Rinaldo: epic masculinity in Tasso's "Gerusalemme liberata"

Speranza

The first section of the essay, "Crossing Genres," opens with Ronald Martinez's sweepingly panoramic "Two Odysseys: Rinaldo's Po Journey and the Poet's Homecoming in Orlando fiirioso," in which Rinaldo's journey is revealed as a masterly accommodation of Arthurian romance and Carolingian epic tradition.

Unfortunately, a vexing (and highly ironic) typographical error repeatedly renders Rinaldo's horse "Baiardo" as "Boiardo" (the author of Orlando innamorato) and results in nonsensical phrases,
such as "Rinaldo's decision to pursue Boiardo" and "Gradasso's desire for Boiardo"
(37).

Parenthetically, it must be noted that, despite an attractive paperback cover
reproducing Poussin's Rinaldo and Armida, the volume has a surprising number of
typos, even of proper names ("Massimissa" for "Massinissa" [78] and "Ermiria" for
"Erminia" [103]); also, the first copy sent to this reviewer had been misbound and
lacked pages 297-328.
Next, Daniel Javitch's "The Graftingof Virgilian Epic in Orlandofiirioso" covers well-known territory for those familiar with this professor's prolific and magisterial writings on Ariosto's modification of epic scenes.

Jo Ann Cavallo's "Tasso's Armida and the Victory of Romance" closes out this first section and con
stitutes perhaps the most provocative essay in the collection, arguing that Tasso is "erroneously . . . considered a spokesman for the Counter-Reformation" (87, italics added) and that

"[b]y redeeming SEXUALITY in the reunion scene of Rinaldo and Armida, Tasso goes against the tendency ofCinquecento writers to equate sexuality with the illicit" (102).

The second section, "The Politics of Dissimulation," starts with Sergio Zatti's
"Epic in the Age of Dissimulation: Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata," which translates a
revised but seminal essay that previously appeared in Italian.

Walter Stephens's "Trickster, Textor, Architect, Thief: Craft and Comedy in Gerusalemme liberata"
perceptively analyzes Vafrino's role in Tasso's poem while boldly positing (against
critical tradition and logic) that the weak, lachrymose, plaintive

"Erminia isTasso's
most explicit poet figure, as well as his most powerful" (164).

Katherine Hoffman's
"'Un cosi valoroso cavallicro': Knightly Honor and Artistic Representation in
Orlandofiirioso, Canto 26" problematizes Ariosto's ccphrastic episode of the foun
tainwhose sculptures depict contemporary monarchs battlinga monstrous Avarice.
The concluding section, "Acting Out Fantasies," contains Valeria Finucci's
"The Masquerade of Masculinity: Astolfo and Jocondo in Orlando fiirioso, Canto
28," a Lacanian reading par excellence.

Eric Nicholson's "Romance as Role Model:
Early Female Performances of Orlando fiirioso and Gerusalemme liberata," a fine
example of performance studies scholarship.

Naomi Yavhen, "'Dal rogo alle nozze':
Tasso's Sofronia as Martyr Manque," a superb iconographical reading of Sofronia;
and ConstanceJordan's "Writingbeyond the Querelle: Gender and History in
Orlandofiirioso," a solid feminist interpretation of Bradamante.
Together these two volumes demonstrate, admirably and repeatedly, the value
andjouissance of reading Renaissance texts against the context of their original cul
tures and in light of new methodologies.
Madison U. Sowell
Brigham Young University

