Veronica Gambara Dissertation 1

Veronica Gambara: Widowhood, Poetry, and Power in Italian Renaissance Court Culture Molly M. Martin

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2007

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UMI Number: 3249109

Copyright 2007 by Martin, Molly M.

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Abstract Veronica Gambara: Widowhood, Poetry, and Power in Italian Renaissance Court Culture Molly M. Martin

This dissertation investigates how the poetry produced by Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) throughout her reign as the governing widow dowager Countess of Correggio (1519-1550) related in a meaningful way to her political status as a ruling widow dowager. Gambara’s poetry has been relatively overlooked by contemporary study. This is partly the result o f past critical approaches to Petrarchism, and especially to early modem female lyricists within the tradition, which generally disfavored a poet of Gambara’s attributes. This dissertation addresses the need for a critical study of Gambara’s poetry by presenting the first historically contextualized analysis of a selection o f Gambara’s verse. Specifically, this study draws on the theoretical model provided by Ann Rosalind Jones, who argues that early modem female poets must be examined with an awareness of the cultural systems within which they operated. This dissertation sheds light on the social milieu within which Gambara functioned - that is, under a system o f widowhood ideologies, and within a set of ideologies specific to women as political agents in the Northern Italian princely court - and examines how Gambara negotiated, and even advanced, her status within the political and cultural realms o f sixteenth century Italy through her lyric production. My analysis comprehensively investigates the connection between Gambara’s literary activity and her political status, and points the way toward a critical study of Gambara’s complete oeuvre.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures

ii

Acknowledgements

iii

Dedication

iv

Preface Chapter One Veronica Gambara’s Courtly Context: A History o f Women in Relation to Education, Poetry, and Politics in the Northern Italian Renaissance Court

v

p .l

Chapter Two 1529 and the Re-emergence of Gambara’s Poetics: Petrarchismo as a Site for Self-Fashioning

p. 44

Chapter Three Poetry as an Instrument o f Rule: Gambara’s Diplomatic Verse to the Medici and d’Avalos Families

p. 75

Chapter Four Gambara’s Imperial Sonnets on Charles V

p. 108

Conclusion

p. 139

Bibliography

p. 146

Appendix

p. 160

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List of Figures

1. Piero della Francesca. Battista Sforza, Federigo da Montefeltro. c. 1465-72. (Uffizi, Florence). 2. Niccolo Fiorentino. Portrait Medal o f Caterina Sforza. c. 1488. (The British Museum). 3. Niccolo Fiorentino. Portrait Medal o f Caterina Sforza. c. 1498. (The British Museum). 4. Titian. Mary Magdalen, c. 1530-35. (Galleria Pitti, Florence). 5. Parmigianino. Allegorical Portrait o f Charles V. c. 1529-30. (Rosenberg & Steibel, New York). 6. Giovanni Britto after Titian. Charles V in Armor, c. 1532, xylograph. (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna). 7. Titian. Charles V with a Hound, c. 1533. (Museo del Prado, Madrid). 8. Jakob Seisenegger. Charles V with a Hound, c. 1532-33. (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). 9. Titian. Equestrian Portrait o f Charles V c. 1548. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Professor Virginia Cox, who first pointed me in the direction of Veronica Gambara and who has guided this project through all its stages, especially to completion. She has been exceedingly generous with her knowledge and time over the years, and will always be a source of inspiration for my work in the future. I am especially thankful to Professor Teodolinda Barolini, for guiding my study of Italian letters and for opening up issues of gender to me, both inside the classroom and over the course of our many conversations together. My warmest thanks to Professor Jean Howard, for helping me deepen and broaden my knowledge of gender studies and for her steadfast support. Special thanks also to Professor Tommasina Gabriele, for inspiring my study of Italian language and literature as an undergraduate and beyond. My friends and family have been an infinite source of encouragement. I am especially grateful to my mother, for her love and inspiration.

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Dedication

This dissertation is for my Dad.

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Preface Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) was bom to a noble family on their feudal estate in Pratalboino outside o f Brescia. She was thoroughly educated in her youth, and by the turn of the century she demonstrated a natural literary talent with aspirations to circulate her verse. In 1509, Gambara’s father arranged her marriage to Giberto X (d. 1518), the Count of Correggio. Giberto was a military condottiere and the lord of a small fiefdom, which boasted a culturally vibrant atmosphere maintained by the learned women who married into the da Correggio family, including Gambara. Giberto died in battle in 1518, and upon his death, Gambara acceded to the position of leadership as the sole guardian of their two sons and exclusive ruler over her husband’s territory. During her sojourn as the widow dowager Countess of Correggio, Gambara patronized many artists, including the famous Antonio Allegri, more commonly known as Correggio (1489-1534); she effectively implemented her husband’s political strategy of fostering alliances with the neighboring princely dynasties; she launched the professional military and church careers of her two sons; and, alongside the most famous literary and political figures of her day, she frequented the year-long celebration in honor of the imperial coronation o f Charles V (1500-1558) in Bologna. Gambara also produced venerable poetry from the third decade of the century until her death in 1550, and it is during this period that she ascended to the national literary landscape as one of the first celebrated female lyricists of the sixteenth century. The purpose of the present study is to investigate how the poetry Gambara produced throughout her ruling years related in a meaningful way to her political status as a ruling widow dowager.

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Of Gambara’s lifetime production of poetry nearly seventy compositions are extant. A careful examination o f her manuscript tradition reveals a hiatus in the public circulation of her verse beginning sometime around 1519 - the year following the death of her husband and her subsequent inheritance of his political position as the ruler of Correggio - and lasting until 1529, when Gambara returned to the public circulation of her verse by sending a sonnet to Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). There is, of course, the possibility that Gambara continued to produce poetry throughout these years, but suppressed the public viewing o f this verse. In terms of the poetry that was circulated to the public, therefore, Gambara’s oeuvre sequentially - and thematically, as we shall see forms two groups: her early poetry composed throughout her youth, marriage, and the period immediately following her widowhood; and her post-1529 verse written during her ruling years as a widow dowager until her death in 1550. Gambara’s early verse, which we will review in the first chapter of this study, is thematically centered on the drama of courtly love. Her post-1529 verse, in contrast, extends beyond the theme of love from her early poetry, and moves instead in relatively equal measure over a range of public themes and occasional verse: Gambara sophisticatedly celebrates the imperial imagery of Charles V through neo-Latin imitation; she praises her homelands, Brescia and Correggio, through pastoral meditations; and she produces the first female-authored Stanze poem in ottava rima. While Gambara never retreated to a spiritual or meditative life, she does address some pressing spiritual themes in her verse, such as the Virgin’s motherhood and the theme of predestination with distinct Reformist leanings.

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The tradition of criticism surrounding Gambara weighs heavily on representing her biographical history.1 Gambara’s poetry, however, has been relatively overlooked by contemporary study. In part, this is the result of past critical approaches to Petrarchism, and especially to early modem female lyricists within the tradition, which generally disfavored a poet o f Gambara’s attributes. Petrarchism was mainly viewed as imitative and derivative by post-Romantic approaches to the genre. This view, when combined with the emphasis on Petrarchism as a masculine literary idiom, led to a critical understanding of Petrarchan imitation as doubly inauthentic for women. Within this

1 Gambara’s first biography was written by Rinaldo Corso, six years after her death. Rinaldo Corso, Vita di Veronica Gambara in Vita di Giberto III da Correggio (Ancona, 1566), located in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence. For further biographical and historical studies on Gambara see: Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Ennio Sandal, eds. Veronica Gambara e lapoesia del suo tempo n ell’Italia settentrionale (Florence: Olschki, 1989); Antonia Chimenti, Veronica Gambara: gentildonna del rinascimento: un intreccio di poesia e storia (Reggio Emilia: Magis Books, 1995); Clementia de Courten, Veronica Gambara: Una gentildonna del cinquecento (Milan: Casa Editrice “Est,” 1935); Riccardo Finzi, Umanita di Veronica Gambara (1485-1550). Commemorazione pronunciata a Correggio, n e llV centenario della morte della Poetessa, I I 28 maggio 1950 (Reggio Emilia: Tipolitografia Emiliana, 1969); Baldassare Camillo Zamboni, Vita di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759). For a collection o f Gambara’s letters see: Felice Rizzardi, ed. Rime e lettere di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759). Katherine A. Mclver provides an excellent overview o f Gambara’s patronage activity at Correggio: Katherine A. Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 26.1 (2000): 25-44. 2 For a contemporary Italian edition o f Gambara’s poetry see: Allan Bullock, Veronica Gambara: Rime (Florence: Olschki, 1995). Gambara is discussed in the seminal scholarship o f the twentieth century on Italian women writers o f the early modem period, see: Mary Prentice Lillie, Laura Anna Sortoni, eds. Women Poets o f the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Ithaka Press, 1997); Letizia Panizza, Sharon Wood, eds. A History o f Women’s Writing in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Rinaldina Russell, ed. Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994); Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Natalia Costa-Zalessow, Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al X X Secolo (Ravenna: Longo, 1982). For further twentieth century critical discussions o f Gambara’s poetry see: Irma B. Jaffe, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves o f Italian Renaissance Poets (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Maud F. Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1969); William J. Kennedy, Authorizing Petrarch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Giovanni Macchia, “Quattro poetesse del Cinquecento,” Rivista rosminiana 31.20 (1937): 152-157; Richard Poss, “Veronica Gambara: A Renaissance Gentildonna,” in Women o f the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University o f Georgia Press, 1987): 47-66. This dissertation follows in the footsteps o f the critical discussions o f Gambara’s verse by Virginia Cox. See: Virginia Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna,” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early M odem Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, eds. Pamela Joseph Benson, Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 2005): 14-31; “Sixteenth Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy o f Laura,” Journal o f M edieval and Early Modern Studies 35.3 (2005): 583-606 .

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paradigm, scholarship highlighted lyricists that creatively departed from customary Petrarchan imitation. In the female tradition, for example, critical attention centered on the more boundary-crossing poets of the sixteenth century, such as Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) and Veronica Franco (1546-1591). Gambara, in contrast, was relatively conservative in her engagement with the Petrarchan model. Indeed, as we shall see in the second chapter of this study, Gambara’s thematic transformation o f Petrarchan conventions was oriented toward fashioning herself an icon of feminine virtue. Further contributing to the oversight of Gambara by past critical approaches to female Petrarchists was the focus on the category of “love lyric” in women’s writing. In Gambara’s case, her amorous-themed poetry comprises only a portion o f her extant verse; thus, a critical focus on love lyric necessarily ignores almost half of her oeuvre. A final analytical tendency that complicated critical attention to Gambara was to read women’s poetry in a biographical light. This approach favored poets whose thematic consistency yielded the imposition of a biographical reading on their verse, while it also favored poets whose lyric was suggestive of alluring amorous narratives.4 I address this phenomenon as it occurs in the cursory studies of Gambara’s amorous verse in the first chapter of this study. These approaches to Petrarchism transformed upon the emergence of new historicism, which raised a critical awareness for the important role social and historical

3 This is observed by Gordon Braden in his work on Gaspara Stampa (p. 115): “When practical criticism deals with a poem’s relation to Petrarchan conventions, it often puts its energy - as if this were mere common sense - into detecting deviation from those conventions and interpreting that deviation agonistically. The usual way in our profession to appreciate a specimen o f Renaissance Petrarchism is to celebrate its attempt to break out o f that category.” See: “Gaspara Stampa and the Gender o f Petrarchism,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 38.2 (1996), 115-139. 4 The title o f Irma B. Jaffe’s work, Shinning Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves ofItalian Renaissance Poets, illustrates this point.

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contexts played in lyric production.5 In this critical light, Petrarchism came to be viewed as a lyric practice that was socially embedded, and, as such, critics approached the genre as a particularly rich site for literary as well as historical interpretation. Within this critical context, the theoretical methodology formulated by Ann Rosalind Jones offered a ground-breaking approach to women’s writing within the Petrarchan tradition.6 Jones argues that early modem female poets must be examined with an awareness of the cultural systems within which they operated. She reveals how early modem gender ideologies and male-authored literary conventions excluded women from the world of letters, and then, by working with the Marxist-feminist concept of “negotiation” and the Gramscian theory of “hegemony,” Jones constructs a model for reading women’s writing as an instrument to negotiate, and overcome, their marginalization. Jones identifies this negotiation strategy as it was implemented by poets of various classes, and she reveals the rhetorical strategies developed by these poets as they related to their particular social and historical contexts. The current scholarship on early modem female poets has richly expanded these approaches to the subject.7 These studies consider the crucial role the female writer’s

5 For example, see: Braden; William J. Kennedy, Rhetorical Norms in Renaissance Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); “Petrarchan Textuality: Commentaries and Gender Revisions,” in Discourses o f Authority in M edieval and Renaissance Literature, eds. Kevin Brownlee, Walter Stephens (Hanover: University Press o f New England, 1989): 151-168; “Petrarchan Authority and Gender Revisions in Michelangelo’s Rime,” in Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives, ed. Antonio Toscano (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1991): 55-66; Amadeo Quondam, Petrarchismo mediato: p e r una critica della form a antologia (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974). 6 Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency o f Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 7 For example, see: Fiore A. Bassanese, “Male Canon/Female Poet: The Petrarchism o f Gaspara Stampa,” in Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives: 43-54; Abigail Brundin, Vittoria Colonna: Sonnets fo r Michelangelo, a Bilingual Edition (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 2005); Cox; Victoria Kirkham, “Creative Partners: The Marriage o f Laura Battiferra and Bartolomeo Ammannati,” Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): 498-558; Laura Battiferra and her Literary Circle (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 2006); Margaret F. Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in Sixteenth Century Venice (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1992); Elissa B. Weaver, ed. Arcangela

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socio-historical experience played in her lyric production, while they have also forged new critical territory by opening up the contemporary discourse to consider female authorship of occasional poetry as well as of spiritual and political verse. One important outcome of this scholarly progress is that the universal category of “Italian Renaissance Women Writers” - a grouping that considered female writers as a collective whole, and which placed writers alongside each other without regard for the variances in their social standing and specific historical experiences - is now considered misleading and homogeneous. More significantly, these critical developments have opened up a critical space in which proper analysis of Veronica Gambara’s poetry may now take place. On a large scale, this dissertation addresses the need for a critical study of Gambara’s poetry by presenting the first historically contextualized analysis of a selection of Gambara’s verse from the third and fourth decades of the century. This study offers primary critical readings of a number o f Gambara’s poems, paying attention to the models and sources with which Gambara worked, and offering a detailed account of Gambara’s lyric production during these decades. Specifically, this dissertation centers on Gambara’s post-1529 verse. The establishment of this parameter is not to reduce the importance of Gambara’s early verse; rather, I have limited my analysis of Gambara’s oeuvre to the compositions she produced throughout her ruling years, which allows me to comprehensively investigate the connection between Gambara’s literary activity and her political status.

Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice (Ravenna: Longo, 2006). I would also like to note the influence Teodolinda Barolini’s article on Francesca da Rimini had on my scholarship, especially as I considered the role o f history in gender studies. Teodolinda Barolini, “Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender,” Speculum 75.1 (2000): 1-28.

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Gambara’s historical significance was literary as well as political in its dimensions, and this dissertation sets out to explore the correlation between these two realms. Gambara’s socio-historical status as the governing Countess of Correggio offers a compelling case study of a particularly rich, and relatively under-studied, category of female agency within the realm of the Northern Italian Renaissance court: the ruling o

widow dowager. This dissertation points to the tradition of dynastic widows who ascended to positions of political rule upon the deaths of their ruling husbands, and my analysis explores the important role the ruling widow’s cultural positioning played in facilitating her political well-being at court. My methodology draws on scholarship in art history, and the recent studies that approach art patronage by women as a cultural practice that was socially embedded. These studies offer important models for extracting cultural as well as historical insights through an analysis of women’s patronage activity. By expanding the compass of my research to consider the self-fashioning of ruling women in all cultural arenas, with a special focus on Gambara, my analysis comprehensively evaluates the interrelationship between the cultural and the political realms in the historical experience of the ruling woman of the Italian governing elite. This dissertation suggests that Gambara’s cultural activity as a producer, and as a patron, of art played a crucial role in fostering her political prosperity as the governing Countess of Correggio. I argue that Gambara’s literary activity was inextricably linked to her political status as a ruling widow dowager in three distinct areas: I parse meaning from Gambara’s literary output by considering her political context as a shaping influence on the fictional literary persona she created for herself; I explore Gambara’s use of poetry as an instrument o f rule in her compositions oriented toward political ends; and 8 For studies on widowhood in the Italian Renaissance, see note 75 o f Chapter 1.

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I show how Gambara utilized her literary skill to publicly fashion her fitness for rule, as well as to herald her affiliation with powerful political figures - such as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. * The first chapter o f the dissertation addresses the tradition of women’s participation in the political realm of the Northern Italian signorial courts. This chapter delineates the practice of educating daughters of ruling families; it illustrates how these women applied their erudition to the political arena by both their diplomatic and cultural endeavors; and, lastly, it disinters the rise of the widow ruler within the court context, and examines the crucial role the widow ruler’s cultural activity played in buttressing her political stature. The first chapter also reviews Gambara’s early poetic activity so as to provide a foundation for the analysis that takes place in the subsequent chapters: that is, an examination o f the transformation of Gambara’s literary voice upon her ascent to her political position as the governing Countess of Correggio. The second chapter of the dissertation explicates the process whereby Gambara emerged as a lyricist o f national recognition in the return to the public circulation of her verse in 1529.1 consider the crucial role Gambara’s political context played in actuating her emergence on the national literary scene, and I offer a rounded portrait of Gambara’s cultural positioning in this year by viewing her literary activity comparatively with her patronage activity in her collaborations with the artist Correggio. The sonnets examined in this chapter represent Gambara’s innovative re-working of the Petrarchan paradigm to suit her particular self-fashioning agenda as a widow ruler.

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Chapter Three considers Gambara’s use o f her literary talent as an instrument of rule: this chapter uncovers the political ambitions behind her poetry for the Medici and the d’Avalos families, respectively, and reveals the pioneering literary devices Gambara developed to impart political meaning in her verse through both her thematic expression as well as her stylistic innovation. Chapter Four further expounds Gambara’s use of poetry for political purposes in examining Gambara’s collection of sonnets devoted to celebrating Charles V’s imperial imagery. This chapter delineates the complex creative framework informing Gambara’s imperial-themed verse, while it also uncovers the multi­ layered self-fashioning stratagem underpinning her lyric sophistication.

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CHAPTER 1 Veronica Gambara’s Courtly Context: A History of Women in Relation to Education, Poetry, and Politics in the Northern Italian Renaissance Court

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the historical framework from which Veronica Gambara emerged as an educated gentildonna of the Northern Italian court environment with early literary aspirations, and, later in her life, as a ruling widow dowager. First, I review the tradition o f educating the daughters bom of governing families as preparation for their adult lives at court, and then illustrate how these women applied their erudition to the political operation o f their husbands’ ruling houses by both their diplomatic and cultural endeavors. I then examine Gambara’s early lyric voice and consider her strategies for circulating her talent at the turn of the century. My aim is to point to the transformation of Gambara’s poetic voice upon her ascent to her political function as the widow ruler of Correggio come 1529. Lastly, in this chapter I explicate how the Northern Italian court system proved favorable to women’s participation in the political realm as consorts to rulers and as ruling regents in their own right upon their husbands’ deaths, and I unpack the crucial role self-fashioning played in the ruling widow’s fostering of her political well-being at court.

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2 I. A Learned Dynastic Daughter Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) was bom in Pratalboino outside of Brescia to noble parents, Count Gianffancesco da Gambara (d. 1511) and Alda Pia da Carpi. Together, the Gambara and Pia families boasted a rich heritage o f erudite women in the humanistic milieu of the Northern Italian Renaissance courts. Gambara’s paternal greataunt was Ginevra Nogarola (1417-1468), the female humanist and sister of the even more famous Isotta Nogarola (1418-1466).1 Ginevra and her sisters were learned in Latin and Greek, and she had made a public name for herself by her writing before her marriage to Brunoro da Gambara at the age of twenty three. Gambara’s maternal aunt was Emilia Pia, the famous gentildonna who was praised for her wit and grace as one of the four signorial ladies presiding over the discourses of Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478-1529) Libro del cortigiano (1524). Gambara’s genealogical link to the first generation of female humanists in the Italian tradition, as well as to one of the celebrated women of Northern

1 On the women o f the Nogarola family, and on female humanists o f fifteenth century Italy in general, see: Phyllis R. Brown, Laurie J. Churchill, Jane E. Jeffrey, eds. Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early M odem Europe, Volume 3: Early Modern Women Writing Latin (New York: Routledge, 2002); Silvia R. Fiore, “The Silent Scholars o f Italian Humanism: Feminism in the Renaissance,” in Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives, ed. Antonio Toscano (Stony Brook: Forum Italicum, 1991): 15-27; Barbara K. Gold, Paul Allen Miller, Charles Platter, eds. Sex and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition (Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1997); Lisa Jardine, ‘“ O decus Italiae Virgo’, or the Myth o f the Learned Lady in the Renaissance,” The Historical Journal (1985) 28 n. 4: 799-819; “Women and Humanists: An Education for What?” in Feminism & Renaissance Studies, ed. Loma Hutson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 48-81; Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr., eds. H er Immaculate Hand (Asheville: Pegasus Press, 1997); Margaret L. King, “Thwarted Ambitions: Six Learned Women o f the Italian Renaissance,” Soundings 59 (1976): 267-304; “The Religious Retreat o f Isotta Nogarola (1418-1466): Sexism and its Consequences in the Fifteenth Century,” Signs 3 (1978): 807-822; “Book Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance,” in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women o f the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Lablame (New York: New York University Press, 1980): 66-90; Women o f the Renaissance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991); Holt Parker, “Latin and Greek Poetry by Five Renaissance Italian Humanists,” in Sex and Gender in M edieval and Renaissance Texts: The Latin Tradition: 247-285; Jane Stevenson, “Women and Classical Education in the Early Modem Period,” in Women's Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 15001800, ed. Barbara J. Whitehead (New York: Garland Publications, 1999): 83-109; “Female Authority and Authorization Strategies in Early Modem Europe,” in This Double Voice: Gendered Writing in Early Modern England, eds. Danielle Clarke, Elizabeth Clarke (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000): 16-40; Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

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Italian Renaissance court culture, may have influenced her desire to emerge as a cultural presence through her lyric activity, while it certainly provided Gambara with a pedigree that reinforced her legitimacy as an intellect in her own right. Gambara’s father, Gianfrancesco Gambara, operated as a condottiere for the Venetian forces against the French throughout the latter half of the fifteenth century, when they successfully drove Charles VIII to retreat back to France and thwarted his ambition to impose a French hegemony on Italy. In the first decade of the sixteenth century, however, the fortune of the Gambara family radically turned. Gianfrancesco betrayed his alliance with Venice in 1509 at the battle of Agnadello and fled to Brescia, where he surrendered to the victorious French forces and subsequently fought in the King r\

of France’s imperial army. Gianfrancesco’s reversal of his position with Venice situated Brescia in a perilous position as a target for Venetian invasion, and one year after Gianfrancesco’s death in 1511, the Venetians indeed attempted a sack of the city. Gambara was visiting her family’s court at the time of the invasion, and watched alongside her mother as French forces came to their aid and drove the Venetians from the city. The political disorder set in motion by Gianfrancesco substantially factored into the lives of the next generation of Gambara rulers. In the same year of Gianfrancesco’s division with Venice, for example, he completed the arrangement of Gambara’s marriage to Giberto X (d. 1518) o f the da Correggio ruling house. The union was politically motivated by Gianfrancesco’s desire to bolster the Gambara family’s ties with the ducal houses of Northern Italy through Correggio, who was strongly allied with the d’Este and Gonzaga princely courts, as he severed his link with Venice. Later in the century, upon 2 For an account o f this episode see: Carlo Dionisotti, “Elia Capriolo e Veronica Gambara,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno Sandal (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 16-17.

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4 the alliance between the King of France Francis I and Venice, the Gambara family’s alliance with Spain’s Charles V became the most secure means of protection against the Venetians, and much o f the political activity by Gambara’s brothers Uberto and Brunoro as well as by Gambara herself as the governing Countess of Correggio was oriented toward this crucial goal. Returning to Gambara’s adolescence at her family’s court, she was raised under a classic studia humanitatis program of instruction alongside her brothers and sisters. She was highly competent in Latin, and there exists at least one document suggesting Gambara was learned in Greek as well.3 In addition to Latin and Greek, Gambara studied philosophy, literature, Scripture, and theology.4 The educational program Gambara underwent in her adolescence was one provided to many daughters bom into ruling families of Renaissance Italy. This was partly due to the establishment of the courts as cultural centers that competed for the admiration of the cultural elite, which led court rulers to seek out prominent humanists to establish educational programs for their children.5 The Gambara family’s Pratalboino court fostered a learned humanist climate of its own throughout Gambara’s childhood, and was especially active within the developing literary culture through the interest of Gambara’s father in book printing.6 The tradition of educating dynastic daughters of certain ruling families was also a product o f the political environment of the ruling houses in which fathers sought to prepare their daughters for adult lives at court upon their marriage with other ruling dynasties. Marital 3 In the library collection o f Filippo Garbelli, abate di Pontevico, a Greek text published by Aldo Manuzio bears the inscription on the frontispiece: ad usum Veronicae Gambarae. In Baldassare Camillo Zamboni, Vita di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759), 35. 4 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 168. 5 Margaret Franklin, B occaccio’s Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 116. 6 Ennio Sandal, “Casa Gambaresca, i libri e la tipografia,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo n ell’Italia settentrionale: 59-68.

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alliances among the Italian governing families of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were crucial to political survival: they solidified existing rule, made future allies, expanded familial territory, and produced legitimate heirs for generations of the dynasty’s rule.7 Thus daughters bom into the political families of Italy’s city states were likely to marry with the political interests of their family in mind, as exemplified by Gambara’s marriage to the da Correggio family to foster her family’s political ties with the princely powers o f Northern Italy. The most famous document attesting to the importance of a humanist education for dynastic daughters is a letter by the famous humanist Leonardo Bruni (1369-1446) to Battista Montefeltro Malatesta (1383-1450). Bruni’s letter may have regarded Battista’s own education, or, depending on the date of the letter, it may address the education of her daughter, Elisabetta Malatesta Varano (1407-1449).8 Bmni proposes a well-rounded program of study in which the pupil should devote herself to the Latin works of the poets, orators, and historians, while at the same time she should formulate an ethical-religious persona through the study of the Church fathers and moral philosophy. Bmni highly recommends that she develop her literary skills by keeping a notebook to record notes on style and vocabulary, which will assist her in the composition of her own original works, and he lays great emphasis on the study of poetry as a crucial component to her program.

7 For a study o f marriage within the Italian princely court see: Anthony F. d’Elia, The Renaissance o f Marriage in Fifteenth Century Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). 8 For the date o f Bruni’s letter to Battista as early as 1405, see: King and Rabil, H er Immaculate Hand, 13. For a date o f the letter as late as 1424, see: Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, David Thompson, eds. The Humanism o f Leonardo Bruni (Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1987), 124. Clough dates the letter around 1419: Cecil H. Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” Renaissance Studies 10.1 (1996): 38. For the Latin text o f Bruni’s letter see: Craig W. Kallendorf, ed. and trans. Humanist Educational Treatises (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 92-125.

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6 Bruni’s suggestions outline an educational program in line with the traditional curriculum Elisabetta’s male counterparts would have followed.9 This education, for men and women of the signorial courts alike, was not ornamental nor an end in itself.10 A humanist edification was deemed practical training to prepare young girls for the political duties they would perform as consorts to rulers11 - a role that often necessitated their involvement in the political affairs of the court in their husbands’ absences, and one that could potentially lead to the rule of a woman in her own right as a widow regent dowager, as was the case for Veronica Gambara. Bruni was explicit in advocating the necessity for rulers to attain a humanist education; the study of letters and history in particular were the fields Bruni believed to spur good government.

19

In his letter to

Battista, for example, Bruni emphasizes the efficacy of history in preparing one to counsel in government - a role many consorts to ruling husbands performed: “Knowledge of the past gives guidance to our counsels and our practical judgment, and

9 Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 38. 10 For scholarship on women’s humanistic studies that views this education as ornamental see: Jardine and King, in note 1 o f the current chapter. These studies address “learned Renaissance women” as a collective group, and do not sufficiently distinguish the historical experience o f dynastic women o f the signorial courts from women o f lower social rank. These studies also evaluate women’s application o f their education to the humanist profession - that is, the recovery o f Classical texts - and do not consider other outlets for women’s education, such as the political arena o f the ruling courts. The research presented in this chapter endeavors to give proper definition to the historical experience o f women from the dynastic ruling elite. I follow in the footsteps o f Cecil Clough’s research on the women o f the Montefeltro/Malatesta ruling dynasty (“Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento”), where he delineates the tradition o f educating women from this family as preparation for rule, and I address the practice o f this tradition in other ruling families - mainly the Gambara, Sforza, and Gonzaga. Later in this chapter, I delineate women’s application o f their humanist erudition to the political operation o f the court by both their political as well as their cultural endeavors. 11 For studies that discuss education o f women for rule in the Italian tradition see: Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento”; Anthony F. d’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations o f Fifteenth Century Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002): 379-433; Fiore; Werner L. Gundersheimer, “Women, Learning, and Power: Eleonora o f Aragon and the Court o f Ferrara,” in Beyond Their Sex: 43-65; Stephen Kolsky, “Bending the Rules: Marriage in Renaissance Collections o f Biographies o f Famous Women,” in Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650, eds. Trevor Dean, K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 227-248; Dorothy M. Robatham, “A Fifteenth-Century Bluestocking,” Medievalia et humanistica 2 (1944): 106-111; Stevenson. 12 Bruni’s philosophy that princes should be accomplished in the humanities, especially history, is the theme o f another letter written by Bruni to King John II o f Castile. See Griffiths, 253-254.

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7 the consequences of similar undertakings [in the past] encourages or deters us according to our circumstances in the present.”13 In a poem by Antonio Comazzano (1432-1484), a prominent humanist employed by the Este court of Ferrara, he shares Bruni’s view on the importance of leaders, both men and women, to be equipped with an education in letters and history to rule effectively: “Vogliono anchor che sia laudabile arte / In homo e in donna chi si sia che rega, / Dottrina haver di lettre e de le carte.” (They also say that it is a praiseworthy art / in a man or a woman who rules / to have knowledge of letters and writing).14 Anthony d’Elia’s elaborate study of wedding orations in fifteenth century Italy uncovers multiple instances of praise allotted to women of the signorial courts, not only for their intellectual ability, but also for their effective application of this capacity towards government. One noteworthy example is an oration Ludovico Carbone (14301485) delivered on the marriage of a Ferrarese couple in which he lays out a catalogue of learned courtly wives who were effective in the political affairs of their husbands’ courts:15 Our time is not lacking in outstanding women who deserve praise. Who has not heard of Battista Malatesta, who delivered a fine oration before Pope Martin? Or Paula, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga’s wife, who was so generous and high-spirited that advice was sought from her on the most important matters? We saw her daughter Margarita, who married Leonello [d’Este] ... she was so prudent and well read that all were astounded. Who does not know that in Barbara, Ludovico Gonzaga’s

13 Kallendorf, 109. 14 See Diego Zancani, “Writing for Women Rulers in Quattrocento Italy: Antonio Comazzano,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (London: Legenda, 2000): 57-74. Further discussion on Comazzano below. 15 d’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations o f Fifteenth Century Italy,” 414-423. Unfortunately, d’Elia does not specify the identity o f the couple Carbone is addressing.

