. Though their poetry might have been Petrarchan, their objectives were thoroughly political, and though their salons gathered literati, their discussions reached the ears of rulers. Robin s volume thus goes a long way in liberating women s poetry from the undeserved stigma of superficiality and mediocrity and in redressing the imbalance in favour of a cultural and political contribution that, so far, has not yet been fully examined. The volume opens in southern Italy, on the idyllic island of Ischia, a holiday resort for the rich and powerful since at least the time of Emperor Tiberius. It was here that in the 1520s-30s Costanza d Avalos, duchess of Francavilla (d. 1541), established a salon frequented by learned men and intelligent women that fostered the intellectual growth and development of four incredible young women closely related to one another the sisters Giovanna d Aragona Colonna (1502-75) and Maria d Aragona d Avalos (1503-68) and their sisters-in-law Vittoria Colonna d Avalos (1490-1547) and Giulia Gonzaga Colonna (1513-66). Costanza s salon was also the catalyst that in the 1530s-40s spawned five different salons in cities such as Naples, Rome, Viterbo, Ferrara, and Milan/Pavia, each directed by one of the founding d Avalos-Colonna women and each thoroughly engaged in the cultural, religious, philosophical and political debates of the time. Each of these salons also served as a cell for the dissemination throughout Italy of religious reformist ideas drawn primarily from Juan de Valdés, but also, to a lesser degree, from transalpine reformers such as
Publishing Women 357 Jean Calvin or Martin Luther, ideas that the Roman Church soon declared heretical. As Robin points out, while the salon that Costanza d Avalos created on Ischia originated as a place of refuge from war, an arcadia in the Italian imagination not subject to the cities of the peninsula, its offsprings quickly became embroiled in and affected by the politics of church and state (p. 39). The second chapter moves with some of these women to Naples and follows the publication of poetry collections by a group of writers that, as Robin suggests, constituted not a real, but a virtual salon (pp. xxi, 62, etc.). The connecting thread for the chapter is the multi-volume collection of poetry published by the Venetian printer Gabriel Giolito de Ferraris in the 1540s-50s, but which also included, by extension, the 1559 collection of women s poetry edited by Lodovico Domenichi and published by Vincenzo Busdrago in Lucca. Robin s underlying suggestion is that the publication of the poetry of two suppressed groups, the Naples salon and women, was not driven alone [sic] by the academies, patrons, and the presses who supported them, but by the very measures to outlaw their work that were instituted in Naples and Rome (p. 77). As a result, Robin positions the ten volumes of Rime published in Venice and Lucca firmly in the context of the cultural, political, and religious debates of the time and the Church s attempt to rein in heterodox thinking. With chapter three the volume moves north to Rome and examines Vittoria Colonna s very active involvement on behalf of her troublesome brother Ascanio in resolving the family s difficulties with Pope Paul III Farnese. Although the pope eventually won the day and confiscated the extensive lands of the Colonna, thus forcing Ascanio into virtual retirement in his small fief of Marino, Vittoria s constant efforts on behalf of the family by way of pen and personal contacts enhanced her reputation throughout Italy and exposed the pope s geopolitical ambitions (p. 101). Having assumed the high moral ground, Vittoria found that she could count on the support of friends from her literary circles and from the reform movement in particular on the papal commissary Giovanni Guidiccioni and on the English cardinal Reginald Pole. Such support would, eventually, help pave the way to the restitution of the family s vast estates in 1559, twelve years after her untimely death (1547). Chapter four bridges Rome and Venice in an analysis of two works, each entitled Tempio, that sang the praises of Giovanna d Aragona, the beautiful and independently minded wife of Vittoria Colonna s unfortunate brother Ascanio. When, in the late 1550s, Pope Paul IV Carafa was waging a military war against the Colonna and a cultural war against a free press, three major publishers in Venice and Florence brought out two major works celebrating Giovanna d Aragona Colonna, the wife and mother of Paul s worst enemies (p. 105) Girolamo Ruscelli s anthology of beautiful contemporary Italian women, Del tempio alla divina signora donna Giovanna d Aragona fabricato da tutti i più gentili spiriti (1555) and Giuseppe Betussi s similar Imagini del tempio della
Konrad Eisenbichler 358 signora donna Giovanna Aragona (1556). Published just as Giovanna was forced from Rome and from the Colonna lands, a victim of papal land grabs and geopolitics, the two volumes bear witness to the support she and her family enjoyed throughout Italian cultural circles. Shortly after the death of Paul IV Giovanna was able to return triumphantly to Rome and regain possession of her palace and lands (1560) a testament to the reputation she had been able to maintain and the support she had garnered from writers and intellectuals who, no doubt saw their fate under Paul IV s regime as analogous to Giovanna s own. Hindered in their mission to speak, write, and publish freely under the pall of the Inquisition, they too hoped for a triumphal return (p. 123). Chapter five brings us to Siena and to another group of women actively engaged in the cultural, but also political life of their city. The Sienese veglie become representative of an intellectual and cultural dialogue that engaged both men and women from the local nobility. In this context, Robin examines the role of women in dialogues and in works by Marc Antonio Piccolomini, Alessandro Piccolomini, and Girolamo