Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T05:52:41.329Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Galileo, Poetry, and Patronage: Giulio Strozzi’s Venetia edificata and the Place of Galileo in Seventeenth-Century Italian Poetry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Crystal Hall
Crystal Hall*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Venetian poet and librettist Giulio Strozzi (1583–1652) spent much of his career glorifying the Serenissima through a series of theatrical pieces. His only epic poem, the Venetia edificata (1621, 1624), while ostensibly a celebration of the republic, shows a level of commitment to Galileo Galilei (1564–1643) and to Galileo’s science that is unique among poets of the time, Venetian or otherwise. It is the apex of Strozzi’s artistic project to incorporate Galileo’s discoveries and texts into poetic works. The Venetia edificata also represents the culmination of a fifteen-year effort to gain patronage from the Medici Grand Dukes in Florence. While the first, incomplete version is dedicated to the Venetian Doge, the second, finished version is dedicated to Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici of Florence. More than a decade after Galileo’s departure from the Veneto to Florence, Strozzi cites from Galileo’s early works, creates a character inspired by Galileo, incorporates the principles of Galileo’s science into the organizing structure of the poem, and answers one of Galileo’s loudest complaints about Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581). Strozzi’s strategies both in writing the Venetia edificata and in seeking patronage for it underscore the ambivalent response to Galileo in contemporary poetry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , Winter 2013 , pp. 1296 - 1331
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I sincerely thank the anonymous readers for Renaissance Quarterly for their helpful and insightful recommendations that strengthened this project. Portions of this research were funded by a Newberry Consortium Grant through the University of Kansas, for which I am also grateful. All translations are the author’s, except where otherwise noted.

References

Aït-Touati, Federique. Fictions of the Cosmos. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Chicago, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnaudo, Marco. “Il Barbarigo di Giulio Strozzi. Un esperimento di epica civica nella Venezia del Seicento.” Studi secenteschi 51 (2010): 3–33.Google Scholar
Bartolomei, Girolamo. L’America. Poema eroico di Girolamo Bartolomei Già Smeducci. Rome, 1650.Google Scholar
Battistini, Andrea. Galileo e i gesuiti: miti letterari e retorica della scienza. Milan, 2000.Google Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. Galileo’s Instruments of Credit. Chicago, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biagioli, Mario. “Did Galileo Copy the Telescope? A ‘New’ Letter by Paolo Sarpi.” In The Origins of the Telescope, ed. Albert van Helden, Sven Dupré, Rob van Ghent, and Huib Zuidervaar, 203–20. Helsinki, 2010.Google Scholar
Bouwsma, William J. Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Berkeley, 1968.Google Scholar
Bucciantini, Massimo. Galileo e Keplero. Filosofia, cosmologia e teologia nell’Età della Controriforma. Turin, 2003.Google Scholar
Camporesi, Piero. I balsami di Venere. Milan, 1989.Google Scholar
Cole, Janie. “Cultural Clientelism and Brokerage Networks in Early Modern Florence and Rome: New Correspondence between the Barberini and Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger.” Renaissance Quarterly 60.3 (2007): 729–72.Google Scholar
Consalvi, Antonio. Il consiglio delli Dei per la fondatione, e grandezza dell’Inclita Città di Venetia, et dell’Eccellentissima sua Republica. Favola maritima di Antonio Maria Consalvi. Al Ser.mo Prencipe Marc’Antonio Memmo. Vicenza, 1614.Google Scholar
Cremonini, Cesare. Il Nascimento di Venetia. Bergamo, 1617.Google Scholar
Dick, Hugh G. “The Telescope and the Comic Imagination.” Modern Language Notes 58.7 (1943): 544–54.Google Scholar
Doglioni, Nicolò. Compendio Historico Universale di tutte le cose notabili successe nel Mondo, dal principio della sua creatione sin’hora: Dedicato già all’Illustriss. Sig. Leonardo Donato, Cavalier, & meretissimo Procurator di S. Marco, & poi Sereniss. Prencipe di Venetia. Ma di nuovo hora dall’Auttore la quarta volta riveduto, corretto, & ampliato con nuova aggiunta sino all’anno 1618. Venice, 1622.Google Scholar
Drake, Stillman. Galileo Against the Philosophers in His Dialogue of Cecco di Ronchitti (1605) and Considerations of Alimberto Mauri (1606). Los Angeles, 1976.Google Scholar
Drake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. Chicago, 1978.Google Scholar
Ferrari, Luigi. Onomasticon. Repertorio biobibliografico degli scrittori italiani dal 1501 al 1830. Milan, 1947.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. Le opere di Galileo Galilei. Ed. Antonio Favaro and Isidoro del Lungo. 20 vols. 1890–1909. Reprint, Florence, 1964–66.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. Sidereus nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger. Ed. and trans. Albert Van Helden. Chicago, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. Sidereus nuncius. Ed. Andrea Battistini. Trans. Maria Timpanaro Cardini. Venice, 1993.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. On Sunspots: Galileo Galilei and Christoph Scheiner. Ed. and trans. Eileen Reeves and Albert Van Helden. Chicago, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grendler, Paul F. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605. Princeton, 1977.Google Scholar
