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

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 furioso,"

in which Rinaldo's journey is revealed as a masterly accommoda

tion 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

Orlando furioso" 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 Politicsof 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

parexcellence; 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

and

jouissance of reading Renaissance texts against the context of their original cul

tures and in light of new methodologies.

Madison U. Sowell

Brigham Young University

274 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

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, cpi

graphic,

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 the

Madonna 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

ofa

Penitent 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.