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Virgil and Sannazaro's Ekphrastic Vision
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
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If the Neapolitan humanist Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530) receives any recognition in scholarly circles these days, it is usually for his Arcadia, an elaborate pastoral in twelve books, each combining prose and verse, that forms one of the most important links between the work of Petrarch, its inspiration, and that of Sir Philip Sidney. The Arcadia, published first authoritatively in 1504, is written in Italian, as are the hundred or so surviving Rime (songs and sonnets), largely products of the last decade of the fifteenth century. But Sannazaro was also a prolific writer in Latin. It is a question worth asking why, after the success of his vernacular magnum opus, he opted to use primarily a classical language for the major poetry that occupied his attention for the opening decades of the subsequent century. Perhaps a confirmation of his allegiance to Christian humanism is one reason. Perhaps also it was his devotion to Virgil whose three great works provided him with the most telling impetus for his own achievements in the Augustan poet's tongue.
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References
Notes
1. This paper was delivered on May 20, 2008, at the University of Crete, Rethymnon, as part of a conference on Greek and Roman ekphrasis. I am grateful to Professor Michael Paschalis for organising the gathering and for making the participants' stay on Crete so enjoyable.
2. Hereafter abbreviated as DPV.
3. For recent theoretical work on ekphrasis see Boyle, A.J., ‘The Meaning of the Aeneid: A Critical Inquiry’, Ramus 1 (1972), 63–90 and 113-151CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Chaonian Dove: Studies in the Eclogues, Georgia and Aeneid of Virgil (Mnemosyne supp. 94: Leiden 1986), 168–72Google Scholar; Webb, R., ‘Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: The Invention of a Genre’, Word and Image 15 (1999), 7–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elsner, J. (ed. intro.), ‘The Genres of Ekphrasis’, in The Verbal and the Visual: Cultures of Ecphrasis in Antiquity = Ramus 31 (2001), 1–18Google Scholar; Becker, A.S., ‘Contest or Concert? A Speculative Essay on Ecphrasis and Rivalry between the Arts’, CML 23 (2003), 1–14Google Scholar; Eisner, J., ‘Seeing and Saying: A Psychoanalytic Account of Ekphrasis’, Helios 31 (2004), 157–85Google Scholar; Rijser, D., Raphael's Poetics: Ecphrasis, Interaction and Typology in Art and Poetry of High Renaissance Rome (Amsterdam 2006Google Scholar); Elsner, J., Roman Eyes (Princeton 2007), esp. 67f.Google Scholar; Bartsch, S. and Elsner, J. (edd. intro.), ‘Introduction: Eight Ways of Looking at an Ekphrasis’, in Ekphrasis = CP 102.1 (2007), i–viGoogle Scholar. On ekphrasis and lists see Boyd, B.W., ‘Virgil's Camilla and the Traditions of Catalogue and Ecphrasis (Aeneid 7.803-17)’, AJP 113 (1992), 213–34Google Scholar. Cf. also, without specific mention of ekphrasis, Most, G.W., ‘Dante's Greeks’, Arion 3 ser. 13 (2006), 15–47, esp. 26-29Google Scholar. On ekphrasis and prophecy see Kurman, G., ‘Ecphrasis in Epic Poetry’, CL 26 (1974), 1–13, esp. 6fGoogle Scholar.
4. See DPV 2.122, 184 and 189.
5. Luke 2.1: factum est autem in diebus illis exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto ut describeretur uniuersus orbis, haec descriptio prima facta est… (‘In those days a decree was issued by Caesar Augustus that the whole world be recorded in writing. This record was first made…’)
6. See, e.g., Greene, T.M., The Descent from Heaven (New Haven 1963), 151Google Scholar.
7. For details see Fantazzi-Perosa (n.9 below), lvii-lxv.
8. Other than 3.302-17, they consist in the depiction of the origins of Jerusalem on the cloak of Matthew (DPV 1.435-9), and the cloak that Nature had woven for God, displaying the creation of the universe (DPV. 3.24-31). Verbal parallels connect the two, and both are replete with references to Virgil.—Sannazaro's first direct use of ekphrasis comes in the prosa of Arcadia 12 where the story of Orpheus and Eurydice forms the decoration on one of the many tapestries woven by the nymphs. The ending of the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, where the tale is powerfully told by Proteus, provides one of the chief unifying influences on Sannazaro's oeuvre as a whole.
9. Throughout this paper I have used the text of De Partu Virginis edited by C. Fantazzi and A. Perosa (Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Studi e Testi XVII: Florence 1988). (At DPV 3.305 I have supplied the missing word auratis.) The notes by S. Prandi to his republication of the 1588 translation of De Partu Virginis into Italian by Giovanni Giolito de’ Ferrari (Rome 2001) have also been a rich resource.
10. For Virgilian ekphrasis in general see Barchiesi, A., ‘Virgilian Narrative: Ecphrasis’, in Martindale, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil (Cambridge 1997), 271–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elsner (n.3 above [2007]), 78-87. On the ekphrasis of the shield of Aeneas, see Putnam, M.C.J., Virgil's Epic Designs (New Haven 1998), 119–88Google Scholar.
11. Cf. Virgil's earlier use of the phrase at geo. 3.16 where, according to Servius, we are dealing with an image (simulacrum) of Augustus as god. The further parallels between the setting of Virgil's poetic temple by the Mincius and the banks of the river Jordan deserve separate treatment.
12. Virgil uses the words at Aen. 3.527 where they describe Anchises, at 8.680 where they are applied to Augustus, and at 10.261 where Aeneas is the subject, carrying Vulcan's shield.
