Adonis: the Myth of the Dying God in the Italian Renaissance

234 Pages·2013·1.489 MB·English

by  Caruso, Carlo

Adonis

Adonis
The Myth of the Dying God in
the Italian Renaissance
Carlo Caruso
Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2013
© Carlo Caruso, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
Carlo Caruso has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as Author of this work.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or
the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4725-3882-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
List of illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Abbreviations x
Preface xi
Introduction 1
1 An ancient myth revisited: Adonis as citrus tree 6
Pontano and the myth of Adonis 6
The solar myth in Pontano’s Urania 8
The Garden of the Hesperides 11
Competition with the ancients 12
The search for the Hesperides 14
Adonis as citrus tree 16
New myths out of ancient verse 18
2 Adonis and the Renaissance idyll 21
The legacy of Pontano 21
The pitfalls of inventiveness 24
Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the eclogue 28
Adonis and the vernacular idyll: the stanzaic poem 32
Ovid’s Adonis in translation 36
3 Adonis in sixteenth-century mythography 39
Early attempts at a new mythography 40
Lelio Gregorio Giraldi’s pagan gods 43
Natale Conti’s explanation of myths 45
The solar myth of Adonis in decorative cycles 47
4 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (i): From pastoral to epic poem 49
Marino’s life and works 51
An outline of the Adone 55
Origin and growth of the ‘grand poem’ 58
Transgressive pastorals 60
Jean Chapelain’s defence of the Adone 62
vi Contents
The poem and the myth 65
From myth to contemporary chronicle 70
5 Giovan Battista Marino’s Adone (ii): The king’s poem 73
The poem and the court 74
Binet’s Adonis and Le Breton’s Adonis 77
‘Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child’ 84
‘The king never dies’ 86
Adonis as the born-again king 88
The king’s heart 91
6 The seventeenth-century aftermath 95
The legacy of Marino’s Adone 95
Marino’s Adone and the Index of Forbidden Books 97
Adonis and the theological debate 100
Return to the Hesperides – Epilogue 102
Notes 111
Bibliography 169
Index of manuscripts 195
Index of principal passages cited 197
Index of names 205
List of illustrations
1 G. B. Marino, L’Adone (Paris: Olivier de Varennes, 1623). Title page
(Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal) 50
2 C. Binet, Merveilleuse rencontre… Adonis… Les Daufins (Paris: Fédéric Morel,
1575). Title page (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale) 78
3 G. Le Breton, Adonis. Tragedie françoyse (Rouen: Raphaël du Petit Val, 1611).
Title page (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale) 80
4 P. P. Rubens, ‘The Triumph of Time and Truth with Louis XIII and Maria de’
Medici’ (Paris, Louvre) 93
5 C. Bloemaert after Domenichino, ‘The Tale of Leonilla’, engraving, from G. B.
Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 105
6 ‘Fingered or multifarious citron’ (Malum citreum digitatum seu multiforme),
etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 106
7 ‘Childing citron-lemon’ (Limon citratus alterum includens), etching and
engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 106
8 ‘Differently-shaped, multi-childing citron-lemon’ (Aliae formae citrati limonis
alios includentis), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 107
9 ‘Foetus-bearing orange’ (Aurantium foetiferum), etching and engraving, from
G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 108
10 ‘Hermaphrodite or horned orange’ (Aurantium hermaphroditum seu
corniculatum), etching and engraving, from G. B. Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 109
11 ‘Misshapen orange’ (Aurantium distortum), etching and engraving, from G. B.
Ferrari, Hesperides (1646) 109
Acknowledgements
‘To hurt no one and give everyone their due’ (Inst. 1.1.3) is a mandate that also applies
to scholarship. But just as in the realm of the law, it is no easy mandate to fulfil.
Anyone spending years over one’s work is likely to receive an incalculable number of
suggestions and stimuli, many of which become, virtually unnoticed, a constituent of
one’s thoughts; and yet, these stimuli are often no less effective than those which are
more readily acknowledged. My first and most general expression of thanks goes to
all those from whom I received valuable feedback without my necessarily recognizing
it as such.
The institutions I have worked in since I developed an interest in the early modern
revival of the Adonis myth include the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and
the Universities of Zurich, Reading, St Andrews, Warwick, Siena and Durham, all of
which have in various ways supported my enquiries. A grant from the former Arts
and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) and a Christopherson-Knott Fellowship of
the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University provided me with the necessary
leisure to conduct a substantial part of my research. The School of Modern Languages
and Cultures and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Durham University backed
the project both with research leave and financial help towards the editing of the
volume.
Libraries remain the centre of scholarly life for any committed student of the
Humanities. In grateful acknowledgement of the assistance I received at every visit, I
would like to single out the Bodleian Library, the Taylor Institution and the Sackler
Library, Oxford; the British Library and the library of the Warburg Institute, London;
the National Library of Scotland and the University Library, Edinburgh; the Biblioteca
Universitaria and the Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, Siena; the Bibliothèque
Nationale and the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris; the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome; the Biblioteca
Provinciale, Pescara; and Durham University Library. The great digital collections –
Internet Archive, Gallica, the digital section of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Jstor,
Persée, Digizeitschriften, Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina, Biblioteca Italiana, and the
programmes of digitalization variously converging towards Google Books – have
made life considerably easier for all scholars, especially (but not only) for those who
cannot always rely on the proximity of well-stocked libraries.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help of colleagues, editors and publishers who
have allowed me to reproduce material for this book. I wish in particular to thank
Stefano Carrai for authorizing the reuse of my chapter ‘Dalla pastorale al poema:
l’Adone di Giovan Battista Marino’, originally published in La poesia pastorale nel
Rinascimento, ed. by Stefano Carrai (Padua: Antenore, 1998), pp. 349–77, parts of
which appear now in Chapter 4; likewise I thank Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos,
Acknowledgements ix
together with the Managing Director of Legenda, Graham Nelson, for permission to
reproduce the content of my chapter ‘Adonis as Citrus Tree: Humanist Transformations
of an Ancient Myth’, in Transformative Change in Western Thought: A History of
Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood, ed. by Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos
(Oxford: Legenda, 2013), pp. 252–72, in the Introduction and in Chapters 1 and 2.
I am grateful to all those who have liberally devoted a significant portion of their
time to discuss the subject of this book. These include Kathryn Banks, Federico Casari,
Paola Ceccarelli, Andrew Laird, Joseph North, James Russell, Lorenzo Sacchini and
Jonathan Usher. Among the many scholars and friends to whom my debt is acknowl-
edged in the notes I wish to single out here Ottavio Besomi, Clizia Carminati and
Emilio Russo. Special thanks go to Ingo Gildenhard for a number of considerable
improvements to the text. The staff at Bloomsbury, and in particular Kim Storry of
Fakenham Prepress Solutions, are to be thanked for their courtesy and forbearance.
Adriana Caruso and Fanny Lombardo have helped towards the compilation of the
Indices. I owe a singular debt of gratitude to Fiona and Peter Macardle for their
extensive expertise and kindness. To my wife and colleague Annalisa Cipollone, I
acknowledge the most useful and helpful observations I received in the course of
my research and to her I attribute some of the most incisive insights the reader may
encounter in these pages.