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8 wife, there was such great constancy, magnanimity, and wisdom that she shared the concerns of the kingdom with her husband and governed like a prince?16 Indeed, we may lengthen Carbone’s list of learned women engaged in government by surveying the lives of a select number of courtly daughters, wives, and widows who employed their studia humanitatis education in the public, and political, arena. Battista Montefeltro Malatesta’s active role in shaping a proper educational program to prepare her daughter and granddaughter for their lives at court was perhaps inspired by her own prominent participation in the government of Pesaro. As the consort to a weak ruler, Battista found herself at the helm of many of Pesaro’s political affairs: she successfully negotiated the release of her husband and brother-in-law upon their capture by Braccio da Montone; she delivered a congratulatory oration to Martin V at the request of her fatherin-law as noted by Carbone above; and she delivered a Latin oration to the Emperor Sigismund to request the restoration o f Pesaro to her husband’s rule.

11

Battista oversaw

the education of her granddaughter, Costanza Varano Sforza (1426-1447), who followed in her grandmother’s footsteps in delivering Latin orations in support of her family’s political causes, mainly in the restoration of Camerino to the rule of her mother Elisabetta and her brother Rodolfo. Costanza’s first effort to this end was her address of the Latin oration, Pro adventu dominae Biancae in picenum oratio, to Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza (1422-1468) during her visit to the Pesaro court,

1R

while later she sent a carmen to

the newly appointed duke of Urbino Oddantonio Montefeltro (d. 1444) in which she

16 Ibid, 419-420. Latin text also included. 17 Gino Franceschini, “Battista Montefeltro Malatesta signora di Pesaro,” in Figure del rinascimento urbinate, ed. Gino Franceschini (Urbino: Stabilimento Tipografico Edit. Urbinate, 1959), 178. 18 B. Felicangeli, “Notizie sulla vita di Costanza Varano Sforza (1426-1447),” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 23 (1894), 24. For the text o f the oration in translation see: King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand, 39. See also Pia Mestica Chiappetti, Vita di Costanza Varano Sforza (Jesi: Tipografia fratelli polidori, 1871).

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9 hopes for the day when the Varano and Montefeltro families might govern Camerino again.19 She also wrote a letter to Alfonso d’Aragona (d. 1504), the king of Naples, expressing a similar sentiment.20 Costanza’s daughter, Battista Sforza Montefeltro (14461472) also drew upon her education as the Duchess of Urbino in her marriage to Duke Federigo III da Montefeltro (1422-1482), and she delivered an oration to Pope Pius II.21 The Sforza ducal house o f Milan led by Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza and Francesco I Maria Sforza (1401-1466) was also invested in the education of its daughters,

22

the most

famous of whom was Ippolita Sforza (1446-1484), who was renowned for her abilities in Latin: Ippolita famously delivered an oration to Pius II; she publicly addressed her mother Bianca Maria in Latin; and she also delivered an ode to Tristano Visconti and Beatrice d’Este (1475-1497).23 The Gonzaga ruling family of Mantua housed a famous school o f learning for its court children led by Vittorino da Feltre (1397-1446) called la casa giocosa ,24 as this family also boasted a number of learned women who actively participated in court government. Carbone alloted praise to Paula Gonzaga and Barbara Gonzaga (1455-1503), who “governed like a prince,” while from this family there was also elevated the famous Cecilia Gonzaga (1525-1551), as well as Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471-1526), who was noted as a political figure in her function as the Duchess of Urbino.25

19 Felicangeli, 31. 20 Ibid, 29. 21 Marinella Bonvini Mazzanti, Battista Sforza Montefeltro: una ‘p rincipessa' nel rinascimento italiano (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 1993), 96-101. 22 See Monica Ferrari, ‘P er non manchare in tuto del debito mio L ’educazione dei bambini Sforza nel Quattrocento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000). 23 King and Rabil, Her Immaculate Hand, 44. 24 See William Harrison Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905). 25 Elisabetta also ruled for her husband throughout his absences and illnesses. Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 50.

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10 These select examples demonstrate how the political arena of the court provided women with a public outlet for their humanist erudition. Indeed, this was expected of them: a poem by Costanza Varano to Giovanni Gonzaga beginning “often my father and my lord commands me to write” clearly attests to this duty.

0f%

This point may be

developed in considering the intellectual abilities of the women who married into the da Correggio family. The lords of Correggio were almost all prominent military generals and thus needed wives who were capable of governing the fiefdom in their place during their extended absences. Three o f these women - Cassandra Colleoni (d.1519), the wife of Niccolo Postumo da Correggio (1450-1508), her daughter-in-law Ginevra Rangone (d. 1540), and Veronica Gambara - were proficient in Latin verse, which suggests that these women were selected as wives in part due to their erudition and, in turn, their ruling ability.

on

Proficiency in Latin was thus a prominent feature of a humanist education that

prepared court daughters for their participation in the political sphere, and the use of Latin by women throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth century often indicated their proximity to political power.281 will return to this point in the final chapter of this study through a discussion of the place of Latin in Gambara’s correspondence with Charles V (1500-1558) as well as in her neo-Latin poetry in celebration of the emperor. Beyond the use of Latin, however, women drew upon their humanist education as participants in the cultural life of the court, which was in itself a claim to political power and prestige within the Italian Renaissance milieu. The Correggio court into which Gambara married offers a rich portrait of active female intellects whose cultural projects effectively advanced the public repute o f the 26 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 167. 27 Ibid, 169. 28 For this point see: Brown, Gold, Parker, Stevenson, in note 1 o f the current chapter.

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11 small seat o f power.

9Q

The first Renaissance church of Correggio was a project initiated

by Gambara’s mother-in-law, Agnese Pio (d. 1474), in her building of the San Francesco church with her husband Manfredo di Correggio in 1469. Cassandra Colleoni extended Agnese’s project by building a family chapel of her own in the San Francesco church called the Capella Colleoni, while she also donated two pieces of property to the convent of the San Domenico church called the Corpus Domini and was responsible for its construction. Francesca da Brandenburg (d. 1512), who was the sister-in-law to Gambara’s husband, also invested in a religious patronage project in her commission of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the monastery church of Corpo del Cristo in Correggio. These devotional patronage projects were a mode of political discourse: religiously centered patronage activity suited courtly tastes as most all of the princely houses put on display their piety through such projects.30 Moreover, the construction of funerary tombs served the important dynastic function of enshrining the burial sites for the lords of Correggio - Manfredo’s funerary tomb was housed in the San Francesco church, while Borso da Correggio, Francesca’s husband, located his tomb in the Corpo del Cristo church - thus serving as prestigious monuments to Correggio’s ruling legacies. In addition to the chapel and funerary tomb constructions, the women of Correggio participated in transforming the architectural layout of the city. This process began with Francesca da Brandenburg’s dedication of her dowry to the construction of the Palazzo dei Principi in 1507 to serve as the principle residence of Correggio’s signori.

29 For an extensive overview o f Gambara’s patronage activity see: Katherine A. Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 26.1 (2000): 25-44; “Two Emilian Noblewomen and Patronage Networks in the Cinquecento,” in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons o f Art in Renaissance Italy, eds. Sheryl E. Reiss, David G. Wilkins (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001): 159-176. 30 Alison Cole, Virtue and Magnificence: Art o f the Italian Renaissance Courts (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995), 131-132.

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12 The Palazzo shifted the political orientation of the city by replacing the Castelvecchio as the seat of its rulers, echoing the layout of a Northern Italian princely court whose rulers resided in prestigious central residences. The Palazzo was also elaborately decorated by a fresco project under Francesca’s management that appears to have emulated the paintings of the Gonzaga’s camera picta in the ducal palace of Mantua, as well as the Palazzo Costabili of the Este family in Ferrara.

•3 -I

This marked emulation of the neighboring

princely courts provided a means to convey Correggio’s eminence as a political and cultural center in its own right. Such flattering imitation also functioned to situate Correggio in the political favor of these surrounding powers. Gambara’s activity as a patron upon her arrival at Correggio appears to have extended this political ambition: she elaborated on Francesca da Brandenburg’s Palazzo dei Principi construction by building her own studiolo called the “Camerino Deurato” in the spirit of the famous studiolo of Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) in Mantua. Gambara further enhanced the cultural prestige of Correggio by founding a literary academy in 1511 presided over by the professor Giovanni Battista Lombardi.

The academy attracted many well known letterati of the

day, and may have served as the center for the education of her two sons as well as her stepdaughter Costanza. Collectively, this cultural activity situated Correggio as a distinct presence on the cultural map of Northern Italy, and confirmation of this ascent may be found in Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474-1533) mention of “The Ladies of Correggio” in the first edition o f his Orlando furioso in 1516. The patronage activity by the “Ladies of Correggio” required a certain degree of humanistic erudition. Gambara’s foundation of a literary academy naturally heralded her

31 Mclver, “Ladies o f Correggio,” 33-34. 32 Ibid, 29.

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13 expertise of letters, but even in ecclesiastical architecture and in the decoration of these structures, one was required to possess knowledge of sacred and Classical texts so as to be able to appropriately manipulate imagery and convey proper meaning. Upon Francesca of Brandenburg’s death in 1512, for example, Gambara inherited funds to complete the decoration of her chapel project in the Church of San Domenico, which she fulfilled by commissioning a painting of Christ Handing the Veil to Veronica (artist and whereabouts unknown) for its interior. The veil of Veronica was a legendary Christian relic, but the alignment of Veronica’s name with the story of Saint Veronica33 offered a new, intimate display of Correggio’s spiritual eminence. In this same chapel, Gambara also commissioned a painting of Saint Jerome to decorate the site for the funerary tomb of her husband Giberto X. Gambara’s choice of the saint served the dynastic function of promoting the future generations of da Correggio men, as Jerome was the patron saint of Gambara’s son, Ippolito; even more, the saint also provided Gambara an ideal icon to emblematize her devotion to piety and chastity in her widowhood, which Jerome came to represent through his epistles to widows espousing such a lifestyle.34 Further public fashioning of Gambara’s chastity was expressed through Classical allusions, most

33 Saint Veronica was the recipient o f a miracle when the image o f Jesus appeared on her cloth after wiping his sweat o ff his face. 34 On Saint Jerome and widowhood see: Caroline Murphy, Lavinia Fontana: A Painter and her Patrons in Sixteenth Century Bologna (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), especially Chapter 5 ‘“ La Vita Vedovile’: The Art o f Widowhood”; Eugene F. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Mary Vaccaro, “Dutiful Widows: Female Patronage and Two Marian Altarpieces by Parmigianino,” in Beyond Isabella: 177-192; Carolyn Valone, “Roman Matrons as Patrons: Various Views o f the Cloistered Wall,” in The Crannied Wall, ed. Craig A. Monson (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 1992): 49-72; “Piety and Patronage: Women and the Early Jesuits,” in Creative Women in M edieval and Early M odem Italy, eds. E. Ann Matter, John Coackley (Philadelphia: University o f Pennsylvania Press, 1994): 157-184.

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14 famously in her inscription of the verses spoken by Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid (Book 4, 28■ ir

29) over her bedchamber door,

which I discuss further below.

Altogether, we see how Gambara’s status as an educated gentildonna enabled her contribution to Correggio’s political operation by way of her participation in its developing cultural enterprises. The projects listed above took place over the course of Gambara’s first decade at Correggio, and, even in this brief period, she drew heavily upon her humanistic erudition in piecing together an iconography cycle from both Christian and Classical sources to convey layered personal, dynastic, political, and spiritual messages to the public. In the years following, Gambara’s education naturally came to extensive use upon her ascent to her political role as the governing Countess of Correggio. In addition to Gambara’s use of her education to fulfill various facets of her ruling responsibility, Gambara continued to participate as a patron, and especially as a producer, o f art as a symbolic channel to position herself on the cultural landscape and convey specific meaning to the public.

35 Rinaldo Corso, Vita di Veronica Gambara (Ancona, 1566).

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15 II.

A Young Lyricist

As a young girl in her family’s court, Gambara exhibited an innate literary talent and veritable aspirations to develop it. One of Gambara’s more famed poems from her youth, Or passata e la speranza, was also one of her earliest publications as it was printed in Venice in 1505. The composition’s success rests in part by Gambara’s thematic sophistication in conveying the popular Petrarchan theme of the transience of amorous desires. In the poem, she contemplates how “nulla cosa aver costanza” (no thing to have constancy) in a form consistent with the lyric fashions of the day, composed as it is in the frottola-barzaletta style. Such a form allowed the possibility of adapting the composition to a musical arrangement, which was a developing vogue of the northern Italian courts, especially of Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) in Mantua. Gambara in fact shared an epistolary correspondence with Isabella in the year 1503.

This correspondence may

have been facilitated by Gambara’s familial connection with Isabella’s elite pedigree: Gambara’s paternal uncles married into the d’Este and Gonzaga families respectivelyGalasso Gambara to Margherita d’Este, and Niccolo Gambara to Lucrezia di Francesco Gonzaga - while from her maternal family, Gambara’s cousin Giberto Pio married Elisabetta d’Este. Gambara’s letter conveys her desire to participate in the cultural life of Isabella’s court as she couches this self-advancement in a laudatory and appropriately reverential tone: Pur meritando essere nel numero de le piu infime serve de la Ex. V., come spero, per la deita infusa in quella, se mai mi dolsi per adietro de la fortuna com ogni studio mi sforzaro da hora inanci laudandola di tal benifitio ringratiarla. Cosi

36 Letter may be found in Luigi Amadduzzi, ed. U ndid lettere inedite di Veronica Gambara e un ’ode Latina tradotta in volgare (Guastella: Tipografia Pecorini, 1889).

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16 humilmente a li piedi di V. Ex. mi raccomando: el simile fanno il S.r Conte mio padre et Madonna mia madre, e la Isotta non mancho serva de la Ex. V. di quel sono io. Even though I am deserving to be among the number of your lowest servants, as I hope, because of the divine nature which you embody, if I have ever complained of fortune in the past, I will put all my effort from this day forward to praise you for this benefit and to thank you. Thus in all humility I commend myself to the feet o f Your Excellence, as does similarly my father the Signor Count, and my mother, and Isotta no less a servant of Your Excellence than I am. The letter displays Gambara’s refinement in her mature address to an elevated and relatively senior member of a princely court (Gambara was seventeen years old at the time while Isabella was twenty nine). In the letter, we also begin to see Gambara’s approach to eminent members of the signorial community: that o f aligning herself with her familial context - rather than fashioning herself as independent from it - making use o f a recognized platform that may have facilitated the reception of her literary talent. Another such figure before whom Gambara drew upon her family’s connections to an even greater extent in seeking to advance her literary ambitions was Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). Bembo was affiliated with the Gambara family and its court at the time Gambara initiated their correspondence in 1504. Gianfrancesco Gambara’s service in Venice put him in relation with Bembo’s father, Bernardo (d. 1519), and Bembo had developed a friendship with Gambara’s brother Uberto upon a visit to the Gambara

371 provide all translations in this dissertation, unless I note otherwise.

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17 court.

While Bembo’s national fame as a literary authority came later in the century

upon his landmark publication, the Prose della volgar lingua (1525), Bembo was already a prominent participant in literary circles of 1504 through the publication of his edition of the vernacular works of Petrarch featuring a commented edition of the Canzoniere. He had also published a Neoplatonic dialogue, the Asolani (1505), and he was closely connected to the Venetian publishing circuit through his ties with Aldus Manutius (14491515). Gambara circulated her literary talent to the Venetian poet by sending him the following sonnet: Non t’ammirar, s’a te, non visto mai, Ardisco di mandar queste mie carte, Che tue virtu, per tutto ‘1mondo sparte, Mi fan far quel ch’ancor non feci mai. E so che tal ardir non biasmerai Se quelle ben misuri a parte a parte; Lor fan ch’a forza e ognun constretto amarte, Pero per questo me excusata arrai. Quelle m ’han spinta a far ch’io ti palesi Quant’io t’amo ed onoro, e quanto ancora Miei spiriti omai sian di servirti accesi; E l’alta umanita, che ‘n te dimora, Mi porse ardir assai piu che non cresi Di far quel ch’ho tardato infin ad ora. 38 See Giorgio Dilemmi, ‘“Ne videatur strepre anser inter olores:’ Le relazioni della Gambara con il Bembo,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell ’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno Sandal (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 23-35.

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Do not wonder if to you, never having seen you, I dare send my writing, since your virtues that spread throughout the world inspire me to do that which I have never done before. I know you will not disapprove of this ardor if you survey these writings line by line; they [the lines] make it so that each one is forced to love you, but for this you would excuse me. Your virtues impelled me to make clear how much I admire and honor you, and how much more already my spirits are enflamed to serve you; and the elevated humanity that resides in you impels my ardor enough to do that which I have delayed to do until now. In a similar reverential tone displayed in Gambara’s letter to Isabella d’Este, she asks Bembo not to marvel at her audacity in writing him without ever having seen him, but in light of his universally noted virtue and acute sensibility, she professes to have been sincerely inspired and infused with the courage to send the lyric master one of her poems for the first time ever. Gambara’s sonnet elaborates an originally crafted posture of feminine modesty: she posits the sending of her sonnet to Bembo as a deep-seated desire at the sonnet’s opening and then proclaims this desire to be a transgression in the second quatrain, hoping Bembo will excuse it; at the same time, however, Gambara situates Bembo’s virtue and humanity as the catalyst to her actual fulfillment o f this desire in lines 4 and 12. Thus it is Bembo’s “virtu” (virtue) that increases her boldness in fulfilling her longstanding ambition to circulate her writing. Through this rotation, Gambara tempers her self-proclaimed transgression by framing the gesture more as evidence of Bembo’s inspiration than of her own ambition. This sonnet offers an early example of Gambara’s sophisticated aptitude for maneuvering the public literary landscape from a weak position as a young female writer, only eighteen years old at the time, in lyric

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19 discourse with distinguished cultural figures such as Bembo. Here, as a young lyricist with aspirations to circulate her talent, and later, as we shall see, as a widow dowager who came to utilize her literary skill to achieve political ends, Gambara meticulously crafts an unassuming posture in her public positioning among the Italian cultural and political elite. Here, as elsewhere, we see Gambara acutely aware of the benefit of bestowing apposite praise to her sonnet’s addressees, and of fashioning her literary persona within the conventions of feminine modesty and virtue. Bembo responded to Gambara with a letter as well as a sonnet of his own in the same year: Certo ben mi poss’io dir pago omai D’ogni tuo oltraggio, Amor, e se a colparte Distretto il verso, o le prose consparte Ho pur talora, or me ne pento assai. Che le note onde tu ricco mi fai, Di quella che dal vulgo mi diparte, Ancor mai non veduta, e scorge in parte Ove tu scorto pochi, o nessun hai; Son tali, che quetar ben mille offesi Possono, e di mille alme scacciar fora Desir vili, e ingombrar d’alti e cortesi. Pensar quinci si pud qual sia quel’ora Ch’io vedro gli occhi che or mi son contesi, E la voce udiro, che Brescia onora.

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20 I may now say for certain that I have been satisfied with every one of your offenses, Love, and if I have now and then dispersed my verse or scattered my prose in order to blame you, now I deeply regret it. That the sounds with which you make me rich of the one woman who separates me from the crowd, still never seen by me, and who sees in part where you have noticed very few or no one; these sounds are such that they can appease even a thousand offenses and to chase out base desires from a thousand souls and fills them up with high and gentle ones. From this one can think what will be that hour when I will see the eyes that are being withheld from me and will hear the voice that honors Brescia. Bembo responded favorably to Gambara’s sonnet by complimenting her expression, and he mollifies any potential offense on Gambara’s part by expressing the satisfaction he received from her sonnet. Bembo describes the power of Gambara’s “note” (music) to bring about tranquility and repel the pains caused by Love, and he returns to Gambara’s theme of never having seen each other in person in turning his thoughts to the day when he will “vedro gli occhi” (will see the eyes) so that he may hear the voice that Brescia honors. While Bembo’s sonnet endorses Gambara’s participation in the literary culture by making an overt reference to her already attained regional fame in the final line, Bembo’s letter, which most likely accompanied the sonnet as it was dated 11 September 1504, illuminates the larger political context governing their correspondence: Che dove dite per l’infinita ubbligazione, che avete al mio padre, che difende il vostro, ed a me; quanto a me appartiene, veggo io che voi per abbondanza della vostra umanita cosi parlate, o forse d’amore, che perawentura mi portate, sapendo quanto e quello, che io a voi porto e alia vostra magnifica ed illustre casa;

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21 quanto poi al mio padre aspetta, lasciero il rispondere a lui, che ha lette le vostre lettere medesimamente, come ho io, vago di vedere alcuna delle vostre scritture. Where you speak o f the infinite obligation that you have to my father, who defends your father, and to me; as far as I am concerned, I see that you speak this way because of your abundant humanity, or maybe by your love, which you daringly bring to me, knowing how much is that love that I offer to your magnificent and illustrious house; as for my father, I will leave it to him to respond to you, as he has also read your letters, as I have, and I long to read some of your writings. Though there is no record of Gambara’s letter to which Bembo is here responding, we may extract one significant feature of Gambara’s approach to Bembo through his response, that is, her declaration o f an “infinita ubbligazione” (infinite obligation) towards the Bembo family, including his father. Gambara may be referring here to Bernardo Bembo’s role in defending Gianffancesco in a legal matter in Venice. Thus, it is significant that Gianffancesco was still fighting with the Venetians against the French at the time o f Gambara’s communication with Bembo, as this clearly allowed Gambara to capitalize on the good standing of this familial connection in her effort to attract Bembo’s attention to her poetry. In part, then, the familial and political context governing this first correspondence between Gambara and Bembo informs to some degree Bembo’s favorable reception of Gambara’s verse; at the same time, however, female authors of lyric poetry were beginning to emerge as a cultural presence at the turn of the century and Gambara’s alignment with this movement may have also attracted Bembo’s interest. This cultural

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22 transformation originated in the fourteenth century’s recovery of the culture of Antiquity as it correspondingly brought to light an awareness of women’s writing of this time. Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) catalogue of famous women De claris mulieribus (1361, revised up to 1375), for example, celebrates the examples of the writers Sappho, IQ

Comificia, Proba, and Hortensia for her ability in public speaking,

while in the

following century Leonardo Bruni’s letter to Battista da Montefeltro, discussed above, introduces the topic of the value of women’s education of letters by laying out examples o f female writers of Antiquity. Bruni’s introductory paragraph not only poses these examples as sources of inspiration for modem women, but he also lays particular emphasis on the fact that these women were honored and celebrated by their contemporary culture: There is, indeed, no lack of examples of women renowned for literary study and eloquence that I could mention to exhort you to excellence. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio, wrote letters in the most elegant of styles, which letters survived for many centuries after her death. The poetical works of Sappho were held in the highest honor among the Greeks for their unique eloquence and literary skill. Then, too, there was Aspasia, a learned lady of the time of Socrates, who was outstanding in eloquence and literature, and from whom even so great a philosopher as Socrates did not blush to admit he had learned certain things. I could mention others, but let these three stand sufficient as examples of the most renowned women. Be encouraged and elevated by their excellence!40

39 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 142. 40 Kallendorf, 93.

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23 This rediscovery o f secular women’s writing allowed the first generation o f female humanists to appeal to the existence of women authors in the Latin and Greek traditions, and they often argued that a parallel, female tradition had always existed, thereby legitimizing their own contemporary authorship.41 A further transformative feature of Italy’s literary landscape occurring at the turn o f the century was the replacement of Latin as the poetic language by the vernacular. Women, in turn, came to be regarded as the principal public for vernacular productions primarily produced within the courtly setting 42 Thus with the emergence of the ancient female poets as a feature of Italy’s early Renaissance culture and the developing vernacular lyric culture oriented towards a primarily female audience, a cultural space began to open up within which women, especially educated gentildonne of courtly rank, began to take p art43 As the cases examined in this chapter demonstrate, women o f courtly rank enjoyed an expanded role within Italy’s political and cultural realms in the fifteenth century,44 and this indeed extended to their participation as audience as well as producers of refined court entertainment.45 We may recall, in fact, that Leonardo Bruni’s outline of a humanistic education for women included her keeping a notebook during their reading to assist her in the production of her own writings. It is indeed around the end o f the fifteenth century

41 Stevenson, “Female Authority and Authorization Strategies in Early Modem Europe,” 21. 42 This phenomenon has been discussed by various scholars, but is the focus o f one work in particular: Nadia Cannata Salamone, “Women and the Making o f the Italian Literary Canon,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. 498-512. 43 Cox fully explicates this notion o f a cultural space opening up for the female writer via the renewed awareness o f the ancient poetess in her forthcoming publication. 44 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 282. “In growing measure, the courtly Renaissance recognizes women as the staid bastions o f its civility.” Fabio Finotti, “Women Writers in Renaissance Italy: Courtly Origins o f New Literary Canons” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Modern Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, eds. Pamela Joseph Benson, Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 2005), 123. 45 Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 282.

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24 that female authored verse appears in manuscript culture, such as the poetry of Camilla Scarampa (1476-1520) and Costanza Varano (1426-1447).46 The authorial voice that emerges from the poetry produced in this early phase of Gambara’s lyric career centers on the expression of love and loss. In part, she is preoccupied with describing the inner world of love in the courtly lyric tradition through poems that lament emotional turmoil rooted in the poet-persona’s suffering over an unrequited adoration on a virtuous and chaste object of her affection. In other poems written during this early period, a distinct shift in tone occurs when she contemplates a pair of “occhi lucenti and belli” (beautiful and radiant eyes). In these moments, the predominantly melancholic description of her amorous sufferings is supplanted by the Neoplatonic conception of spiritual love to the effect of describing a more joyful and uplifting love experience. The critical tendency has been to understand these “eyes” as those belonging to Gambara’s husband, Giberto X da Correggio, as such a biographical classification conveniently explains the shift from a negative to a positive experience in Gambara’s projected amorous relations.47 This is an unfortunate critical trend, as there is no manuscript evidence that situates these poems as composed during the years of her marriage. In a similarly imposing vein, one study claims the anonymous object of Gambara’s affection in the sonnets that do not address the “occhi lucenti e belli” to be the narration of a true love affair experienced by Gambara as a young girl in her parent’s 46 Finotti, 123. See Cox, publication forthcoming. 47 See: Irma B. Jafife, Shining Eyes, Cruel Fortune: The Lives and Loves o f Italian Renaissance Poets (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Maud F. Jerrold, Vittoria Colonna (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1969); Mary Prentice Lillie, Laura Anna Sortoni, eds. Women Poets o f the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Ithaka Press, 1997); Richard Poss, “Veronica Gambara: A Renaissance Gentildonna,” in Women o f the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University o f Georgia Press, 1987): 47-66. Alan Bullock’s ordering o f Gambara’s early verse also suggests this narrative. He places Gambara’s sonnets on the “occhi lucenti e belli” after her more pessimist compositions and suggests that they are from her years o f marriage to Giberto X. Allan Bullock, Veronica Gambara: Rime (Florence: Olschki, 1995).

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Brescia court - a claim that is also unsubstantiated by any historical record.48 More accurately, we may turn to the literary culture at the turn of the century as an appropriate context in which to relate the themes and styles present in Gambara’s early amorous works. Altogether, Gambara’s early verse evokes a repertoire of metaphors and imagery that demonstrate a keen knowledge of the lirica cortigiana culture throughout the first decade of the sixteenth century.49 This poetic culture enjoyed a range of literary styles and meters as they were explored before the Bembist reforms that came with the Prose della volgar lingua (1524) publication and subsequent codification of linguistic and lyric norms. Accordingly, Gambara’s compositions from this early period include numerous madrigals, the frottola-barzelletta for a musical adaptation mentioned above, and even a few free standing stanzas in ottava rima .50 Another facet to this pre-Bembist literary culture was the significant influence wielded by Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) on poetry produced within the courtly setting - even before he was nominated by Bembo as the sole model for Italian lyric in the vernacular in the Prose - as well as the steering of this cultural fashion towards women: a poet at the court of Ludovico Sforza in Milan produced an elaborate pictorial interpretation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere for Beatrice d’Este (1475-1497); also to Beatrice was Gasparo Visconti’s dedication of a Petrarchan themed collection of lyrics; and to Isabella d’Este the historian Vincenzo Calmeta offered a commentary on the Canzoniere, to name a few examples.51 Bembo’s poetry written after the Petrarchan model, which was often addressed to women of the signorial courts,

48 See Jaffe. 49 See Cox, publication forthcoming, on the female writer o f the lirica cortigiana tradition. 50 The poetry produced by Vittoria Colonna in the first decade o f the sixteenth century was also experimental in its range o f styles and forms. See Carlo Vecce, “Vittoria Colonna: il codice epistolare della poesia femminile,” Critica letteraria 21 (1993): 3-34. See also chapter 3 o f the current study. 51 Finotti, 123.

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also contributed to this trend. Gambara’s early verse indeed demonstrates a perceptive knowledge of the Petrarchan model. Aligning herself as the poet-lover, Gambara’s literary persona remains sensitive to the transience of earthly desires and distressed in regard to the passage o f time which inexorably augments her pain; memory serves the conventional function as at once the poet’s refuge and prison; and poetry is set forth as the exclusive conduit through which she may relieve her pain. This portrait of Gambara’s early literary voice as well as the definition of her early literary aspirations in the circulation of her talent at the turn of the century provides an important foundation for my analysis in following chapters, which considers the shape of Gambara’s voice in the poetry produced during her ruling years as the governing Countess of Correggio. In looking back to the above outlined features, we will be able to recognize the alterations in Gambara’s projected literary persona in her mature verse, and come to understand how this transformation was determined by Gambara’s political context.

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27 III.

A Ruling Widow Dowager

The ascent of a widow to a seat of political power in the absence of a legitimate male heir was a temporary solution commonly practiced within the courts of Northern Italy throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.52 The court system proved favorable to women’s participation in the political realm beginning with the duties apportioned to the wives of dynastic rulers: indeed, the traditional function of the consort to a ruling husband among numerous dynasties of the Italian ruling elite was to assume her husband’s political duties during his absences from court. At the court of Mantua, for example, Barbara of Brandenburg (1422-1481), and years later, Isabella d’Este, effectively substituted for their husbands as the head of the family and court during their frequent absences in carrying out the military profession of condottiere,53 This tradition of female government in the absence of ruling husbands extended beyond the princely dynastic court centers into the feudatories and fiefdoms throughout the Northern Italian region: Silvia Sanvitale Boiardo (d.1584) was as influential as her husband Giulio Boiardo (d.1550) in the government of Scandiano, a vassal of the powerful Este family of Ferrara, and she was granted approval by Duke Ercole II d ’Este (1431-1505) to rule Scandiano in her own right upon her husband’s death; similarly, Paola Gonzaga-Sanvitale (1504-1570s) took an active role alongside her husband, Giangaleazzo Sanvitale (14961550), in managing the political issues of their fiefdom, Fontanellato, and she also was

52 See Natalie Tomas, The M edici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), especially the chapter “The ‘Problem’ o f a Female Ruler”. 53 See: Christina Antenhofer, “Letters Across the Borders: Strategies o f Communication in an ItalianGerman Renaissance Correspondence,” in Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700, eds. Jane Couchman, Ann Crabb (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2005): 103-121; Deanna Shemek, “Isabella d’Este and the Properties o f Persuasion,” in Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700: 123-140.