13. See further Putnam (n. 10 above), 97-118.
14. Sannazaro replaces Virgil's puro with medio for two reasons. The repetition of medio from 305 emphasises the particular focus of the event. We watch first the centrality of the river, then of the events within the river, each of which is rich with symbolic value. Moreover Sannazaro has already just used puro at 300 to describe the glass on which the ekphrastic story is detailed. The medium is as immaculate as the tale that it tells.—The adjective alba (300), applied to the urn's crystal, on the other hand, picks up its use at 296, to describe the clothes (uestibus) of Jordan's daughters and anticipates the characterisation of the towels used at the moment of the baptism as niueas…uestes (312). In the setting, the medium and the content of the ekphrasis, purity is essential.
15. Though the Latin word saetae (bristles) stands by synecdoche for skins, both Virgil and Sannazaro choose the word for the deliberate rusticity that it implies.
16. Geo. 1.439,463, and 471 (the first and third occur at the start of the hexameter).
17. The source of the dove image is usually traced to Genesis 1.2: ‘and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’ (et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas). It is so taken by Sannazaro at DPV 2.352.—It should be noted that a father, at least, also appears in the scene that we have been discussing on the shield of Aeneas. Of Augustus, standing on the lofty stern, we learn that ‘his happy brows spew forth twin flames and his father's star appears upon his helmet’ (geminas cui tempora flammas/laeta uomunt patriumque aperitur uertice sidus, Aen. 8.680f.)
18. Sannazaro draws here on Horace c. 1.18.16, where the phrase perlucidior uitro also ends a line, but eliminates the classical poet's ironic conjunction of clarity and betrayal.—The transparent brilliance of Sannazaro's ewer of glass stands in marked contrast to the metal of Virgil's shield of Aeneas and to the urn on the shield of Turnus, both of which are opaque in material construction and in density of meaning.
19. I draw the translation, and its meaning for art, from Quintilian IO 5.10.9f. where the Virgilian tag is quoted and explained. For further detail see Putnam (n.10 above), 18-20.
20. Aen. 1.651 : inconcessos hymenaeos.
21. See, of the shield alone, dona (Aen. 8.729); of the shield and the other arms of Vulcan, dona (609), donis (617).
22. The situation of Aeneas is in clear contrast to that of Vulcan, ‘by no means ignorant of prophecy and lacking knowledge of time to come’ (haud uatum ignarus uenturique inscius aeui [Aen. 8.627]).
23. Virgil leaves it unclear whether Aeneas' joy, in his ignorance of the future, is concessive (although) or causal (because).
24. For Proteus, and through him Jordan, as a ‘type of poet’ see Kennedy, W.J., Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover NH 1983), 219Google Scholar.
25. The lines stand out as a deliberate heightening of Virg. geo. 4.341f.: Clioque et Beroe soror, Oceanitides ambae,/ambae auro, pictis incinctae pellibus ambae (‘Clio and her sister Beroe, both daughters of Ocean, both girt with gold, both with dappled hides…’)
26. One further detail deserves mention. At DPV 3.285 Sannazaro uses the phrase agmina densentur (‘they throng in bands’) of Jordan's daughters. It is drawn from Virg. Aen. 7. 794 where it is applied to the squadrons Turnus is marshalling for his support (the only appearance of the phrase in classical Latin). It cannot be coincidental that only one line intervenes between it and 792, a line that looks to DPV 3.298f. and thus to Jordan's urn. Here, too, no martial element is present to dampen the spirits of the girls caring for their father.
27. The repetition also brings the poetry of the second half of DPV 3 nearly full circle, in a grand chiasmus reflecting the smaller figure around which the opening of the ekphrasis is built. If 305-17 are renewed in 400-06, the description of Jordan's daughters (284-97) is picked up at 407-12, and the direct mention of Jordan at 284 is recalled with the triple mention of his name at 413-15, to complete the ring.
28. While acknowledging Jordan's ewer as a multivalent source, we should also recognise in Virgil its own essential origin.
29. At Luke 3.21f. Christ is baptised. At 23 he is said to start (incipiens) on his mission immediately after. In explaining how Christ becomes the Son at this inaugural moment in his career, the biblical accounts also foretell not only the history of his actions within the Jewish people but also the etiology of the Christian church's own initiatory ritual.—For the symbolism of the Jordan as discussed especially in the writing of the early Fathers of the Church and by their later interpreters, see Quint, D., Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature (New Haven 1983), 71–77Google Scholar.
30. At Aen. 7.31 Virgil uses the same phrase of the Tiber (uerticibus rapidis, ‘rushing swirls’) as Sannazaro of the Jordan at DPV 3.309 (uorticibus rapidis), both beginning their respective hexameters. DPV 3.283, which concludes by naming the Jordan as generator aquarum (‘father of waters’), brings to mind Aeneas' apostrophe to the Tiber, at Aen. 8.77, as regnator aquarum (‘ruler of waters’), also at line end. At DPV 3.403 Sannazaro gives to Proteus the words flumine sancto (‘hallowed stream’) to describe the Jordan, another phrase that Aeneas uses in the same address to the Tiber (Aen. 8.72). Again both appearances are at line endings.
31. Cf. Sannazaro's earlier imitation at Arcadia 12.187-89 where the name Filli (Phyllis) is reiterated three times.
32. The role of Virgil's Georgics as a whole in serving as a structural model for De Partu Virginis deserves separate, detailed treatment. We begin with the careful parallels between DPV 1.19-32 and geo. 1.24-42 and end with recollections of geo. 4.559-66 in the conclusion of DPV at 3.505-13.
33. See especially Quint (n.29 above), 72f., 75f.