BOOK: Paolo Giovio, "Portraits of Learned Men"

Paolo Giovio: Portraits of Learned Men. Edited and translated by Kenneth Gouwens. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 95. Harvard University Press, 2023. 9780674290150. xviii + 667 pp.

We have already encountered Giovio in the I Tatti Renaissance Library a few years ago — vol. 56 is his dialogue Notable Men and Women of Our Time, consisting mostly of short biographies of notable military commanders, poets, and noblewomen (see my post about it). The present volume, Portraits of Learned Men, has a few things in common with that previous one: it, too, consists of short biographies, though only of men of letters; and both volumes have the same editor and translator, Kenneth Gouwens. (Incidentally, an earlier English translation of this work, by Florence Alden Gragg (1935), is available online. Gouwens mentions a few downsides of this translation in the notes here on pp. 454–5.)

Giovio's Portraits of Learned Men is based on an interesting concept: he was trying to set up a kind of museum,* a villa (open to the public) on the shores of Lago di Como that would house portraits of notable men of letters of the last few generations, roughly from 1300 to his own time (he lived in the early 16th century); and next to each portrait there would be a sheet of parchment with a short biography of the individual in question (p. xi). Unfortunately he didn't manage to gather all the portraits he had hoped to obtain, and it seems that nobody bothered to continue the project after his death; the villa was demolished in the early 17th century.

[*In his time the word still meant simply a place dedicated to the Muses, but I guess efforts like his helped shift it towards our modern sense of a building containing educational exhibits.]

The biographies he wrote for his museum, however, are still extant and are gathered in the present work. There are 106 longer ones (about two pages long on average, which is rather longer than than the amount of time Giovio spends on each person in Notable Men and Women), of people whose portraits he managed to obtain; and then there are about 50 short ones, just one paragraph long or so, of people whose portraits he lacked. He concludes the work with a ‘peroration’, really an appeal to potential supporters of his project in other countries, asking them to donate portraits of eminent men of letters to his museum.

I liked this book a good deal; because the individual biographies are short, it's easy to read them in small doses and thus avoid getting bored. One downside, however, is that he doesn't really have the space to tell you much about each individual and he certainly can't go into any details of either the subject's life or his work. A peculiar obsession of his seem to have been epitaphs: he concludes each biography with one or several epitaphs, short poems commemorating the subject of the biography, sometimes by that subject himself but more often by various minor poets. Perhaps someone who understands Latin (unlike me) can enjoy these epitaphs for their poetical qualities, but from my point of view they didn't really contribute anything of biographical value to the work. Another good feature of this book are the translator's endnotes, which are very extensive; for every person mentioned by Giovio, we get a list of references to further literature; for every work mentioned by Giovio, we get the bibliographical details of its original publication; for every epitaph, we are told what metre it's in; the notes also point out parallels to Giovio's Notable Men and Women (which mention some of the same people are the present work) and contain a wealth of other background information.

Giovio's biographies are arranged in more or less chronological order (he points out that this conveniently avoids any disputes about the order of precedence; p. 25); the first few are actually medieval scholastics: Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus; but then we reach Dante and continue with the usual panoply of Renaissance authors. A good few of them were already slightly familiar to me because we've had some of their works in the I Tatti Renaissance Library, but many others were of course also completely new to me. As one might expect, Giovio's subjects are mostly Italians, but they don't predominate by as much as I thought they would. In the early parts of the book, there are about ten or so Greeks, people who had fled from the declining Byzantine Empire and helped restart the study of ancient Greek language and literature in Italy; to my surprise, there were also several Englishmen (Thomas Linacre, Thomas More, John Fisher), some of whom even spent part of their career in Italy. Later in the book there are more and more northern authors — Dutch, French, Germans, etc., about twenty in total; and Giovio admits on more than one occasion that in his time the study of ancient Greek and Latin was flourishing more in those countries than in Italy. Unsurprisingly, however, he had a harder time getting the portraits of these northerners, so their biographies are mostly among the shorter ones at the end of the book. But he was aware of this deficiency and, as I already mentioned, his peroration at the end of the book contains appeals for potraits from all sorts of countries.* Often enough, western Europeans' idea of Europe used to end at the eastern borders of Germany, and I was pleasantly surprised to see here that this was not the case for Giovio: his world stretches as far as learning is done in Latin, and he extends his appeal for portraits and support as far as Poland (which he calls “Sarmatia” :)), Hungary (“Pannonia”), Transylvania and Dalmatia (pp. 437–9).

[*And clearly his appeals had at least some success; he mentions that the bishop of Arras “is having portraids made for me” (p. 439) and that another Frenchman, Danès,** “even now is sending a portrait ofhis teacher Budé” (p. 443).]

