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Idea Transcript


Maria Galli Stampino

Bodily Boundaries Represented: the Petrarchan, the Burlesque and Ar-

cimboldo's Example*

The purpose of the following study

is to

expand along chronologic and thematic

made by Elizabeth Cropper in an essay published in 1986 entitled "The Beauty of Woman: F*roblems in the Rhetoric of Renaissance Portraiture." In it, Cropper analyzes the relationship between women's portraits and lines the claims

courtly love poetry in Renaissance Italy and reaches a notable conclusion with respect to the role of the female subject in both these domains. She recognizes that Renaissance

women's

vis-à-vis their subject,

portraits contain nothing natural or

much

like love poetry of the period, in

Gareth Walters' characterization) "the

mode

even naturalistic

which

use D.

(to

of detailing the lady's qualities

is

a

highly stylized one .... She represents an ideal beauty, a symbol of perfection"

Neoplatonic tendencies went, obviously, hand

(73).

that the various poetical descriptions of physical

beloved further tiful

woman

by

even

less real

and more

ideal.

in

hand with

this trend, so

bodily) details render the

(i.e.,

However, Cropper goes one

step

asserting that the ultimate goal of literary and visual portraits of beau-

women

did not consist in the celebration of beauty in

the praise of the male artist's ability to represent

these representations

is

male narcissism, while

it.

its

purest form, but in

Consequently, the subject of

their object is the absent

woman

(190).i

The expand

intent of the present paper is twofold.

my

well as in Italy (with other,

I

On

the

one hand,

I

would

like to

analysis to the poetical production of the Baroque period, in Spain as

some examples from France and England,

too).

On

the

contend that a careful consideration of the burlesque poetical production

of the times could yield fruitful results in the current effort of mapping the representational strategies at

work

in the poetical

and visual

portraits in early

modem

culture.

My

claim

is

that in the

Baroque period there

is

a notable convergence of rep-

resentational strategies between the lyrical and the burlesque domains; in particu-

both utilize the clichés and patterns inherited from the previous

lar,

literary pro-

duction but do so only superficially. In other words, the pre-existent poetical

forms are self

filled

with

new

"contents," that are particular to the Baroque period

it-

and that cover a larger domain than the Renaissance ones.

Within the Petrarchan tradition of

lyrical poetry, a cursory analysis

QUADERNI daalicuustica Volume XVl, No.

1.

1995

of a few

Maria Galli Stampino

62

sonnets of the Baroque period reveals a striking tendency towards inorganicism in the descriptions

manos

of the beauty of the beloved. In Góngora's

cristalinas" (445), not only are the

has been extracted by

"Amor

.

.

amada's hands

"Ya besando unas

crystalline, but her hair

from

entre el oro de sus minas" ["Love

.

golden mines"], 2 her teeth are "perlas finas" ["fine pearls"] and her

kisses that are "purpureas rosas sin temor de espinas" ["purple roses free

Quevedo's love poems, we encounter

fear of thorns"]. In

("Bastabale

from the

lips that are rubies

are "relampagos

clavel" 151), smiles that

al

his

lips dispense

... de purpura"

["flashes of purple"], hair defined as "oro de tu frente" ["gold of your brow"]

("Al oro de tu frente" 156), and an entire description of the face of the

amada

in

which the only organic elements are yet again, roses and carnations: Crespas hebras, sin ley desenlazadas,

que un tiempo tuvo entre

las

manos Midas;

en nieve estrellas negras encendidas,

y cortésmente en paz de ella guardadas. Rosas a abril y mayo anticipadas, de

la injuria del

tiempo defendidas;

auroras en la risa amanecidas,

con avaricia del clavel guardadas. (169)

[Curly fibers, untied in a discomposed manner.

Once held by Midas' Black

stars

on

hands;

fire in the

snow.

Kept safe from it with gallantry. Roses advanced to April and May, Protected from the offense of time;

Dawns

appearing from your laughs.

Watched over by Parallel descriptions can be

In

"Donna che

si

a carnation, with cupidity.]

found

in the Italian

"aureo mar" combed by a "navicella d'avorio"

production in Marino's sonnets.

woman's hair is "onde dorate" of an d'avorio" (the comb) held by "una man pur

pettina" (Getto 1.224) the

— where

it

is

noteworthy that for the poet, there

is

no difference

in

texture or material between the tool and the lady's hand. In "Pianto e riso" (Getto

1.226) the eyes ("I'umidette stelle") claim their primacy over the asserting that

maintains

its

from them flows "di vive perle

superiority

mouth by

oriental ricchezza," yet the latter

by merely "disserrando quelle

/

porte d'un bel rubino in

duo diviso." Albeit inorganic elements such as those highlighted above are original to this

kind of poetry,^

in their earlier

usage they tended

to

be linked to the cruelty ex-

pressed by the lady vis-à-vis the unacknowledged or rejected lover-poet.^ In the early seventeenth century, however, this parallelism crumbles, so that the inor-

Bodily Boundaries Represented

63

ganic images traditionally associated with rejection, coldness and cruelty are

employed independently of clear instance of this cristalinas,"

is

the situation for

A

Góngora's already cited sonnet "Ya besando unas manos

where the white, polished neck and

an aubade: precisely

now

which the poem was composed.

moment when

at the

hands are praised

crystal-like

the poet is kissing his beloved's

in

hand

and neck ... .

.

.

oh claro Sol invidioso hiriéndome los ojos,

tu luz

mató mi

gloria

y acabó mi

suerte. (445)

[Oh, bright, envious Sun,

Your

A

wounding

light,

Killed

my

my

eyes.

my

glory and sealed

fate.]

similar observation applies to the cosmologica! elements of Neoplatonic as-

cendance tered in

that are traditional in Petrarchan poetry

Baroque

times.

A

single

example

and

that can

still

be encoun-

will suffice to delineate the extent of

the hollowness of these stereotypical images in Marino's poetry: the fictional "I"

of the sonnet saw

... nel sol de le luci uniche e sole intento, e preso dagli aurati stami,

volgersi quasi un girasole

This tercet

is filled

il

with those seemingly empty paronomasiae, polyptotons and

antistases

which contributed powerfully

altogether

common

then,

we

sole. (Getto 1.215)

until at least the

to the

are faced with a series of clichés that

in the Petrarchan tradition,

was

readily available to the poets

but that had been depleted of

meaning and relevance. What

is left is

much of

its

with any

fill

new meaning

they

fit.^

A

similar situation emerges

tremendous following

in the

from another

tradition of lyric poetry that

Baroque period: the burlesque.