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Ingo Herklotz, Cassiano dalPozzo unddie Archdologie des 17. Jahrhunderts
(Romische Forschungcn dcr Bibliotheca Hertziana, 28.) Munich: Hirmcr, 1999. 226 pis. +
439 pp. DM 268. ISBN: 3-7774-7750-8.
This is an important book. In the last decade or so there has been renewed
attention to the antiquarian culture ofearly modern Europe. Most ofthis work has
been done by art historians. This is itself telling, reflecting the partly submerged
genealogy that leads from early modern antiquaries to post-modern professors of
the humanities. The images that the antiquaries collected to help study antiquity
are now studied by moderns more interested in images than antiquity. This split is
itself aconsequence ofthe dissolution ofantiquarian, pre-disciplinary, polymathy
into its constitutive parts; to historians and classicists is delegated the study ofcon
tent, to art historians that of form.
In the work ofthe last decade no one historical figure has occupied a more
prominent place in the scholarship on antiquarianism than Cassiano dal Pozzo,
Nicolas Poussin's Roman friend. Conferences, collections ofessays {Qjiaderni Puteani),
exhibitions, and an ambitious and lavish program to publish his "Paper
Museum" testify to the importance now attached to him, and to the "type" he
embodies. That so many scholars, from so many different disciplinary corners but
predominantly from art history, are now working on antiquaries and antiquarian
ism suggests that times arc changing, and some of those divisions between form and
content are being overcome.
Ingo Herklotz's new book is in almost equal parts about Cassiano and about
his world. It is the comprehensive monograph that those who have been following
the Cassiano industry have long awaited. Its first part is about the man and his
world, the second about the man and his work. There is, throughout, attention to
the specificity ofCassiano in his Roman context. If the first halfoffers itscharms to
those wanting to know more about some of its lesser-known denizens, men like
Girolamo Aleandro, Lelio Pasqualini or Lucas Holstenius, the second halfof the
book—or rather the second part of the second half— will be required reading for
anyone interested in the history of antiquarianism.
Thereare, then, twobooks to be reviewed here. The first isabout Cassiano and
his social circle. Here one would want to emphasize the importance ofboth the nar
row focus and the wide. Herklotz maps out the learned prosopography ofBarberini
Rome with great economy and deftness: the relationship of Cassiano to the Academia
dei Lincei, to his patron Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and to his fellow (but
socially inferior) scholars in the Barberini fiamiglia. Perhaps nowhere does Herklotz
better delineate thespecific character oflearned life in the third and fourth decades
ofthe seventeenth century than by way of an extended three-way comparison of
Cassiano, his patron, and their mutual friend, the Provencal antiquary, Nicolas-
Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Observations about the difference between Barberini and
Peiresc as patrons, and between Cassiano and Peiresc as scholars, reflect the author's
deep immersion in the material. The strain —but also the opportunities—of
being acourtier shaped learned life in Rome. To this was added the insistent imper
ative ofdemonstrating the vitality ofthe early Church by its Counter-Reformation
REVIEWS 275
descendents, amongwhose proponents few were louder than Cassiano's boss, who
was also the Pope's nephew. This alone, even without the long hours these learned
courtiers had to waste waiting in cold corridors for their masters to emerge, would
have been enough to stiflewide-ranging inquiry.
The second part of the book offers a genealogy of Cassiano's focus on ancient
manners and customs (mores et instituta). Those interested less in the book's hero
than in his kind of heroism, namely, the historyof antiquarianism, must read these
chapters (9-13). This book-within-a-book charts the strands —ethnographic, cpigraphic,
monographic, jurisprudential and visual —that fed Cassiano's project of
"eine samtlichc Lebensberciche umfassendc Zivilisationsgeschichte" (185). The
"Zeugnisse der Sachkultur"— he also refers to "Objektikonographie" (154)—
defines an approach to the study of the past that looked at things, and especially
those things overlooked by historians typically moreconcerned with rhetoricallydriven
didactic discussions of politics and war, as evidence of what the past was
really like. Herodotus and especially Varro wereimportant ancient authorities. But
Herklotz makes clear on several occasions that the decisivesteps towards this new
kind of cultural history (he refers always to "zivilisationsgeschichte") were taken in
the sixteenth century, by the leading figures in the Farnesc Circle, Pirro Ligorio,
Onophrio Panvinio and Fulvio Orsini. Other importantdevelopments occurred in
Padua and Paris. Herklotz presents Cassiano as the heir of these different intellec
