Showing posts with label Giovanni della Casa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giovanni della Casa. Show all posts

23 April 2019

Gaspara Stampa – poet

Gaspara Stampa is seen by some as Italy's greatest female poet
Gaspara Stampa is seen by some
as Italy's greatest female poet

Beautiful sonnets were inspired by unrequited love


Gaspara Stampa, the greatest female poet of the Italian Renaissance, died on this day in 1554 in Venice at the age of 31.

She is regarded by many as the greatest Italian female poet of any age, despite having had such a brief life.

Gaspara was born in Padua and lived in the city until she was eight years old. Her father, Bartolomeo, had been a jewel and gold merchant, but after he died, Gaspara’s mother, Cecilia, took her three children to live in Venice. They were accommodated in the house of Geronimo Morosini, who was descended from a noble Venetian family, in the parish of Santi Gervasio and Protasio, now known as San Trovaso. 

Along with her sister, Cassandra, and brother, Baldassare, Gaspara was educated in literature, music, history and painting. She excelled at singing and playing the lute and her home became a cultural hub as it was visited by many Venetian writers, painters and musicians, among them Francesco Sansovino, a poet and writer who was the son of the great Florentine architect, Jacopo Sansovino.

Gaspara dedicated most of her poems to Count Collatino di Collalto of Treviso, with whom she had an affair.

Much of Gaspara Stampa's best work came after she had suffered a break-up with her lover
Much of Gaspara Stampa's best work came after she
had suffered a break-up with her lover 
When he broke off the relationship she was devastated and suffered from depression, but she wrote some of her most beautiful poems at this time, creating for herself a lasting literary reputation.

Only three of her poems were published during her lifetime although many were circulated among her literary friends in Venice.

Gaspara went to live in Florence for some time because of poor health, hoping that the milder climate might help her. But on her return to Venice in 1554 she became ill with a fever and died after 15 days on April 23. The parish register recorded the cause of her death as ‘fever, colic and mal di mare', which today would be understood as 'seasickness', although the theory has also been put forward that it could have been a suicide.

The first edition of Gaspara Stampa’s poetry, Rime di Madonna Gaspara Stampa, was published in Venice six months after her death.

Gaspara’s 311 poems are considered to be the most important collection of female poetry of the 16th century. They were edited by Gaspara’s sister, Cassandra, and the edition was dedicated to the Florentine poet and writer, Giovanni della Casa.

The 19th century German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, refers to Gaspara Stampa in the first of his Duino Elegies, which were written while he was staying at Duino Castle on the Adriatic coast near Trieste. The Duino Elegies are now considered his greatest work.

Giotto's extraordinary decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel. which is one of the highlights of a visit to Padua
Giotto's extraordinary decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel.
which is one of the highlights of a visit to Padua
Travel tip:

The city of Padua in the Veneto, where Gaspara Stampa was born, is one of the most important centres for art in Italy. Padua has become acknowledged as the birthplace of modern art because of the Scrovegni Chapel, the inside of which is covered with frescoes by Giotto, an artistic genius who was the first to paint people with realistic facial expressions showing emotion. His scenes depicting the lives of Mary and Joseph, painted between 1303 and 1305, are considered his greatest achievement and one of the world’s most important works of art.

The two facades of the Chiesa di San Trovaso, the  centrepiece of the neighbourhood of the same name
The two facades of the Chiesa di San Trovaso, the
centrepiece of the neighbourhood of the same name
Travel tip:

San Trovaso is a neighbourhood within the Dorsoduro sestiere of Venice, just across the Accademia Bridge from the bustle of San Marco. At its heart is the Chiesa di San Trovaso, a church dedicated to the saints Gervasio and Protasio, rebuilt in 1584 on the site of a former church built in the 11th century. The church contains works of art by Domenico Tintoretto as well as his father, Jacopo, and by Michele Giambono and Palma il Giovane. The church is unusual in that it has two facades, one looking out across the Rio de San Trovaso canal, the other facing the Rio del Ognisanti. San Trovaso is also home to Venice’s oldest working gondola yard, the 17th-century Squero di San Trovaso, one of only two surviving squeri in Venice.

