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6 - Interpretations of Renaissance Masculinities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2024

Jessica O'Leary
Affiliation:
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter analyses the legacies of both brothers and the emphasis that writers, biographers, secretaries, and artists placed on preserving a particular type of elite martial masculinity. Throughout the sixteenth century, war, confessional conflict, and the threat of further invasion from the Ottoman Empire created a crisis of masculinity in Italy that led to biographers of Ferrante Gonzaga publicising the captain's life as a pedagogical tool for young men. Federico Gonzaga, although less militarised, was nonetheless remembered using different classical and contemporary traditions. The combined effect of their legacies reveals the desire of contemporaries to shape the next generation of Italian rulers and captains by celebrating Hispanophile predecessors.

Keywords: Gender, Gonzaga, Italian Wars, Biography, Funeral Orations

In 1563, Alfonso Ulloa's Vita del valorosissimo e gran capitano Don Ferrante Gonzaga was published in quarto by the Venetian bookseller, Nicolo Bevilacqua. In five books totalling over two hundred folio, the Spaniard described the deeds not only of Ferrante Gonzaga, but of “many other princes and captains” and the “wars of Italy and other countries, beginning in the year 1525, when Guicciardini finished his Historie, until 1557.” The title page was followed by a Spanish-language sonnet written by Antonio de Gusman and dedicated to Ferrante's son, Cesare. The sonnet serves as an introduction to the Vita, both in terms of its subject matter, but also its primary themes:

He who always lived among the Spaniards

Protector, defender, honourable and guardian

And to his enemies, enemy

Defending his Kingdoms and his glory

It was fitting that, in dying,

He should be remembered in life (as a friend)

By such a nation, a witness

To all that he did in the world.

Magnanimous Lord CESARE GONZAGA

Alonso de Ulloa took this task

For your invincible father, Don Fernando

So that Spain may repay its debt

And the brilliance of he who shone

May endure perpetually in our era.

The placement of the sonnet, its authorship, and its language immediately prime the reader for two of the key themes of Ulloa's Vita: the close connection between Ferrante and Spain, and the celebration of the virile character traits traditionally associated with Italy's elite men.

Type
Chapter
Information
Renaissance Masculinities, Diplomacy, and Cultural Transfer
Federico and Ferrante Gonzaga in Italy and Beyond
, pp. 189 - 214
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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