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given dominion over the territory until her eldest son came of age.54 Thus many consorts to governing husbands were expected to briefly step into the role of ruler.55 The degree to which the consort fulfilled these responsibilities depended on the political stability of the court as well as it cultural stature, while an equally determinant factor was the ruling ability of the husband and whether or not he held a military career that would keep him distant from court for extended periods. Accordingly, the particular historical context of some women resulted in more prominent examples of female co-regency. A more famous such example is that o f Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza, who served as the official ambassador to her husband Francesco Sforza I (1401-1466) throughout their rule of Milan. Bianca Maria fulfilled many roles throughout this period, but perhaps most significant was her creation of a network of monasteries and churches that over the years effectively transformed the political patronage by the local ecclesiastic community.56 Working within an equally extensive field of political operation was also Eleanora d’Aragona d’Este (d.1493) o f the court of Ferrara.57 Eleanora played an essential role in the immediate government o f the state during the duke’s frequent absences from Ferrara while pursuing military campaigns. She also performed the duties of head of state for the duration of the duke’s numerous illnesses - her most famous execution of the post being her management o f Ferrara throughout the difficult war with the Republic of Venice.58

54 See Katherine A. Mclver, Women, Art, and Architecture in Northern Italy, 1520-1580 (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2006). 55 Evelyn Welch, “Women as Patrons and Clients in the Courts o f Quattrocento Italy,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, 19. 56 See ibid. 57 For the frequent mention o f Eleanora d’Aragona in wedding orations as a model wife and learned woman see d’Elia, The Renaissance o f Marriage, 111. 58 Werner L. Gundersheimer, “Bartolomeo Goggio: A Feminist in Renaissance Ferrara,” Renaissance Quarterly 33.2 (1980), 183. For a survey o f Eleanora’s correspondence with Ercole concerning the administration o f the state see: Luciano Chiappini, Eleanora d ’A ragona, prim a duchessa di Ferrara (Rovigo: S.T.E.R, 1956); Gundersheimer, “Women Learning and Power”. For Eleanora’s role dining the

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29 The political role consorts played in the government of their husband’s states was celebrated in the visual representations of prominent dynastic couples. O f the most famous examples in this regard is the panel of portraits in profile of the Duke Federigo III da Montefeltro (1422-1482) of Urbino and his wife Battista Sforza da Montefeltro (14461472) by Piero della Francesca, (see Figure 1) The portraits are a part of a diptych work that joined the images by hinges, to be opened and closed as a book and painted on both sides. Battista held an official mandate to rule Federigo’s vicariates in his stead,59 and the portrait is indeed suggestive of this political function as it conveys her equal stature alongside her husband: the placement of Battista on the left-hand side expresses a particular celebration of her eminence, as this place of honor was usually reserved for the husband in conjugal portraits,60 while the parallel gaze she holds at balanced eye-level with her husband transmits a sense of balance between the ruling couple. A similar depiction of equality amongst ruling dynastic spouses may be seen in the bronze portrait medals of Ercole d’Este (1431-1505) and Eleanora d’Aragona d’Este. The medium through which the couple is represented is also suggestive of Eleanora’s rulership in its evocation of the reigning emperors of Antiquity and their prominent wives in government who were similarly portrayed on classical coins.61 The political role Eleanora di Toledo (1522-1562) fulfilled in the government of the Florentine court of her husband, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1547), was visually represented by the iconography that surrounded the duchess in the decoration of four rooms of the Palazzo della Signoria, each devoted to a famous woman o f Antiquity. The rooms celebrate Eleanora as co-ruler Venetian invasion see: Edmund G. Gardiner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1968), 189-197. 59 Clough, “Daughters and W ives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 33. 60 Franklin, 117-118. 61 Franklin, 118-119.

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30 of Florence in the guardianship of the state, not independent o f Cosimo but in conjunction with him, in a select series of female models from Antiquity. The depictions of Penelope, Hersilia, and Esther are examples of female rulers who depended on the political authority of their husbands, while the Gualdrada room exemplifies Eleanora’s commitment to Florence’s political independence from the emperor.62 Thus female consorts of the Italian Renaissance dynastic ruling elite were politically engaged to varying degrees in a form of partnership of statecraft,63 and they were prepared to fulfill such roles temporarily as well as in a permanent capacity upon their husband’s deaths.64 The ascent of a widow to occupy a seat of rule occurred within varying historical circumstances: often this occurred in the case that the rightful male heir was absent, too young to rule, or incapacitated; there are also instances of widow regency in which the wife provided the legitimate link to the ruling seat through her patrilineal heritage; and often the transfer o f power from the ruling husband to his widow depended on the support and tolerance of the male members of court and family of the female ruler.65 Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza, for example, was appointed as a regent ruler of Milan in conjunction with her eldest son, Galeazzo Maria (1444-1476). Since she was the sole link of the Sforza family to the Visconti dukedom, Bianca Maria’s continuance of her responsibilities as duchess was paramount to the stability of the court upon her husband’s death in 1466.66 In spite of the important role Bianca Maria played in establishing Galeazzo’s legitimacy as ruler, the young duke’s readiness to take over full

62 See Pamela J. Benson, “Eleanora Among the Famous Women,” in The Cultural World o f Eleanora di Toledo, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2004): 136-156. 63 Shemek, 127. 64 See Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento”. 65 Tomas, 165. 66 See Gregory A. Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galieazzo Maria Sforza (Berkley: University o f California Press, 1994).

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powers of the court led him to resist his mother’s authority and he systematically displaced her in her final year of life. By granting the right to rule to the widow, rather than to male family members such as a brother or uncle to the defunct husband, the seat of power held a stronger chance of passing through the patrilineal line as a female regent did not pose the threat of usurpation posed by secondary male family members. An illuminating example in this regard is the case of Bona of Savoy (1449-1503), who followed Bianca Maria in her regent rule for her son Gian Galeazzo Sforza (1469-1494), only nine years old at the time of the assassination of his father in 1476. As Gian Galeazzo’s regent ruler, Bona was intent on securing the ascent of her son to the duchy of Milan and she had him officially enthroned as Duke of Milan in 1478. Bona’s brother-inlaw, Ludovico “il Moro” Sforza (1451-1508), in contrast, held his own ambitions for the government of Milan. Ludovico forced Bona to renounce her regent status in 1480 and successfully usurped the title of duke of Milan, keeping his nephew behind the government scene for the next sixteen years. Bona’s case exemplifies the threat males posed as Ludovico effectively wielded power in the absence of his elder brother by taking it from his nephew in the regent role; even more, Bona’s effort to secure her son’s ascent to his father’s seat, though thwarted, illustrates the propensity of female regents to pursue the advancement of their sons’ careers.

f\1

A further example of this phenomenon is the

case of Giovanna da Montefeltro della Rovere (1463-1514), the second daughter of Battista Sforza and Duke Federigo III da Montefeltro. Giovanna’s husband, Giovanni della Rovere (d. 1501), ruled the vicariates of Senigallia, Mondavio and Mondolfo, but Giovanna often fulfilled his ruling responsibilities during his frequent absences as an 67 While Bona’s case may exemplify the disadvantages o f appointing a widow regent to a temporary seat o f power, as she was effectively removed from this seat by more powerful male members o f her family, this strategic seizing o f power occurred across gender lines within the courts.

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active condottiere. Giovanni died from illness in 1501, and Giovanna ascended as the regent ruler of her husband’s vicariates until their only son, Francesco Maria della Rovere (1490-1539), came of age.68 Giovanna remarkably set out in her regent rule to promote her son to the prestigious position to inherit the duchy of Urbino, and this ambition involved negotiating his adoption by her brother, Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro of Urbino (1472-1508) and his wife Elisabetta Gonzaga Montefeltro - a ruling couple that lacked a son and heir.69 Giovanna was not without competition, however, as both Guidobaldo’s sisters Agnese and Costanza were each promoting their own family members to the duke’s post. Giovanna took her fight to Rome to appeal to the Pope’s interest in re-establishing the papal court’s link with the Urbino court and the della Rovere territory, and he indeed sanctioned the adoption of Francesco Maria by 70

Guidobaldo and Elisabetta in 1504. The efforts by widow rulers to secure the ascent of their sons to seats o f political security reflected favorably upon the regent mother, and even facilitated the advancement of her own political ambitions. This point will be further explored by examination of Alfonsina Orisini de’ Medici’s (1472-1520) promotion of her son Lorenzo (1492-1519), and more specifically by my study of Gambara’s advancement o f her sons as proxies to her own political status. The social variables women in positions of rule faced were largely determined by the historical conditions surrounding their particular political roles. An analysis of these considerations in specific relation to the widow ruler’s cultural activity at court will

68 Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 4849. 69 Elisabetta also ruled in her husband’s post throughout his illnesses and absences. Ibid, 50. 70 See Cecil H. Clough, “La successione dei Della Rovere nel Ducato di Urbino,” in I Della Rovere n ell’Italia delle corti, eds. Bonita Cleri, Sabine Eiche, John E. Law, Feliciano Paoli (Urbino: Quattro venti, 2002): 35-62.

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33 follow, but here I would like to emphasize that the social and political attitudes surrounding courtly women were generally less restrictive than those faced by women of Republics or o f the patrician class due to the public nature of the roles they were expected to perform at court. Women in positions of rule, either as consorts or widow regents, were responsible for upholding the virtues necessary to the behavior of Italian court princes. Public display o f humanistic learning was one important attribute to the ideal image o f a ruler. Also, Italian court rulers endeavored to project images of themselves as good Christian princes by shaping outward images as devout, God-fearing, patrons of church building, and of religious works of art.71 A poem previously mentioned by Antonio Comazzano of the title Del modo di regere e di regnare written for the court of Ferrara between the years 1478-9 offers a compelling portrait of the interchangeable relation of classical and Christian virtues necessary in a Prince as they apply to male and female rulers alike.72 Comazzano’s poem crosses lines of gender from the onset as he dedicates the work to Eleanora d’Aragona d’Este, the appointed ruler of Ferrara in her husband’s absence, while he hopes at the same time that it will be useful for the future government of her son Alfonso (1486-1534). Comazzano praises Eleanora for her strength o f character and military prowess during the uprising of Nicolo d’Este: “Gia vi vid’io tra ferri e molte spade / senza el marito e pochi altri consigli / ch’a salvarvi Maria vi fe’ le strade” (I have seen you among weapons and many swords, / without your husband and few other advisors / and Mary helped your road to safety); he presents the

71 Clough, “Daughters and Wives o f the Montefeltro: Outstanding Bluestockings o f the Quattrocento,” 51. See also d’Elia, “Marriage, Sexual Pleasure, and Learned Brides in the Wedding Orations o f Fifteenth Century Italy,” 422, where he concludes in his study o f wedding orations in the fifteenth century courts with: “While there were clearly different expectations for men and women in Italian courts, brides and grooms are often praised in surprisingly similar ways.” 72 For a study o f selections o f this poem see: Zancani. All quotes and translations from Zancani.

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34 knowledge o f literature as a value for any ruler involved in the government of states: “Vogliono anchor che sia laudabile arte / In homo e in donna chi si sia che rega, / Dottrina haver di lettre e de le carte.” (They also say that it is a praiseworthy art / in a man or a woman who rules / to have knowledge of letters and writing); and he lays special emphasis on Eleanora’s religious piety and further relates this ideal ruling quality to another female co-regent at the time, Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza: Mille Madonne ha Franza e Signor milli Di cottal fede, io una in Lombardia Vidi e la piansi con ultimi strilli. El mondo la chiamo Biancha Maria Io l’appellai delle virtu duchessa Che d’ogni ben fu tempio e sacrastia. Ne dico che ogni di volse la messa, Ma matutino, vespro e terza e nona, Come si canta nella chiesa stessa. Dignissima d’imperio e di corona Alla qual donna voi sola compagna Leonora ho data e non altra persona. One thousand ladies has France and a thousand lords / of such faith, but one in Lombardy/1 saw and mourned with deathbed wailing. / The world called her Bianca Maria / 1 called her the duchess of all virtues / since she was a temple and sacristy o f all good. / Not only did she demand a Mass a day / but matins, vespers, and terce and none / just as they are sung in church itself. / She was most worthy

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35 o f being a ruler and o f her crown / and you, Leanora, I have assigned as her companion, none other. Narrowing our focus on the widow regent who ruled independently, she was responsible, as was the case for male rulers, for shaping a public image that would justify her rule and facilitate the public’s reception of her power.73 A significant facet to this self-fashioning program was to exhibit the ideals attributed to Italian court princes outlined above. The ruling widow also benefited from fashioning the ideal behavior prescribed to widows o f the Italian Renaissance. The prescriptive literature addressing the appropriate behavior of widows in the sixteenth century primarily addresses the Italian widow of the upper nobility and the patrician class, rather than widows of dynastic status.74 And, as is the case with the body of male authored prescriptive texts that set out

73 Joyce de Vries, “Casting Her Widowhood: The Contemporary and Posthumous Portraits o f Caterina Sforza,” in Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Alison Levy (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2003), 78; Tomas, 166. 74 For studies on widowhood in the early modem period see: Rudolph M. Bell, How to D o It: Guides to Good Living fo r Renaissance Italians (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1999); Judith M. Bennett, Amy M. Froide, eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800 (Philadelphia: University o f Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Lourens van den Bosch, Jan Bremmer, eds. Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History o f Widowhood (London: Routledge Press, 1995); Kevin Brownlee, “Widowhood, Sexuality, and Gender in Christine de Pizan,” Romanic Review 86 no. 2 (March 1995): 339-353; Cindy L. Carlson, Angela Jane Weisl, eds. Constructions o f Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Sandra Cavallo, Lyndan Warner, eds. Widowhood in M edieval and Early Modern Europe (New York: Pearson Education Inc., 1999); Isabelle Chabot, ‘“ La sposa in nero’: La ritualizzazione del lutto delle vedove fiorentine (secoli XIV-XV),” Quaderni Storici 86 (1994): 421-462; Stanley Chojancki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Virginia Cox, “The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modem Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 48 no. 3 (1995): 513-581; Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early M odem England (London: Routledge Press, 1993); Jack Goody, Joan Thrisk, E.P Thompson, eds. Family and Inheritance in Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Jack Goody, The Development o f Marriage and Family in M edieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); David Herlihy, Women, Family, and Society in M edieval Europe: Historical Essays (1978-1991) (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995); Diane Owen Hughes, “From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean Europe,” Journal o f Family History 3 (1978): 263-296; Catherine E. King, Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy, 1300-1550 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Joan Larson Klein, Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and M arriage in England (Urbana: University o f Illinois Press, 1992); Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1985); Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology o f Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1991); Catherine Lawless, ‘“A Widow o f God?’

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36 to codify large generalities of women’s behavior in the Italian Renaissance, the distance between the recommended condition of vedovanza (widowhood) and the real lives and perceptions of noble widows was indeed incalculable.75 With this disjuncture in mind, I approach the research surrounding these texts not to extract a portrait of the actual lives of Italian noble widows; rather, I address this as a constructive source to outline in broad strokes the social ideologies surrounding widowhood in sixteenth century Italy.

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Collectively, ideal behavior of noble widows entailed the display of piety, charity, and spousal devotion (chastity), and these widows ideally, but not necessarily, lived in private retreat or in a convent. By and large, then, patrician widows were to conduct themselves according to the sixteenth century conventional ideals of feminine behavior, though in the absence o f their husbands they were advised to control their sexuality and transfer what was once their devotion to their spouse to a spiritual devotion to God. Clearly, the ruling widow was distinctly at odds with the ideal of the patrician widow’s retreat to the private sphere by the very public nature of her duty to her state. Yet when examining the iconography put forth by the patronage pursuits of widow regents, we find that the fashioning of these qualities - that is, devotion to the memory of her husband and his ruling legacy, religious piety that was often exhibited by her patronage activity beginning with the burial project and funerary tomb for the deceased husband, and the public St. Anne and Representations o f Widowhood in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” in Women in Renaissance and Early M odem Europe, ed. Christine Meek (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000): 15-42; Levy; Louise Mirrer, ed. Upon My Husband’s Death: Widows in the Literature and Histories o f Late M edieval Europe (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 1992); Murphy, Lavinia Fontana; Tomas; Richard C. Trexler Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaka: Cornell University Press, 1991). Murphy, Lavinia Fontana, provides an excellent survey o f the prescriptive behavior for Renaissance widows, where she examines the following texts: Girolamo Savonarola, Libro della vita viduale 1491; Giovan Ludovico Vives, D e Vufficio del marito, de I’institutione de la femina Christiana 1546; Ludovico Dolce, Dialogo della institutione delle donne 1557; Bernardino Trotto, Dialoghi del matrimonio e vita vedovile 1568; Gulio Cabei, Ornamenti della gentildonna vedova 1574; Agostino Valerio (Valier) Della vera eperfetta viduita 1577. 75 See Murphy’s excellent work on the portraits by Lavinia Fontana on aristocratic widows o f Bologna that convey engagement with, rather than withdrawal from, the public sphere: Murphy, Lavinia Fontana. 76 See note 75 o f this chapter.

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37 display of her chastity so as to mitigate the threat of losing the husband’s seat of power to an outside family - effectively moderated the potential tensions surrounding their roles as female rulers occupying a temporary seat of power. Widow rulers recognized the power of self-representation for the preservation of power throughout sixteenth century Italy.77 To this end, the cultural undertakings of the ruling widow were primarily charged with the objective of making manifest her virtue, dignity, power, and fitness for rule. The cultural endeavors of Caterina Sforza (14631509) throughout her regent rule over Imola and Forli are exemplary of this phenomenon in the Italian tradition, as she set out to strategically mold her public image as the model Riario ruler.

Caterina’s first act as regent was to orchestrate a triumphal ceremony fused

with political and spiritual meaning: on the feast day of Forli’s patron saint, San Mercurialis, Caterina added to the ceremonies a triumphal entry into Forli to exhibit the Riario family’s hold of power and simultaneously put on public display her role as her husband Girolamo’s legitimate political heir; even more, Caterina utilized the day to commemorate the honorable burial of her husband in the church that housed many of the past Riario rulers, allowing Caterina to publicly showcase her mourning in widowhood and her devotion to his memory as both a spouse and a ruler.79 Caterina further manipulated her public image as a chaste widow and Riario ruler through her medal portraiture. One side of a medal by Niccolo Fiorentino (see Figure 2) presents Caterina in modest dress with a veil that signals her widowhood status, under which the inscription emphasizes her Riario name (‘DE RIARIO’) - the key link to her political power - and 77 de Vries, 83. 78 Caterina became the widow regent for her young son over the territories Imola and Forli upon the assassination o f her husband Girolamo Riario in 1488. See: Julia L. Hairston “Skirting the Issue: Machiavelli’s Caterina Sforza,” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 687-712; de Vries. 79 de Vries, 82-83.

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underscores her natal family’s name (‘SF’). This cycle of presenting Caterina as a chaste Riario widow was exclusive to her political status as a widow regent; indeed, upon the conclusion of Caterina’s regency, her portrait image on a medal presented Caterina in a new light (see Figure 3) by the removal of her widowhood symbol, her veil, and highlighting her feminine features in exposing her hair and adorning her dress and jewels.

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A further illuminating example of a widow regent who creatively fashioned the

legitimacy of her regency through a select public representational cycle is that of Caterina de Medici (1519-1589). She was charged with negotiating the tenuous position of being not only a regent ruler of a foreign country (France), but also of presiding over a court that favored her husband’s mistress. Caterina staged her legitimacy for regency by showcasing her eternal mourning in widowhood through her elaborate black attire, not only in her own presentation but in all representations of her, which forged a permanent link with her husband. She also established a lavish monument to the memory of her husband with whose construction her name would be forever associated. Lastly, Caterina aligned herself with the Classical figure Artemesia - a widow who mourned the loss of her husband after which she stood as the authoritative ruler in his stead - in her surrounding artwork through the patronage of a series of tapestry drawings by Antoine Caron.81 Thus there existed a distinct interrelationship between the ruling widow’s cultural activity and her political well-being at court, and it is this nexus that provides the point of

80 Ibid, 87. 81 See: Sheila Ffolliot, “Catherine de’ Medici as Artemisia: Figuring the Powerful Widow,” in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses o f Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, eds. Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1986): 227-241; “The Ideal Queenly Patron o f the Renaissance,” in Women and Art in Early M odem Europe, ed. Cynthia Lawrence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997): 99-110.

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39 entry into this study’s analysis of Veronica Gambara’s lyric activity throughout her rule as the governing Countess o f Correggio from 1519-1550. Before turning to examine Gambara’s use of poetry as a key site in the construction of her image as an ideal and legitimate widow ruler, there is one significant self-fashioning device implemented by Gambara immediately upon her widowhood in 1519 that is particularly revealing o f the themes discussed in this chapter and worthy of careful consideration - 1 refer to her inscription of the verses spoken by Dido in Virgil’s Aeneid (Book 4, 28-29): “Ille meos primus, qui mi sibi junxit, amores abstulit, ille habeat secum, servetque sepulchro” (For he who first had joined me to himself / has carried off my love, and may he keep it / and be its guardian within the grave).82 Gambara’s use of Virgil’s version of the Dido myth, as opposed to the accounts of the myth that do not include any mention of her love affair with Aeneas, is significant. The pre-Virgilian account of Dido’s story, which is first set forth in a history by the Greek historian Timaeus (ca. 356-260 B.C.E.) and is later elaborated by the Roman

82 Translation by Allen Mandelbaum, The Aeneid o f Virgil (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), 82. 83 On the tradition o f Dido in the Italian Renaissance see: Howard Bloch, M edieval Misogyny and the Invention o f Western Romantic Love (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1991); Anna Cerbo, “Didone in Boccaccio,” Annali istituto universitario orientate (Napoli, Sezione Romana, 1979): 177-219; Isabelle Chabot, “Widowhood and Poverty in Late Medieval Florence,” Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 291-311; Marilynn Desmond, Reading Dido (Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota Press, 1994); Margaret W. Ferguson, D id o ’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender, and Empire in Early M odem England and France (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 2003); Franklin; Eugenio L. Giusti, “The Widow in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Works: A Negative Exemplum or a Symbol o f Positive Paraxis?” in Gendered Contexts: New Perspectives in Italian Cultural Studies, eds. Laura Benedetti, Julia L. Hariston, Silvia M. Ross (New York: Peter Lang, 1996): 39-48; Stephanie Jed, Chaste Thinking: The Rape ofLucretia and the Birth o f Humanism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Constance Jordan, “Feminism and the Humanists; The Case o f Sir Thomas Elyot’s Defense o f Good Women,” Renaissance Quarterly 36 (1983): 181-201; Craig Kallendorf, In Praise o f Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover: University Press o f New England, 1989); “Boccaccio’s Dido and the Rhetorical Criticism o f Virgil’s Aeneid,” Studies in Philology 82 (1995): 401-415; Marie Louise Lord, “Dido as an Example o f Chastity: The Influence o f Example Literature,” Harvard Library Bulletin 17 (1969): 216-232; Elizabeth M. Makowski, Katharina M. Wilson, eds. Wykked Wyves and the Woes o f Marriage (Albany: State University Press, 1990); Glenda McLeod, Virtue and Venom: Catalogues o f Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 1991); Malcolm Pittock, “Widow Dido,” Notes and Queries 33.3 (1986): 368-369.

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40 historian Justin, provides one tradition of Dido’s story: in these accounts, Dido traveled to Africa upon the death o f her husband to flee her brother-in-law, Pygmalion, as he pursued Dido in marriage to gain access to his brother’s wealth. Dido and her followers arrive in Africa and negotiate the acquisition o f land that allows them to found Carthage, but Dido then comes under the threat by Iarbas, the king of Maxetani, who demands to marry Dido under the threat of war. In Justin’s account, Dido appears to agree to the marriage, but then builds a pyre, perhaps to placate the spirit of her husband, where she stands and declares that she is going to her husband, and kills herself with a sword.

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Within the Italian tradition, Boccaccio rehearsed the Dido myth throughout his oeuvre, including in his Genealogia deorum (1360, revised up to 1375) and his De claris mulieribus (1361, revised up to 1375), and he points to the conflicting textual traditions o f the myth. This awareness o f divergent Dido traditions also occurs in Petrarch: this distinction is noted in his allegorical commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid in his collection of letters, the Seniles, and Petrarch also mentions the non-Virgilian Dido in his Africa (1337, revised up to his death in 1374), as well as in his Triumphi (1351, revised up to 1374). It is possible that Gambara was relying on her public to work out for themselves that she is referring to the non-Virgilian version of Dido in her self-identification with the myth, considering the existence of this alternative, and more positive, account in the Italian tradition. But Gambara does quote from Virgil, however, and the possibility of her alignment with this version of myth remains an issue worthy of careful inquiry. Gambara’s alignment with the Virgilian Dido could have, in fact, worked towards her self-fashioning agenda to emblematize her ideal qualities as a widow ruler.

84 Desmond, 25. 85 Ibid, 238 n .l.

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Recalling Virgil’s version inevitably evokes the sexual dangers Dido’s story represents as a widowed ruler who succumbs to an amorous desire that subsequently destroys her kingdom - certainly a peculiar model for Gambara to fashion her ideal chastity in her widowhood and fitness for rule. Gambara would have been exposed to the Aeneid as a fundamental facet of her studia humanitatis curriculum, as Virgil was considered the Latin poet par excellence and the Aeneid one of the best poems of the epic poetry genre. Contemporary humanists approached the Aeneid in their reading and teaching not only as a source for Latin and literary instruction, but also as a moralistic device: a text that praises virtue and condemns vice, and thus an instructive tool through asr

which one may learn virtuous behavior.

This contemporary approach to reading the

Aeneid may inform the meaning Gambara was seeking to convey. To begin, Gambara’s citation is careful to capture a select moment in the Dido episode where she stands as a judicious ruler in steadfast control of her feminine sexuality, just before the gods fully overcome her as they ignite her amorous flame for Aeneas and perpetually feed it into a frenzy. Juno’s distant observation of Dido’s condition later in the episode puts into just perspective her impotence against this divine will: “[she] sees that Dido is in the grip of such a scourge and that no honor can withstand this madness” (IV, 120-121). In Gambara’s citation, however, Dido is still standing by the power of her honor: here to her sister Anna, Dido displays her strength of human character by her steadfast resistance to Aeneas’ attraction, divine intervention notwithstanding, and pleas that the gods kill her before she violate the memory of her husband, Sychaeus. Up to this point in the narrative, moreover, Virgil has gone to great lengths to present Dido as an ideal ruler: her newfound citadel is replete with signs o f modem civility, with theatres, buildings, paved streets, and 86 See Kallendorf, In Praise o f Aeneas.

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a senate center, over all of which Dido presides and drives forward as she “urged on the work of her coming kingdom” (I, 711). Gambara is thus aligning herself with Dido’s exemplarity as a female widow ruler, not only in the successful management of her flourishing citadel, but also as one who is soberly cognizant of the threat an amorous entanglement would pose to the stability of this very government as she avows her loyalty to her dead husband. It is a Classical allusion that publicly heralds Gambara’s knowledge of letters, and thus her fitness for rule, while it also allows her to point out the tradition of widow rulers in the venerated civilization of Antiquity so as to legitimize her own contemporary position. While Gambara’s citation extricates Dido from her divinely imposed amorous frenzy and captures her in her most pronounced declaration of her devotion to her husband as a single widow ruler, Gambara’s draw from Virgil must have also endeavored to convey her reading o f the Dido episode as a cautionary tale that warns against the dangers of fusing eros with politics. This was a message Virgil’s contemporaries would have appreciated as he effectively molds Dido to the recent imprint left on Rome by Cleopatra, a female ruler whose unrestrained sexuality posed a substantial threat to Rome’s unity. Indeed, upon Dido’s divinely willed union with Aeneas, they became “forgetful o f their kingdom, [and] take long pleasure fondling through the winter, the slaves of squalid craving” (IV, 255-7). Moreover, her suicide after Aeneas’ departure detonates the fall of Carthage, the rise o f Hannibal as her avenger, and the cause of the Punic wars that challenged Roman dominance in the Mediterranean throughout the centuries to follow. Thus Dido, even more dangerously than Cleopatra, threatened Rome’s very foundation and Virgil’s account of her affair with Aeneas provides a

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43 mythological backdrop to the historical enmity between Carthage and Rome that would dominate the history leading up to the writing of his poem. Renaissance readers of the Aeneid, especially within the context of a studia humanitatis education that included Roman history, would understand this layering of fiction and history in his account of Dido’s myth, which Gambara works here to her self-fashioning advantage. Virgil’s account of Dido’s story allowed Gambara to assimilate a distinct political meaning to the public fashioning of her chastity in widowhood. When viewed in conjunction with the Christian motivation for leading a chaste life conveyed by her painting of Saint Jerome over her husband’s burial tomb, we may see how Gambara set in motion the fashioning of the desired qualities o f a learned, pious, and chaste ruler, who understood the political dangers of unrestrained sexuality while she simultaneously aspired to the Christian ideals of feminine virtue. Gambara richly expanded upon her public portrait as an ideal widow ruler through her innovative use of poetry in the vernacular as a buttress to her political status, which we will now turn to explore.

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CHAPTER 2 1529 and the Re-emergence of Gambara’s Poetics: Petrarchismo as a Site for Self-Fashioning

In 1529, Veronica Gambara sent the sonnet A I ’ardente desio ch ’ognor m ’accende to Pietro Bembo (1478-1547) in which she sings the praises of the famous Venetian poet and appoints him her sole spiritual guide. As discussed in the previous chapter, Gambara shared an epistolary correspondence and sonnet exchange with Bembo in the first decade of the century, but it is after the sonnet exchange between the two poets that took place in 1529, the subject of this chapter’s analysis, that their correspondence became recurrent until Bembo’s death. Viewed within the framework of Gambara’s poetic oeuvre, her 1529 sonnet to Bembo raises numerous points of inquiry. First, the sonnet breaks an almost ten year silence in the public circulation of Gambara’s verse, marking her reemergence onto the literary scene. The sonnet is also significant on a thematic level in indicating Gambara’s departure from the amorous themes of her early poetry and consequent introduction of a new approach to Petrarchan imitation. Lastly, the period surrounding her 1529 sonnet to Bembo marked Gambara’s ascent to the literary scene on a national level where she remained a poet of renown for the remainder o f her life. Confirmation of Gambara’s national literary repute may be found in the homage paid to her literary talent in two of the monumental literary productions of the day. Pietro Bembo first issued a collected publication of his writings entitled the Rime in 1530, in which he thanks Gambara for having inspired his composition Certo ben mi poss ’io dir pago omai (1504), while five years later in a republished edition of his Rime, Bembo included Gambara in the index alongside fellow poets Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550), Vittoria

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45 Colonna (1490-1547), and Francesco Maria Molza (1489-1544).1 Another significant publication in which Gambara received acclamation was the final edition of Ariosto’s (1474-1533) Orlando furioso in 1532. Over the course of Ariosto’s three editions and substantial revisions of his chivalric epic, Gambara’s presence underwent its own transformation. In Ariosto’s 1516 edition, he pays special tribute to the talented women of the Correggio court within which Gambara is included as an important member: “Quella che scende con Ginevra al mare / Veronica da Gambara mi pare” (she who descends with Ginvera to the shore, Veronica da Gambara appears to me). Later, in the 1532 edition, Gambara is again presented as a member of the illustrious ladies of Correggio, but here she is allotted special attention for her lyric talent as the darling of Apollo and the choir of the muses: Oh di che belle e sagge donne io veggio oh di che cavalieri il lito adomo! Oh di che amici a che in etemo deggio per la letizia ch’han del mio ritomo! Mamma e Ginevra e l’altra da Correggio veggo del molo in su l’estremo como; Veronica da Gambara e con loro si grata a Febo e al santo Aonio coro.2 (emphasis mine) Oh what fair, what virtuous ladies, what excellent knights I see gracing the shore, and what good friends, too. I shall be forever indebted to them for the happiness

1 Giorgio Dilemmi, “We videatur strepere anser inter olores: ’ Le relazioni della Gambara con il Bembo,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell ’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno Sandal (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 31. 2 Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso Canto 46.3 (Milan: Mondadori editore, 1976), 1207.