Bargagli. She then turns her attention to the fascinating poet Laudomia Forteguerri (1515-55?), whose story has been much embellished (often with no actual documents to support this) by subsequent Sienese antiquarians and even by some more modern scholars. While the cultural world of Siena had much in common with that of Naples, Rome, and Milan, it was also dramatically different, not the least because Siena was a republic on the verge of internal disintegration and about to disappear entirely from the map of Italy. Robin uses Forteguerri as an emblem for Siena s cultural vitality in the mid-cinquecento but also for its dogged determination to fight against the invader a battle that Siena, however, was to lose, in spite of its heroic last stand. The study ends with a chapter on Florence that focuses on the salons around such figures as the duchess of Camerino, Caterina Cibo (1501-57), and the courtesan Tullia d Aragona (1510-56). In the first case we find once again the presence of religious reformers (this time, Bernardino Ochino), in the second the presence of male literati keen to praise and assist talented women writers. The courtly Laura Battiferra (1523-89) and her poems in praise and remembrance of Cibo bring the chapter to a close, a fitting tribute to the end of an era when influential and intelligent women could gather around them intellectuals, reformers, and writers and engage directly in the crucial debates of the times. A series of excellent and informative appendices on the Giolito poetry anthologies, a chronology of events, and a bio-bibliographical index of authors and patrons brings the entire volume to a close. Diana Robin s study is a ground-breaking piece of scholarship. It examines a group of Italian women from a perspective that is rarely, if ever, taken into consideration when considering their lives, their work, or their contribution to the male-dominated politics and culture of the time. While it makes a very
Publishing Women 359 significant contribution to scholarship on Italian noble or learned women, it should, however, be read with some historical caution because, at times, factual accuracy seems to give way to romantic exaggeration or, simply, not to be as rigorous as a historian would expect. For example, Siena was not sacked in 1555 (pp. xii, xvii, etc.) but was, in fact, consciously spared from any looting and further destruction: at its surrender the conquering army of Duke Cosimo I of Florence (and of not Emperor Charles V as reported on pp. xxiv, 126, passim) led by Gian Giacomo de Medici, marquis of Marignano, gave full military honours (l onore delle armi, as many sources report) to the defending troops and citizens, even standing at attention (one would say today) as the Sienese forces and many of the city s inhabitants filed out from Porta Romana, with their weapons and flags, on their way to Montalcino, where the Republic of Siena was to continue in exile for another four years. And the siege and bombardment of Siena did not last thirty-six months (p. 124), but fifteen months at most (from a first attack on the night of 26-27 January 1554 to the city s capitulation on 17 April 1555). The poet Laudomia Forteguerri did not recruit and train a company of women [and] enter the war in 1554 as their captain against the overwhelming forces of Cosimo I and the emperor Charles V (p. 126, but also pp. 128, 131, and passim) no contemporary document attests to this type of military engagement on the part of Laudomia or any other woman, but in January 1553 she did lead a troupe of, reportedly, about a thousand women in carrying construction materials for the building of a bastion along the norther perimeter of the city s walls and many contemporary sources do attest to this. Similarly, one might seriously question the application of some modern terminology to sixteenth-century realities, such as using the term agent in referring to Alessandro Piccolomini s literary/poetic relationship with Laudomia Forteguerri, or the word club member in referring to membership in a literary academy (both on p. 147). Duke Cosimo I should really not be described as a patron of Michelangelo (p. 261); in fact, he never commissioned anything from Michelangelo and was not even able to get the artist to return, however temporarily, to Florence. Nor should Margaret of Austria be called Duchess of Parma and Piacenza when she visited Siena in 1536 and 1538 (p. 159) because the first time she was simply the emperor s daughter engaged to be married to the duke of Florence and the second time she was the widowed duchess of Florence she would not become duchess of Parma and Piacenza until about ten years later (p. 1547), when her second husband, Ottavio Farnese, inherited it from his assassinated father. Similarly, the Sienese poet Virginia Martini Casole Salvi is variously referred to as Virginia de Martini Salvi (p. 151), Virginia Martini de Salvi (p. 158), Virginia di Salvi (p. 159) the confusion is such that in the index she is even listed as two different persons: Salvi, Virginia di Matteo and Salvi, Virginia Martini de (p. 362). In short, more careful copy-editing and stricter fact checking would have
Konrad Eisenbichler 360 greatly benefited the volume and its readers. In spite of the many quibbles touching on historical accuracy that might be raised by an attentive reader, Robin s over-all examination of the literary salons founded by the d Avalos-Colonna women and of the virtual salons constituted by printed collections of poetry and dialogue among the literati makes an important contribution to the history of literature, of learned women, and of literary circles in mid sixteenth-century Italy. The volume will certainly stimulate further research on these women and lead scholars to scour the archives in search of more information and greater insights into these formidable women who were fully engaged in, and actively contributed to the cultural, religious, and political life of the time.