If

we keep

Cropper's contention that Renaissance portraiture and love poetry aim ing the author's art and at erasing the ject of the painting or of the

a highly attractive poetic

The

original

the silhouette of these traditional meta-

phors and metonymies, which poets could then

saw

defamation of Baroque poetry,

beginning of the twentieth century.^ Overall,

woman

poem), then

mode

it

in

had

mind

at glorify-

(no longer the subject, but the ob-

becomes

clear that the burlesque

for any artist aspiring to his

own

was

aggrandizement.

uglier, or the least canonical, the object of representation, the bigger the

challenge for the

artist to

legitimize

it

by portraying

consequently, the higher the reward for the

artist

it

in painting or poetry,

and

succeeding in this task. The

Renaissance vogue of burlesque poetry converges with a rediscovery of classical

Maria Galli Stampino

64

adoxology

(or

mock encomium)

(Martin 48-49) to provide the Baroque period

with plenty of opportunities and justifications for engaging in this poetic endeavor.

There are various degrees

which Baroque poets adapted Petrarchan clichés

to

Marino's poetic corpus

to eccentric topics. In

ling the beauty of a slave

we

find a sonnet devoted to extol-

woman. What makes

this subject matter particularly

— and

suitable for a representation along, as well as against, Petrarchan lines



therefore especially challenging to the poet

amination hair

is

black.

the fact that the slave under ex-

The Petrarchan bric-à-brac of

and marble-like neck has

sative conjunction

is

ma,

in the

very

ma

sì,

fra le belle

first line),

lily

white skin, golden blond

emerges from the forceful adver-

(as

thus making the praise

and for the audience

difficult for the poet to achieve

Nera

be reversed

to

all

the

more

to

deny

to accept.

o di natura

se' bella,

d'amor leggiadro mostro;

fosca è l'alba appo

te,

perde e s'oscura

presso l'ebeno tuo l'avorio e l'ostro.

Or quando, vide



or dove

mondo

il

viva mai, sentì

o luce uscir

di



antico o

il

nostro

pura

tenebroso inchiostro,

o di spento carbon nascere arsura? Serva di chi m 'è serva, ecco ch'avolto porto di bruno laccio

il

core intorno,

che per candida

man non

La

o

've più ardi,

fia

mai

un Sole è nato; un

Sol, che nel bel volto

porta la notte, ed ha negli occhi

Marino

them

clearly this



cites

many common

in the case at

hand;

il

giorno. (Croce 105)

attributes of the Petrarchan

in particular,

we ought

amata only

to notice that the

on the opposition light-darkness, and on the paradoxical

black

woman

gives

more

a sharp antithesis to the

which the for the

sciolto.

Sol, sol per tuo scorno

fair

and

to the

enamored

world than the sun

(1.2), i.e.

is far

itself

numerous claims of previous Petrarchan poetry

poet, as well as the center of his universe.

from being

derisive: the slave

is,

is

assertion that

complexion and the eyes of the beloved were the source of

sonnet, however,

mostro"

light to the poet

emphasis

in

all light

The tone of Marino's after all, a "leggiadro

an object worth observing, a thing of beauty and leggiadria.

Properly speaking, then, this

is

not a burlesque poem, but simply one where the

author stretches ready-made topoi to express his fictional feelings.

Another challenging and popular subject matter for burlesque poetry

Baroque period are old women. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza wrote net about "una vieja que se tenia por hermosa" ["an old hag beautiful"]

which

is

a

who

in the

a caudate son-

reputed herself

deformed description rather than an attempt

at

using Pe-

trarchan clichés in a creative, novel way. Indeed, the representation of this old

Bodily Boundaries Represented

woman

from being subsumed

far

is

emerges

in

gives us a long

list

same glorifying tone

in the

Marino's sonnet on the black

65

slave.

that clearly

Hurtado de Mendoza instead

of elements that characterize the old

woman

under scrutiny,

an openly mocking tone: she has "très cabellos no mas, y un sol diente,

pechos de zigarra propriamente,

/

en que ay telas de aranas y de aranos" ["Three

strands of hair, and no more, and only one tooth, / Breasts

hopper, filled

/

Where

are to be found

with "tantas rugas" ["so

and oversized

(11.7-8);

cobwebs and

many

wrinkles"]

even her smell

(Martin 198).^ Indeed, the

elicits a

last tercet

which single element

is

fit

more

for a grass-

brow

scratches"] (11.2-4); her (1.6),

while her mouth

is

to

negative and scoffing remark (1.12)

look carefully

responsible for the old

de todo quanto oys no os

is

empty

crowns the sonnet by accentuating the

anybody who were

that the poet (in fact,

in

/ los

woman's

fact

cannot decide

at her)

lack of beauty:

falta cosa:

dezid que os falta para ser hermosa.

[Of

all

you hear you lack nothing: what you lack to be beautiful.]

Tell us then

A

typically laudatory line (the second to last one) is rendered ironic

by the pre-

ceding enumeration, and the crowning touch comes from the repetition of falta. is

the old hag herself

entry into the

who

domain of Petrarchan beauty.

Hurtado de Mendoza 's sonnet

clear difference in tone

woman

directly,

is

much more blatant in its indictment of its poems on viejas. One of the reasons for this

is

subject matter than Quevedo's love

old

the fact that Hurtado de

in turn,

sonnets

come

more

to

Mendoza 's poem

while Quevedo's usually avoid

tion, then, the subject matter is spared the

comes,

It

receives the task of choosing the elements that bar her

produc-

open jeers of the author, but she be-

more inconspicuous,

transparent,

addresses the

this. In the latter's

mind: the one entitled "Pinta

el

that

is,

more

absent.