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46 they feel at my return. I can see Mamma Beatrice out on the tip of the pier with Ginevra and other ladies from Correggio. With them is Veronica Gambara, the darling o f Apollo and the choir of the muses.3 Alongside Gambara’s mention on both these occasions stood the fellow lyricist Vittoria Colonna, who received an even more pronounced celebration of her poetic talent, especially in the thirty-seventh canto of Ariosto’s text, where he offers an elaborate ode to the poet.4 The main aim of this chapter is to explicate the process whereby Gambara emerged as a poet of national recognition in the year 1529. This study will first delineate the crucial role Gambara’s political context played in motivating her return to the public circulation o f her verse by viewing this cultural endeavor within the context of the eminent political status the Gambara family held at the time. To further forge the correlation between Gambara’s political status and her literary activity, this chapter will illuminate the political ambition behind Gambara’s efforts to position herself amongst the elite cultural circles of her time. My readings of her sonnets from this period will also unpack Gambara’s use of poetry as a self-fashioning device through which she crafted a poet-persona particularly reflective of the qualities required by her ruling widow dowager status. The year 1528 was a crucial period for the fortune of the Gambara family, due in great part to the prestigious political status achieved by Gambara’s brothers, Uberto and

3 Translation by Katherine A. Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 26 no.l (2000), 25. 4 For an analysis o f Ariosto’s discussion o f Colonna in this passage see: Virginia Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna,” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Modern Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, eds. Pamela Joseph Benson, Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 2005), 17-19.

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Brunoro. Uberto Gambara had developed a career within the papal court under Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici, 1475-1521), and in 1528 he was appointed governor of the city of Bologna by Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici, 1478-1534) to oversee the coronation of Charles V (1520-1558) in two different ceremonies in which he became both Emperor and King of Italy.5 The appointment was noteworthy, as it situated Uberto front and center throughout the events that established Bologna as the point of congregation for Italy’s most illustrious political figures and letterati of the day. Alongside Uberto in Bologna was another o f Gambara’s brothers, Brunoro, who capitalized on Uberto’s prominent political position to celebrate his renowned marriage to Virginia Pallavicino in 1529. This union brought recognition to the Gambara family in view of the bride’s generous dowry in property, as well her ties with the powerful Famese family as the widow of Ranuccio Famese (1509-1529), the illegitimate son o f the future Pope Paul III (Alessandro Famese, 1468-1549).6 While in Bologna, Brunoro also substantially advanced his military career through an appointment as a high ranking general in Charles V’s imperial army. This exceptional political and social positioning of the Gambara brothers in the most important city o f Northern Italy at the time provided Gambara with an ideal setting to stage the promotion of her own family: mainly her two sons, Ippolito (b. 1510) and Gerolamo (b. 1511), whom she was seeking to situate in public offices. Solidifying ties with her brother, Gambara sent Gerolamo to serve under Uberto’s governorship in Bologna for the duration o f his post. Meanwhile, Gambara’s firstborn son, Ippolito, had attained an appointment in Charles V’s imperial army under the generalship of Ercole

5 Zamboni, 53. 6 Ibid, 58.

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48 Corso, a well known military official and Correggio native.7 Both Gerolamo and Ippolito’s accomplishments were celebrated by Gambara in a letter to her personal secretary, Ludovico Rosso, who was in Bologna alongside Gambara’s brothers at the time. In discussing Gerolamo’s transfer to Bologna, Gambara places special emphasis on her kinship with her son, going as far as to consider him a representation o f herself: II Sig. Girolamo mio figlio viene tanto allegro, quanto si possa dire, e stara appresso di Monsignore; io ve lo raccomando non solamente come figliuolo mio, ma come una parte di me stessa, e che dico io una parte, s’egli e il tutto! Ve lo raccomando adunque come me stessa, poiche egli e la Veronica medesima.

o

My son Girolamo is extremely happy to arrive, as much as one can express in words, and he will be staying with my brother; I pass him on to you not only as my son, but as a part of me, though I say “a part” when I really mean that he is all of me! I pass him on to you then as myself, in that he is an exact representation of Veronica. Gambara’s casting of her son as a natural extension of herself touches on an important theme in the public promotion of sons by their ruling mothers in the political arena raised in the previous chapter: that is, the eminence of sons in their public careers - be it in the church in Gerolamo’s case or the military in Ippolito’s - reflected favorably upon their ruling mother. Gambara’s promotion of her sons was coterminous with her own ambition to advance her own standing on the national landscape. This point may be developed when considering Gambara’s other efforts aimed at her self-advancement within this very year. Alongside the renowned status of her

7 Ibid, 55. 8 Felice Rizzardi, Rime e lettere di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759), 171.

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brothers in Bologna, Gambara participated firsthand in the imperial coronation ceremonies by setting up a villa residence in the city for a number of months. During this time, Charles V and Clement VII arbitrated settlements that reconstituted key territories of the Italian states, and during these negotiations Uberto and Brunoro’s prominent political authority in Bologna brought important recognition to the Gambara family. Together, the Gambara brothers worked to include an internal article within the emperor’s peace treaty with the Venetian Republic in which all Gambara territory would be protected by the emperor from Venetian invasion.9 Through these negotiations, Charles V also played an instrumental role in facilitating the return of the Gambara family to Brescia after a decade-plus period of exile. The strategic maneuvering for protection by Charles V on the part of Uberto and Brunoro provided a propitious opportunity for Gambara to seek her own political alliance with the newly crowned emperor. Gambara was successful in this endeavor, and to commemorate this alliance she hosted a personal visit from Charles V to her Correggio court on his journey out of Italy after the ceremonies. By the time Charles V arrived at Correggio in March 1530, Gambara had significantly transformed the landscape of the city as well as its decoration through various cultural projects. In the previous chapter, we saw how Gambara’s artistic activity centered mainly on the commemoration of her deceased husband, which was considered standard patronage practice by widows within dynastic family circles of the sixteenth century, if not an uxorial duty. Gambara markedly departed from her domestic projects as she sought the means to commemorate her political alliance with Charles V. Accordingly,

9 Riccardo Finzi, Umanita di Veronica Gambara (1485-1550): Commemorazionepronunciata a Correggio nel IV centenario della poetessa, il 28 maggio 1950 (Reggio Emilia: Tipolitografia emiliana, 1969), 16.

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50 Gambara undertook a major civic development by calling on the local artist, Antonio Allegri, called Correggio (1489-1534), to oversee the constmction of a new street called the viale dell’Imperatore down which Gambara and the emperor would proceed together for his ceremonial arrival.10 Civic architecture - the most visible, expensive, and permanent form of art11- by its very nature envelops notions of power and prestige on a substantial scale. In most Northern Italian cities, it was indeed unusual for women below the status of the Medici, Este, or Gonzaga to be involved in architectural commissions beyond the building of a burial chapel.12 In fact, a comparative glance at the architectural activity of one of these illustrious women may help illuminate not only how Gambara’s commission was of a scale that placed her on equal footing with the women of Italy’s prominent ruling elite, but it will also bear out the cultural impact o f women - here specifically two widows who worked within Renaissance Italy’s patronage system to realize fundamentally political aspirations. Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici (1472-1520) ruled Florence in the year 1515, when her son, Lorenzo (1492-1519), the head of the Medici family at the time, departed the city to fight against the French as the general of the Florentine troops.13 In this year, she pursued a patronage project aimed at the promotion of herself and her son.14

10 Zamboni, 65. 11 Carolyn Valone, “Roman Matrons as Patrons: Various Views o f the Cloistered Wall,” in The Crannied Wall, ed. Craig A. Monson (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 1992), 49. 12 Murphy, 138. 13 Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 167. 14 For an extensive examination o f Alfonsina’s patronage activity aimed at the promotion o f herself and her son throughout her career see: Sheryl E. Reiss, “Widow, Mother, Patron o f Art: Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici,” in Beyond Isabella: 125-157; Tomas, 173-174.

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51 Alfonsina’s widowhood from Piero de Medici15 was characterized by her publicly manifested endeavors to advance her son Lorenzo to a titled lord, and later, upon the restoration of the Medici to power in 1512, she sought to achieve princely status for her son.15 When Alfonsina learned that her brother in law, Pope Leo X, would visit Florence on his way to Bologna to meet Francis I in 1515, she staged an entrata to put on full display Florence’s honored guest as well as her intimate connection to him. Here, too, the landscape o f Florence was altered to accommodate the entrance and procession of the Pope in ways that celebrate both the guest as well as his host: great triumphal arches marked the ceremony’s route; gold and enamel horse trappings were built by goldsmiths; and the domestic rooms o f the Palazzo de’ Medici where Alfonsina and Lorenzo lived were transformed to accommodate the Pope. While Alfonsina worked in conjunction with the political clout of the male Medici family members, thus operating less as an independent agent than Gambara, both Alfonsina and Gambara succeeded at leaving a permanent mark on their respective cities. The elaborate architectural work produced by these processional projects provided an ideal medium through which they were each able to convey on a grand scale their political, familial, and personal magnificenza.

17

Such self-fashioning through patronage activity by women o f Renaissance Italy’s court circles did not necessarily require a public forum to attract national attention. A substantial number of commissions through which women established themselves as

15 Piero de’ Medici was the son o f Lorenzo il Magnifico who took over the government o f Florence upon his death in 1492, only to cause the exile o f the Medici from Florence when he failed to take on Charles VIII, the King o f France, in 1494. 16 Reiss, “Widow, Mother, Patron o f Art: Alfonsina Orisini de’ Medici,” 133. 17 Ibid, 140. This is also stressed by Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” 37, where she states: “[...] each time she [Gambara] traveled the new highway to her home, she could relive Charles V ’s procession, re-enacting the event and its imagery o f imperial power. She had glorified not only Charles V but herself and her city, as well.” The viale constructed by Gambara is today the Viale Leonardo da Vinci.

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52 serious patrons of art also took place on the domestic front in the decoration of private palace chambers.18 This was a venue Gambara herself explored around the year 1528 through another collaboration with Correggio, whom she commissioned to produce a fresco o f a Mary Magdalene penitent in the desert for her Casino residence. Like the construction of the viale, Gambara’s commission of the Magdalene is significant in its resonance with the cultural activity of Northern Italy’s most elite patrons, beginning with her choice o f artist for the project. Correggio became an artist of stature around 1514 and boasted a wealth of patrons from a wide variety of social levels, the most famous of which was the Duke Federico Gonzaga (1500-1540) and his mother Isabella d’Este (1474-1539) of Mantova, by whom Correggio is believed to have been well known before the year 1528.19 With this patronage network in mind, Gambara’s commission displays a certain stratum of power and wealth that would allow her the means to secure an artist of note for a domestic decoration, even if for only a few assignments. Such a posture is readily available in a letter Gambara wrote to Isabella d’Este in 1528, where she presents herself as a patron o f equal stature to Isabella and draws special attention to her rapport with the famous artist, calling him “il nostro Antonio”.20 As we look further into Gambara’s letter to Isabella, it becomes clear that Gambara may have had even greater self-fashioning goals in mind through the commission. Consider, for example, Gambara’s description o f the painting, where she is careful to describe the details o f the figure while also emphasizing the work as an emblem of the painter’s talent:

18 See Reiss and Wilkins, Beyond Isabella, a collection o f essays addressing the patronage activity o f secular women o f Italy’s Renaissance, for numerous examples o f this phenomenon. 19 Arthur Ewart Popham, C orreggio’s Drawings (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 89. 20 Mclver, “The ‘Ladies o f Correggio’: Veronica Gambara and her Matriarchal Heritage,” 41 n.30.

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53 [...] Rappresenta il medisimo la Madelena nel deserto ricoverata in un orrido speco a fare penitentia, sta essa genuflexa dal lato dextro con le mani gionte alzate al cielo in atto di domandar perdono de peccati, il suo bell’attegiamento, il nobil et vivo dolore, che exprime il suo bellissimo viso la fanno mirabil si che fa stupore a che la mira. II quest’opera ha expresso tutto il sublime dell’arte della quale e gran Maestro.21 [The painting] Represents the Magdalene in the desert in a horrible state to do penance, she has her right leg kneeling with her hands clasped together and raised to the heavens in an act of asking forgiveness for her sins. The peaceful expression and the noble and vivid pain expressed by her beautiful face make her wondrous so that she amazes all who look at her. The work is a supreme example of the sublime art of that grand master [Correggio]. Gambara’s detailed description of the image, from the significance of her raised hands in the air in plea of forgiveness for her sins of the flesh to her “nobil et vivo dolor” (noble and living pain), transmits some level of connection between the patron and the saint, she who “fa stupore che la mira” (amazes who may look at her). On account o f this connectedness, we may begin to recognize Gambara’s draw on the saint as an ideal icon to reflect her own Christian virtue. Similar to Gambara’s use of Dido as a charged exemplum that references the worst fears observers may have had about a young widow allotted complete control of her state, Gambara’s association with Mary Magdalene, in light of her status as a harlot saint, is an equally provocative alignment. We may look to the Northern Italian court context within which the image of the penitent Magdalene began to circulate with frequency and popularity to elucidate the significance of 21 Ibid.

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Gambara’s commission. One significant indicator of the Magdalene’s pervasiveness in the court culture within which Gambara operated is Vittoria Colonna’s interest in, and perhaps even commission of, a Mary Magdalene painting by Titian (1488/90-1576) in the same period of Gambara’s commission in 1530 (see Figure 4).22 Colonna’s Magdalene painting was also a depiction of the saint in her penitence, though hers presented a more sensuous, nude Magdalene. Colonna’s Magdalene painting further verges on Gambara’s by way of Colonna’s correspondence with duke Federico of the Gonzaga court of Mantova - the court to which Gambara wrote the letter describing the painting just examined - as it was Federico who served as the official agent to request the portrait from Titian, rather than Colonna herself. It is possible that Federico gave the image to Colonna as a gift or, as Majorie Och convincingly argues, that Colonna worked through the Gonzaga network to have Federico commission the painting for her. It is also unclear how much Gambara knew of this particular patronage activity taking place in Mantova, which raises an important query as to her ambition to directly emulate the Gonzaga court, and especially Colonna, in sharing her select iconography. Even with these factors unresolved, we may lift from this intersection of interest in the penitent Magdalene an understanding of the image within its immediate sixteenth century context as an exemplum for Italian Renaissance noblewomen, and particularly for widows, to exhibit their piety and virtue. The image of the penitent Magdalene, in fact, was one o f the most pervasive saintly representations of the time.23 Gambara’s select iconography was thus markedly concurrent with female patronage trends within her own court culture, and as such, an endeavor well worth heralding to Isabella’s eminent neighboring Mantova court. 22 See Marjorie Och, “Vittoria Colonna and the Commission for a M ary Magdalen by Titian,” in Beyond Isabella: 193-223. 23 Ibid, 202. See also Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Harcourt, 1993).

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55 My argument to this point has centered on explicating how Gambara’s endeavors around the year 1529 encompass a series of political and cultural undertakings through which she emerged as a figure of national recognition - a process that was greatly assisted, if not motivated by, the prominent status achieved by her brothers in Bologna at the time. I have also argued that throughout these enterprises Gambara carefully managed the representation of her individual qualities so as to project a particular image. This historical context continues to inform the remaining consideration of this chapter: Gambara’s emergence as a poet of national acclaim in 1529 and her self-fashioning through this literary activity. If we consider Gambara’s 1529 sonnet to Pietro Bembo within the framework of both her participation in the political events of the day and her patronage activity within this same timeframe, we may begin to see Gambara’s return to poetry as a further facet of her cultural positioning aimed at exhibiting her cultural talents on a national level. This point becomes clearer in light of the fact that Gambara’s early poetry - those poems composed in the first two decades of the century preceding Gambara’s ten year hiatus in the public circulation of her poetry from 1519 until 1529 was mainly circulated within familial and provincial circles. In sharp contrast, Gambara’s addressing her 1529 sonnet to Pietro Bembo would, and did, receive widespread attention. This was due in most part to the fact that in the wake o f the publication of his Prose della volgar lingua (1525), Pietro Bembo was known as the literary and cultural authority of the day, while his literary and linguistic model espousing the practice of vernacular poetry after the model of Petrarch had asserted itself as nationally dominant.24 Some observations concerning the literary climate in the third decade o f Italy’s sixteenth century may help illuminate how Gambara came to read, quite properly, this 24 Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna,” 16.

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56 environment as one that would prove favorable to the reception of her verse. Certainly, the concentration of culture by the congregation of Italy’s most famous letterati in Bologna throughout the imperial coronation ceremonies yielded a phase of exposure and discovery of the peninsula’s literary activity. It is in fact at this time that Vittoria Colonna first began to circulate her verse outside of her regional Neapolitan context and ultimately reached Pietro Bembo, to which he responded with great enthusiasm. Bembo commented on his discovery of Colonna’s verse to fellow letterato Carlo Gualteruzzi (1500-1577), referring not only to the elevated talent on display but also drawing special distinction to her gender: “Ebbi il sonetto della Marchesa di Pescara ... Di vero egli e bello e ingenioso e grave piu che da donna non pare sia richiesto: ha superato la espettation mia d’assai” (I have received the sonnet by the Marchioness of Pescara... It is truly beautiful, ingenious and serious as one would not expect from a woman: it has far surpassed my expectations).

Bembo’s responsiveness to Colonna’s poem provides a convincing

marker of the male literary world’s openness, if not eagerness, to engage with the female writer, which recent critical studies have addressed.

9 f\

One important factor to the

reception o f Gambara and Colonna by the sixteenth century literary culture was their status as highly educated members of Italy’s elite aristocracy who came from - both by birth and in their marriages - prominent ruling houses. Colonna came from a prominent 25 See: Abigail Brundin, ed. and trans. Vittoria Colonna: Sonnets fo r Michelangelo, A Bilingual Edition (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 2005), 11; Carlo Dionisotti, “Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna,” in Miscellanea Augusto Campana, ed. Rino Avesani et al. (Padua: Antenore, 1981), 260; Giovanna Rabitti, “Vittoria Colonna, Bembo e Firenze: Un caso di recezione e qualche postilla,” Studi e problem i di critica testuale 44 (1992), 147-149. 6 For the emergence o f the female writer on the national Italian Renaissance landscape see: Brundin; Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna”; Dionisotti; Fabio Finotti, “Women Writers in Renaissance Italy: Courtly Origins o f N ew Literary Canons,” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Modern Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy: 121-145; Giovanna Rabitti, “Vittoria Colonna as Role Model for Cinquecento Women Poets,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (London: Legenda, 2000): 478-497; Nadia Cannata Salamone, “Women and the Making o f the Italian Literary Cannon,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society: 498-512.

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57 baronial family o f Rome, and she descended from an even more elite dynasty of learned women through her maternal lineage connected to the Montefeltro family (see Chapter l).27 Through Colonna’s marriage to Ferrante d’Avalos (d. 1525), the Marquis of Pescara, the Colonna family fastened its link to the Spanish King of Naples, and upon the coronation of Charles V, the family advanced in its political stature by its connection to Neapolitan, Roman, and Imperial powers. Within the courtly realm to which Gambara and Colonna belonged, the developing vernacular culture was in the process of cultivating the ideal of an explicit expression o f courtesy towards women. This emerging space was upheld by the pillar texts of the third decade of the century: Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478-1529) Libro del cortegiano (1528), Pietro Bembo’s Rime (1530), and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532). Each text, in its own unique manner, contributed to a newfound code of gallantry and chivalry towards women, particularly of courtly rank.28 Gambara and Colonna also attained legitimacy as writers within this public sphere by their strict and admirable stylistic adherence to the literary reforms espoused by Bembo in 1525 and codified by Italy’s literary culture in the decade thereafter. Bembo’s election of Petrarch (1304-1374) as the lyric model for sixteenth century emulation and the linguistic classification accompanying his study transformed Italy’s poetic culture by its codification of linguistic norms. But this is not to say that an attitude of original creativity and experimentation in thematic expression was not allowed by the Bembist model, especially within the courtly context in which both poets were operating.

Indeed, both Gambara and Colonna, as we

shall see, set forth their own unique variation on the thematic surrounding the Petrarchan 27 For an excellent overview o f Colonna’s biography see: Brundin. 28 Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna,” 17. 29 For the court as theatrical, creative space see: Finotti.

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58 paradigm - in Colonna’s case, the development of a poetic mysticism, and in Gambara’s, an exploration beyond amorous love lyric into occasional verse occupied with public themes concerning Italy’s political and religious climate - while simultaneously remaining perfectly in line with the greater framework of stylistic precision in form and language according to Bembist regulations. This phenomenon also attests to the fact that while to some extent Gambara and Colonna emerged onto the literary scene as disciples of the prevailing male models of Italy’s poetic culture, they should each also be viewed as working within a sphere of relative autonomy in the shaping of their unique poetic identities, as the analysis to follow will fully illuminate. This leads to one final consideration that should by no means go underestimated, and that is the fact that from within this somewhat autonomous space of poetic self-fashioning, both Gambara and Colonna endeavored, though by distinctly divergent means, to fashion themselves as icons o f feminine virtue.30 If we disunite Gambara’s rise to poetic notoriety around 1530 from that of Colonna, there are some factors particular to Gambara’s context that should be borne in mind as we continue to elucidate her case. Gambara’s pedigree in her relation to the Nogarola sisters as well as Emilia Pia discussed in the previous chapter provided her with a legacy o f female erudition that reinforced her legitimacy as an intellect in her own right. In addition, the longstanding history of friendship between Gambara’s family and Pietro Bembo allowed Gambara to extend herself to the famous poet from within an intimate familial context rather than a strictly literary one. This holds especially true in the year 1529 upon Bembo’s restoration of his friendship with Gambara’s brothers for the

30 This is also stressed by Brundin in Vittoria Colonna, and Cox in “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna”.

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59 Bologna festivities. It is also important to bear in mind the distinguished political platform from which Gambara was writing at the time, having attended the coronation ceremonies in Bologna while also preparing to host a visit by the newly crowned emperor at her own Correggio court. Expanding upon Gambara’s political context, one further notable feature that may have facilitated Gambara’s entrance into literary society at the time was her participation within these circles as not only a producer o f poetry, but also as a patron of it. Gambara had established a literary salon at her Correggio court to which she frequently invited the well known letterati of the day. This included one memorable visit by the famous general of Charles V’s imperial army, Alfonso d’Avalos, called the Marchese del Vasto (1502-1546), and Ludovico Ariosto in 1530. During this visit, Gambara established a pension of 100 gold ducats to Ariosto in support of his writing enterprise31 - a gesture o f support that may have influenced Ariosto’s revision of Gambara’s presence in the final edition of his Orlando furioso (1532) mentioned at the opening o f this chapter. As is becoming clear, the context surrounding the reception of Gambara’s verse was to a large extent historically determined by the shifting literary climate as a cultural space began to open for women’s participation therein, and also by Gambara’s political status. This is not to discount, or in any way overshadow, the crucial role Gambara’s innate literary talent played in facilitating her ascent to literary fame, as we shall now come to view first hand.

Let us turn to the sonnet in question, Gambara’s 1529 composition addressed to Pietro Bembo: A l’ardente desio ch’ognor m ’accende 31 Zamboni, 67.

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60 di seguir nel camin ch’al Ciel conduce sol voi mancava, o mia serena luce, per discacciar la nebbia che m ’offende. Or, poiche ‘1 vostro raggio in me risplende, per quella strada ch’a ben far ne induce vengo dietro di voi, fidato duce, che ‘1mio voler piu oltra non si stende. Bassi pensier in me non han piu loco; ogni vil voglia e spenta, e sol d’onore e di rara virtu l’alma si pasce, dolce mio caro ed onorato foco, poscia che dal gentil vostro calore etema fama e vera gloria nasce. In the ardent desire that has always fired me to follow the path that leads to heaven, you alone were lacking, my dear serene light, to dispel the obscuring mists; but now that your ray is shining in me, trusted leader, I can follow you along the way of righteousness, for this is now entirely my object. All base desires have ceased in me, and my soul now feeds solely on honor and rare virtue, o my dear, sweet, and honored flame, since from your gentle warmth eternal fame and true glory are bom. In the sonnet, Gambara identifies Bembo as the supreme example of virtue, serving as the essential factor once missing in the confirmation of the poet’s desire to folly reinforce her

32 Translation by Virginia Cox, “Sixteenth Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy o f Laura,” Journal o f M edieval and Early Modern Studies 35.3 (2005), 593-594.

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61 faith and overcome all impediments blocking her way. Illuminated by him, Gambara now follows the path of virtue, no longer distracted by other vain desires - by now already abandoned - and absorbs Bembo’s light from which eternal fame and true glory emanate. Immediately noteworthy is how the amorous thematic once occupying Gambara’s early poetry is here replaced by the new theme of the quest for spiritual conversion - an alternative, though nonetheless fundamental plot line of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (hereafter R VF) inextricably linked to the poet’s innamoramento. Gambara casts Bembo as her sole spiritual guide in terms especially familiar to her past Petrarchan imitation, where she conveyed the eminence of the man behind the “beautiful and radiant eyes” through the convention of light imagery most resonant with Petrarch’s depiction of Laura as a source of radiant light. While in her earlier sonnets Gambara centered on the luminosity emanating from his eyes as an uplifting force leading her to a more positive experience in love and an even deeper innamoramento, her rehearsal of the imagery here to identify Bembo - “o mia serena luce” (oh my serene light), “’1vostro raggio” (your ray), “onorato foco” (honored flame) - takes on a new, spiritual meaning as an elevating power leading to the “Ciel” (heaven). Gambara’s depiction of Bembo’s eminent virtue echoes Petrarch’s compositions that emphasize Laura’s role as the poet’s moral guide leading him to virtue.

Sonnet 351, for example, is dedicated to defining Laura’s role as

the poet’s salvific figure who uprooted every “bassio pensier” (low thought) from his heart, while in sonnet 357 Laura’s spiritual guidance is celebrated as the poet christens her his “fida et cara duce” (dear, faithful guide) - both terms repeated here in Gambara’s composition.

33 For a close reading o f Gambara and Bembo’s exchange as a dual o f Petrarchan imitation within the context o f sixteenth century interpretations o f Laura as an enabling fiction see: ibid.

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62 In part, then, Gambara is clearly drawing from Petrarch’s paradigm of casting Laura as an example of virtuous excellence in her sonnet to Bembo. The gender inversion works flatteringly towards Bembo: he is, as Laura was for Petrarch, responsible for the birth of Gambara’s own “etema fama e vera gloria” (eternal fame and true glory), while Gambara in the male Petrarchan role situates herself in the unthreatening position of a disciple to Bembo’s example. Gambara’s connotation further advances her own variation on the theme by folly liberating her relationship with Bembo - the object of her sonnet’s affection - from any resonance of an innamoramento. The narrative intrigue o f Petrarch’s love for Laura was one particularly emphasized by sixteenth century commentators of the RVF, who endowed their editions with interpretations that weighed heavily on reading Petrarch’s collected compositions as a linear narrative of love. This plot line was even further accentuated by the division o f the work into in vita (in life) and in morte (in death), which began before the sixteenth century.34 In Petrarch, the fundamental psychological conflict dominating Petrarch’s fixation on Laura is the poet’s moral and spiritual quandary in his unrealized desire to sublimate this love for a higher spiritual calling. Thus, while on the one hand certain poems of the RVF endeavor to sing of Laura as an example of all human excellence, on the other hand Petrarch continues to repent his love for her right up to the very end of the collection, as in sonnet 365, where the poet asks God’s forgiveness for his love: “I’vo piangendo i miei passati tempi / i quai posi in amar cosa mortale senza levarmi a volo” (I go weeping for my past time, which I spent in

34 For an overview o f sixteenth century editions o f the R VF see: ibid. For studies on Petrarchism in general see: Roland Greene, Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations o f the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

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63 loving a mortal thing without lifting myself in flight).35 Taken as a whole, Petrarch’s poetry envisions his personal salvation through the burning of sensual attachments while simultaneously dramatizing the impossibility of shedding such earthly connections. In this manner, no matter the eminence of the object of affection, the Petrarchan encomium intrinsically imposes certain limitations on the poet’s depiction o f his own virtue. This is precisely the avenue Gambara opens up in her sonnet to Bembo through her departure from the amorous premise of the model, the result being Gambara’s ability to celebrate not only Bembo’s virtue in a new light, but also her own. While Gambara’s sonnet seemingly sets its sights on singing of Bembo’s moral excellence, subtly, yet persuasively, she houses a declaration of her own elevated virtue in the third stanza stating: “Bassi pensieri in me non han piu loco; ogni vil voglia e spenta, e sol d’onore e di rara virtu Talma si pasce” (All base desires have ceased in me, and my soul now feeds solely on honor and rare virtue). At this point, Gambara has turned her attention from Bembo to herself as she proclaims in definitive tones that she has superseded her past state of mind once occupied with low thoughts and desires, having now dedicated herself exclusively to an honorable and virtuous existence. The novelty of Gambara’s mind-set from a Petrarchan perspective is her achievement of conversion out of love to a more virtuous state o f being: hers is not a struggle, it is a done deed. Yet, it remains a deed done thanks only to the sustained guidance and radiance of Bembo’s virtuous example, as the sonnet painstakingly delineates. In this manner, Bembo realizes that which Laura does not by lifting Gambara to a higher spiritual plane, while at the same time Gambara transcends Petrarch’s rendition by faithfully following her guide

35 Translation by Robert M. Durling, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 575.

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64 all the way to the heavens. By hinging Gambara’s transformation of self on Bembo’s superior caliber, Gambara unassumingly fashions her own virtue in equally absolute terms. Gambara sings of the other’s virtue while all the while showing us her own. One reading, in fact, does not preclude the other. An important courtly context as we turn to consider the motives behind Gambara’s shift in self-presentation in her poetry from a woman in love to an example of impeccable virtue is that of her own political experience within the court system as a ruling widow dowager. If we step back to consider Gambara’s public iconography previously discussed in this study, especially her commission of the Magdalene penitent in the desert, what becomes readily apparent is Gambara’s desire to convey her piety in all avenues of her self-representation. In fact, considering Gambara’s poetry as a creative outlet through which she was able to first handedly craft her public identity as a ruling woman greatly explicates the significant shift in thematic occupation o f her poetry out of amorous verse into her unique rendering of the quest for conversion plot-line of the RVF. Gambara’s literary persona, like the penitent Magdalene, publicly fashions her avowal to an elevated state of virtue. Through this mode of expression, Gambara is able to adeptly present herself as an icon of virtue fitting for a woman in her socio-historical position. Let us now turn to examine the sonnet Bembo wrote in response to Gambara’s composition, sent to her that same year: Quel dolce suon, per cui chiaro s’intende, quanto raggio del ciel in voi riluce, nel laccio, in ch’io gia fui, mi riconduce dopo tant’anni, e preso a voi mi rende.