[**This is how it's spelt in the book; but the French wikipedia spells it “Danes” and adds in a note: “And not Danès, although the e is open.” :))]

Miscellaneous

“Pomponio [Leto]'s early morning lectures were so popular that students would arrive at midnight to be sure of getting a seat.” (From the translator's introduction, p. xiii.) Clearly those were very different times :))

Giovio on Duns Scotus: “he seems to have made sport of Christian doctrines: for, hesitating here and there on a question that had been raised, he obscured faith in religious matters with a dense fog of jargon. In this manner he sowed the seeds of interminable quarrels” (III.2). That may well be true, but surely you can say the same of any other theologians. They have been causing disputes and heresies from the first centuries of christianity onwards.

Apparently Scotus was mistakenly buried alive after having an apoplexy; when he “regained consciousness, it was too late: as the poor fellow was shouting, vainly seeking help, and after he had long been beating his head against the sarcophagus, at last he bashed it in and died.” (III.3) Eeek :S But on the other hand, how did Giovio know this? Did someone dig him up later, just in case, and open the sarcophagus?

Giovio points out how mistaken Petrarch was when he thought that he would become famous for his Latin rather than his Italian works: “Fortune, mocking the judgment of so great a man, deceived him grievously when he spurned these works, which would enjoy a life of everlasting favor, in order to pursue surer and nobler glory from his Latin poem Africa” (V.2). The same happened to Boccaccio: “with a fate not unlike Petrarch's, Boccaccio himself was deceived by his opinion of his literary efforts”, but his Latin books “are forgotten and indeed barely retain a breath of life” (VI.2).

There is a biography of Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita) which, to my surprise, contains no mention at all of his infamously, gloriously obscene poems which we saw in the ITRL a few years ago (see my post from back then). Even the translator's notes say that “It is remarkable that Giovio does not mention” them (p. 481, n. 60). I wonder how many other interesting things are missing from other biographies in this book, without me being in a position to notice them...

A bizarre anecdote about how Cardinal Bessarion almost became a pope: “when three of the most powerful cardinals had approached him in his cell at the conclave in order that they might hail him as pope, they were not let in by the doorkeeper” who “said that Bessarion had to be left alone to his studies”; annoyed, they cast their votes for a rival candidate, who thus won the election (XXIV.4). However, judging by the wikipedia page about that conclave, it doesn't seem that Bessarion was quite that close to being elected pope after all.

From the biography of John Argyropoulos: “in the last act of his life, when he made his will, as a joke he made his richer friends heirs to his debt. [. . .] by eating too much watermelon he brought on an autumnal fever, and thus died in his seventieth year.” (XXVII.3.) What a way to go :))

Demetrius Chalcondyles “surpassed the morals of the Greeks, inasmuch as no deceit or artifice was observed in him” (XXIX.1) Wahahaha :))) Judging by my experiences with the Greek tourist industry, Giovio may have been on to something.

The bizarre end of Callimachus, an Italian (his real name was Filippo Buonaccorsi) who spent much of his career in the service of the King of Poland: “he became an exile of sorts, hidden away in the Polish villa of an old friend. His death there was kept secret and he lacked funeral obsequies; once his body had been dried in an oven, it was stored in a chest”; the king later had it buried in a church in Cracow (XLI.2). But according to the translator's note 298 on p. 298, these things “appear to be more fabrications of Paolo Giovio than fact”.

Galeotto Marzio “had such a great belly that he used to ride in a carriage, since even massive pack animals would break down under the tremendous weight of his obese body; and when he was an old man he finally died at Montagnana, near Este, smothered under his own lard” (XLIV.4). You can't accuse Giovio of idealizing his subjects :))

Interesting: “clade Sonciaca” is translated as “the defeat at the Soča River” (XLVIII.2) — I was pleasantly surprised by this, as the ITRL translators tend to use Italian names of such geographical features when available. On the other hand, in chap. CXI “Iustinopoli in Histria” is translated as “Capodistria”.

Syphilis was “called la maladie italienne by the French, and la maladia francese by the Italians” (translator's note 363 on p. 521). Ah, nothing like a bit of neighbourly love <3

Bartolomeo Cocles was a fortune-teller who came to a sad end: he was murdered by a certain Coponi, who “gave no excuse for committing this crime, other than Cocles's having made known to him that he was soon to become a foul murderer.” (LIII.5.) Amazing — this is almost like Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, but in real life :))

A certain physician named Zerbi “lured by a large sum, had traveled to Bosnia to cure from dropsy the pasha Skander Bey [. . .] Zerbi did not make good on what he had extravagantly promised the dying man, and was butchered by Skander's barbarian servants in order that they might yield him up to the spirit of their lord as a sacrificial victim.&rdquo, (LIX.2) Translator's note 436 (p. 531) adds that “in the summer of 1499 Skander Bey led troops from Sarajevo into Friuli and Carinthia and subsequently ‘ravaged the country around the Isonzo River in September [. . .]’ ”.