'Aqui fue Troya' de

la

Two

Hermo-

sura" ["He paints the 'Here Troy used to stand' of Beauty"] (203), and the quat-

"En cuévanos, sin cejas y pestaiias" (21 1-12). Quevedo teases an old woman's attempts to look younger by way of an excessive amount of cosmetics. Even if some of the usual Petrarchan

rains of the

one

starting

In the first one,

attributes are present

ample



— her

face

they are linked with

lesque tradition: her hair

is

is

"bianca nieve" ["white snow"]

some of

silver (1.4)

(1.1),

for ex-

the traits already encountered in the Bur-

and her complexion

almidonado de gargajo" ["carnation starched with phlegm"]

is

likened to "clavel

(1.8),

thus fusing to-

gether a perfectly acceptable element of Petrarchan description (the carnation)

with the element of

made

is

artificiality (the cloth

starched, so that the old

ful skin) as

woman

with which the

manmade

flower

is

can maintain the pretense of her beauti-

well as with a repulsive term, inappropriate in the Petrarchan tradition

Maria Galli Stampino

66 (the gargajo, or phlegm). In

direct

"En cuévanos," however,

the criticism

is

much more

and pointed:

En cuévanos,

sin cejas

y pestanas,

ojos de vendimiar tenéis, agiiela;

cuero de Fregenal, muslos de suela; piemas y cono son toros y canas. Las nalgas son dos porras de espadaiias; afeitâis la caraza de chinela con diaquilón y humo de la vela,

y luego dais

la teta a las aranas.

[As on the bottom of baskets, without eyebrows or eyelashes.

You

have, old hag, eyes

fit

for a grape harvest;

Skin from Fregenal, thighs of tanned leather;

Your legs and cunt are fit for bulls and look like reeds. Your buttocks are two clubs made of reed-mace;

You shave your With

plaster

slipper-like face

and candle smoke.

And readily you The

direct address in line

old hag's head

is

two soon gives way

deprived of

of drunkenness; her skin

give your breast to the spiders.]

is

to an

impersonal description: the

eyes are dark and possibly showing signs

hair, her

as hard as leather, and her thighs are far

from

flexible

and supple. Even bodily parts accurately avoided by love poets (buttocks and breasts,

which are not designated as such but with a more colloquial and offen-

sive equivalent) surface here and are accurately observed, so as to

whole

portrait

more

That the mocking portrait of the old

woman had become

rather than a casual disruption of a Petrarchan

Donne's Elegy this

9,

"The Autumnall."

composition as one of the

conversely see

it

as an

last

examples

the

in the

this elegy

poems

largely a cliché, attested

by John

Mario Praz construed

in this poetical trend (1 15),

we

can

to

was

"first printed

which

it

and thus

entitled in

belongs "are often thought to

mid- 1590s" (Donne 135).^ Consequently, "The

Autumnall" can be legitimately viewed in

is

early vitality of the burlesque exploitation

1633" (Donne 152), the group of poems

have been composed

commonplace,

In spite of the fact that

example of the

of Petrarchan modes. Although

of Petrarchan topoi

make

bizarre and less canonical.

as an early attestation of the exploitation

other than love ones.

The tone of Donne's elegy 9 can be If transitory things,

easily gathered

from

its last

which soone decay,

Age must be lovelyest at the latest But name not Winter-faces, whose

day. skin's slacke;

Lanke, as an unthrifts purse; but a soules sacke;

sixteen lines:

^

Bodily Boundaries Represented

67

Whose Eyes seeke light within, for all here's shade; Whose mouthes are holes, rather worne out, then made; Whose every tooth to a severall place is gone. To vexe their soules at Resurrection;

Name

not these living Death-heads unto mee,

For these, not Ancient, but Antique be. hate extreames; yet I had rather stay With Tombs, then Cradles, to weare out I

Since such loves motion natural

My love descend, Not panting I

shall

after

is,

growing beauties,

ebbe out with them, here

is

Donne

is

woman's

is

appearance,

still

no longer

taut is

not his main concern; the skin, after

(1.38). ff the

own

art,

old

woman

all,

described in "The

but ad majorem Dei gloriam, so to speak.

also interesting to notice that "a

Paradox of an ould woman'" for the interpretation that

woman was

Donne's concerns is

she tends to become transparent and inconspicuous: seemingly

not to benefit the poet's is

skin

appreciated for her inward substance rather than for her outward

Autumnall"

It

is

a transcendent meaning, so

by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and

as in the sonnets

"but a soules sacke"

goe. (154)

derisive, reflects

with morality and mortality. The fact that the

Quevedo, since outward appearance

hill.

so,

endowed with

description

from being mocking and

for

still

who home-ward

that the tone, far

Donne

a day.

and journey downe the

The old woman's

not derided by

may

this

few

MSS

elegy (Donne

provide

152); this

Donne's usage of Petrarchan clichés

eccentric for his contemporaries,

who

titles

such as 'A

could corroborate vis-à-vis

an old

could only read these poetic

compositions along the lines of the burlesque and the paradoxical. Indeed, paradoxical portraits of the beloved

sonnet tradition,

and had a following

woman in the

surface fairly early in the Italian

Spanish Baroque production.

I

am

of

course alluding to Francesco Bemi's "Sonetto alla sua Donna," a precocious

example of paradoxical usage of many Petrarchan clichés of the beloved:

Chiome d'argento

fino, irte e attorte

Senz'arte intorno ad un bel viso d'oro;

Fronte crespa, u' mirando io mi scoloro.

Dove spunta Occhi

Da

i

suoi

strali

Amor e

Morte;

di perle vaghi, luci torte

ogni obietto diseguale a loro;

Ciglia di neve, e quelle, ond'io m'accoro.

Dita e

man dolcemente

Labra di

latte,

Denti d'ebeno

grosse e corte;

bocca ampia

celeste;

rari e pellegrini;

Inaudita ineffabile armonia;

Costumi altèri e gravi: a voi, divini Servi d'Amor, palese fo che queste

Maria Galli Stampino

68

Son

The tone so

far.

is

le

bellezze della donna mia. (Martin 190)

again different from that characterizing the

Since the

sonnet aims

woman

described by

Bemi

is

poems we have examined

admittedly his beloved (1.14), the

describing her using Petrarchan topoi that at

at

first

pounded:

brow, eyes, eyebrows, hands, fingers,

hair,

lips,

com-

sight look

pletely plausible. All the canonical features are taken into consideration

mouth,

teeth,

and exand her

general demeanor. Furthermore, most sanctioned attributes are present here:

sil-

ver and gold, pearls and snow, milk, a pale blue color, ebony. Bemi's innovation consists in the fact that he bestows on each physical feature an attribute that is

unusual in the Petrarchan vein;

amata, one that

Bemi audience.

and

is

utilizes yet

He

this

way, he builds a paradoxical

indeed difficult to visualize

in the reader's

portrait

of his

mind.

another strategy with respect to direct address of his implied

Love

identifies the latter in the coterie of his friends, all devoted to

to loving similar beauties.