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65 Sento la bella man, che ‘1nodo prende, e stringe si, che ‘1 fin de la mia luce mi s’awicina; e, chi di fuor traluce, ne rifugge da lei, ne si difende: ch’ogni pena per voi gli sembra gioco, e ‘1morir vita; ond’io ringrazio Amore, che m’ebbe poco men fin de la fasce, e ‘1vostro ingegno, a cui lodar son roco, e l’antico desio, che nel mio cuore, qual fior di primavera, apre e rinasce. That sweet sound, which clearly shows how bright a ray shines within you, now leads me back, after so many years, into the noose in which I was once caught, and renders me to you as a captive. I feel your lovely hand taking the knot and so tightening it that the end of my light seems nigh, but my soul neither flees from you nor offers any defense, for every pain it suffers for you seems rather a joy, and death becomes life. And so I thank Love, who has been my lord since my earliest days, and your fine mind, which I praise without cease, and that former l/r

desire that within my heart unfolds and is reborn like a flower in spring. If we submit Bembo’s sonnet to the discussion above regarding Gambara’s poetic selffashioning, the mirroring exercise through which Bembo responds richly expands the argument. Drawing from Gambara’s virtuous self-representation, Bembo reciprocates her gesture of appointing him as her spiritual guide by situating Gambara, in contrast, as the superior figure between the two. In Bembo’s sonnet, he describes Gambara’s “dolce 36 Translation by Cox, “Sixteenth Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy o f Laura,” 594.

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suon” (sweet sound) as his guiding force, attributes the “raggio dal ciel” (heavenly ray) to Gambara herself, and declares his dedication to praising her “ingegno” (intellect). As a result, Bembo’s sonnet sanctions the very image Gambara put forth of herself in her own sonnet as an emblem of virtue. The reverence Bembo conveys towards Gambara in his sonnet may be understood as an attitude rooted in his own particular court context, one that resonates with one of the landmark texts of sixteenth century Italy’s court culture, Castiglione’s Libro del cortegiano (1528). In Book 3 of the four part dialogue concerning the shaping o f the ideal courtier, the interlocutors turn to discuss the Lady of the Court and an elaborate debate on the role of women within the palazzo ensues. Here Castiglione puts forth women’s function vis-a-vis the courtier in terms almost parallel to those set forth by Petrarch in relation to his Laura: she is the civilizing agent who inspires her male counterpart’s cultural refinements, and to whom the courtier, in turn, is a humble •3 -7

servant.

But Bembo’s customary casting of Gambara as his own “Laura” figure reflects

his own interest in her lyric talent by situating his temporal attachment to her eminent light as contingent on the operating subjective force of the sonnet: Gambara’s “sweet sound.” In Bembo’s rendition, Gambara’s virtue is aligned with her voice, thereby praising Gambara for her honorable state o f mind in conjunction with her lyric talent. Bembo’s praise of Gambara’s lyric talent confirms the crucial role the production of poetry came to play in Gambara’s fashioning of herself as an educated and talented member of the signorial community. Recalling this similar expression of praise by the humanist community o f the fifteenth century to the learned women of the Northern Italian courtly elite discussed in the previous chapter - such as Ludovico Carbone’s

37 David Quint, “Courtier, Prince, Lady: The Design o f the Book o f the Courtier,” in The Book o f the Courtier, ed. Daniel Javitch (New York: W.W. Norton & co., 2002), 364-365.

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67 praise of Margarita Gonzaga d’Este who was “so prudent and well read that all were astounded” - we recognize Gambara’s refined courting of Bembo’s praise for her lyric skill as a continuum of this tradition. The emerging public image Gambara fashioned through her Petrarchan imitation m aybe even further illuminated by examining another sonnet she composed in 1532 for Vittoria Colonna. At the time of Gambara’s composition, the historical experiences of both Gambara and Colonna through the first decades of the sixteenth century had taken strikingly similar shape. They were members of the Italian elite aristocracy, though Gambara’s family was of the smaller feudal system of the north and thus of a lesser status to Colonna through her family’s baronial rank and lineage that connected her to the Montefeltro dynasty. Gambara and Colonna were both widowed within the first quarter of the century,

and most significantly, they were both exceedingly talented lyric poets

within the Bembist Petrarchismo tradition. Moreover, around the year 1532 both poets successfully attained national acclaim for their poetic talents, thanks in great part to their shared correspondence with Pietro Bembo, as previously discussed.39 Gambara and Colonna, however, differ substantially in the divergent themes and unique innovations put forth by their lyric productions. Around the time of Colonna’s first correspondence with Bembo in 1530, the primary occupation of her poetry, in stark contrast to Gambara’s, was that o f a devout widow dedicated to commemorating her husband’s memory in verse. Later in the 1530’s and 1540’s, this thematic evolved into a spiritual contemplation to which she remained devoted until her death in 1547. O f Gambara’s poetic oeuvre, in contrast, there are only three poems that may perhaps be attributed to

38 Vittoria Colonna was widowed in 1525 when her husband, Ferrante d’Avalos, died in battle. 39 Dionisotti, 260.

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mourning the loss of her husband in her widowhood, and, once she returns to the literary scene in 1529, she moves over a range of occasional verse dominated by public themes, a few spiritual compositions, and a pioneering twenty-seven stanza poem in ottava rima. Colonna also produced occasional and encomiastic verse in the later years of her career, and this is indeed where the two poets are at their most similar. The point worth emphasis here, however, is that both poets were meticulous at managing and shaping their public images as members of Renaissance Italy’s literary society, and it is through their unique Petrarchan innovations that they successfully fashioned these divergent literary personas.40 This very feature is brought to light in the sonnet exchange that takes place between the two poets in 1532. Gambara to Colonna Mentre da vaghi e giovanil penseri fui nutrita, or temendo ora sperando, piangendo or trista ed or lieta cantando, da desir combattuta or falsi or veri, con accenti sfogai pietosi e fieri i concetti del cor, che, spesso amando il suo mal assai piu che T ben cercando, consumava doglioso i giomi intieri. Or, che d’altri pensieri e d’altre voglie

40 For extensive studies on Colonna’s management o f her poetic persona see: Sara M. Adler, “Strong Mothers, Strong Daughters: The Representation o f Female Identity in Vittoria Colonna’s Rime and Carteggio,” Italica 11 (2000): 311-330; Abigail Brundin, “Vittoria Colonna and the Virgin Mary,” Modern Language Review 96 (2001): 61-81; Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna”; Giovanna Rabitti, “Vittoria Colonna as Role Model for Cinquecento Women Poets”.

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69 pasco la mente, a le gia care rime ho posto ed a lo stil silenzio etemo, e se, allor vaneggiando, a quelle prime sciocchezze intesi, ora il pentirmi toglie, la colpa palesando, il duol intemo. While I was once nourished by young and desirous thoughts, at times fearing, other times hoping, sometimes crying in sadness other times singing in happiness, all from a combative desire at once false and true, in aching and heavy accents I sang o f the concepts of the heart that, more often yearning for pain than good, painfully consumed entire days. Now that I have passed my mind on to other thoughts and desires, to those dear rhymes and style I have imposed eternal silence, and if I bent myself to those early follies then, while straying, how my repentance takes away, by revealing the sin, my inner grief. Colonna to Gambara Lasciar non posso i miei saldi penseri ch’un tempo mi nudir felice amando; or mi consuman, misera cercando pur quel mio Sol per altri erti senteri. Ma, tra falsi desiri e pianti veri, la cagion immortal vuol ch’obliando ogn’altra cura io viva, alfin sperando un giomo chiaro doppo tanti neri; onde l’alto dolor le basse rime

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70 move, e quella ragion la colpa toglie che fa viva la fede e ‘1 danno etemo. Infin a l’ultim’ora quelle voglie saran sole nel cor che furon prime, sfogando il foco onesto e ‘1 duolo intemo. I cannot discard my deeply rooted thoughts that once upon a time nourished me in my happy love; now they consume me as I search in misery for my Sun among strange deep paths. But between false desires and true laments the immortal cause o f things wants that I live, forgetting these cares and hoping for a bright day after so many dark ones; whereupon these low rhymes are inspired by a noble grief, and that reasoning removes my guilt that makes faith live and the harm eternal. Up until the last hour the desires that were first will remain alone in the heart, breathing out this honest flame and internal pain. Gambara’s sonnet charts the trajectory of how in the past, nourished by youthful thoughts on love, she sung of the concepts of the heart in her poetry until now, as she passes on to other thoughts and desires, she puts to silence the old style of her verse and only repents to relieve herself of the guilt of her youthful error. Here, again, we find a palpable connection between Gambara’s literary persona and her visual representation: the sonnet, like the Magdalene, is penitent in tone and posture, with a particular emphasis on remorse for amorous devotion in her past as Gambara here rejects her early poetic expressions of love. Indeed, Gambara’s emphasis appears to be on her identity as a poet, indicated by her reference to her “care rime” (dear rhymes) and “stile” (style). A further marker of Gambara’s portrayal of her poetic identity with a penitential angle is the correlation

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71 between the terms employed here to describe her early poetry centered on love with those set forth by Petrarch in reference to, and repent of, his own lyric experiments in the prefatory sonnet of the R VF. In sonnet 1, Petrarch declares his love as a “giovanile” (youthful) error, he explains how his sighs of suffering in love “nudriva” (nourished) his heart, he identifies his activity to be an act of “vaneggiar” (raving), and explains how the awareness of his error leads him to “pentirsi” (repentance) - all terms repeated in Gambara’s composition to classify her own lyric activity. More closely, Gambara’s passage to “altri pensieri e d’altre voglie” (other thoughts and desires) in juxtaposition to the jettisoning of her “care rime” (dear rhymes) and eternal silencing of her “stile” (style) in the third tercet, suggests a sweeping rejection of the enterprise o f poetry altogether. In this light, Gambara’s use of Petrarch’s prefatory sonnet to confirm her primary devotion to poetry emulates the ambiguous distance the Petrarchan model establishes between the poet and his work. While Petrarch’s opening sonnet renounces his “breve sogno” (brief dream) before he elaborately succumbs to it in the endeavor to represent it through the 365 compositions that follow, Gambara’s declared silencing o f her verse is equally at odds with her regular production of poetry subsequent to the 1529 return of public circulation o f her verse. In consideration of the fact that these post-1529 compositions were largely oriented toward distinctly political ends, as the following chapters will fully illuminate, we may understand Gambara to be referring here to her departure from lyric production as a self-serving undertaking in the Petrarchan vein. Gambara’s return to the public circulation of her verse and to the forging of her presence on the national literary landscape, if not to pursue the vocation of poetry as a primary enterprise, attests to a more politically oriented ambition: that is, to secure her status as a member of Italy’s cultural

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elite in order to strengthen her stature on the political landscape. The Italian Renaissance ruler’s engagement with the artistic community was a significant claim to power and prestige. Accordingly, Gambara’s public display of her competence to craft refined court entertainment was a way to earn her membership in the elite literary community, which in turn provided her with a further means to fashion her fitness for rule - a buttress to political power that was especially desired by Gambara in her relatively weakened position as a single female ruler over a territory she was aligned with by inheritance rather than birth. Colonna’s sonnet in reply is equally devoted to crafting her poetic identity as determined by her own unique state of mind, from which, naturally, a markedly divergent self-portrait emerges. In direct response to Gambara’s declaration of passing on to “altri pensieri e altre voglie” (other thoughts and desires) in her verse, Colonna stakes her claim on her inability to leave behind the deeply-rooted amorous thoughts that once nourished her happy state of love with her husband “quel mio Sol” (my Sun), but now consume her painful existence. Colonna acknowledges the ideal of dismissing worldly longings that may allow a bright day following her current state of darkness - the very principle suggested by Gambara’s sonnet - yet her unyielding identification of her pain as “alto” (noble) effectively trumps Gambara’s conviction. Colonna does not suffer from the “colpa” (guilt) Gambara does when she thinks of her youthful concerns because of her conviction in the nobility and honesty of her grief, which not only inspires her “basse rime” (low rhymes) but operates to “toglie[re] la colpa” (remove guilt). While Gambara concludes her sonnet in an avowal to repent in the case that she should wander into such foolish concerns again, Colonna reaffirms her dedication to breathe out this aching pain

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73 so that she may die with her heart’s early desires intact. Considering my argument above regarding the ever virtuous nature of Gambara’s self-portrait set forth through her poetic journey beyond amorous lyrics, a natural assumption to make here concerning Colonna might be that she - who moved in the opposite direction of Gambara by means of her dedication to the amorous thematic of her verse - produced a less-virtuous self-image. Such is not the case, and the very unique amorous concerns which occupy her verse throughout the 1530’s, as well as the stylistic rigor through which she sings of them, may attest to this insight. Colonna’s stance throughout her Rime amorose (love poems) was that of a widow grieving the loss of her virtuous husband with whom she shared a requited conjugal love. Here, we may see Colonna’s simultaneous adherence to and departure from the Petrarchan paradigm by fusing the sensations of love and loss while at the same time devoting her lyrics to sing of a requited, religiously sanctioned, and mature amorous rapport.41 This exact balance was very purposefully pared by Colonna by circulating only those poems written in her widowhood devoted to her husband in his death, which was followed by the suppression of the circulation of her amorous verse once the project of her Rime spirituali (spiritual rhymes) came into fruition later in the decade. The pathos through which Colonna mourns the loss of her husband followed by the spiritual devotion to which she devotes her later verse together fostered a public image o f significant virtue, and a literary model that served the female writing community for almost a century to follow. The sophisticated, and markedly divergent, re-workings of the Petrarchan paradigm by both Gambara and Colonna to suit their fashioning agendas were equally unprecedented endeavors by female lyricists in the Italian tradition. Gambara’s socio41 For Colonna’s Petrarchan innovation in her amorous verse see: Brundin, Vittoria Colonna; Cox.

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historical context as a ruling widow dowager proved a shaping influence on the reemergence o f her poetics, not only in facilitating her rise to recognition on the national literary landscape, but also in determining Gambara’s creative choices as a lyricist. Gambara’s return to the circulation o f her verse was a way to carve out a cultural space from which she reinforced her political status on multiple levels. Gambara’s innovative rehearsal o f the autobiographical slant to Petrarchan poetics allowed her to set forth a chapter in her own public “autobiography” through which she skillfully projected a literary-persona image that was complimentary to her status as a widow ruler. More broadly, we see how Gambara’s production of poetry offered her a means to participate and secure her place in the cultural circles of the day. These literary efforts point to Gambara’s fashioning herself in the tradition of the scholar-ruler first set forth by male court members, such as Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492) and even more locally by Niccolo da Correggio (1450-1508). Through her lyric output, she effectively bolstered her legitimacy for rule. Gambara was the first woman to step into this poet-ruler role, and as we continue to explore the question of how Gambara’s poetry related in a meaningful way to her historical situation as the widow dowager Countess of Correggio, we will further understand how Gambara’s production o f verse offered her not only a site for fashioning herself as an ideal ruler, but also an effective diplomatic device.

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CHAPTER3 Poetry as an Instrument of Rule: Gambara’s Diplomatic Verse to the Medici and d’Avalos Families

From Gambara’s return to the public circulation of her verse in 1529 forward, a number of her poems were designed with a specific political agenda in mind. What is more, a defining feature o f Gambara’s craft was to draw upon her political context as inspiration for the material o f this verse. In this chapter, I examine two instances in which Gambara used her poetry as an instrument of rule: first, I examine Gambara’s twentyseven stanza poem in ottava rima that conveys support for the Medici family, published in 1536; and, second, I analyze her imitation of Vittoria Colonna’s (1490-1547) Epistola poem in three sonnets to Alfonso d’Avalos (1502-1546) and his wife Maria d’Aragona (1503/5-1568), from the years 1543-1544. These two projects offer the sixteenth century literary culture the first example of a female-authored Stanze poem, as well as the first case of a female poet’s imitation of Colonna as a literary model. In the pages that follow, I explain how Gambara’s political context actuated her stylistic innovation in her poetry to the Medici and the d’Avalos families, respectively. Through this analysis, I also reveal Gambara’s skill at imparting political meaning through the themes of her poetry, as well through its style.

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76 Gambara engaged with ottava rima in her post-1529 verse, and this may be attributed to the extension o f Gambara’s mature verse beyond the traditional realm of courtly love lyric. Thematically, Gambara mastered the ability to tailor, rather than transgress, popular literary conventions, such as Petrarchan imitation, to meet her specific self-fashioning needs as a woman o f political rule. Her work with alternative, though nonetheless authorized, stylistic forms may be viewed as an extension of this craft. On a structural level, a poem scripted in ottava rima composed of a chain of stanzas offered an authorized stylistic alternative to the sonnet - a form to which traditional sixteenth century imitation of Petrarchan verse was tightly linked. The first poem Gambara composed in ottava rima in her mature verse was a four stanza meditation on the return to her native Brescia, perhaps from the year 1532 when the Gambara family was restored to power, Con quel caldo desio che nascer sole. The poem offers a suggestive moment of both this stylistic and thematic phenomenon. Gambara opens the composition by expressing her devotion to her patria in terms equal to the sentiments surrounding a reunion of two distant lovers: Con quel caldo desio che nascer sole In petto di chi toma, amando, assente, Gli occhi vaghi a vedere e le parole Dolci a scoltar del suo bel foco ardente; Con quel proprio voi, piagge al mondo sole, Fresch’acque, ombrosi colli, e te, possente Piu d’altra che T sol miri andando intomo, Bella e beta cittade, a veder tomo.

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77 With that warm desire that is accustomed to be bom in the chest of one who returns, loving and absent, returns to see the beloved eyes and to hear the sweet words of his great ardent flame. With that exact desire I return to see you, unique shores, fresh waters, shadowed hills, and to see you, beautiful and happy city, where the sun shines on you stronger than on any other. The “fresch’acque” (fresh waters) of Gambara’s Brescia point us immediately in the direction of the “Chiare, fresche, e dolci acque” (clear, fresh, and sweet waters) of Petrarch’s (1304-1374) canzone 126. Petrarch famously evoked his Vaucluse residence in this canzone, where he recreates an image of the absent Laura by reintegrating his memory of her with the natural landscape of his surroundings. As in Petrarch’s canzone, Gambara fuses amorous emotion with a mediation of idyllic scenery, but, in her politicized reshaping of the thematic, the object of Gambara’s desire is the landscape of her homeland. While Petrarch projects a reunion with Laura in the third strophe of his composition, where he hopes in the future tense that the blessed day “verra” (will come) in which his love will return “tomi” (will return), Gambara casts her return to Brescia in the definitive, realized present. Moreover, she adeptly assuages the fulfillment of her amorous longing - a satisfaction that remains sublimated and frustrated throughout Petrarch’s verse, especially in this canzone - by casting her family’s ruling domain as the object of her affection, rather than a male love interest. This prudent substitution allows Gambara to project the image of a chaste sovereign who channels her capacity, and her desire, for love through a political vein in her devotion to her family’s political sovereignty. Along these lines, Gambara next imagines a scene o f earthly paradise, which elevates her patria to a veritable Golden Age setting - perhaps as an allusion to the

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78 instrumental role Charles V (1500-1558), who was considered a modem day Augustus in his own right, played in the restoration of Gambara political power to the region.1 In the final stanza, Gambara modifies the “occhi beati” (blessed eyes) of her early verse to become here the “lochi beati” (blessed places) of her homeland: Ma perche a dir di voi, lochi beati, Ogn’alto stile saria roco e basso II carco d’onorarvi a piu pregiati Sublimi ingegni e gloriosi lasso; Da me sarete col pensier lodati, E con l’anima sempre e ad ogni passo, Con la memoria vostra in mezzo il core, Presto fia ‘1 mio potere in farvi onore. But because to sing o f you, blessed places, every high style would be humble and low, the task to honor you I leave to more worthy sublime and glorious minds; by me you will be forever honored with my thoughts and with my soul every step of the way, and with my memory of you always engraved deep in my heart, as much as it is within my power to honor you. Gambara modestly renounces her ability to properly honor such divine beauty with her low style, as Petrarch also enacts the drama of searching for proper expression o f his feelings for his beloved at the end of his canzone. Yet, where Petrarch creates an impass that keeps him in a divided state where feeling and expression stand at an incompatible distance, Gambara, in contrast, compliantly yields to her supposed lyric incapacity. She expresses her ability, if not her willingness, to control these emotions by sublimating her 1 See: Virginia Cox, publication forthcoming; Chapter 4 o f the present study.

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79 desire “in mezzo il core” (deep in my heart), while silencing her pen in the process. Gambara’s literary persona thus stands judiciously in command of not only her feelings, but also over her impulse of expression as she suggests the possibility of submission in the containment of her voice. This posture of feminine modesty and restraint complemented Gambara’s projected public image as a model of feminine virtue characteristic of her post-1529 verse. At the same time, however, she adroitly places this modest expression almost as an afterthought to the preceding display of stylistic and thematic innovation. In this position, Gambara’s projected modesty does not overshadow the display o f her lyric talent in her inventive transposition of love poetry to a politicized celebration of place. We may see how ottava rima allowed Gambara an unconventional stylistic conduit beyond the sonnet form to forge new thematic territory, while it is also clear how this creative movement related to her political role. This same innovation in the use of alternative, and authorized, lyric meter and form to convey political meaning informs Gambara’s use of ottava rima in a twenty-seven stanza poem, Quando miro la terra, ornata e bella. Gambara’s poem evolves three principal themes: she opens with a contemplation of the fleetingness of time and mortality; she then laments the moral decay of Italy’s court leaders; and lastly, she espouses the teaching and practice of virtue so as to call back to the earth the coveted Golden Age through an elevated meditation of the pastoral ideal. Gambara’s poem presents a groundbreaking convergence of elevated themes and innovative style, and it was well received by literary circles within Gambara’s lifetime, as well as after her death. This may be attributed to the elevated stylistic rigor of the work, which was also in accordance with Pietro Bembo’s (1470-1547) regulations on

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80 the genre. Bembo influenced Stanze poetry by the extensive corrections and republications to which he submitted his own poem of the genre, which was first composed in 1506. This revision process began in 1522, when Bembo modified and re­ published his Stanze with his Asolani, which he followed by further modifications through the re-publication o f the poem in his Rime in 1530,1535, and 1548 - each edition with its own unique corrections and variants. What Bembo sought, and accomplished, by repeatedly revising and republishing his Stanze was to implement Petrarch as the single model for the genre over the traditional plurality of Classical sources. Gambara’s Golden Age meditation echoes Virgilian poetry, but she generally follows the Bembist reforms by rehearsing the Petrarchan theme of the fleetingness of time at the opening of her poem, while also moving over contemporary sources in her lament o f the ailing courts. One such source was another landmark courtly text concerned with the ailing morality of the courts, Baldassare Castiglione’s (1478-1529) Libro del cortegiano (1528), which similarly espouses the teaching and practice of virtue to call back to the earth the Golden Age. The thematic sophistication on display situates the poem within Gambara’s post1529 oeuvre, and the publication of the poem by Fabrizio Luna in the index of his Vocabolario confirms its completion in 1536.3 After the Luna publication, Gambara’s poem was misattributed to Vittoria Colonna’s authorship throughout the sixteenth century and after.4 Another tension surrounding the poem is the uncertainty of its beneficiary. The hypothesis that Gambara dedicated her poem to Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574) is

2 Calitti, 128. 3 Allan Bullock, Veronica Gambara: Rime (Florence: Olschki, 1995), 37. 4 Ibid, 129.

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81 recurrent throughout her critical tradition.5 This position is problematic, however, in light of the fact that the complete poem was published in October 1536, whereas Cosimo did not come to power in Florence until January 1537. Moreover, Cosimo’s ascent to power was unexpected, as he was appointed the leader of Florence upon the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici (1510-1537). My reading suggests that there was, in fact, a connection between Gambara’s poem and the Medici family. Specifically, I read the final stanzas of the poem as an expression of Gambara’s support for the Medici family’s restoration to power in Florence in the third decade of the century. I explain my position, first, by illuminating Gambara’s political interest in supporting the Medici family’s government of Florence, and, second, by revealing how the penultimate stanza of the poem rehearses patent Medici imagery. Gambara’s association with the Medici family can be traced back to the ties her family shared with the Medici in Rome through Gambara’s older brother, Uberto.6 While Uberto was the first to bridge the Gambara family to the prominent Medici members in Rome, Gambara’s interest in fostering her tie with the Medici rule in Florence was a

5 The dedication o f the poem to Cosimo I de’ Medici first appears in print in a collection o f Gambara’s verse from 18 51. See Bullock, 31-32. Bullock also attributes the dedication o f the poem to Cosimo I de’ Medici: ibid, 155. In Gambara’s biographical tradition, the dedication o f the poem to Cosimo I de’ Medici begins with Zamboni, where he states on p. 50: “a Cosimo I gran Duca di Toscana indirizzo le bellissime ottave sopra l’instabilita della presente vita [...].” (to Cosimo I grand Duke o f Tuscany [she] addressed the beautiful octaves on the instability o f this present life), Baldassare Camillo Zamboni, Vita di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759). Later commentaries on Gambara’s life and poetry similarly attribute the poem as dedicated to Cosimo I de’ Medici. See: Antonia Chimenti, Veronica Gambara: gentildonna del rinascimento: un intreccio d ipoesia e storia (Reggio Emilia: Magis Books, 1995), 54; Clementia de Courten, Veronica Gambara: Una gentildonna del cinquecento (Milan: Casa Editrice “Est,” 1935), 35; Giovanni Macchia, “Quattro poetesse del Cinquecento,” Rivista rosminiana 31.20 (1937): 156; Claudio Vela, “Poesia in musica: Rime della Gambara e di altri poeti settentrionali,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo n ell’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno Sandal (Florence: Olschki Editore, 1989): 412; Rinaldina Russell, ed. Italian Women Writers: A BioBibliographical Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), 147. 6 Uberto prominently served in the two Medici papal courts o f the sixteenth century, beginning with his service under Pope Leo X (Giovanni de Medici, 1475-1521), and followed by his appointment by Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici, 1478-1534) to serve as governor o f Bologna in 1529.

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82 strategic political responsibility she upheld as the governing Countess of Correggio. Correggio was an independent fiefdom located in the Po river valley, where it was surrounded by the major princely dynasties of Northern Italy: to the north were the Sforza, Este, and Gonzaga courts, while to the south was the court of Florence, and more distantly that of Urbino. Given this geographic situation, Correggio maintained a longstanding defensive strategy of cultivating close alliances with these superior princely n

courts. In part, then, Gambara’s support of Medici rule in Florence was motivated by Correggio’s policy of maintaining a favorable standing with its neighboring powers. In the case o f Medici rule in the third decade of the century, we must also expand this alliance policy to include Gambara’s interest in strengthening her connection with Charles V, as it was the emperor who restored the family to power between the years 1530-1532. Gambara supported the emperor’s push to restore the Medici by sending her son Ippolito (b. 1510) to fight in the imperial forces.8 Later in the decade, Gambara further displayed her favor of Medici rule of Florence by breaking her ties with Niccolo Ridolfi, who was an active member of the anti-Medici faction that resisted the rule of the appointed Medici leader, Alessandro de’ Medici (1510-1537). Gambara had communicated with Ridolfi to advance the career of her son Gerolamo (b. 1511) in the ecclesiastic courts throughout the third decade of the century, but upon Ridolfi’s execution of a manifest attack on Medici rule, Gambara publicly denounced Ridolfi’s actions.9 She expressed this position to Ludovico Rosso, in a letter from January 1536: “Voi pensate forse, che la giunta di Monsignor Reverendis. di Ridolfi in Fiorenza 7 See Alberto Ghidini, “La contea di Correggio ai tempi di Veronica Gambara,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo n ell’Italia settentrionale: 79-98. 8 Zamboni, 50. 9 For an account o f this episode see: Felice Rizzardi, Rime e lettere di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759), 188.

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83 dovesse piacermi, ma v’ingannate di gran lunga, avendo io molte ragioni, e molte cose, che fanno desiderare il contrario” (You think, perhaps, that the arrival of Monsignor Ridolfi in Florence must please me, but you fool yourselves greatly, since I have many reasons and many factors that cause me to desire the contrary).10 Thus Gambara’s political position supported the restoration of Medici power in Florence. Let us now turn to her composition with this context in mind, and consider how Gambara imparted this political message through her literary skill. To begin, the period surrounding Lorenzo de’ Medici’s (1449-1492) rule of Florence was considered the Golden Age of Medici power. The evocation of this period by later Medici leaders, especially in the third decade of the century upon their restoration to power, allowed them to forge a link with their family’s most glorious age to reinforce their authority.11 Gambara appears to have recognized the importance of the Laurentian Golden Age to fortify contemporary Medici rule, and I suggest that her poem endeavors to build this connection in two ways. First, Gambara’s particular combination of ottava rima in a long-chain stanza composition as a thematic meditation, as opposed to the popular use of the meter in chivalric-epic narratives, was a use of the meter that was highly practiced by the literary circles of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s court. This was also practiced by Lorenzo in his own poetic activity. His poem in ottava rima, the Selve d ’amore (1492), was not only praised in Florence, but it was also celebrated by the Sforza court of Milan.

19

The most

renowned poem in the meter was the Stanze (1471) of Angelo Poliziano, which was also

10 Ibid, 188. 11 For a comprehensive examination o f Medici imagery see: Janet Cox Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 12 For a history o f ottava rima see: Floriana Calitti, Fra lirica e narrativa: storia d ell’ottava rima nel Rinascimento (Florence: Cariti, 2004). Her study centers on the lyric-descriptive (vs. chivalric-epic) use o f ottava rima throughout the sixteenth century.

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84 linked to Lorenzo de’ Medici by his dedication of the poem to Lorenzo’s court.