More reading:

Giovanni della Casa - the 16th century advocate of etiquette and good manners

Petrarch - the Renaissance poet whose work helped shape the modern Italian language

The death in Florence of English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Also on this day:

1857: The birth in Naples of opera composer Ruggero Leoncavallo

1939: The birth of Stefano Bontade, a Sicilian Mafia boss with links to ex-PM Giulio Andreotti

1964: The birth of orchestral conductor Gianandrea Noseda


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28 June 2016

Giovanni della Casa - advocate of good manners

Bishop and poet remembered for his manual on etiquette


A portrait of Giovanni della Casa by the artist Jacopo Pontorno
A portrait of Giovanni della Casa by the
artist Jacopo Pontorno
Giovanni della Casa, the Tuscan bishop whose witty book on behaviour in polite society became a handbook for generations long after he had passed away, was born on this day in 1503 in Borgo San Lorenzo, 30 kilometres north-east of Florence.

Born into a wealthy family, Della Casa was educated in Bologna and followed his friend, the scholar and poet Pietro Bembo, into the church.

He became Archbishop of Benevento in 1544 and was nominated by Pope Paul III as Papal nuncio to Venice. Disappointed at not having been elevated to Cardinal, however, he retired to a life of writing and reading.

At some point between 1551 and 1555, living at an abbey near Treviso, he wrote Galateo: The Rules of Polite Behaviour, a witty treatise on good manners intended for the amusement of a favourite nephew.  He thought it would be regarded as frivolous compared with other books he had written. Little did he know it would become one of the most celebrated books on etiquette in European history.

Published in Venice in 1558, it is considered one of the three great books on Italian conduct, alongside Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, which discusses the qualities required of a 16th century courtier, and Niccolo Machiavelli's Il Principe (The Prince), which was less about manners than about political pragmatism and achieving objectives.

Della Casa's work goes into considerable detail in describing how to behave without causing offence to others, particularly in the areas of eating, drinking and personal hygiene.

He advised that tearing food apart with the hands and with hunting knifes was vulgar, as a result of which Italians began using dainty forks some two centuries before other European countries. He also cautioned that sniffing another person's wine should be avoided for fear of something unpleasant falling out of one's nose.

Reprints of Della Casa's book, such as this 2013 edition, still sell today
Reprints of Della Casa's book, such as this
2013 edition, still sell today
It was not good form, in his opinion, to spit, yawn or scratch and he cautioned that handwashing should take place in private because, if done in public, those witness to it risked their minds being drawn to thoughts of the bodily functions that might have necessitated it.

One should dress, he proposed, in clothes that conformed to prevailing custom and were reflective of social status and in conversation one should seek to interest all parties present with words that were 'orderly and well-expressed'.

His guidance in other areas could apply to the modern world.  It was not good manners, he said, to brag about one's children, or to sing off key.  Grooming in public was uncouth and making jokes at the expense of the disabled was unacceptable. And even in an age that could not have imagined telephones, let alone mobile ones, it was rude, he counselled, to read one's mail in company.

However, taking someone to task over their social shortcomings was also considered out of order, unless somehow you could be complimentary at the same time.  In short, he advised that people should be pleasant, appropriate and polite in all but the most extreme circumstances.

A Latin scholar, Della Casa is thought to have named the book in honour of Galeazzo Florimonte, a bishop and man of letters from whom he took his own inspiration.  The title entered the Italian language and for a time people who were impolite or crude were said to 'not know the Galateo.'

Della Casa died in Rome in 1556, aged 53. Modern editions of Galateo are still being reprinted today.

Travel tip:

Borgo San Lorenzo is the largest of nine towns and villages that make up the Mugello, a green hilly area overlooking the Sieve valley.  The Medici family have their roots in the Mugello, as does the artist, Giotto, the most important Italian painter of the 14th century.  Its Romanesque Church of San Lorenzo has a belltower dated at 1263. The medieval Palazzo del Podestà was rebuilt in the 1919 earthquake.

Photo of the ruins of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio near Treviso
The ruins of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio near Treviso
Travel tip:

Little remains now of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio, the Benedictine monastery of the early 11th century where Della Casa is thought to have been staying when he wrote Galateo.  Situated close to the small town of Nervesa della Battaglia, about 20km from Treviso in the Veneto, it had already been abandoned when it suffered substantial damage during the Battle of the Piave River during the First World War.

(Photo of the Abbey of Sant'Eustachio by Franco CC BY-SA 2.0)


More reading:


Cosimo II de' Medici - patron of Galileo

Pietro Bembo - poet and scholar who was Lucrezia Borgia's lover

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