More

than a criticism of the object of the sonnet,

"Chiome d'argento" can be construed

as a direct attack against the Petrarchan

school of love poetry and as an attempt to legitimize

its

alternative, the so-called

"berneschi." It is

not by coincidence,

intrigued ian:

I

am

by Bemi's sonnet

I

"Chiome d'argento" at the

is

what

remarkably different

is

is

falls

more

it

into Castil-

The elements

at the

are

once again the tone.

a tongue-in-cheek raillery of his beloved, arguably

Petrarchan tradition than

aimed

object of his description, as can be

gathered from the abstract terms on 1.11 and, in general, the

crespos"

sigh de oro was

and adapting

referring to Baltasar del Alcazar's "Cabellos crespos."

largely similar to Bemi's, but

more

believe, that a Spanish poet of the

to the point of translating

clearly in the burlesque category

last tercet;

by virtue of

"Cabellos

its last

two

lines:

Si lo

que vemos publico es tan

bello,

jContemplad, amadores, lo secreto! (Martin 202)

[If

what we see openly

is

so

fair,

Contemplate, lovers, the secret Baltasar leaves

much

part!]

unsaid, and not because he has run out of lines

if

he

is to

respect the sonnet form; instead of ending the composition on a light, yet sympathetic tone like

Bemi, Baltasar tums the poem into something very similar to the viejas by Quevedo and Hurtado de Mendoza. In any

mocking descriptions of case, both in

exploited to

"Chiome d'argento" and "Cabellos crespos" Petrarchan clichés are form an absurd, paradoxical picture, one that does not seem to have

a possible visualization.

We seem to

be able to reach the same conclusion for the

burlesque tradition as with Petrarchan poetry proper: these female images de-

Bodily Boundaries Represented

69

scribe only the outline, the silhouette of their object, so that the poet

them with any elements he deems Just as Italian

is

free to

fill

poetic, or mocking, enough.

Cropper points out the discrepancies between

Renaissance, in the later poetic tradition

we

portraits

and

sitters in the

detect a gap (indeed, in the

case of the burlesque, a chasm) between the woman-object and her representation in poetic

compositions. However, in the Baroque period the series of poetic and

pictorial portraits that maintain the contour of the object of description while filling

it

with various and sundry elements

most blatant example Cabra

in

in

not limited to female subjects. The

is

literature is the description

Quevedo's El Buscon (book

1

,

chapter

El era un clérigo cerbatana, largo sólo en el

of the infamous warden

3):

talle,

una cabeza pequena, pelo ber-

mejo (no hay mas que decir para quien sabe el refrân), los ojos avecindados en el cogote, que parecia que miraba por uévanos, tan hundidos y escuros, que era buen sitio el

suyo para tiendas de mercaderes;

la nariz, entre

Roma y

rancia,

porque se

le

habïa comido de unas bûas de resfriado, que aun no fueron de vicie porque cuestan dinero; las barbas descoloridas de

miedo de

la

boca vecina, que, de pura hambre,

parecîa que amenazaba a cernersela; los dientes, le faltaban no sé cuântos, y pienso que por holgazanes y vagamundos se los habîan desterrado; el gaznate largo corne

de avestruz, con una nuez tan de

la necesidad; los

que parecîa se iba a buscar de comer forzata

salida,

brazos secos, las

manos come un manojo de sarmientos cada

una. (97-98)

[He was a peashooter-scholar, notable only in his length; he had a small head and (I do not have to add anything for those who know the proverb). His eyes were so sunken in his head that he seemed to look out of deep baskets, so profound

red hair

and obscure they were; they would have been

Roman and

shop. His nose was between the

away by rheum

(but

it

He was

for the

could not have been vice, as

white with fear of the adjacent mouth, as the

pure hunger.

fit

missing

awnings of a tradesman's

the French type, having been eaten it

latter

costs money). His beard

looked ready to eat

do not know how many

I

teeth,

was

out of

it

banished in

my

opinion for being lazy and vagabonds. His neck was as big as an ostrich's, and his

Adam's apple was so prominent find some food. His arms were

that

it

looked as though

it

was

straining forward to

withered, and each hand looked like a bundle of

twigs.]

Since Quevedo

in this novelistic

passage

is

remarkably free of clichés to follow,

contrary to love poetry, his fancy depicts Cabra in

than what

we have

head and neck,

seen so

filled

far.

much more

Truly, what the reader "sees"

imaginative terms is

the outline of a

with disparate objects: the merchants' tent that shadows

Cabra's eyes; his mustaches, embodied and fleeing from the mouth for fear of

being eaten; his teeth, so few and

far in

between

that the rest

iled; his

Adam's apple prominent

on.

also worthwhile noticing that Cabra's portrait

It is

must have been exand so

as if looking for food outside the neck;

by no means stops

neck; similar equivalents are given for his gait, his hat, and his clothes,

at the

among

Maria Galli Stampino

70 others.

unclear, however, if this is a function of a different subject matter for

It is

the description (a

which In

man, instead of the Petrarchan lady) or of

the different genre to

this description belongs.

Quevedo's passage, then, the whole body

tendency

we

identified in the poetic traditions.

more domain could be

invested with the deforming

is

It is

besides poetry and portraits: staged performances. studied the

phenomenon of

worth mentioning that one

gamer more examples of

fruitfully exploited to

this trend,

Mark Franko has

recently

courtly ballets at the French court, and in the case of

burlesque ballets he describes dancers garbed in costumes that highlighted, ex-

panded and "reduced the body

[of the dancer] to

one anatomical

an enormous head or legs walking without a trunk" (80). posite, yet corresponding, trend to the etry: instead in

one observed

of preserving boundaries while

filling

feature, such as

We witness here an

in lyrical

op-

and burlesque po-

them with disparate elements,

French burlesque ballets the boundaries are erased so that one element can

gain the upper hand on

all

the others.'^

un hombre de gran nariz" ["To a

man

Almost

naturally,

Erase un hombre a una nariz pegado, erase una nariz superlativa, erase una alquitara

medio

viva,

erase un peje espada mal barbado; era un reloj de sol mal encarado, erase un elefante boca arriba, erase una nariz sayón y escriba,

un Ovidio Nasón mal narigado. Erase un espolón de una galera, erase una piramide de Egito, los

doce tribus de narices

era;

erase un naricismo infinito, frison archinariz, caratulera,

sabanón garrafal, morado y

[There was a

man

frito.