13

The

thematic influence o f Poliziano’s composition on Gambara’s poem will be discussed below, but here I would like to stress how the stylistic attributes of Gambara’s composition evoke a literary trend of particular Florentine origin. In this stylistic manner, Gambara’s poem imitates, and thereby celebrates, Florence’s literary heritage from the golden days of Lorenzo. The second way in which Gambara’s poem evokes the Laurentian Golden Age is through her praise of the quintessential symbol of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s rule: the laurel. Visual images linking the Medici family to the laurel color the whole of the dynastic family’s patronage activity from Lorenzo’s age forward.14 The original use of the imagery, however, took place primarily in literary works. Lorenzo adopted the laurel as a personal emblem sometime around 1459.15 Initially, the laurel served the creative purposes of allowing Lorenzo a punning illusion to his name, as well as to his activities as a poet.16 The image also linked him to the laurel’s significance as an emblem of virtue, triumph, and immortality. The poets of Lorenzo’s literary circles then began to infuse the laurel imagery with a unique political significance, mainly through the metaphor of Florence as safely protected under the protective shade of the Medici laurel tree - an obvious reference to Lorenzo’s rule of Florence. In a sonnet by Luca Pulci (1431-1470), for example, he scripts an elegy to the protective shadow the Medici laurel holds over the city: Poi sopra al Lauro posero il mio nido

13 Ibid, 16. 14 See Cox-Rearick. 15 Ibid, 19. 16 We may recall a similar inventiveness on Gambara’s part in her play with “Saint Veronica.”

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Mediceo, nato; impetro, o gentil prole, Che tomi buona l’ombra ov’io mi fido, Diamante sempre in mezzo a Palla e ‘1 Sole; Veder l’alte eccellenze, udire il grido Che il Cielo e l’Universo onora e cole, Per la virtu di sua magnificenzia Florida fronda a far fiorir Fiorenza. (emphasis mine) Then over the laurel I will set my nest, bom of the Medici. I beg, O kind-hearted children, that the shadow I trust turn fruitful - a diamond always between Pallas and the Sun: to see the high excellences, to hear the cry that the sky and universe honor and revere for the virtue of his magnificence - a florid leafage to make Florence flourish.

17

Similarly, in a sonnet by Bernardo Bellincioni (d. 1492), he places Florence safely under the shade o f the laurel: Co’ fiori in grembo un’altra donna bella Veggio, che nova Atene el mondo canta, Lieta posarsi e l’umbra della pianta, Che tantao amai in viva forma quella. (emphasis mine) With flowers in her lap I see another beautiful lady, of whom the world sings as a new Athena. I see her resting happy in the shade o f that plant which I so loved in its living form.

1R

17 Ibid, 18. 18 Ibid, 19.

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86 Lastly, in Angelo Poliziano’s famous Stanze, he directly depicts Lorenzo as the laurel under whose protection Florence rests in peace (see below). These poems, and others, formulated the topos of the “ombra” (shadow) of the Medici laurel that was charged with distinct political meaning. In Medici imagery following the period of Lorenzo, the laurel tree developed in its political significance to become an image o f regeneration, as well as a symbol o f dynastic and political continuity.19 Turning to Gambara’s penultimate stanza, we may see how Gambara’s laurel evocation bears a distinctive Medicean meaning: Dico di voi, e de 1’altera pianta felice ramo del ben nato Lauro. in cui mirando sol si vede quanta virtu risplende dal mar indo al mauro; e sotto Tombra gloriosa e santa non s’impara apprezzar le gemme o l’auro; ma le grandezze omar con la virtute, cosa da far tutte le lingue mute, (emphasis mine) I speak of you, and o f the proud plant, the happy branch from the noble bom Laurel, in whom when looking one sees how much Virtue shines from East to West; and under the glorious and saintly shade one doesn’t learn to appreciate gems or gold; rather, to ornament greatness with virtue, and so to make all tongues silent. Gambara’s stanza follows faithfully behind the image makers of the Medici court before her: she evokes the political tradition of the Medici laurel as set forth by the Florentine 19 Ibid, 235.

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87 poets of Lorenzo’s circle by offering her own variation of the “under the shade of the Medici laurel” trope. Compare, for example, Gambara’s stanza with the opening dedication to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s court by Angelo Poliziano in his Stanze: E tu, ben nato Lauro, sotto il cui velo Fiorenza beta in pace si riposa, Ne teme i venti o ‘1minacciar del celo O Giove irato in vista piu crucciosa, Accogli all’ombra del tuo santo stelo La voce umil, tremante e paurosa; O causa, o fin di tutte le mie voglie, Che sol vivon d’odor delle tuo foglie. (stanza 3, emphasis mine) And you, well bom Laurel, under whose shelter happy Florence rests in peace, fearing neither winds nor threats of heaven, nor irate Jove in his angriest countenance: receive my humble voice, trembling and fearful, under the shade of your sacred trunk; o cause, o goal of all my desires, which draw life only from the fragrance from your leaves.20 Like Pulci, Bellincioni, and especially Poliziano before her, Gambara’s laurel casts an “ombra” (shadow), and is thus political in its function. Gambara’s firm re-planting of the flourishing Medici laurel signals the return of Medici power to Florence, and it conveys her hope for the continuance of the Medici dynasty after Lorenzo de’ Medici’s example. What is more, Gambara connects the contemporary Medici ruler of Florence with the days o f Lorenzo by depicting him as the descendent o f Lorenzo de’ Medici: the “ramo”

20 David Quint, ed. and trans. The Stanze o f Angelo Poliziano (Amherst: University o f Massachusetts Press, 1979), 3.

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88 (branch) that stems from Lorenzo’s “Lauro” (laurel). Alessandro de’ Medici, the ruler of Florence from 1532 until his assassination in 1537, was the illegitimate son of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s grandson, Lorenzo II de’ Medici (1492-1519). While Alessandro could not claim a valid link to Lorenzo’s ancestry, which was an obstacle to his authority, Charles V played a crucial role in symbolically bolstering Alessandro’s legitimacy as the rightful Medici Duke of Florence. The emperor, in collaboration with the Medici Pope Clement VII, bestowed a hereditary dukedom on Alessandro in 1532, and later, in 1536, he gave his own daughter, Margaret o f Austria (1522-1586), to Alessandro in marriage.

01

Gambara’s imagery thus evokes Alessandro’s status as it was legitimized by Charles V. On a large scale, the emperor was seeking to stabilize Medici control of Florence from the time of his restoration of Medici rule forward, and Gambara’s expression of her hope for the continuation of the Medici dynasty under the shadow, and in the spirit, of Lorenzo’s example conveys her support for Charles V’s cause. Thus Gambara’s poem reinforces the authority of Medici rule of Florence by forging the link between the current government and the Laurentian Golden Age, while it also alludes to Charles V ’s backing of Medici power by envisioning Alessandro de’ Medici as the hereditary Medici duke. Through these devices, Gambara’s poem endeavors not only to fashion herself in the political favor of the Medici family, but also to advance her standing with Charles V. Gambara concludes her composition with epideictic rhetoric that was characteristic of her mature verse: Dietro a l’orme di voi, dunque, venendo, Ogni basso pensier post’ho in oblio; Seguiro la virtu, chiaro vedendo 21 Natalie R. Tomas, The M edici Women (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 150-151.

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89 Esser se non quest’un dolce desio Fallace ogn’altro, e cosi non temendo O nemica fortuna o destin rio Staro con questa, ogn’altro ben lassando, L’anima e lei mentre ch’io viva amando. As I walk behind your footsteps, I have placed in oblivion each low thought, I will follow Virtue, seeing clearly that apart from this one sweet desire, all others are fallacious, and thus, not fearing bitter fortune or cruel destiny, I will stay with virtue, leaving aside every other good, loving while in life the soul and her [Virtue]. Gambara employs her final stanza as an occasion to circuitously fashion her own honorable image by expressing her commitment to a life of virtue. We may recall this self-fashioning device in Gambara’s sonnet to Pietro Bembo (see Chapter 2), where she similarly declares: “Bassi pensieri in me non han piu loco; ogni vil voglia e spenta, e sol d’onore e di rara virtu l’alma si pasce” (All base desires have ceased in me, and my soul now feeds solely on honor and rare virtue). Here, however, Gambara is professing her devotion to Virtue itself, and the source o f virtue in her poem is political: that is, the example set by Lorenzo de’ Medici’s rule. Thus Gambara adopts the image o f the Medici laurel for her own self-fashioning purposes. Gambara’s avowal to Virtue affirms her commitment in her political role to model her rule after Lorenzo’s eminent age, and, in doing so, she enhances her own authority as a pious, and chaste widow ruler. As discussed above, Gambara’s poem was published in the appendix of Luna’s Vocabolario in 1536. Also included in the appendix was the only other female poet of the

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90 collection, Vittoria Colonna. She was linked to an equally unique composition in the publication: her Epistola, which was a letter-poem in terza rima written to her husband during his absence at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512. Colonna’s Epistola had not publicly circulated until its appearance in Luna’s publication, as Colonna was known to have suppressed the public viewing of her early amorous works, especially on her husband when he was alive. Luna’s publication of Colonna’s poem, and Gambara’s inclusion therein, may have offered Gambara access to the unique composition. Another possible source for Gambara’s access to the poem may have been Alfonso d’Avalos, during his famous visit to Correggio in 1530. D’Avalos was a poet himself, and considering Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) accompanied him for his visit to Correggio, Gambara likely engaged d’Avalos and Ariosto in a literary as well as a political capacity. Gambara appears to have been knowledgeable of Colonna’s poem. We will now turn to Gambara’s imitation of Colonna’s Epistola in a series of sonnets composed for members of Colonna’s family, Alfonso d’Avalos and his wife Maria d’Aragona, within the years 1543-1544. I consider Gambara’s ottava rima poem to provide a compelling example from her mature verse o f how she used her literary skill to achieve a diplomatic end: in this case, to fashion herself in the favor of the Medici family, and with Charles V as well. I suggest that Gambara celebrated the Medici family by stylistically imitating a lyric trend from the age o f Lorenzo de’ Medici, as well as by echoing Medici imagery in her thematic laud of Lorenzo’s rule. Gambara’s use of her poetic skill toward a diplomatic end similarly provides the impulse behind her sonnets for the d’Avalos family. What is even more novel here, however, is Gambara’s imitation of a female lyricist through this

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91 process. The imitation, as well as the advancement, of one female writer by another female writer was unprecedented in the Italian tradition, and we may look to Gambara’s political context as the motivation behind her posturing towards Colonna. As we have previously seen, Colonna was linked by birth and marriage to powerful political families connected to Neapolitan, Roman and Imperial powers. Her status as Gambara’s superior in this political context informs Gambara’s posture of deference towards her contemporary. What is more, while Colonna did not retain ruler dowager status as Gambara did upon her husband’s death in 1525, she nevertheless operated with political authority within these circles: Colonna was influential in serving as an intermediary between the Colonna family and the papal court of Pope Clement VII (1478-1534) in the 1540’s, while she also played a crucial role in the advancement of Pietro Bembo to his Cardinal title in 1539.22 Thus similar to Gambara’s public status, though on a less overt scale, the letterati of the day, particularly Pietro Bembo, approached Colonna as a talented lyricist and as a political figure within this exclusive network of regional and imperial powers. Correspondingly, the correlation Gambara sought to foster with Colonna shared an interest in both her literary fame as well as her political status. Fittingly, Gambara drew upon her literary skill to broadcast her reverence for her contemporary: O de la nostra etade unica gloria, Donna saggia, leggiadra, anzi divina, A la qual reverente oggi s’inchina Chiunque e degno di famosa istoria:

22 See: Brundin; Carlo Dionisotti, “Appunti sul Bembo e su Vittoria Colonna,” in Miscellanea Augusto Campana, ed. Rino Avesani et al. (Padua: Antenore, 1981), 273.

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92 Ben fia etema di voi qua giu memoria, Ne potra il tempo con la sua ruina Far del bel nome vostro empia rapina, Ma di lui porterete alma vittoria. II sesso nostro un sacro e nobil tempio Dovria, come gia a Palla e a Febo, farvi, Di ricchi marmi e di finissim’oro, E, poiche di virtu sete Fesempio, Vorrei, Donna, poter tanto lodarvi Quanto vi riverisco, amo, ed adoro. O unique glory of our present age!/ Lady of wisdom, graceful and divine,/ to whom all who are worthy of remembrance/ will bow today in deepest reverence./ Your memory here below will be eternal,/ nor can old Time himself will ruinous hand/ wreak dire destruction of your lovely name:/ over him you will win great victory./ Our sex should raise to you a noble temple/ as in the past to Pallas and to Phoebus,/ built of rich marble and of finest gold./ And since you are a model of all virtue,/1 wish, Lady, that I could sing your praises/ as much as I revere, love, and adore you. Gambara’s sonnet praises Colonna as a wise and talented, almost divine example of virtue. While she deferentially suggests to the members of her sex that they erect a temple in Colonna’s honor in the tradition of those to Pallas or Apollo, it is in actuality Gambara’s sonnet that fortifies Colonna’s “monumental” status as the female Apollo of

23 Translation in Mary Prentice Lillie, Laura Anna Sortoni, eds. Women Poets o f the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Ithaka Press, 1997), 29.

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93 the Italian literary tradition. Gambara was the first female poet to posit Colonna as a literary model within her lifetime, and the appearance of her sonnet in anthologies throughout the second half of the sixteenth century set in motion the tradition of female poets paying tribute to Colonna for her exemplary poetics after her death in 1547.24 Beyond Gambara’s sonnet, a further enterprise on Gambara’s part to evince her support o f Colonna was her commission of the Correggio scholar Rinaldo Corso (1525-1582) to compile a collection of Colonna’s spiritual verse to which he provided his own commentary in 1541.

The manuscript, which was published in 1543, provided the first

published commentary o f a living female author’s verse, while equally pioneering was the project’s commission by a female patron. Gambara naturally gained in her own literary repute by her association with Colonna, especially as Colonna’s prestige continued to advance the female poet’s favorable position within cultural circles. More immediate to Gambara’s interest, however, was to celebrate and advance Colonna - the figure who made the d’Avalos family famous on the national literary landscape - to fashion herself in the family’s political favor. Alfonso d’Avalos was appointed to the command of Charles V’s imperial army upon the death of Colonna’s husband (and his cousin) Ferrante d’Avalos in 1525. After numerous military victories, he was awarded with the Order o f the Golden Fleece, and he was appointed the governor of Milan by

24 For example, the sixteenth century writings o f Lucia Bertani dell’Oro, Arcangela Tarabotti, Lucrezia Marinella, Maddalena Campiglia, among others. See: Brundin; Virginia Cox, “Women Writers and the Canon in Sixteenth Century Italy: The Case o f Vittoria Colonna,” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Modern Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, eds. Pamela Joseph Benson, Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University o f Michigan Press, 2005): 14-31; Giovanna Rabitti, “Vittoria Colonna as Role Model for Cinquecento Women Poets,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (London: Legenda, 2000): 478-497. 25 For the Corso manuscript see: Monica Bianco, “Rinaldo Corso e il ‘Canzoniere’ di Vittoria Colonna,” Italique, Poesie italienne de la Renaissance 1 (1998): 35-45; “Le due redazioni del commento di Rinaldo Corso alle rime di Vittoria Colonna,” Studi difilologia italiana 56 (1998): 271-295; Brundin; Chiara Chinquini, “Rinaldo Corso editore e commentatore delle Rime di Vittoria Colonna,” Aevum 73 (1999): 669696.

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Charles V. D’Avalos and his wife, Maria d’Aragona, herself the niece of King Ferdinand II (1452-1516) of Naples, cultivated high culture at their court in both the visual and literary arts, and Alfonso was known as a man of letters as well as arms. In addition to Gambara’s desire to build her political association with this powerful family, Gambara also endeavored to foster her tie with d’Avalos as a means to strengthen her connection with Charles V - a political ambition that dominated Gambara’s diplomacy. The cultivation of Gambara’s tie with d’Avalos also held the aim of securing her son Ippolito’s (b. 1510) military career in Charles V ’s imperial army, which is made evident in this letter Gambara composed for d’Avalos in 1540: Accetti dunque l’animo mio, il quale sara ben sempre ardito e pronto a ricevere, e ricompensare quanti favori, e quante grazie ponno far tutti i Re del mondo insieme. E per non fastidirla tanto, mi rimetto a quel di piu, che le dira M. Michele; pregandola ancora che si degni non solamente di ascoltarlo volentieri, ma di tenere memoria delle cose del Sig. Ippolito mio figliuolo, tanto servitore di V. E. quanto ella medessima sa, alia quale bacio le mani, desiderando felice fine a tutti gli altri suoi desideri. Accept then my soul, which will always be strong and ready to receive and compensate as many favors and as many graces as all the kings in the world can offer together. And to not disturb you too greatly, I entrust myself to whatever more will tell you M. Michele; asking you again not only to kindly listen to him, but to keep in your memory Signore Ippolito my son, great servant to Your Excellence, as much as you know, I kiss your hand, wishing a happy conclusion to all o f your desires.

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95 Gambara’s initiative indeed helped situate Ippolito within the Marchese del Vasto’s command, as he fought in d’Avalos’ ranks throughout the years 1543-1544.26 Thus, Gambara’s sonnets to d’Avalos functioned not only to strengthen her political bond with the powerful family, and with the emperor in turn, but they also provided an effective means to fulfill her promise to “ricompensare” (compensate) d’Avalos’ political favor in the employment of her son. Gambara’s three sonnets for Alfonso d’Avalos and Maria d’Aragona stand out for their amorous theme, which remains on the periphery of Gambara’s mature verse. Gambara’s sonnets relate the domestic drama surrounding d’Aragona’s suffering in the absence of d’Avalos while at battle between the years 1543-1544. Gambara’s anguished tone in these sonnets, as well as her center on the domestic setting and her exclusive narrative focus on the feminine perspective of love and absence, are discernible features that call forth Colonna’s Epistola. The Epistola was a ground-breaking feminine reffaming o f traditionally male-authored epistolary narratives that express a first-person feminine voice. Colonna primarily imitates the first example of the genre, Ovid’s (43 B.C.E.-17 A.D.) Heroides (5 B.C.E.): a collection of fictitious letters written by mythological women to the famous lovers who abandoned them in which they re-narrate the stories of these famous heroes from a perspective of suffering and neglect. A more contemporary example of the genre was offered by Niccolo da Correggio’s (1450-1508) letter narrative, where he supposes the voice of his wife in a lament on the tragedy of war during his imprisonment by the Venetians in 1482-1483.27 Colonna’s work thus presents

26 See Clementia de Courten, Veronica Gambara: Una gentildonna del cinquecento (Milan: Casa Editrice “E s t 1935). 27 For an excellent analysis o f Colonna’s Epistola see: Carlo Vecce, “Vittoria Colonna: il codice epistolare della poesia femminile,” Critica letteraria 21 (1993): 3-34.

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96 the first epistolary narrative in the Italian tradition that aligns feminine authorship behind first person feminine expression, and Gambara’s engagement with this model upholds her image o f Colonna as an exemplar projected in her sonnet discussed above: Gambara not only sang of Colonna as a literary role model, but she actively engaged her in this role. Gambara’s sonnets to the d’Avalos family operate on a triangular narrative framework where she stands in the authorial position to sing of another couple’s love. Gambara had written love poetry by proxy in two earlier instances of her mature verse, to Pietro Bembo and Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), respectively, in consolation of the deaths of their lady loves. A comparative glance to one of these earlier instances may further elucidate the distinct features of Gambara’s sonnets to d’Avalos that indicate a Colonna imitation. Let us consider Gambara’s composition to Bembo on the occasion of the death of his love interest, Morosina, composed in 1536: Quella donna gentil, ch’amaste tanto Mentre fu ‘n terra, or nel Cielo sciolta Dal grave incarco vive, ed indi ascolta I sospir vostri e l’angoscioso pianto. Di voi si duole e cosi dice: “Ahi, quanto Con la tua vita, solo a pianger volta, Turbi ‘1mio stato e la mia pace molta, E questo viver mio felice e santo! Io non t’amai perche ‘1mio bene odiassi, Ne in man ti dei de la mia vita ‘1 freno Perch’il frale di me solo pregiassi;

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Dunque asciuga le lagrime che ‘1 seno Ti bagnan sempre, e l’alma, che ‘n Ciel stassi, Ama piu che non festi il suo terreno!” That lovely lady that you loved so much while she lived on this earth, now lives in heaven free o f life’s heavy burdens, and there she listens to your sighs and your anguished cry. She grieves for you and so she says: “Ah, how many times with your life turned only to crying you disturb my state and my great peace and this saintly and happy living of mine! I did not love you because you hated on my good, nor in your hands I gave you the brake on my life because you valued only my fragile part [my body]; thus dry your tears that forever bathe your chest, and love more the soul that is waiting for you in heaven so that you no longer contemplate its earthy existence.” Gambara’s sonnet is consolatory and, as befits its beneficiary, strictly Petrarchan in its imitation. The opening line lifts from Petrarch’s sonnet 91 written to comfort a friend (perhaps his brother) in the loss of his lady love, beginning La bella donna che contanto amavi (The beautiful lady whom you loved so much). Next, the heart of Gambara’s sonnet engages in the trope o f the beloved speaking in death and instructing him in mourning, along the lines o f Petrarch’s sonnet 279, Se lamentar augelli, o verdi fronde, where Laura’s speech is inspired as a response to Petrarch’s “sospir” (sighs), she speaks “con pietade” (with pity), and conveys her happiness in the afterlife so as to convince him not to cry for her: “di me non pianger tu” (do not cry for me). Yet, where Petrarch speaks o f himself in his verse - albeit in a highly manipulated and fictional way - to the effect that his literary persona supplies the sonnet’s topic, Gambara establishes a new dynamic

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98 between artist and subject by cleaving the two apart. Gambara is not experiencing the love and loss of which her sonnet sings. She is, instead, distant and detached as the sonnet’s impartial artist, and it is from this remote authorial perspective that Gambara modulates an emotional distance from the amorous intrigue. This triangular narrative structure erases any trace of gender on Gambara’s part, as she transfers the codified roles of the male Petrarchan sufferer and the enlightened feminine Laura to Bembo and Morosina, respectively. Moreover, Gambara expertly balances the male/female interaction as Morosina eases Bembo’s pain in her wisdom, which neutralizes the emotional tension with which the sonnet began. Gambara’s rendition evolves the Petrarch-in-life/Laura-in-death exchanges to render the discourse complimentary to both genders: she circumvents the notion of a weakened male Bembo by having Morosina’s feminine “wisdom” stem from Bembo’s own Neoplatonic ideology. This offers not only consolation to Bembo, but also a flattering allusion to his own doctrine. Most significantly, Gambara’s novel authorial perspective allowed her to sing of Petrarchan love and loss in a manner that evaded any display of a first-person amorous intrigue with a male love interest - a posture that effectively protected her well-crafted public image as a chaste widow. This same tri-part narrative structure informs the framework o f two sonnets Gambara wrote to d’Avalos, where she recites the amorous intrigue surrounding his absence from his wife while at battle. The first sonnet of the series follows: La dove or d’erbe adoma ambe le sponde II bel Sebeto, e le campagne infiora, Amarilli gentil, che v’ama e adora,

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99 Tal spesso dice, al mormorar de l’onde: “Deh! perche, lassa! agli occhi miei s’asconde L’altero sguardo ch’oggi ‘1mondo onora? E perche ‘1 fier desio, che m ’innamora, Cresce coi fiori e con le nove fronde? E ‘1mio Davalo, forse intento sempre Con l’armi e con l’ingegno a render vano II nemico furor, di me non cura?” Cosi, piena d’amor e di paura, La bella donna in disusate tempre Si strugge del star vostro a lei lontano. There where now the green plants adorn the banks of the beautiful river Sebato, and the countryside flowers with Amaryllis, which you love and adore, she often speaks to the murmur o f the waves: “Oh, why is that proud glance that the world honors hidden from my eyes? And why does that bold desire that bums with love in me grow with the flowers and with the new leaves? Perhaps my d’Avalos, forever intent with arms and genius to drive the enemy away, does not care for me?” In this manner, full of love and fear, the beautiful woman is anguished about your state while you are far away. In contrast to the balanced gender dynamic of the sonnet to Bembo just examined, here Gambara adopts Colonna’s distinctly feminine narrative perspective in her emphasis on the plight of d’Aragona: that is, her confinement to the domestic front during her husband’s absence at battle. The thematic novelty of Colonna’s Epistola, which is

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100 rehearsed here by Gambara to great effect, is her exposure of the feminine experience of war. She expresses the feelings that she, and all women, feel in thinking o f themselves in a world of war: “Noi, timide nel cor, meste nel ciglio semo per voi; e la sorella il ffatre, la sposa il sposo vuol, la madre il figlio” (But left behind, we, fearful and sad, worry for you: the sister wants the brother, the bride the bridegroom, and the mother her son). The gender framework of Gambara’s narrative thus weighs heavily on the femininity of speech. D’Aragona is the only party allowed a voice, while Gambara serves as a scribe by translating d’Aragona’s inner-most thoughts and feelings into direct discourse. Correspondingly, d’Avalos stands in an exclusive listening, and silent, capacity. Another distinctive feature approximating Gambara’s sonnet to Colonna’s work is the epistolary machination of the narrative. Gambara relates d’Aragona’s setting and emotions to d’Avalos, the sonnet’s addressee, denoted in the “a lei” (to you) of the final line. Gambara thus positions herself as an intermediary between her sonnet’s two subjects (as opposed to the stance of the distant artist capturing an exchange taking place on its own previously displayed). In doing so, Gambara affects the interaction of d’Aragona and d’Avalos by bridging communication between them. Where Gambara remained impartial in her distance from the Bembo-Morosina exchange, here her sympathies align with d’Aragona, and she even inescapably alludes to her personal familiarity with the drama of the absent husband at war as a consort and subsequent widow to a military general in her own life. The emotional propinquity Gambara methodically engenders with her subjects, in contrast to the distance distinctive to her Bembo sonnet, allows the redolence of an intimate connection with the d’Avalos family to seep through the sonnet. Through this posture, Gambara fashions herself on familial terms with the couple. Yet, Gambara’s

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101 intimacy is flatteringly modulated by her consummate performance of Colonna’s poetics to foster the connection. Gambara’s three sonnets collectively formulate a narrative sequence in accordance with Colonna’s three-part narrative structure informing her Epistola. In the above sonnet’s prefatory position, Gambara draws on the question that frames Colonna’s discourse: “la vostra gran virtu s’e dimostrata d’un Ettor, d’un Achille; ma che fia questo per me, dolente, abbandonata?” (Your great virtue makes you a Hektor or an Achilles, but what does it mean for me, weak and abandoned?). Equally, d’Aragona weighs her husband’s departure in battle against his love for her in the third tercet, while Gambara suspends resolution to the incompatibility of war and marriage through the sequence of d’Aragona’s unanswered questions. The next sonnet in Gambara’s sequence mirrors the central meditation of Colonna’s Epistola, where she turns her thoughts to imagining the troubles facing her husband in battle: “Sempre dubbiosa fu la mente mia [...] ma io, misera me! sempre pensava l’ardito tuo valor, l’animo audace, con che s’accorda mal fortuna prava” (My mind was always doubtful [...] but I, miserable me, thought always of your ardent valor and audacious soul, which does not agree well with fortune). Correspondingly, Gambara captures d’Aragona’s state of distress in repeating her thoughts of abandonment and doubt from the previous sonnet, while adding a new layer o f suffering to her protracted lament through a repetition of the word “pain” in its even distribution throughout the sonnet: Se lungi dagli amati e cari lumi De la bella Amarilli in doglia e ‘n pianto, Signor, sempre vivete, ella altrettanto

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102 Sparge per voi dagli occhi amari fiumi, E cio che mira le par ombre e fumi Oscuri ed atre, e spesso dice: “Ahi! Quanto Offendi ‘1 nostro amor pudico e santo E ‘1 viver mio col tuo dolor consumi! Non basta ben che per mia do glia etema Anzi tempo di vita ha il Cielo avaro Tolto il mio dopo te sommo diletto? Pero se m ’ami, e se mia doglia intema Cerchi addolcir, pon freno al duolo amaro, Che da te solo ogni conforto aspetto”. (emphasis mine) If far away from the beloved and dear eyes of the beautiful Amaryllis you live, Signor, in pain and grief, she equally spills forth from her eyes bitter rivers for you, and that which she looks at appears to her as obscure shadows and black rivers, and often she says: “Ah, how much you offend our modest and sacred love and how much you consume my life with your sorrow! Is it not enough in my eternal anguish to have had the bitter heaven take from me my highest pleasure, second to you? If you love me, and if you wish to sweeten my eternal suffering, put an end to bitter sorrow, since I expect comfort from you alone. Gambara’s second sonnet rehearses the distinct doubling device from Colonna’s Epistola. Colonna’s model elaborates an intricate doubling of her pain as she laments the absence of not only her husband, but also her father, Fabrizio Colonna (1450-1520), in the same battle: “Non credeva un Marchese ed un Fabrizio, l’un sposo e l’altro padre, al mio

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103 dolore fosse si crudo e dispietato inizio” (I did not believe that a Marquis and a Fabrizio, one a husband the other a father, could be so cruel to my pain and unfortunate beginning). In Gambara’s sonnet, history and fiction are doubly implied through her alignment of d’Aragona with Colonna. On the one hand, Gambara positions d’Aragona to stand in the precise bearing of Colonna’s literary persona in her Epistola: both women consider themselves on the brink o f widowhood. Yet, seeing as Colonna’s widowhood had already transpired by the date o f Gambara’s sonnets, she brings the historical Colonna to the page as well. Through this layering, Gambara frames the universal drama of war and potential death as a real-life crisis with a particularly tragic history within the d’Avalos family, especially for the family’s women. In fact, d’Aragona is especially linked to Colonna in experiencing the tragedy, and the glory, of war, as the evocation of Ferrante d’Avalos’ death recalls at the same time the subsequent promotion of her own husband to general of the imperial army in his place. Through this alignment, Gambara echoes another key insight expressed by Colonna’s Epistola: that is, that men fundamentally gain in repute at times of war, even from tragedy, while women stand to bear the torment of idleness as they wait for news o f their return: “Non noce a voi seguir le dubbie imprese, m ’a noi, dogliose, afflitte, ch’aspettando semo da dubbio e da timor offese” (Risky endeavors of war do not harm men; but we women - afflicted and forsaken - are hurt by fear and anxious care alike). In Gambara’s sonnet, the advancement of Alfonso d’Avalos to take Ferrante’s position upon his death translates to d’Aragona standing in Colonna’s historical place to bear the burden of fearing her own husband’s death in battle. Here, d’Aragona can only wait, as Gambara illustrates by the pungent “aspetto” (I wait) at the sonnet’s conclusion.