tual practices. The leading accounts of this story in English are by Arnaldo
Momigliano and, more recently, Francis Haskell. At several points and in small
ways Herklotz distinguishes hisaccount from theirs. Butthere isa certain hesitation
here, as if the author realized that he wason to something even bigger than Cas
siano, and drew back. This is only to say that a very good book could have been
even better — if there were two of them.
Peter N. Miller
University of Maryland, College Park
R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi andthe Authority ofArt
University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 1999. 27 color pis. +257
b/w illus. + 446 pp. $85. ISBN: 0-271-01787-2.
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652/3) was arguably the greatest woman painter
of seventeenth-century Italy. Born in Rome to the Caravaggesquc painter Orazio
Gentileschi, Artemisia became Caravaggio's only female follower in Italy and the
first Italian woman to specialize in history painting. Modern art history has pro
duced important studies on Artemisia by Roberto Longhi, Ward Bissell, Mary
Garrard, Roberto Contini and Gianni Papi, Judith Mann, and Alexandra Lapicrrc,
among others. Garrard in particular has constructed Artemisia as an innovatively
proto-feminist figure, whose brilliant reintcrpretations of traditional subjects pro
duced unprecedented characterizations ofwomen in Italian painting.
Bissell's long-awaited monograph on Artemisia promises to make a majorcon
tribution. This book includes a much-needed catalogue raisonne" of her works,
276 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
including 57 autograph entries, 42 "incorrect and questionable attributions," and
an astonishing 108 lost works. The disproportionately high number of lost works
illustrates a formidable issue for the study ofall women artists from the early mod
ern period: the disappearance of works. This situation arises largely from the
relative paucity ofdocumented public commissions. Most pictures by early modern
women were painted for private collectors, and many privately owned works have
disappeared, resulting in extant oeuvres that are either greatly diminished, as with
Artemisia's, or entirelyunknown today.
Although this far-reaching issue is not discussed by Bissell (nor is he con
cerned, in general, with matters that pertain broadly to women artists of the
period), one ofthe book's real contributions is the attention to patronage. Bissell
convincingly argues that previous scholars have erred in crediting Gentileschi alone
with inventions that were impacted both by her patrons' ideas and desires and by
the history oftaste. Although this argument is well-founded, Bissell goes further,
rejecting previous feminist interpretations ofArtemisia's work. This unequivocally
anti-feminist view will be difficult for many scholars to accept. Some points cannot
be dismissed, however, such as Bissell's fascinating discussion ofArtemisia's subspe
cialty in paintings ofthe female nude, which he argues constitute more than half of
her extant canvases from the 1620s on. Bissell concludes that Artemisia did not
reject eroticized interpretations ofwomen, as others have alleged; although some
will question the author's denial that Artemisia's inventive interpretations ofwomen
were intended to impart a new heroism to her gender.
This book includes additions to the artist's known oeuvre and reconsiderations
ofher chronology and development. Some suggestions are more plausible than oth
ers. Surely theMadonna and Child'in the Spada Gallery, Rome (no. X-l9), which is
mentioned as Artemisia's work in a 1637 inventory, is by Artemisia and not by an
artist from Giovanni Baglione's circle, as Bissell believes. The author's attributions
ofaPenitent Magdalen (private collection, no. 17) and a Cleopatra (Paris, no. 29) to
Artemisia arc not convincing.
Bissell's careful rethinking of several aspects of Gentileschi's life and career is
often productive. His reassessment of the circumstances of Artemisia's removal to
Florence in c. 1612, his suggestions about historical confusion of Artemisia with
the still life painter Giovanna Garzoni, and his discussions ofArtemisia's thirty
known letters enhance ourunderstanding ofthe artist. His reassessment of her later
career in Naples addresses a period that is often ignored.
Occasionally, important issues are insufficiently explored. Bissell's comment
that Artemisia may have drawn male nudes from life, based on Sandrart's remark
that she drew from live models (22-23, 62), contradicts a universal belief about Ital
ian practice: that women were not permitted to draw nude men during the early
modern period. Bissell's argument is never clearly explained, and hedoesn't make
his case. The author is also inattentive to Artemisia's unprecedented specialization
in history painting. He does not consider how unusual this practice was for women
painters in Italy, who generally specialized in portraiture. This oversight impedes a
full appreciation of Gentileschi's innovativeness.