(188)

stuck to a nose.

was a superlative nose. It was a half-alive alembic, It was a swordfish with an ugly beard; It was a sundial with an ugly face. It was an elephant with a high mouth. It was a nose-executioner and a nose-scribe. An Ovid Naso with an ugly nose. It was a galley's ram. It was an Egyptian pyramid, It was the twelve tribes of noses; It was an infinite nosism. It

Quevedo's sonnet "A

with a big nose"] comes to mind:

Bodily Boundaries Represented

71

A Phrygian arch-nose, maker of masks, A tremendous chilblain, purple and fried.] In the case of the French burlesque ballets the object of representation can

male or female, without the gender limitations

either

and

that are already

much

be

mark Petrarchan poetry

that

burlesque domain, as proven by

less fixed in the

Quevedo's sonnet about the man-nose.^^ In order to

come

to

some general conclusions with

covered by Cropper's essay,

it is

necessary that

we

respect to the entire field

consider

some

portraits that

can be deemed contemporaneous to the Baroque poetical production that has constituted the core of our analysis so

far.

There

is

one

artist

whose production

deserves such sustained attention: Giuseppe Arcimboldo, official portraitist of the imperial court in Prague in the years 1562-87. His "Vertumnus" (which portrait of

Emperor Rudolph H,

sent to

Mario Praz, an appropriate emblem

him

in

Prague

1591)

in

is,

is

also a

according to

between the

for the transitional phase

late

Renaissance and the Baroque:

Se una figura mitologica è

Proteo egli ha la mutabilità,

ma

barocco, questo è Vertumno. Di

il

Proteo è già mutabilità assoluta, pieno gioco di

forme, essenza del barocco; Vertumno è vista d'un fine,

emblematicamente quella fase della

atta a rappresentare

cultura che sta tra l'ultimo Rinascimento e

cambia più volte

meno

sfrenato, esperimenta mutazioni in

sua figura per entrar nelle grazie della bella

la

Pomona, cioè personifica il mutare delle culture per ottenere la fertilità dei campi raffigurata in Pomona, la dea dei frutti. E così l'età che egli è atto a impersonare è caratterizzata da una serie di tentativi, di atteggiamenti, di assaggi di ninfa

nuovi accordi, che preludono a quella che sarà poi

Vertumno è un personaggio



in

keeping with traditional interpretations of the Baroque

ful analysis

Over

and hermetic exegesis of his composite

Cacciari in a 1987 article,

approach as more productive

my

a

more

fruit-

language. Just as in the fulness from

phonemes

Arcimboldo's work

we

latter

to

we

words

in this context.

proposed by

According

to his interpretation,

articulation that is distinctive of

identify an increased complexity and to

poems

(or literary

works

meaning-

in general), so in

witness the progress from points to objects to portraits.

therefore possible for the painter to

It

work with metaphors, metonymies, and

any other poetic tropos as poets do (24-26). Consequently,

Arcimboldo's

portraits,

analysis favors Roland Barthes's linguis-

Arcimboldo bestows on painting the multiple

is



needs to address the distinctive characters of Arcimboldo's paintings.

a Foucaultian

Massimo tic

piena orchestra del barocco.

Praz emphasizes, in the subject matter of Vertumnus, the aspect of mutabil-

If ity

la

di Arcimboldi. (33)

portraits yield a richer harvest of

meaning

in Barthes's analysis,

to their

viewers than a

conventional, realistic (yet, as Cropper has shown, idealized) one.^^ It is

tive

worthwhile noting that while Arcimboldo's followers repeated his figura-

schemes or transposed them

to

landscape painting (thereby virtually revert-

ing to the antecedent tradition),^^ his approach revolutionizes the field of portrai-

Maria Galli Stampino

72

much more

ture, a

sensitive domain, precisely because

long philosophical and iconographical

unusual case of a courtly

who

tradition.

it

was associated with a

Arcimboldo presents us with the

the official portrait painter of the Hapsburg court,

artist,

plays with the expectations of his patrons. ^'^ According to Giancarlo Maiori-

monograph on Arcimboldo,

no, author of the most recent

was responding

in a

remarkably personal way

to a tension

the Milanese painter

running through his

times:

To maintain some

sense of order, knowledge often was reduced to an inventory of was stored in the only frame of order: the canvas itself. Form became catalogue, which would present unusual things without having to interpret them. In reality that

Arcimboldo's

art,

man is not an idea man would take

an anatomical vessel,

We

should keep

mind

in

Wunderkammern and traits are

and

primarily tools to

insists

make

of

sense of and envision a

seems

to strengthen

at glorifying their

new

order for the world

Cropper's contention that

authors while erasing their object,

on man as the foremost subject matter of Arcimboldo's work, a

rather objectionable assertion.

Along with the akeady mentioned Vertumnus, one

of Arcimboldo's most successful portraits ery.

As

heap of objects. (58)

that these are also the times of the popularity

Renaissance portraits aimed

Maiorino

in a

studioli}^ according to Maiorino, then, Arcimboldo's por-

objects. ^^ If this assertion

its

but a shape, and a grotesque one at that.

Both paintings are praised

delfine della pittura, the

among his Ambrogio Figino,

first

in

is that

a painter in real

expert of literature,

if

//

Pigino overo

document of Arcimboldo's popularity and appre-

peers and contemporaries.

ciation

of Flora, the goddess of green-

Gregorio Comanini's dialogue

life,

The

fictional character

Giovanni

asks Stefano Guazzo, a cavalier and an

Arcimboldo's paintings can be considered

as expressing

"fantastica imitazione":

E

perché no? anzi, ingegnosissimo pittor fantastico e commendabile sommamente.

Che

se bene la favola, così di Flora

come

di

Vertunno,

gli è stata

somministrata di

da poeti che l'hanno imitata col verso, e da altri pittori che l'hanno dipinta; capriccio et invenzion sua nondimeno è stato il formare una donna che tutta sia fiori, et un uomo che tutto sia frutti; cosa che non aveva l'essere in alcun altro infuori, e

telletto.