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The third and final movement of Colonna’s Epistola is to frame the plight of women at times of war as its own war-like experience. Colonna uses this configuration to raise women to a heroine status in their own right, while she also establishes an unfound equality among the sexes: “a quel che arrisca Tun l’altro s’arrisca; equali in vita equali siano in morte, e cio che avien a lui a lei sortisca” (for that which one risks, so too the other risks; equal in life equal they are in death, and that which happens to him is also given as fate to her). In this early example of Colonna’s literary voice, we may detect the qualities that will later characterize her projected literary persona: if we recall Colonna’s sonnet to Gambara previously discussed, Colonna stands in defiance o f any notions of feminine weakness in succumbing to her suffering. Accordingly, Gambara admiringly posits d’Aragona as a heroine of infinite strength in the final sonnet of the series: Donna gentil, che cosi largamente De le doti del Ciel foste arricchita, Che per mostrar la forza sua infinita Fece voi cosi rara ed excellente: Fuggan da vostra altera e real mente Tutti i pensier eh’a darvi oscura vita Fosser bastanti, perche omai finita E la guerra di lui troppo possente. E se finor con mille oltraggi ed onte V’ha mostrato Fortuna il fiero volto Stato e sol per provar l’alto valore Che ‘n voi soggioma; or la serena fronte

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Vi volge, e, del suo error pentita molto, Quanto fu il mal tanto fia il ben maggiore. Noble lady, who is so enriched with the generosity of heaven, which, in order to demonstrate its infinite strength made you so rare and excellent. Let flee from your proud and noble mind all the thoughts that were enough to give you a clouded life, since now the powerful war with him is over. And if until now Fortune has shown you its fierce face with thousands of offenses, it was only to prove the high valor that reigns in you; now the serene face of Fortune will turn itself to you, and Fortune having repented for her error now makes it so that however much the bad was so much more will be the good. In this sonnet, Gambara shifts out of her role as intermediary between the couple and directly addresses d’Aragona. She follows Colonna’s lead in reframing the drama of war as a trial of feminine valor, and then employs her epideictic rhetorical devices to raise d’Aragona to the ranks of Colonna’s heroism, where d’Aragona stands as a supreme example of virtue. We have seen such rhetoric from Gambara in her encomiastic poetry to prominent male figures, while the examples of such posturing by Gambara to women are exclusive to the d’Avalos family (Vittoria Colonna and Maria d’Aragona). Viewing collectively Gambara’s female authorship, her imitation of the feminine model offered by Colonna, and her reverential address to Maria d’Aragona, there is in fact a certain level of feminist consciousness on display. This exceptional nexus of female agency is charged with both a political as well as a literary significance. Gambara’s address to Maria d’Aragona testifies to the political power held by consorts of ruling families discussed in the first chapter of this study - a nod to the influence of consorts within the political

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106 realm that naturally stemmed from Gambara’s intimate familiarity with such a role from her own experience. What is more, Gambara’s sonnet illustrates an important point about her particular operation within this network: Gambara did not confine herself to addressing male political figures, nor to adopting a male lyric voice to participate within the political sphere. On the contrary, Gambara’s sonnet exhibits her vision, as well as her skill, to innovatively play off her gender in both a political as well as a literary capacity in her double appeal to the women of the d’Aragona family. Moreover, Gambara’s imitation of a female lyricist in a literary address to a female political figure was not only apposite, but it was utterly pioneering. In part, Gambara was taking part in the longstanding tradition o f dedicating poetic works to women of importance as gateways to the heart of a male ruler, which was practiced by male poets and humanists in court circles from the fifteenth century forward.

98

At the same time, however, Gambara is heralding the

newfound standing of the female poet on the sixteenth century literary landscape as a creative model in her own right. Viewing these features collectively, we see how Gambara’s sonnet signals her exclusive standing at the crossroads of politics, culture, and gender in sixteenth century Italy. Gambara’s use of poetry as a diplomatic device held significant implications for her identity as a lyricist on the national landscape. Gambara’s mature verse was largely outwardly directed to prominent figures for explicit political purposes, and we may see how Gambara developed a mastery for ensuring a welcome reception of her verse. Gambara adapted her lyric voice to literary models as they were compatible with, and

28 See Diego Zancani, “Writing for Women Rulers in Quattrocento Italy: Antonio Comazzano,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society: 57-74. Zancani states on p.62: “The dedication o f poetic works to women o f importance is on the same level as the dedication to their male counterparts. Both can be ‘gateways’ to the heart o f the ruler.”

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107 flattering to, her audience: for example, her imitation of the Florentine poets to convey support for the Medici family; her Petrarchan imitation in her compositions to Bembo; her pioneering imitation of Colonna’s Epistola to the d’Avalos family; and, as we shall examine in the following chapter, Gambara’s use of Virgilian verse in her poetry on Charles V. Even more, Gambara expertly vacillated across gender lines in the seamless transformation of her lyric voice to male and female poetic models alike. These examples illuminate how the writing of poetry yielded Gambara an effective means to integrate the realms o f culture and politics across gender lines, which Gambara pursued for cultural as well as political gain.

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Chapter 4 Gambara’s Imperial Sonnets on Charles V

For the final chapter of this study of how Veronica Gambara’s socio-historical position as the ruling widow dowager of Correggio impelled the shift in her poetic voice from amorous courtly verse to publicly circulated and politically themed compositions, I will examine Gambara’s collection of sonnets centered on the celebration of Charles V (1500-1558) in the third decade of the sixteenth century. Gambara’s imperial verse projects the voice o f a solemn and erudite ruler, vigilantly invested in the expression of the universal themes surrounding Charles V’s developing empire, and intent on harmonizing the eminence of her subject with her own grave and elevated lyric style. The analysis to follow will delineate the creative framework informing Gambara’s imperial verse - that is, Gambara’s use o f Charles V ’s contemporary imperial concetto as it circulated throughout the Northern Italian court atmosphere; her use of the examples of Roman history in her select alignment of the emperor with Augustus; and her thematic and stylistic emulation of the classical literary model offered by Virgil (70-19 B.C.E.). In this context, I also explore the multi-layered self-fashioning stratagem underpinning Gambara’s use o f such elevated intellectual material in her verse. As will be evident, the sonnets set out to fashion Gambara’s alliance with the emperor by celebrating his eminence with the most elevated refinement and delivery, while at the same time functioning as a conduit to display her Classical education, and thereby further signaling her fitness for rule.

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109 Gambara’s collection of sonnets in celebration of Charles V m aybe understood as a crucial component of her long-standing campaign to cultivate and maintain the emperor’s political alliance. Gambara sought imperial protection for her territory as the governing Countess o f Correggio, while in a larger context she was also linked to her family’s need for Charles V’s Spanish alliance to protect their Bresica territory from Venetian invasion once Venice allied with France in the second decade of the century. This threat harkened back to Gianfrancesco Gambara’s (d. 1511) betrayal of Venice in 1509, and his subsequent service in the King of France’s army certainly required that the next generation of Gambara rulers, including Veronica and her brothers, recover some substantial ground with the Spanish Charles V. Gambara sought to foster her alliance with the emperor from all available angles throughout her rule of Correggio: in addition to attending Charles V’s imperial coronation ceremony in Bologna, she hosted personal visits from the emperor and realized a patronage cycle that celebrated Charles V ’s magnificence in a manner that forever imprinted the emperor’s presence on Correggio’s landscape. Moreover, she utilized her literary skill to fashion herself in the favor of highranking members in Charles V ’s imperial army, such as Alfonso d’Avalos (1502-1546), as we just examined. Collectively, Gambara’s endeavors proved successful indeed, as upon Charles V’s two visits to Correggio he established an official alliance with Gambara and situated Correggio under his security.1 Beyond Gambara seeking the emperor’s political backing of her rule o f Correggio, she was also taking measures to acquire his support in the appointment o f her son Ippolito into service with the imperial army. Ippolito (b. 1510) began his military career at the beginning of the third decade o f the 1 Baldassare Camillo Zamboni, Vita di Veronica Gambara (Brescia: Rizzardi, 1759), 69; Alberto Ghidini, “La contea di Correggio ai tempi di Veronica Gambara,” in Veronica Gambara e la poesia del suo tempo nell ’Italia settentrionale, eds. Cesare Bozzetti, Pietro Gibellini, Enno Sandal (Florence: Olschki, 1989), 84.

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110 century, at the same time as the appointment of Gambara’s brother Brunoro in the imperial army. Nonetheless, the efforts set forth by Gambara to promote Ippolito’s career throughout the decade in both her letter correspondence and her poetry suggests this was a vacillating appointment in need of careful attention. Thus Gambara owed a great deal to the emperor in light of his favorable political treatment of Correggio as well as of her family. Her poetry in celebration o f his magnificence may be understood, then, as a gesture of gratitude to his benevolence. Even more, these poems would have also functioned as a diplomatic device to hold strong the emperor’s friendly political treatment over the years. Perhaps most significantly, Gambara’s alliance with the emperor held implications for her reputation as a ruler on the national landscape. As this study argues, Gambara’s status as a widow in a position of rule necessitated her continual public display of the qualities that legitimized her rule - a campaign within which Gambara’s poetry played a central role. This stratagem indeed factors into Gambara’s poetry on Charles V in more than one way. On a large scale, while the sonnets endeavor to sing the praises of the emperor, they concurrently put on public display Gambara’s personal ties with his power, which in turn made public a political connection that effectively bolstered and legitimized her own authority. Even more, Gambara’s sonnets on Charles V drew heavily from Classical material that evinced her educational background rooted in studia humanitatis - an authentic sign of Gambara’s preparedness for political rule and a marker of her status as a member of the Northern Italian courtly learned elite. As we will see below, Gambara’s sonnets demonstrate her humanistic competence as they bring to the page Roman history, Classical allusions, and biblical imagery, while displaying Gambara’s facility in Latin as

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I ll she emulated the Classical model provided by Virgil’s poetry. The display o f Latin competency was crucial to a female ruler’s shaping of her public image according to the traditional humanist image of an educated ruler, as discussed in the opening chapter of this study.2 Gambara excelled in Latin and was known to have composed a poem in the language for Charles V, while documentation of a letter the emperor wrote in Latin to Gambara from the year 1521 attests to their shared use of the language in their interaction.3 While Gambara was evidently capable of utilizing her Latin skills in both an epistolary and lyric mode, she composed her collection of verse on Charles V in the form of neo-Latin imitation in the marketable and popular vernacular. This creative decision allowed Gambara to maintain her status as a renown lyricist according to contemporary criterion, while her sophisticated use of Virgil’s Latin model equally functioned as an authorization device through which she publicly displayed her fitness for rule. In this manner, Gambara’s imperial verse further secured her double foothold in the political and cultural elite realms: the sonnets on Charles V offered a pioneering shaping of the female voice through which she displayed at once the marrow of legitimacy in rule as well as her elevated lyric talent. What we find in Gambara’s neo-Latin verse is an innovative continuum of the tradition of learned women of the signioral courts who put on display their humanist education within the public arena of the courts in the fifteenth century. While women of the tradition preceding Gambara primarily drew upon Latin in the form of orations, odes, and verse to legitimately perform in the political arena, Gambara’s 2 A comparative glance to the struggles experienced by Isabella d’Este with her Latin abilities may further illuminate this point: Isabella strove over a number o f years and multiple tutors to master her Latin skills, and she viewed her difficulty with Latin, which she never fully overcame, as a serious gap in her credibility as member o f an eminent court in which she exercised masculine functions as a temporary ruler in her husband’s absences and later as a regent ruler in her son’s stead. Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 152-153. 3 For the Latin text o f Charles V ’s letter to Gambara see: Zamboni, 49 n51.

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112 pioneering poetics forged a new conduit for women to engage in this masculine space by way of creative neo-Latin imitation in the vernacular. Around the time of her imperial verse in celebration of Charles V in the third decade of the sixteenth century, Gambara was also continuing to outwardly project the qualities wanted of a widow ruler through her verse as we first explored in her poetry to Pietro Bembo and Vittoria Colonna. Before looking at the sonnets on Charles V, it is worth examining one contemporary example of Gambara’s use of her public verse as a tool of political self-fashioning: the 1537 sonnet probably written for Pietro Aretino (1492-1556). Voi che fra l’altre doti e pregi vostri Bagnaste al dotto fonte i labbri santi, Con vostra pace quanti oltraggi e quanti Fate a le Muse, a voi, ai tempi nostri Poiche non date, con vostri alti inchiostri, Lume ai tardi intelletti, ch’ora erranti Se ne van ciechi senza guida inanti Che la chiara e la dritta via lor mostri! Io per me non mi levo tanto in alto, E, come fa tra pochi quel’amico, Non mi presumo invano, e non mi esalto. Voglion le Muse l’ozio e il tempo aprico; A me Fortuna e dura piu che smalto; II vemo mi combatte, e il mar nemico.

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113 You, who with your other gifts and merits, bathed your saintly lips at the learned spring, with your peace you make so many offenses to the muses, to yourselves, to our times, why not give light with your noble ink to slow minds who now wander in vain, blind and without guide, so that your clear and straight path could show them the way! I do not raise myself to such noble heights, and, as does that friend among few, I do not presume myself in vanity, nor exalt myself. The Muses need leisure and warm weather; to me fortune is harder than stone; the marble combats against me, and the sea is my enemy. Gambara’s meditation on the enterprise of poetry sets its sights on imparting to Aretino the ideal of using his poetry to teach virtue, while in the final tercets the discourse points in a more personal direction as Gambara lays out why she herself does not take to task the above outlined literary ideal. Gambara’s shift of the sonnet’s focus from Aretino to herself by way o f subordinating her poetic talent to that of Aretino in lines 9 and 11 performs a humbling gesture that serves at once to honor Aretino’s literary repute and to signal adherance to the ethos of feminine modesty. This posture was paradigmatic of Gambara’s encomiastic verse, in which she sought to sing her addressee’s praises while subtly advancing select qualities to meet her own self-fashioning objective. In this case, Gambara begins the final tercet by setting forth her vita attiva as firstly coming into conflict with the peace and time needed to fulfill the poetic vocation: “Voglion le Muse l’ozio e il tempo aprico,” which subsequently renders Gambara’s life utterly onerous as depicted in the pungent final lines: “a me fortuna e dura piu che smalto; il vemo mi combatte, e il mar nemico”. In pointing to the hardships of her public life, and in couching those demands in explicit conflict with the poetic vocation, Gambara is publicly

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114 fashioning her primary devotion to her role as a ruler over her desire to fulfill the enterprise o f poetry.4 If we recall Gambara’s early literary aspirations on display at the turn of the century in her correspondence with Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), to whom she fervently aspired to become “nel numero de le piu infime serve” (among the number of your lowest servants), and Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), to whom she dared to “mandar queste mie carte” (to send my writing), we may view on a large scale the significant alteration in Gambara’s projected literary persona as determined by her status as a widow ruler regent. Decades past the expression o f her early literary ambitions, and after years of political rule under her belt, Gambara’s mature poetic persona conveys her somber renunciation of her literary ambitions as required by her political office. We may find a further example of this demeanor in a sonnet written around this time to Ludovico Dolce (1508-1568/9), a prominent member of the Venetian publishing circuit, in which Gambara overtly demeans her poetic abilities in referring to her “il rozzo mio debile ingegno” (my weak and rough talent) and characterizes her verse as “basso, umile” (low and humble). Such a posture may be attributed to Gambara’s well-crafted feminine modesty, but the expression of such meekness to a prominent member of the publishing world does indeed reflect the fact that Gambara did not appear to aggressively seek the publication of her verse in these later years of her career. Gambara’s poetry was not widely published within her lifetime as it circulated mainly in manuscript form, and this distribution practice is suggestive of one of the central arguments to this study: that Gambara’s post-1529 verse was largely composed with a distinct political agenda in mind as determined by her ruling status. While her mature verse was sharply and sophisticatedly concurrent with the lyric regulations and literary fashions of the day, this 4 See Virginia Cox (publication forthcoming) for a reading o f the same poem.

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115 poetry was generally outwardly directed to convey distinct meaning to specific recipients, rather than composed as an artistic performance for the literary culture as audience at large. Indeed, the political responsibility Gambara fashions in her sonnet to Aretino does not at all eclipse - and in turn, silence - her lyric production. On the contrary, what is pioneering to Gambara’s fulfillment o f her duty as a ruler - in the case examined in this chapter, her responsibility to celebrate the emperor as essential to her political well-being - is her use of her creative talent as a poet to meet political ends. Even more, as we shall see, Gambara’s use of poetry as a vehicle for political maneuvering yields significant points about her abilities as a poet as she assays beyond the scope of Petrarchismo and into the realm of neo-Latin Virgilian verse. Continuing to expound upon Gambara’s historical context as a shaping influence on her sonnets on Charles V, one further consideration dovetails with the above analysis of Gambara’s status as a female ruler, and that is her geographical situation amid the princely houses o f Northern Italy. Indeed, Charles V’s imprint on the culture o f the Northern Italian courts brings to light a more widespread cultural context within which Gambara participated as both a poet and a ruler. To begin, the courts of Northern Italy predominantly espoused Charles V’s new empire. This stronghold o f support was due in part to the emperor having held his coronation ceremonies in the northern city of Bologna, and it is through these celebrations that the code of Charles V’s imperial imagery made its debut in Italy’s artistic culture.5 In the years immediately following the coronation, Charles V tended to his Northern Italian following by becoming a frequent visitor to the princely Italian courts. This combination of factors resulted in an explosion 5 William Eisler, “The Impact o f Charles V upon the Italian Visual Culture 1529-1533,” Arte Lombarda 65 (1983), 98. See also Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650 (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1984).

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116 of artistic endeavors through which the princes of Northern Italy set out to assimilate Charles V’s imperial code in their creative celebrations of their guest. The artistic broadcast of imperial support by the courts was in fact considered a political duty, to the point that individual Northern cities practically competed in their cultural promotions of the emperor as a way of ensuring political and economic survival.6 Such was the political and cultural network within which Gambara governed, and thus a political responsibility she too bore as a ruler within the region. We may in fact look to the developments of imperial representation within the cultural activity of the Northern Italian courts around the time of Charles V’s coronation to elucidate the attributes of this artistic atmosphere. The first portraits of Charles V in the Italian tradition were produced by Parmigianino (1503-1540) in 1529-30 and Titian (1488/90-1576) in 1532, respectively, and thus m aybe approached as foundational works in this context. Both prominent artists of Northern Italy, Parmigianino’s patrons were mainly drawn from the upper noble families between the regions of Parma and Bologna, while Titian boasted a princely clientele, most famously at the Gonzaga court of Mantova. Parmigianino’s imperial portrait, it should be noted, did in fact ascend to the courtly ranks and circulate among the ruling houses of Northern Italy throughout the sixteenth century: the painting first belonged to the collection o f Ippolito de’ Medici (1509-1535) upon its conception in 1530, after which it transferred to the Ducal Collection of the Gonzaga court as a gift from the Medici to the Cardinal of Mantova. It is relevant that both artists circulated within the cultural network to which Gambara belonged as we consider her proximity to the endemic celebration of the imperial

6 See Marcello Fantoni, “Carlo V e l’immagine dell ’im perator” in Carlo V e I’ltalia, ed. Marcello Fantoni (Rome: Bulzoni editore, 2000): 77-101; Eisler, 109.

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thematic in the Northern region: both artists were contemporaries of Correggio (14891534), who as we have already seen worked closely with Gambara on her imperial decorations in 1530. Titian, moreover, was a frequent correspondent with one of Gambara’s close literary relations, Pietro Aretino. The portraits of Charles V produced by Parmigianino and Titian in the period immediately surrounding his coronation telegraph the debut of the emperor’s visual campaign on the Italian front. Both portraits are replicas of two works previously produced for Charles V by the Austrian artist Jakob Seisenegger (1505-1567), after Charles V became the Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, but before his coronation by Pope Clement VII (1478-1534) in 1530.7 The imitation cycle denotes the emperor’s interest first and foremost in the proliferation of his well-established propagandistic devices in Italy. Charles V’s propaganda interests are reflected in the emperor’s granting to Titian a patent of nobility in 1533, which bestowed upon the Italian artist the exclusive right of making imperial portraits.8 As well, the reproduction of the images subsequent to his ceremonial coronation intimates the emperor’s aspiration to renew his patterned devices with greater consideration of his recent honor. Trumpeting the arrival of the imperial thematic to the Northern Italian court culture primarily, the paintings are secondarily emblematic in setting forth the method through which this culture would come to celebrate Charles V’s imagery - that is, through the use of allegory, idealization and classicization. Parmigianino’s portrait (see Figure 5), painted in Bologna during the coronation ceremonies in 1530, does not set out to display Charles V as an individual personality or even provide a real image of the

7 Eisler, 99. See also Luba Freedman, Titian’s Portraits through A retino’s Lens, especially chapter “Charles V: The concetto o f the Emperor” (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). 8 Freedman, 118

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118 emperor. In realism’s stead, the painting lays its emphasis on the emperor’s symbolic reach providing an overview of Charles V’s imperial concetto as it stood in 1530.9 I will refer back to these symbolic icons in my discussion of Gambara’s depiction of the imperial devices in her poetry; here, however, I would like to emphasize how the portrait serves as a visual symbol of the Northern Italian court culture’s interest in marking the imprint of Charles V’s imperial spirit. Titian’s two portraits of the emperor expound this same method of representation. His first portrait, Charles V in Armor (1533) (see Figure 6), presents the emperor as an emblem of his title Diffensore de la Fede (Defender o f the Faith), which he earned upon his victory over the Muslims in 1532. The portrait, a half-figure of Charles V clad in battle armor, undertakes the idealization of the emperor in his military dress and ennobled facial features, and follows in the tradition of ancient imperial representations of Roman emperors by preserving the image of the emperor unadorned by accessories.10 The second portrait, produced around the same time, Charles V with a Hound (1533) (see Figure 7), introduces a new level of grandeur to the emperor’s visual image in depicting a full body portrait. Here as well, Titian veers towards spiritualizing the emperor’s asymmetrical features while imposing his image on a sparse setting, in contrast to the intricate background detail of Seisenegger’s work (see Figure 8), so as to centralize the viewer on the eminence of the figure itself.11 These portraits ritualistically advance the central objective in imperial representation - to capture the majestic image o f Charles V while symbolizing his imperial essence providing a veritable blueprint of the Northern Italian artistic culture surrounding the

9 Cecil Gould, Parmigianino (New York: Abbeville Press, 1994), 59, 88; Sydney J. Freedburg, Parmigianino: His Works in Painting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 112. 10 Freedman, 119-120. 11 Ibid, 124.

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119 celebration o f the emperor over the next decade. We may look in fact to Titian’s third and final portrait of the emperor, Equestrian portrait o f Charles V (1548) (see Figure 9), as a signature piece that serves as a bookend to the movement of the allegorical, classicized, and idealized representations of Charles V. Conceived to commemorate the emperor’s victory over the protestant forces at the battle of Muhlberg on April 24,1547, the portrait presents the emperor in full battle armor emerging from an obscure forest at sunrise. The painting portrays Charles V as a symbol of military prowess, an icon o f Catholicism - as indicated by his red sash - and as operating under the divine protection that sanctifies his rule, figured by the sunlight looking over the solitary leader in the open field.12 Gambara’s collection of sonnets on Charles V, like the portraits just discussed, convey the emperor’s magnificence according to his own propaganda cycle. The sonnets are thematically centered on the emperor’s momentous defeat of the Turkish general Barbarossa (1475-1546) in Tunisia in 1532, though Gambara took interest in the theme of the crusade in her verse even before the emperor’s triumphant return, as set forth in the following sonnet: Guida con la man forte al camin dritto, Signor, le genti Tue ch’armate vanno Per dar a’ Tuoi nemici acerbo danno E per Tua gloria a far Cesare invitto. Quell’ira e quel furor, che gia in Egitto Mostrasti, adopra or contra quei che stanno Duri per colmar noi d’etemo affano, Qual Faraone il Tuo Israele afflitto. 12 See Freedman.

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120 Mira con pietoso occhio e vedrai quanto, Per racquistar la gia perduta gregge, S’affliga ed usi ogni arte il Pastor santo; Fa che si vegga che ‘1 favor Tuo regge Quest’alta impresa, alfin cagion di tanto Utile e onor a la cristiana legge. Guide with a strong hand towards the right path, Lord, Your forces that go forward, armed, to give Your enemies bitter punishment, and for Your glory to make Caesar invincible. That rage and that fury, which You showed once before in Egypt against the Pharaoh for Your wounded Israel, apply now against those hard enemies to quell us from eternal struggle. Look with compassionate eye and see how the saintly shepherd uses every art to regain the lost flock; make it so that one sees how Your favor supports this noble undertaking, cause for great utility and honor to the Christian law. As we can see, the sonnet puts aside Gambara’s circumspect self-fashioning devices by centering the focus entirely on the occasion of Charles V’s African expedition. In fact, Gambara suppresses entirely her individualized, feminine poet/author ‘io’ voice, to assume in its stead the voice o f the collective Christian population as indicated by the “noi” of line 7. This collective authorial posture sets an authoritative tone to the poem in framing the crusade by its universal significance to Christianity, and it allows Gambara to explore more pithy political, and perhaps even masculine, attitudes in her intrepid call for God to infuse the emperor with “ira” (rage) and “furor” (fury). Indeed, one is more likely to find such tones in Ariosto’s (1474-1533) chivalric epic than in the vernacular verse of

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121 a female lyricist. Like Titian’s first portrait of the emperor, Gambara’s sonnet endeavors to depict Charles V as the sole defender of the Christian faith. This image emerges in part by forthrightly identifying the imperial army as the army of God, “le genti Tue ch’armate vanno” (Your armed people that go), at the helm of which stands Charles V, working on behalf of the Christian world and setting out to punish God’s enemies in the name of God’s glory, “per Tua Gloria” (for Your glory). In more broad, symbolic strokes, Gambara utilizes biblical imagery to further depict the emperor as the figurehead of Christendom. Starting in line 5, Gambara equates the crusade against the Turkish army with the liberation of the Jews in Egypt as narrated in Exodus by asking God to bestow upon Charles V the same force and fury he imparted upon Moses in opposition to I -5

Pharaoh.

The evocation o f this biblical subtext points to a stylistic pivot in Gambara’s

mature oeuvre to produce sonnets imbued in more lofty allusions, and which display a more weighty, classicized tenor. In this way, Gambara reinforces the elevated political context from which the sonnets are inspired. In the execution of this more elevated lyric style, Gambara continued to adhere to the Petrarchan lyric and linguistic forms authorized by Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua (1524) by conforming her style to produce what Bembo arranged as an effect of gravita in place of piacevolezza.14 We see this shift in weightiness in Gambara’s rhyme scheme by the position of longer syllables composed o f double consonants in the last word of almost each verse, which slows the pace of the sonnet. This aesthetic conversion from the pleasing and musical ballads of 13 See Alison Brown, “Savonarola, Machiavelli, and Moses: A Changing Model,” in Florence and Italy: Essays in Honor o f Nicolai Rubinstein, eds. Peter Denley, Caroline Elam (London: Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies, 1992): 57-72. 14 For neo-Latin poetry in sixteenth century Italy see: Andrea Afribo, Teoria ep ra ssi della “gravitas” nel Cinquecento (Florence: Franco Cesati, 2001); Emilio Bigi, Poesia Latina e Volgare nel Rinascimento (Napoli: Morano, 1989); Stefano Carrai, Iprecetti di Parnasso: Metrica e generipoetici nel Rinascimento italiano (Rome: Bulzoni, 1999); Daniel L. Heiple, Garcilasco de la Vega and the Italian Renaissance (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).

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122 Gambara’s early love lyric to the grave and solemn effect desired by her political verse, displays Gambara’s masterful adaptation of her rhyme scheme to impart political meaning. Stylistically, as well as thematically, Gambara’s imperial rhetoric is biblical in sound. Gambara’s Exodus imagery exploits the emperor’s claim to the title Difensore della Fede as depicted in Titian’s portrait: indeed, here Gambara raises the emperor to the height of a Christ-like figure with the privileged status of sharing a covenant bond with God. This exclusive spiritual standing extends into the following tercet o f the sonnet through a reference to John 10.16. The metaphor of a saintly shepherd searching out to collect a lost flock renders the emperor as the “Pastor santo” (saintly shepherd), whose mission against the Turks is to collect the “perduta gregge” (lost flock): those Christian Europeans lost to Turkish dominance in Africa.15 The words of the Gospel of John, “And there shall be one flock and one shepherd,” were typically applied in the sixteenth century to Christ or the Pope. Gambara herself follows in this tradition in a sonnet addressing the succession of the new Pope upon the death of Paul III in 1549 by describing the Church as “senza pastore” (without shepherd). Here, however, Gambara’s appointment of Charles V to the role of holy shepherd stands in direct adherence to the propagandistic imagery surrounding the emperor made manifest by the imperial Chancellor Mercurino de Gattinara (1465-1530),16 who was instrumental in the formulation of Charles V ’s imperial idea upon his coronation in Bologna. This is evidenced in this address by Gattinara:

15 Alan Bullock reads the “pastor santo” as Clement VII. 16 See John M. Headley, The Emperor and his Chancellor: A Study o f the Imperial Chancellery under Gattinara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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123 Sire, God has been very merciful to you: he has raised you above all the Kings and princes of Christendom to a power such as no sovereign had enjoyed since your ancestor Charles the Great. He has set you on the way towards a world monarchy, towards the uniting of all Christendom under a single shepherd. As previously discussed, this imperial idea, first set forth in Bologna, subsequently informed the creative fabric of the cultural endeavors of the Northern Italian courts. A landmark literary example of this influence may be viewed in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532), a text Gambara was intimately familiar with from the Northern court of Ferrara, in which Ariosto revives the twelfth-century romances of the Charlemagne imperial cycle to a striking contemporary note. Ariosto, in fact, heralds Charles V’s emerging conception of empire by echoing Gattinara’s address in Canto 15 of the epic, where Astolfo hears the prophecy of the future empire o f Charles V: “E vuol che sotto a questo imperatore, Solo un ovile sia, solo un pastore.” (And wills that in his time Christ’s scattered sheep should be one flock, beneath one Shepherd’s keep) (Canto 15 verse 26). Gambara’s rendition thus mirrors the developments of Charles V’s imperial image in both its political and literary manifestations: her sonnet posits the emperor as the figurehead for the salvation of the Christian community; the one who shall save Christianity from “etemo affano” (eternal strife) in the name of the “cristiana legge” (Christian law). One final facet to the image of Charles V as set forth in Guida con la man forte worthy of consideration, and one that will help lead the way to the two sonnets we will consider next, is Gambara’s nod to Roman history in naming the emperor “Cesare” in

17 Frances A. Yates, Astrea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 26.

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124 line 4. The title marks Charles V as a descendant form the lineage of Julius Caesar (1 GO44 B.C.E.), rendering him a present-day Caesar Octavian in his own right, which, when stacked together with the emperor’s role as the holy Christian shepherd and Defender of the Faith, allows the poem to hint at the return o f a Christianized Golden Age upon Charles V’s defeat of the Turkish forces. This fleeting alignment of Charles V with the Age of Augustus under the “one world” topos is further elaborated in the sonnets discussed below. But before considering these cases, we may first see how the alignment of Charles V with Augustus becomes even more accentuated when viewed together with Gambara’s more detailed engagement with Roman history in two sonnets in celebration of Charles V’s African conquest post-expedition, Mira 7 gran Carlo con pietoso affetto, and Quel che di tutto il bel ricco oriente. These compositions offer prayers to God for the bestowal of divine grace upon the emperor’s fame as reward for his African triumph. Compare, for example, Gambara’s prayer asking God to “Guida” (guide) the emperor in the poem composed before the expedition with her prayer here that God more distantly “Mira” (look) at the accomplished emperor in all his glory. More importantly, Gambara draws extensively upon Roman history as the historical lens through which the grandeur of Charles V may be appropriately assessed as well as historically contextualized. The crux of the argument in both sonnets, however, is not to align the emperor on equal footing with his pagan predecessors; rather, it is to set his accomplishment apart, and above, their own. We may see how this works in the third tercet of Mira 7 gran Carlo con pietoso affetto, where Gambara alludes to the Roman general Scipio’s (235-183 B.C.E.) defeat over Carthage, which granted him the title Scipio Africanus in commemoration of his victory:

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125 Mira ‘1 gran Carlo con pietoso affetto, Padre del Cielo, e le sue annate genti Che non ad altro eh’a disfare intenti Son quelli che ‘1 Tuo nome hanno in dispetto. E, se lui solo hai fra tanf altri eletto Per dimostrar gli effetti Tuoi potenti, Fa che, confusi li nemici e spenti, Possa render le grazie al Tuo conspetto; Che se con Bursa insieme al gran Romano Desti l’Africa vinta, onde ritenne De TAfficano poi sempre il cognome, A questo, che nel mondo unqua non venne Simil a lui, per gloria del Tuo nome Dagli quanto poi dar con larga mano. Look upon the great Charles with compassionate affection, Father of the heavens, and to his army as well, who do none other than go against those that have Your name in vain. And, if he is the one elected from many others to make known Your powerful effects, make it so that, having confused and spent the enemy, he may render thanks to You in Your presence; if Scipio won over Africa so that he took the name Africa for his name, to this one, no one similar to whom ever came in the world, for the glory of Your name give him with as generous and large a hand as possible.