The poet Pietro Gravina “died in his seventy-fourth year [. . .] when a chestnut burr very lightly punctured his calf as he was taking a siesta in the shade: for by casually scratching it, he opened a sore, bringing upon himself a deadly infection.” (LXXIV.7) I'm starting to sense something of a pattern here — many of Giovio's subjects ended their lives in gruesome ways :]

I was interested to learn that Baldassare Castiglione, who is of course famous as the author of The Courtier, a sort of early etiquette-book, also wrote “a long epic, Cleopatra” (LXXVII.1). This sounds intriguing, but apparently the poem is actually about “an ancient statue of Ariadne purchased by Julius II that was thought to have been of the Egyptian queen” (n. 563 on p. 553).

Giovio's biography of Ludovico Ariosto mentions that “he distinctly surpassed Boiardo and Pulci himself” (LXXXIV.4), which made me realize that these two other epic poets don't have biographies in Giovio's book — a very rare case of two Italian renaissance authors who are famous enough that even I know about them but didn't get biographies here.

Interesting: Machiavelli had “no Latin, or at least a mediocre knowledge of it” (LXXXVII.1); Giovio is amazed that someone with this deficiency was able to become such a good writer. Later he adds: “It's a fact (as he himself used to tell me) that the Greek and Latin he slipped into his writings had come from Marcello Virgilio, whom he served as secretary an assistant when he was working for the government” (LXXXVII.4). So it seems that Machiavelli got his own boss to help him write his books — you've got to admit that that's pretty damn Machiavellian :)

Albert Pigge, “from the Dutch town of Kampen” had a “grotesquely harsh and throaty voice, and his resonant snorts pretty much disfigured the whole appeal of his wisdom.” (CV.1) Sounds like your average Dutch speaker :))) I also liked the mention of snorts, which go well with his porcine surname, but this must be just a coincidence in the translation, since the original is in Latin and I don't think there's any Latin word for a pig that would sound similar to Pighius.

There's also a biography of Giovio's older brother, Benedetto Giovio (CVI). This seems a bit nepotistic but Giovio describes his brother in such affectionate terms that I can't blame him for including this biography in his book.

Pietro Alcionio “was such a shameless slave to gluttony that often, within the space of a day, he cadged meals at two or three different people's tables. [. . .] when at last he was home,he relievedhimself of the burden of excessive drink by throwing up at the very edge of his bed.” (CXXIII.1) A Spaniard named Sepúlveda published a book so critical of Alcionio that the latter “was compelled to go to great expense to buy up his Spanish enemy's books in all the shops to burn them.” (CXXIII.2) Poor Alcionio — I think I'd prefer not to have my portrait in a museum than to have it appear next to such a biography :))

From the short biography of Hector Boece, a Scottish historian: “we marvel greatly that there can be found a written tradition of over a thousand years concerning the islands of the Hebrides and Orkney, so remote from our region; whereas in Italy, that nursemaid of genius, writers were entirely lacking for so many centuries after the expulsion of the Goths.” (CXXXIV)

Near the end of the book Giovio writes that he has “completed the first volume, which contains portraits of the deceased” and that he intends to write a second, which “will treat of the living” (p. 431). I don't know if he ever completed this second volume, however. Perhaps he was distracted by a different project: the translator's introduction says that six years after the present work, Giovio published a similar volume “surveying prominent military and political figures” (p. ix).

The poet Baptista of Mantua was rewarded after death with “a marble likeness of him crowned with laurel [. . .] alongside that of Vergil” (LXI.3), which Giovio thinks ridiculous since Baptista was such a mediocre poet. But what's even funnier is the following from the translator's note (n. 455 on p. 536): “Within months after its completion in 1514, a notice bearing the marquis of Gonzaga's official seal was posted on it forbiding its defacement — and soon thereafter, someone hurled feces at the notice itself” :)))

A poet named Guido Postumo, whom I haven't heard of before, “composed the elegies, for which he is best known today, which describe the pope's court and include a detailed account of a hunting expedition in Palo” (n. 512 on p. 546). Sounds interesting — too bad we don't have that work in the ITRL :)

Cardinal Egidio of Viterbo wrote a Book on Hebrew Letters; this work, “written in hopes of persuading Leo X to reform the Roman alphabet, drew extensively upon the Kabbalah and analyzed what he believed to be the sexual anatomy of Hebrew letters.” (Note 634 on p. 563.) ROFL :)) I think if you're starting to write about the sexual anatomy of the alphabet, it's high time you've put the pen away and had a wank...