(257)

Comanini, through the words of Guazzo, recognizes

came

part of

one of the Seasons

tive topic for a painting; 1^

ment of the mythological tion that he himself

nied

it

to

Prague

in

however

figure.

that Flora,

series as "Primavera," is

later be-

the originality is clearly present in the treat-

Comanini cannot avoid

citing a poetic

had written à propos of the painting and 1589:

which

by no means an innova-

that

composi-

had accompa-

Bodily Boundaries Represented

73

Son io Flora, o pur fiori? Se fior, come di Flora

Ho col sembiante il riso? E s'io son Flora, Come Flora è sol fiori? Ah non fiori son io, non io son Flora, Anzi son Flora e

fiori.

Fior mille, una sol Flora,

Però che Sai

i

come?

fior fan Flora, e I fiori in

Cangiò saggio

Flora

i

fiori.

Flora

pittore, e Fiora in fiori. (258)

This poem, with a distinctive Marino-like usage of puns and verbal recurrences, furthers Arcimboldo's attempt at disguising a natura morta^^ as a lively (or living) subject for his portrait; the last line of the lyric)

one

is to

that is necessary if the painter

(dubbed "wise"

in

pursue the traditional representation of Flora as

ideal beauty.

compose the portrait of Flora metonymy fiori-Flora, hence in this respect

interesting to notice that the materials that

It is

are organic, precisely to further the

we encountered in poetic in much the same way as

fundamentally different from the inorganic ones which production. However, Arcimboldo lyric or

What

burlesque poets: he

is

literalizes

twisting clichés

them, showing on canvas

all their

impact.

accounts for the grotesque quality of Flora's portrait is the lack of corre-

spondence res-verba; what would go almost undetected

in a

poem

footnote reference to yet another topos) is forcefully effective

(other than a

when

depicted on

the canvas. 1^

One could simply espouse Maiorino's conclusion that Arcimboldo's portraits move towards a form of relativism in taste: "Whereas cosmos rests with the proportional order of beauty, chaos thrives on clashes between beauty and ugliness,

thus opening the door to a plurality of standards" (126). Indeed, this conclusion

echoes perfectly

at least

some of

the preceding observations

on

lyric

and bur-

lesque poetry: having observed a convergence between lyric and burlesque poetry,

based on their respective usage of traditional images depleted of

nal content,

their origi-

can easily further the parallel between poetry on the one hand and

we

Arcimboldo's paintings object represented

is

in the other. In the latter case, too, the silhouette

respected, yet

it is

filled

of the

with other elements. These, to fur-

ther Maiorino's claims, are manifestations of the tendency of the times towards a plurality of standards of beauty, based

would have reached Baroque period sance,

on chaos and confusion. Once again we

a conclusion fitting the traditional belief of a Mannerist or

that proceeds to dismantle all the cherished tenets of the Renais-

among which, of course, female beauty

However,

I

would

like to

emphasize a

ranks high.

parallel point

made by Nancy Vickers

Maria Galli Stampino

74

with respect to Petrarch's lyrics and by Maiorino vis-à-vis Arcimboldo's portraits.

In the former's words,

Petrarch's particularizing

mode

of figuring [Laura's] body, the product of a male-

viewer/female-object exchange that extends the Actaeon/Diana exchange, thus reveals a textual strategy subtending his entire volume: lyric

program and understandably becomes the

tors.

(107)

In other words, in order to better,

more

easily possess



rarch and his followers scatter her limbs

image never emerges.

that the full

We

i.e.,

goes to the heart of his

Laura and her body, Pet-

they only describe parts of

it

so

Roman adage "particularizing mode of fig-

face a literalization of the

applied to the body politics: divide et impera. This

uring that body" derives from a specific

it

lyric stance of generations of imita-

way of

looking, which

is

aggressive and

possessive, in other words, well suited to a male gazer vis-à-vis his prized possession. This

almost

remark converges unmistakably with Maiorino' s observation, made

in passing, that

in spite of an extravagant

assemblage of natural and

Arcim-

artificial objects,

boldo's profiles are set against aperspectival backgrounds. The shapes making up the anatomical whole^^ preserve their depth, but the predominant effect

crowded plane on which shallowness of foreground and background test ambiguity. (31-32)

As

in

is

that of a

middle and

Petrarchan poetry the gazer concentrates on one limb or feature at a

time, so in Arcimboldo's portraits the viewer

composing the

sitter's profile as

the beloved

is

is

is

aware of the different elements

well as of the décalage between the foreground

and the background of the painting. the object of vision

In

flatness of

In both instances, the viewer's possession of

furthered and completed by the disjointed

way

in

which

presented to view.

conclusion,

we

witness a remarkable convergence of representational

strategies in the case of lyric

and burlesque poetry as well as

portrait painting in

the period variously described as late Renaissance or mannerism, and continuing into the

Baroque proper.

of Petrarch's

If

such strategies emerge from the historical antecedents

own Canzoniere

ture (as demonstrated

(as

Vickers has shown) and of Renaissance portrai-

by Cropper), they become more

spread in the period under our scrutiny.

Is this

haustion of poetic and figurative clichés? Or earlier of the

is it

rather

"deux discontinuités dans V episteme de

according to Foucault? Or

is it

radical and

more wide-

trend a consequence of the ex-

la

one of the marks of the

culture occidentale" (13),

evidence, to follow Cacciari, of a crisis in the

hermetic belief of the centrality of man? Or does

it

reflect a positive

view of na-

much like Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, to espouse Maurizio Calvesi's opinion? The representational strategies expounded in the present study accommodate themselves to all these interpretative approaches, and possibly many more. Truly, they are a strangely neglected monstrum. Held to our view (if the term come from ture,

Bodily Boundaries Represented

monstrare) as an admonishment ness,

still

come from monere,

(if it

instead) to our blind-

they have gone undetected for centuries, transparent to our rhetorically

trained eyes. artists:

75

And

so they have fostered the very

a keen awareness of their

art,

aim of Renaissance and Baroque

emptied of any reference

and

to its object

its

medium. Stanford University

NOTES

I

would

thank Professors H.U. Gumbrecht, A. Martin, and C. Springer of Stanford

like to

University as well as Professor Karl Maurer of Ruhniniversitat

ing questions, which led to

many

Bochum

for their stimulat-

Thanks

also to the gradu-

revisions of the present work.

and suggestions

ate students in Italian at Stanford University, 1993-94, for their feedback

for fiirther reading.