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126 The legacy o f Scipio provides an obvious parallel to Charles V in light of his African triumph, which was easily translatable to the creative celebrations of the emperor’s victory by relating Scipio’s Africanus title to Charles V. This was the interpretation set forth by the Spanish poet Garcilasco de la Vega (1501-1536), who uses the epithet ‘Cesar Afficano’ to refer to Charles V in an elegy composed around the time of the emperor’s campaign to Tunisia.18 Gambara, in contrast, extricates the emperor from this configuration in imagining an utterly exclusive status for the emperor in line 12: “nel mondo unqua non venne simil a lui.” The depiction of Charles V as surpassing the accomplishments o f the emperors of Rome’s past continues in Quel che di tutto il bel ricco oriente, where Gambara not only evokes the prestigious examples set forth by Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.) and Julius Caesar in the first two quatrains, but also points to their struggles and defeats so as to set Charles V’s conquest in Tunisia in more prestigious relief in the final tercets: Quel che di tutto il bel ricco oriente E del gran Dario ando superbo e altero Se vincer volse a piu d’un rischio fero Se stesso pose, e la sua ardita gente, E fu piu d’una volta anco dolente Quel che soggetto al glorioso impero Fece ‘1 Rodano, il Ren, Tamesi, e Ibero, Se ben piu d’altri fu saggio e possente. Ma voi, che T Cielo, invitto Carlo, ha tolto Per vero esempio in far palese al mondo 18 Heiple, 223.

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127 Quanto le forze sue sono e son state Con la presenza sola in fuga volto II gran nemico avete, e posto al fondo Quante glorie fur mai degne e pregiate. He who showed himself proud and arrogant throughout Asia to the great Darius, determined to conquer for both himself and his people, took more than one reckless risk; and the one who subjected the Rhone, Rhine, Britain and Spain to the glorious empire, who though wise and powerful knew more than one deep sorrow. But You, in the heavens, who made Charles invincible and took him as the true example to make evident to all the world that which Your forces are and were, with just his presence he set to flight Your great enemy, and buried in oblivion his shameful deeds. The congruence between Charles V and Alexander the Great was one Pietro Aretino preferred in his classicization of the emperor. This assimilation is revealed in a letter Aretino wrote to Titian during the conception of the third imperial portrait, Equestrian Portrait o f Charles V (1548). Here, Aretino addresses Titian as “Vecellio Apelle” iL

Apelles (4 century B.C.E.) being the artist behind the imperial portraits of Alexander the Great - thus alluding to the artists’ task of bringing about the parallels between Charles V and Alexander the Great, and of doing so with the allegorical grandeur akin to Apelles’ depictions o f his imperial subject.19 Titian, in contrast, rightly had his own imperial vision in mind for the Roman subtext of his portrait, and that was to align Charles V with the first Christian emperor, Constantine (316-340), by setting the emperor against the symbolic providential landscape at sunrise on the morning of his victory over the 19 Freedman, 132.

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128 Protestant Johann Friedrich I, Elector of Saxony (1503-1554). This event was frequently compared by historians to Constantine’s victory over the pagan Maxentius in 312.

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Gambara’s alignment of Charles V with the Age o f Augustus endeavors in part to relate the emperor to the same age that witnessed the birth of Christ. Through this association, Gambara’s select pagan identification of the emperor holds watertight the emperor’s spiritual objective of reviving the religious side of the imperial office. In this ideal conception, Charles V and his advisors drew from Dante’s (1265-1321) notion o f empire as set forth in the Monarchia (1310-13), which the imperial chancellor Gattinara requested Erasmus (1466-1536) translate for the emperor in 1527, and in which Dante espouses world rule as a providentially determined Roman right under Augustus (63 BC14 AD).

21

Gambara excavates this precise spiritual dynamic in both Mira 7 gran Carlo

and Quel che di tutto by drawing upon the emperor’s triumph in Africa as the qualifying example of the role of providence behind Charles V ’s rulership at large. In Mira 7 gran Carlo, Gambara reminds God of His choice of Charles V as the figure through which His power is demonstrated: “E, se lui solo hai fra tant’altri eletto Per dimostrar gli effetti Tuoi potenti” (And, if he is the one elected from many others to make known Your powerful effects). Likewise, in Quel che di tutto, Gambara reminds God of his election o f Charles V as the true example of His force: “Ma voi, che T Cielo, invitto Carlo, ha tolto per vero esempio in far palese al mondo quanto le forze sue sono e son state” (You, in the heavens, who made Charles invincible and took him as the true example to make evident to all the world that which Your forces are and were). Gambara’s words may be compared to those set forth by Ariosto, returning to his layout o f the imperial prophecy in

20 Ibid, 127. 21 Yates, 21, 26; Freedman, 117.

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129 Canto 15 of the Orlando furioso, where he too upholds the Dantesque belief that God will subject the world to one monarch, destined to bring back the justice and prudence of the age of Augustus: Dio vuol ch’ascosa antiquamente questa Strada sia stata, e ancor gran tempo stia; Ne che la prima si sappia, che la sesta E la settima eta passata sia: E serba a farla al tempo manifesta, Che vorra porre il mondo a monarchia, Sotto il piu saggio imperatore e giusto, Che sia stato o sara mai dopo Augusto. (Canto 15, verse 24) That this way should be hidden was God's will of old, and ere 'twas known long time should run; nor will he suffer its discovery, till the sixth and seventh century be done. And he delays his purpose to fulfill, in that he would subject the world to one, the justest and most fraught with prudent lore or emperors, since Augustus, or before.

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Gambara conceives of Charles V as a direct descendant of Augustus in the sonnet Quella felice stella e ‘n d el fatale, where she interprets the modem re-birth of the Augustine age by positing the star of Julius Caesar, from which Caesar Octavian Augustus was bom, over the birth of Charles V. It is this pagan star that serves as the “guida” (guide) to the emperor’s rale - a role Gambara previously assigned to God in Guida con la man forte: Quella felice stella e ‘n ciel fatale Che fu compagna al nascimento altero 22 Translation by Guido Waldman, ed. and trans. Orlando furioso (London: Oxford University Press, 1974).

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130 Del gran Cesare Augusto, onde l’impero Del mondo tenne, e visse alto e immortale; Quella, ma piu benigna, al bel natale Fu guida del gran Carlo, e tal ch’io spero Maggior vederlo, per dir meglio il vero, E fatto un dio fra noi d’uomo mortale; Che se per vincer gli Indi, e i Medi, e i Sciti, E i Cantabri, e i Britanni, e i Galli audaci Merito quel aver tant’alti onori Questo, ch’omai duo mondi ha vinto, e uniti Tanti voler discordi in tante paci, Merita maggior lodi e onor maggiori. That happy star in the fate-filled heavens that accompanied the earthly birth of Caesar Octavian Augustus, who held the empire of the world and lives noble and immortal; that same star, but in kinder mood, guides the great Charles from his birth, so strong he is I hope to see him, to speak the truth, he is a god among us as a mortal man; so that if the former merited high honors for defeating Indians, Medes, Britons, Scythians, Cantabrians, and the bold Gauls, the latter who has now conquered two worlds, united such discordant wills in that many peaces, merits even greater praise and greater honors. The classicizing lens through which the sonnet praises the emperor suggests Gambara is drawing from more remote, classical poetic models rather than from contemporary ones. At this point, we may consider a secondary, literary, motive behind Gambara’s alignment

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131 of Charles V with the Age of Augustus, and that is her ability to evoke Virgil as a poetic exemplar in his celebration of the legacy of Caesar Octavian Augustus. In light of the correlation between the Age of Augustus with the birth of Christ, Virgil’s Aeneid (29-19 B.C.E.) could alternatively be viewed as a semi-sacred text that glorified the historical framework of the Savior’s arrival.23 This approach to the Aeneid was one Charles V and his chancellor Mercurino de Gattinara approved of, if we recall their appreciation of Dante’s notion of empire set forth in the Monarchia. There, Dante uses the tools of scholastic philosophy in conjunction with the information of the Aeneid to prove that Augustus founded the Roman Empire by legal and divine right.

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It is also worth

recalling Gambara’s fluent knowledge of the epic poem, so displayed by her select citation of the verses spoken by Dido in Book IV to convey her own chastity and devotion to her husband in his death. Thus it is Virgil that provides Gambara with the appurtenant model from which she may not only convey her regard for Charles V ’s eminence, but also put on display her erudite literary skill in her engagement with classical models. Viewed collectively, in fact, as the analysis to follow shall make clear, Gambara’s sonnets on Charles V formulate a linear narrative through which the alignment of the emperor with the Age of Augustus is the central animating feature. Returning to the sonnet with the Virgilian model in mind, the identification of Julius Caesar as a star in his death, here named “Quella stella” (that star), is indeed a Virgilian construct raised in the description o f the shield of Aeneas in Aeneid VIII, where Caesar Octavian Augustus bears the star of his father on his helmet: “and upon his head

23 Craig Kallendorf, In Praise o f Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover: University Press o f N ew England, 1989), 7; Yates, 4. 24 Kallendorf, 8.

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132 his father’s Julian star is glittering” (lines 881-2).25 For an even more palpable echo, we may turn to Virgil’s celebration of the emperor in Aeneid VI, where the imperial prophecy for Augustus’ reign is laid out to Aeneas in the underworld (lines 1045-1071). Here, Virgil connects the reign of Augustus to the realm of the cosmos to reinforce the grandeur o f Rome as a part o f the divine whole, as Gambara similarly aligns the mortal emperor with his heavenly, pagan guide as an illustration of his “divine” ancestry. Further, both Virgil and Gambara point to the vastness of their respective empires as examples of their greatness. Virgil describes the expanse of territory under Augustinian rule to reach beyond the fields of Latium and beyond the Garamantes and the Indians, while Gambara’s argument parallels Virgil’s movement in cataloguing the expanse of Charles V’s acquired territories in lines 9 and 10. On the one hand, then, the sonnet aligns the emperor with his Augustinian lineage so as to set him on equal footing with the object of Virgil’s praise, Caesar Augustus, for which Charles V “merito quel aver tant’alti onori” (he merits many high honors). In the final tercet, however, Gambara thrusts the argument towards the emperor’s merit of “maggior lodi e onor maggiori” (more praise and more honors). Gambara’s “maggior” is redolent of the emperor’s Plus Ultra (further beyond) motto represented by the columns of Hercules, with which Charles V sought to symbolize his reign as extending beyond his predecessors in Europe, Africa, and the New World.26 Various depictions of the device pervade the visual representations of the emperor, which in the Italian tradition first appears in Parmigianino’s portrait of the emperor previously discussed (see Figure 5).

25 See J.T. Ramsey, The Comet o f 44 B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games (Atlanta: The Scholar’s Press, 1997). 26 See Earl S. Rosenthal, “Plus Ultra, Non Plus Ultra, and the Columnar device o f Emperor Charles V,” JW C I34 (1971): 204-28.

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133 Here, the columns appear on the sheath of the emperor’s sword, while the portion of the earth represented on the globe signals his mastery of Europe and the Mediterranean region sanctified by his coronation. The global region Gambara renders in her poem is even more historically contextualized in marking the emperor’s uniting of the “duo mondi” (two worlds) of line ten, indicating his union of France and Germany. If we return to Gambara’s engagement with the Virgilian model provided by the Aeneid, and with this Herculean imperial device in mind, we may see her adaptation of this literary ancestor to serve her own contemporary purposes. Virgil concludes his depiction o f the expanse of Augustinian territory with his transgression of the boundaries of Hercules: “For even Hercules himself had never crossed so much of the earth” (lines 1061-2), but this classical model espouses the expanse of empire for empire’s sake. Gambara, in contrast, advances the emperor’s expansion in specific Christian terms by representing the emperor as the great world unifier: the juxtaposition of the verb “vincere” (conquer) with the adjective “unire” (unite) in line 12 prompts the movement, which then gains full momentum in the penultimate line by the rhyming alignment of “uniti” (united) and “pad” (peace). In this way, Gambara’s evocation o f the quintessential symbol of the unity of the ancient world that was the Age of Augustus yields the contemporary triumph o f Charles V over the balkanization of Christian territories, positioning him to stand as the great unifier of the modem Christian world. This was, in fact, the deeply religious emperor’s own intended expression in his use of the Herculean device: that is, to signify his expansion o f the Christian faith, particularly in the reforming objective of his rale, beyond the current limits o f his empire in the name o f a peace.27

27 Ibid, 84.

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134 The sonnet just discussed exhibits Gambara’s adept reapplication of iheAeneid to relate a new, modernized Christian understanding of Charles V’s imperial concetto. This was in fact the precept of sixteenth century neo-Latin poetics as defined by Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569) in the preface to his Libroprimo degli amore (1531), where he provides a model of writing poetry in imitation of classical models in the vernacular. The neo-Latin poet, according to Tasso and demonstrated by Gambara, was to evoke the past within a contemporary framework; to re-contextualize classical topoi so as to adapt them to modem historical contexts, and even in some cases to personal situations.28 This re­ scripting of the classical past to a more personal end provides the literary framework to Gambara’s sonnet La dovepiii con le sue lucid’onde, where the poet imagines a monument in commemoration of Charles V’s African victory by way of a patent rehearsal of the prologue to Virgil’s Georgic 3 (29 B.C.E.). While Virgil describes a monument to Octavian Caesar Augustus alongside the bank of the river Mincius in his native Mantova, Gambara’s monument to Charles V shall stand equally in the poet’s patria alongside the bank of the river Mella in the Brescian countryside: La dove piu con le sue lucid’onde La picciol Mela le campagne infiora De la mia patria, e che, girando, onora Di verdi erbe e bei fiori ambe le sponde, A1 gran nome real, che copre e asconde Le glorie nove e quelle antiche ancora, Faro un tempio d’avorio, e dentro e fora Mille cose vedransi alme e gioconde. 28 Heiple, 103-133.

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135 Stara nel mezzo una gran statua d’oro, E dira un scritto: ‘Questo e Carlo Augusto, Maggior di quanti mai ebber tal nome’. D’intomo i vinti regi, e al par di loro Fuggir vedrassi il Turco, empio ed ingiusto, Giungendo a’ suoi trionfi altere some. There, where the river Mella’s transparent waters seep into the meadows around my homeland, giving life, winding through its shores and leaving in its path flowers and soft green plants, to the royal name, which protects, shelters our ancient splendors, I will build an ivory temple, and inside if it will be seen a thousand beautiful and joyful things. There will be in the middle a great gold statue and an inscription will say: “This is Carlo Augusto, the greatest of any others who have ever bom the name”. Around him one can see the conquered kings and like them now the vicious and bmtal Turk in flight adding to his triumphs heavy burdens. The architecture of the sonnet faithfully parallels Virgil’s projected landscape: the point of entry into the symbolic imagery for both poets is the detail of the flowering countryside; inside both temples, in the middle, will stand a statue of the Roman Emperor: in Virgil’s case Caesar Octavian Augustus, and in Gambara’s Charles V; surrounding both emperors are images of the lands and peoples over which Augustus and Charles V respectively triumphed; and each poet strikes the note of the enemy in flight, as Virgil depicts the Parthian thrusting their arrows backwards in flight and Gambara recalls Barbarossa’s escape from Charles V’s army. Gambara’s classicizing play with

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136 poetry as architecture stands as her most prolific celebration of Charles V’s African triumph in establishing a sense of permanency and stability to the prospects of his rule by stylistically transposing his success into a sculpture of marble and gold.

Here, Charles

V stands in his most exalted posture by the name “Carlo Augusto,” which first bestows him the “Augusto” title passed on to Caesar Octavian at the height of his rule, and then, juxtaposed with the “maggior” topos in the following line, carves for the emperor even greater honor in his unprecedented stature. Exceptionally, the sonnet marks the re-emergence of Gambara’s individualized poet/author “io” voice, which has been previously withheld so as to assume the voice of the collective Christian whole. Here, however, the emphasis rests on Gambara’s distinctiveness as a political figure in identifying herself with “la mia patria” (my homeland) in line 3, with no reference to her femininity. Gambara’s choice of the territory of the Gambara family’s rule, Brescia, over her own fiefdom, Correggio, as the monument’s locale merits careful consideration. Gambara’s oeuvre evidences an interchangeable devotion to the celebration of Correggio and Brescia in her verse: to Correggio there is identified the sonnet Onorate acque, e voi, liti beati, and to Brescia, as we have seen, Con quel caldo desio (Chapter 3), while the sonnet Poiche, per mia ventura, a veder torno - a play on the theme of Gambara’s return to her homeland after a period of absence - may be equally identified with Gambara’s return to Correggio after her sojourn in Bologna or the end of the Gambara family exile from Brescia. Thus, Gambara could echo in precise terms the Virgilian precedent by assigning either Correggio or Brescia to the role ofpatria. In consideration of Gambara’s political context

29 We may recall another example o f Gambara’s “monumental” poetry in her sonnet to Vittoria Colonna where she suggests that women erect a temple in her honor. See chapter 3 o f the present study.

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137 as a determining factor to her creative choices as a poet, we may consider what Gambara may have been looking to achieve in her own self-fashioning as a ruler in identifying herself with Brescia over Correggio. The choice of Brescia allows Gambara to boast of her descent from generations o f Gambara family rule while also recalling her powerful brothers, and buttressing her single female rule status with her longstanding dynastic familial lineage of Northern Italian political power. Moreover, the sonnet effectively glorifies Brescia in deeming it worthy to house the monument to the emperor qualification indeed of its political fortitude. In this light, it is relevant to recall Charles V ’s instrumental role in backing the return of the Gambara family to Brescia after a decade-plus period of exile. In drawing attention to the political stability of Brescia, Gambara is not only pointing to her family’s favorable connection to the great emperor, but perhaps is even offering the monument as a gesture of gratitude for his political backing of Gambara family rule. This final sonnet provides a compelling display of Gambara’s acumen in fashioning her prominence as a ruler by her prestigious political lineage as well as her personal affiliation with the Holy Roman Emperor. Gambara’s sonnets devoted to the theme of empire in celebration of Charles V present her most elevated and erudite lyric production, and we see how Gambara’s political context shaped this very advancement. On a cursory level, as a ruler of a fiefdom in the Northern Italian court region, Gambara was expected to celebrate the newly crowned Holy Roman Empire through her cultural activity - a duty Gambara fulfilled beyond her verse in her patronage projects at the time of his coronation. But we may now understand how Gambara skillfully integrated her own self-fashioning ambitions throughout her lyric campaign in honor of Charles V as a crucial facet to her political

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138 success as a widow ruler: Gambara’s imagery drew directly from her studia humanitatis education and her use of Virgil displayed her facility in Latin - all signs of her erudition that bolstered her legitimacy for rule - while she also put on public display her alliance with the emperor and heralded his connection to her powerful brother’s rule of Brescia. Gambara clearly recognized the power of self-representation for the preservation of power, and the imperial sonnets devoted to Charles V present Gambara’s most nuanced use of poetry as a key site in the construction of her image as not only a legitimate, but as an ideal and fundamentally powerful female ruler.

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Conclusion

The purpose of this dissertation was to impart a critical reading of Veronica Gambara’s post-1529 lyric production as it related to her political position as the governing widow dowager Countess of Correggio. My research found that Gambara actively carved out a cultural space in the production and the public circulation of her vernacular verse, and that from this position she effectively fostered, and even furthered, her political prosperity. The analyses presented in this study read Gambara’s poetry as a self-fashioning performance through which she shaped a poetic persona that embodied the ideal qualities of a female ruler. These analyses also brought to light Gambara’s use of poetry as an instrument for diplomatic maneuvering, which she realized through both her thematic as well as her stylistic ingenuity. Lastly, this study revealed the important role Gambara’s political status played, in conjunction with her talent and adherence to the tenets of the Bembist literary culture, in facilitating her ascent to the national literary landscape, where she remained a celebrated lyricist within her lifetime and after. To conclude this study, I shift my analytical perspective, which thus far has focused on Gambara’s role in the construction of her ideal public image, to consider how this image factored into the historical accounts of Gambara’s life in her posthumous tradition. For this, I turn to the first portrayal of Gambara’s life, the Vita di Veronica Gambara (1556) written by the local Correggio scholar Rinaldo Corso (1525-1582) six years after her death.1 Corso’s portrait of Gambara confirms many of the findings presented in this study, as his account by and large mirrors the qualities Gambara put on display through her lyric activity. 1 Rindaldo Corso, Vita di Veronica Gambara Gambara in his Vita di Giberto III da Correggio (Ancona, 1566). Located in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

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140 Corso begins his biography by underscoring Gambara’s historical significance as a skilled lyricist in the Petrarchan tradition: [...] ella stata la prima, che da i tempi del Petrarcha in qua, da che la lingua Thoscana giunse al suo colmo (che fu allhora) posto habbia la mano a cosi fatto stile,& siaci [fiaci] riuscita a tal segno, che se bene e possibile, che qual che altra la trapassi, tutte non dimeno (sia detto con pace loro) hanno havuto, & hanno, et havranno Veronica per perpetua scorta. Ne e meraviglia, che se’l Bembo vero,& per commun giudicio primo risuscita tore in questi secoli delle buone lettere, e stato capo a quanti pregiati scrittori ha l’eta nostra, elle, che col Bembo s’allev6,& da lui prese i primi nutrimenti della sacra Poesia, tal guida della donne sia stata quale esso fu de gli huomini. Allegrisi per tanto, alle grisi il nostro secolo d’havere havuto il Bembo,& insieme questa Dona, non lei avanti, ne dopo lui, ma l’uno & l’altro ad un tempo, & di concorde volere alia virtu inanimati per dare alia posterita lume, & invitarla a seguire i loro vestigi. Aurea [avrea] veramente in assai cose e stata l’eta nostra, ma in questa io la reputo di geme pretiosissime, & piu, se piu si puo dire.

[...] she was the first woman since Petrarch’s time, and since the time when the Tuscan language first came to its full maturity, to have turned her hand to this style o f writing. And she succeeded so well in it that, although it is possible that other ladies may come to surpass her, I am sure they will not mind my saying that it was Veronica who led the way in this and guided them on this path. Nor is this any wonder, when one considers that she was such a close friend and disciple of

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141 Bembo, who is universally acknowledged to have been the founder of modem literature and the leader of all the finest writers of our day. Veronica was virtually a pupil of his and drew from him her first lessons in the sacred art of poetry; it seems appropriate, then that she should have served as a model for women writers just as he was for men. It has been a great blessing for the present age to have had two such great writers as Bembo and this lady, and not one after the other but both together and concerted in their pursuit of poetic excellence; together, they have served as beacons to those who came after them, inspiring them to follow in their footsteps. Rightly has this been called a golden age in general, but in this respect, I consider it not only golden but adorned with precious jewels. Corso positions Gambara as the first female lyricist to write after Petrarch’s model, though, as discussed in the first chapter, female lyricists began writing in the Petrarchan tradition before Gambara’s emergence at the turn of the century. In Corso’s account, however, his view o f Pietro Bembo as the founder of Italy’s modem literary culture and as the guide for the famous writers of the day, establishes the parameter of his assessment of Gambara’s literary authenticity. Within this framework, Corso presents Gambara’s rapport with Bembo as the genuine marker of her cultural standing as an acclaimed lyricist. Corso applies this configuration to Gambara’s early lyric production, for example, by portraying her as a pupil of Bembo, from whom she learned her first lessons in the art form. Gambara herself approached Bembo as an important figure to the legitimization of her lyric voice, and, as we have seen, she worked this dynamic to her own cultural and political advantage. Gambara courted Bembo as an approving audience of her poetry by her strict stylistic adherence to the Petrarchan model, and, more 2 Translation by Virginia Cox, publication forthcoming.

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142 exceptionally, by her thematic re-adaptation of the paradigm to position Bembo in the role of the edifying example of excellence and virtue, and who supersedes Laura’s power in inspiring the fulfillment of Gambara’s spiritual conversion. Gambara’s rhetorical devices were designed to achieve Bembo’s favorable reception of her verse, and this reception, in turn, confirmed her status within the elite cultural circles of her day and bolstered her authority within the Northern Italian signorial community. Before turning to another moment in which Corso’s Vita reflects the public image Gambara shaped though her poetic self-representation, it is worth examining one more facet o f this passage to help formulate a preliminary understanding of Gambara’s role as a model for female poets in the second half of the century. In conjunction with Corso’s flattering alignment of Gambara with Bembo as the female counterpart to his literary example, Corso also comments on Gambara’s standing with other female poets of her time, where he gives cultural precedence to Gambara over Vittoria Colonna as a beacon for female lyricists who will follow in her path. Within Gambara’s lifetime, there was, in fact, one known instance of her surpassing Colonna in this position: that is, in Laura Terracina’s (1519-1577) Discorsi sopra tutti iprimi canti di Orlando furioso (1548). Terracina revises Ariosto’s tribute to Vittoria Colonna as the best female writer of his generation in Canto 37 of his Orlando furioso (1532), and she positions Gambara to stand in Colonna’s stead to inspire contemporary women to devote themselves to study and letters. Sometime after Gambara’s death, Lucia Bertani dell’Oro (1521-1567) wrote a sonnet tribute to Colonna and Gambara, while she also bestowed special praise to Gambara in a sonnet devoted to celebrating her name through a word-play on Saint Veronica: “La santa veramente unica ebrea” (The truly unique Hebrew saint). Thus,

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143 Corso correctly anticipates the status Gambara came to hold as an inspiration for female poets in the decades following his account, though the degree to which Gambara may have outshined Colonna in this role requires further inquiry. Returning to the Vita, beyond portraying Gambara’s role as a gifted lyricist, Corso draws special attention to Gambara’s political status by commenting on her affiliation with Charles V: Ne de Principi daro altro testimonio, che quel di Carlo V. Cesare, il quale, quando fu a Correggio, dissele, che per tre rispetti l’amava. Prima per la virtu,& fama sua. Poi per essergli parente; che i signori di Correggio sono del vero,& leggitimo, et antico sangue d’Austria. Et finalmente per essere ella sorella di Monsignor Gambara, quello, di ch’io ho fatto mention sopra. O f the princes I will not give testimony other than to Charles V. Caesar, which, when he was at Correggio, said to her that he loved her for three reasons. First for her virtue and her reputation. Then for her family, since the Signori of Correggio come from true and legitimate ancient Austrian lineage. And finally, for being the sister o f Monsignor Gambara, of whom I made mention above. Corso’s account thus chronicles Gambara’s historical significance for her participation in the political realm. Even more, he heralds the eminent status Gambara successfully attained therein by distinguishing Gambara’s relationship with the Holy Roman Emperor - a ruler o f “Caesar” status - as her crowning diplomatic achievement. As we saw with Bembo, Corso frames Gambara’s legitimacy as a ruler by drawing special attention to her rapport with the most powerful figure of the political realm, and this authorization strategy was made manifest by Gambara herself through her neo-Latin imperial verse that

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put on public display her personal ties with Charles V’s power. Corso’s narrative approach to the relationship, moreover, is compelling. Indeed, he relates the admiration Charles V held for Gambara, rather than the other way around. This framing works flatteringly toward Gambara by shedding appropriate historical perspective on her political relation with Charles V, through which she did achieve a concrete political alliance, while it also reverentially positions Gambara as a renowned ruler, who stirred praise from the most powerful figures of the day. Specifically, the attributes for which Charles V appears to have praised Gambara reflect the qualities she herself put on public display through her poetic self-fashioning: as we have seen, Gambara unwaveringly fashioned herself an icon of feminine virtue, and she aligned herself with her family’s political legacy, and in particular with her powerful brothers - rather than fashioning herself as independent from them - to bolster her own authority as a widow ruler. Altogether, the correlation between Corso’s narration of Gambara’s life and the qualities she set out to fashion through her literary and cultural activity provides a convincing marker o f the success Gambara realized by maneuvering through the cultural and political realms in her poetic activity. Gambara developed original rhetorical devices to court the approval and alliance of Italy’s most powerful figures, and she appropriately went down in history for her renowned status in both the literary as well as the political realms. Corso’s Vita attests to Gambara’s historical significance as a literary as well as a political figure, and this dissertation affirms the rationale for studying her poetry with this double focus. Together, my readings of Gambara’s lyric output, and my historical contextualization of the interrelated construction of her artistic and political persona,

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145 suggest new ways of understanding the nexus between gender, poetry, and political power in the sixteenth century Italian court. This understanding, furthermore, carries implications for the subsequent theorization of the female voice in literature and politics. My research builds on Jones’ theoretical methodology by bringing new critical awareness to the social systems of widowhood ideologies, as well as to the set of ideologies specific to women as political agents in the Northern Italian princely court milieu. In examining how Gambara responded to these systems through her vernacular poetry, my research unveils new rhetorical strategies that were formulated to negotiate these spaces. The work presented in this dissertation is limited to the investigation of the interrelationship between Gambara’s literary activity and her political role, but it is hoped that my analysis will provide a stepping stone for future inquiry into Gambara’s poetry, and point the way towards a comprehensive critical study of her complete oeuvre.

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Appendix

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Figure 1. Piero della Francesca. Battista Sforza, Federigo da Montefeltro. c. 1465-72. (Uffizi, Florence).

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Figure 2. Niccolo Fiorentino. Portrait Medal o f Caterina Sforza. c. 1488. (The British Museum).

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Figure 3. Niccolo Fiorentino. Portrait Medal o f Caterina Sforza. c. 1498. (The British Museum).

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Figure 4. Titian. Mary Magdalen, c. 1530-35. (Galleria Pitti, Florence).

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165

Figure 5. Parmigianino. Allegorical Portrait o f Charles V. c. 1529-30. (Rosenberg & Steibel, New York).

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CA.ROLV S•IM P ER AToR-QVINTVS >

Figure 6. Giovanni Britto after Titian. Charles V in Armor, c. 1532, xylograph. (Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna).

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Figure 7. Titian. Charles Vwith a Hound, c. 1533. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

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Figure 8. Jakob Seisenegger. Charles V with a Hound, c. 1532-33. (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

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Figure 9. 9. Titian. Equestrian Portrait o f Charles V. c. 1548. (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

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