Giovanni Pozzi' s remarks seem

gami

tra

i

to corroborate the possibility of such

componenti del sistema

sembra funzionare

[letterario] si rinserrano in tal

in sé e per sé, senza

che

designare la bellezza, la forza,

il

che

il

letteratura elabora

i

suoi simboli per

piacere senza interessarsi gran che degli esseri in carne ed i

dati.

La compattezza

coerenza del sistema che viene elaborato in rapporto

su un riferimento al reale" (398-99).

alla materia

del

tema

si

not that, according to Pozzi, any attempt at map-

It is

literature. Rather,

in

Empson,

stricto

he offers a necessary counterpart to any duU

referential school of criticism, such as the neoclassical

language (see chapter 5

basa

da descrivere e non

ping representational strategies becomes void and useless, as no representaticm sensu ever takes place in

"I le-

congegno

renda necessario un rapporto con la realtà

meno intensamente

ossa che ne oggettivano più o sulla

si

... La

percettiva o sperimentale che rappresenta.

an exegesis:

modo

one attacking John

Miltcxi's use of

Maybe Cropper's most relevant a revamping of this debate among scholars of lit-

especially 153-54).

contribution will turn out to be precisely erature.

All the translaÙOTis are by the author, they strive to render the original closely, and not to

reproduce

stylistic effects.

Nancy Vickers emphasizes

this character

of lyric poetry in Petrarch's

textures are those of metals and stones; her beautiful dissociated objects" (96). Italian poetry

A

image

is

representative

own

works: "Her

that of a collecticn of exquisitely

list

of of^sitional clichés in early

can be found in Pozzi (413-14), while Forster' s classical study offers a short

roster of Petrarchan topoi (9-10). classic petrarchist situation is that the lady is hard-hearted; love has struck the poet

"The

alone but spared the lady, and he begs that love should strike her too. The lady

shown as enjoying the lover's pain; she is The best overview of the biith of the

is

often

crueller than a tiger" (Forster 15).

twentieth-century notion of "Baroque"

is

still

WeUek's. Earlier than the

Pierre de

Jean

examples

we

have

Adhémar

put

it,

"Pour lui,

les

mais des statues ou des peintures (344).

just

mentioned, approximately in the years 1550-65,

Ronsard found another method for portraying

However,

beloved than

it

is

earlier,

femmes ne

comme

worth noticing

il

his beloved in inorganic terms: as

sont pas des êtres vivants, des êtres de chair,

en voit autour de lui"

that his corpus contains far

contemporary or

later

at

Fcmtainebleau castle

fewer descriptions of the

examples. Moreover, Ronsard

tries to

for bodily parts of his aimée that are usually neglected in love poetry: a wild

him of Marie's waist and hips

(1

.

122); the branches of an

account

oak reminds

elm covered with ivy

are a figu-

Maria Galli Stampino

76

laùan of her arms embracing him

(1 170); .

even her breasts, her legs and her

feet arrest his

observation for a while (1.348-49).

7

"Oleys come a pescado remojado" ["You stink

like pickled fish"] is diametrically ofçosite

"Du beau jardin de son jeune

to Ronsard's description of Cassandre's breath (sonnet 143):

printemps/ Naist un parfum, qui

en tous temps/ Embsmeroit de ses douces haleines."

le ciel

(1.61)

8

The tail

and introductiMi

in the preface

sive study of the relationship tual settings within

9

Donne's poems before they were printed

issue of the circulation of

by Marotti

was generated and by which

it

is

explored in de-

John Donne, Coterie Poet, an exten-

between Donne's poetic production, the

and for which

it

was

and

social

intellec-

influenced, as well

as the generic constraints and expectations that ruled over

it.

An

considers directly only the Anni-

interesting text

versaries, a

much

on

this topic is Tayler's.

less descriptive series of

a better understanding of Donne's and description of, especially,

10

to his

I

will only

which

Although

poems,

it

its first

chapter

is

useful in order to gain

and idealized

his contemporaries' concept of "idea"

women.

mention in passing the consequences of such deforming costumes (some of

on the freedom of bodily movements for the danc-

are reproduced in Franko's text)

Qearly, there exists a tension between bodily movements as

ers involved in the ballets.

conceived by the choreographers and those possible donning those costumes. In Franko's

costumes were of paramount importance

interpretation,

to establish the identity

of the

staged bodies: "Unlike plays that develop character and action through dialogue, burlesque ballets attempt to

communicate principally through the dancer's appearance"

(79).

Even

in

the openly Platonic setting of British masques, costumes play an important function. Their architect rate

and designer Inigo Jones frankly acknowledges the goal he pursues: "his elaboin Townshend's Tempe Restored has been de-

costume for Queen Henrietta Maria

vised, he said, 'so that corporeal beauty, consisting in symmetry, color, and certain unex-

pressable graces, shining in the Queen's majesty,

beauty of the soul, unto which strategies are akin to those

and

"kings and queens

.

.

in Renaissance portraiture, as analyzed

form the core or our analysis

Queen

us to the contemplatici of the

by Cropp)er,

in the rest of the present work.

Henrietta Maria, moreover,

worth remembering

is

it

that

possess two bodies, one their own, the other belonging to the State

.

over which they mie.

commission"

may draw

hath analogy'" (Orgel 369). In some sense, both these

employed

in the paintings that will

In the specific case of

it

It

is

(Brilliant 102)

the latter that interests portrait artists worthy of their royal

— an important element

to

be recalled

later in

our discussion

of Arcimboldo's imperial portraits. 11 In one canovaccio of the

commedia dell'arte.

Pulcinella offers a long tirade in praise of his

beloved Checca that bears witness to the pervasiveness and longevity of such chchés (the manuscript is dated 1734) as well as to an indirect (i.e., in non embodied, evocative form) stage usage: "Schiavo gioia

Toleto

/

addove

Ammore

mia amata

/

De Napole

terato dalle Grazie

Lanziere, e Tanto delli spaiare

/

lo

tu sei la bella Fata /

ba 'ncarozza

/ ss'

miezzo de ssà faccia è propeo

ssà vocca, laura, e diente, è chiazza larga delli Arefece

s'mballa la farina

Mercato 'nante

/

Chiù

ssè rizie è chiazza

/

sotta

avenno dato

pò ngè /

sta lo

de pietto

belle coscetelle tuie: / ora aie

mantracchio.

/

/



/

e

non bole

/

/

delle doie

Pertuso" (Thérault 152).

Maggio

le

de

dalli

la chiazza dell'Armiere /

Recotte

/

Doana addò

ssò ventre è lo

Vena mia / non pò jire chiù Colonne d'Ercole, che so le



frate assaie

sfratta

temmerario, e resoluto,

autro lo Poveriello scuro

ma siente nò lo trattare da Vozzacchio / co' chisso pò à

la strata

ora suffece, cà la

non presuto

da sapere cà aggio

chisso è sciuto da Porta Caputo, chisso ftsciaturo:

/

sij

ssò Pietto è la

d'Arco addò se venneno

Lavenaro

allo

/

Tu

vocchie uno è la strata

com'è

/

/

e

cà ave na casa à

darele Chiazza Larega, ò lo

l'uso, / e

vene ad abetà dereto à

lo

Bodily Boundaries Represented 12

It

77

then becomes possible to advance a variety of exegeses, including the recent one by

Qaude Gandelman

according to which Vertumnus would be a direct inspiration to Hob-

"A

bes' idea of Leviathan: part of the body. This

was

tradition diverging

from the

the Hobbesian tradition with

classical its

foregrounded one single

concept of the king as a

sort of

devouring stomach constituted by the digested bodies of his subjects. The body of the Leviathan-king was crystallized in an etching that served as the firontispiece of the first edi-

Hobbes' Commonwealth. This

tion of

mannerism. The picture of Rudolph

known

.... Arcimboldo represented the king as a conglomerate of

doing so he was following the precept

start in spring. In

who was also

the philosopher,

wrote, is

away from Leviathan

stituted

King

in the

that is

by the

fruit

the fruit that gets

all

down by

hidden in

all things.'

his friend

he has digested, whereas the Leviathan

may have

in fact,

Vertumnus

essential difference that

mannerism, and the representation-directing homunculus may be said

by painters

delman's interpretation seems to go a

cimboldo and

homunculus à

into the composite mannerist

in particular. In the

Prague

setting, these paintings,

made with a

Arcimboldo"

trans-

Gan-

fine study of Ar-

and to the Rudolphian court

culminating with Vertumnus, would be

and an intentional

specific poUtical content,

"pubhc figures are always defined

in general,

(78). If

Season cycle was

establishes that the in general

in-

con-

aesthetics of

have been

to

Thomas Kaufmann's

far,

Holy Roman Empire

clearly perceived as "allegories

message" (102). Indeed,

too

Hapsburg court

his relation with the

replete with references to the

little

la

is

formed by human bodies.

is

Hobbesian ideology thus may be regarded as a product of the philosophical lated

its

Comanini,

Rudolph as Vertumnus

Hobbesian conception and,

Both are composite images, with the

it.

set

patronized by Rudolph. 'The duty of the painter,' Comanini

to reveal the face of the

'is

not far

spired

stemmed from sixteenth-century Roman god of spring, was well

latter tradition

as Vertumnus, the

II

to

some degree by

the distance necessary to stage the roles they play for a sizeable audience. Allegorical por-

by

traiture, its

its

very nature, tends to make observation abstract, to displïice perception from

and

objects,

to

engender emblematic images which transmute the substance of a person

words and

into ideas,

conceits, gathered around a

"La

13 Forster reproduces a 1627 etching of

from Arcimboldo's production, and,

different

named persona"

(Brilliant 104).

belle Charité" (plate 3), in

which

any case, much posterior

ever interesting to remark that the text which this etching accompanies (Sorel's

Le Berger extravagant): and

par Métaphore" (Forster

xii),

that its author calls

is

indeed very

is

to

it.

It is

how-

parodie in nature

such a depiction "un portraict

fait

thus anticipating Barthes's exegesis.

14 Extant documents and evidence of Arcimboldo's earUer work, prior to taking up residence

do not seem

in Vienna, tion. In

1549,

brica del ity

Duomo in

moves

to

any grotesque, bizarre, or otherwise irregular produc-

to indicate

when Arcimboldo

is

twenty-two, his

Como, where he works on

cal cathedral.

Only four years

later, in

ready the following year he paints his 15

A well-documented

name appears

in the

Annali della Fab-

Milan, where he worked on stained glass windows; in 1558, his activpreparatory designs for à fresco painting in the lo-

1562, does Arcimboldo

first

Seasons

move

to Vienna,

and

al-

series.

and highly comprehensive study of these phenomena

is

to

be found in

Lugli.

16 This

is

by Raimondi: "A mano a mano che entra nel mondo il nuovo gusto rinasci-

also the interpretation offered

letterario e,

per così dire,

si

secolarizza, la cultura platonica educa

mentale a un'idea di naturalezza che sia insieme decoro, e mentre propugna la libertà dell'immaginazione, di una sapienza

stilistica

convertita in

una

sorta di grazia, diviene

anche un Principio d'ordine, in quanto postula in ogni opera d'arte un organismo governato,

come

l'universo, dai segreti rapporti delle

forme vive e fluenti"

unitario,

(9).

17 Held's article provides a broad overview of the treatment of this subject from the fifteenth century onward

— one from which

emerges astonishingly.

the originality of Arcimboldo's treatment of this topic

A background

study on a particular (and teUing) exploitation of the

Maria Galli Stampino

78 image of Flora is provided Leda" in Lawner. 18

The connotations of the ing English one of

in the section entitled

Italian phrase are

much gloomier and negative than the

A

this

"still life."

comparative analysis of

has not been attempted before, to

is

my

correspond-

phrase in various languages

knowledge, but could perhaps shed some

light

on

conventions throughout various times and places. In any case, Arcimboldo's

pictorial

claim

"The Mythological Guise: Rora and

simply that he "cangiò" one living element into another, an appropriate claim for

his highly personal representational strategies, yet remarkably different

from Góngora's

contention that El Greco "dio espìritu a leno, vida a bno" ["gave soul to wood,

life to

cloth"] (502).

19

On

work

the topic of the effectiveness of images, the seminal

chapter 4: "The

20 These "wholes"

is

Freedberg, especially

Myth of Aniconism." are far

from comprising the

entire

body of the

portrait sitter,

whether male

or female; correctly, Maiorino refers to them earlier in the same passage as "profiles," since that

is vtiiat

they are: silhouettes of faces and shoulders.

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