Heilbron, John. Galileo. Oxford, 2010.Google Scholar
Hill, John Walter. “Oratory Music in Florence, I: Recitar cantando, 1583–1655.” Acta musicologica 51.1 (1979): 108–10.Google Scholar
Hirshfeld, Adam. Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos. New York, 2001.Google Scholar
Livello, Ottavio. Concettione di Venetia. Venice, 1624.Google Scholar
Macandrew, Hugh. “Vouet’s Portrait of Giulio Strozzi and its Pendant by Tinelli of Nicolò Crasso.” The Burlington Magazine 109.770 (1967): 266–26.Google Scholar
Marinelli, Lucrezia. L’Enrico overo Bisantio acquistato, poema heroico. Venice, 1635.Google Scholar
M. B. C. di G. Il Cannocchiale per la Finta Pazza. Drama dello Strozzi. 1641. Reproduced in Alessandra Chiarelli and Angelo Pompilio, “Or vaghi or fieri” Cenni di poetica nei libretti veneziani (circa 1640–1740). Con l’edizione de Il cannocchiale per la “Finta Pazza” di Maiolino Bisaccioni, ed. Cesarino Ruini, 281–28. Bologna, 2004.Google Scholar
Michaud, Joseph, Fr., and Louis Gabriel, eds. Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne. 85 vols. Paris, 1811–62.Google Scholar
Michelassi, Nicolà. “La Finta pazza a Firenze: Commedie ‘spagnole’ e ‘veneziane’ nel teatro di Baldracca (1641–1665).” Studi secenteschi 41 (2000): 313–31.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. Oxford, 2004.Google Scholar
Morosini, Andrea. Historia Veneta ab anno MDXXI usque ad annum MDCXV. Venice, 1623.Google Scholar
Morosini, Paolo. Historia della città, e republica di Venetia. Venice, 1637.Google Scholar
Muir, Edward. Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton, 1981.Google Scholar
Muir, Edward. The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance. Cambridge, MA, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Negri, Giulio. Istoria degli scrittori fiorentini. Ferrara, 1722.Google Scholar
Onofri, Fedele. Cronologia veneta. Nella quale fedelmente, e con brevità si descrivono le cose più notabili di questa famosissima Città di Venetia sino all’anno 1663. Venice, 1643.Google Scholar
Osthoff, Wolfgang. “Maschera e musica.” Nuova rivista musicale italiana 1 (1967): 16–44.Google Scholar
Pallavicino, Ferrante. Panegirici, epitalami, discorsi accademici, novelle, et lettere amorose. Venice, 1649.Google Scholar
Pancetti da Serravalle, Camillo. Venetia libera, poema heroico del Sig. Camillo Pancetti da Serravalle. Venice, 1622.Google Scholar
Picciotto, Joanna. Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England. Cambridge, MA, 2010.Google Scholar
Pirrotta, N. Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo. 9 vols. Rome, 1954–62.Google Scholar
Porta, Giambattista della. Natural Magick. Ed. Derek J. Price. New York, 1957.Google Scholar
Reeves, Eileen. Galileo’s Glassworks: The Telescope and the Mirror. Cambridge, MA, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosand, David. Myths of Venice: The Figuration of a State. Chapel Hill, 2001.Google Scholar
Rosand, Ellen. Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre. Berkeley, 1990.Google Scholar
Rosand, Ellen. Monteverdi’s Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy. Berkeley, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sansovino, Francesco. Venetia città nobilissima et singolare, descritta in XIIII. libri da M. Francesco Sansovino. Venice, 1663.Google Scholar
Soranzo, G. Bibliografia veneziana in aggiunta e continuazione del “Saggio” di E. A. Cicogna. Venice, 1885.Google Scholar
Spiller, Elizabeth A. “Reading Through Galileo’s Telescope: Margaret Cavendish and the Experience of Reading.” Renaissance Quarterly 53.1 (2000): 192–221.Google Scholar
Steiner, Calro. Cristoforo Colombo nella poesia epica italiana. Voghera, 1891.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. Orazione funebre recitata nell’Esequie fatte in Roma dalla Nazione Fiorentina al Ser. Ferdinando I Il Gran Duca di Toscana. Venice, 1609.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. Erotilla di Giulio Strozzi per le nozze de gli Eccell.mi Principi D. Marcantonio Borghese et D. Camilla Orsina. Venice, 1615.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. Esequie fatte in Venetia dalla natione Fiorentina al Serenissimo D. Cosimo II Quarto Gran Duca di Toscana. Il dì 25 di Maggio, 1621. Venice, 1621a.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. I primi dodici canti della Venetia edificata poema eroico. E de’ saggi Poetici di Giulio Strozzi. Venice, 1621b.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. La Venetia edificata. Poema heroico di Giulio Strozzi. Venice, 1624.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. Il Barbarigo, over l’Amico sollevato. Poema eroico di Giulio Strozzi. Con Licenza, e Privilegio. Venice, 1626a.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. La Venetia edificata. Venice, 1626b.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. Le sette giornate nelle quali hebbe Venetia i serenissimi principi d. Ferdinando II Gran Duca di Toscana e d. Gio. Carlo de’ Medici suo fratello sonetti. Venice, 1628.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. La Delia o sia la Sera sposa del Sole. Poema drammatico di Giulio Strozzi. Venice, 1639.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. La Finta savia. Drama di Giulio Strozzi. Venice, 1643.Google Scholar
Strozzi, Giulio. La vita di Lazzariglio del Torme. Traduzione secentesca di Giulio Strozzi. Ed. Aldo Ruffinato. Naples, 1990.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato. Jerusalem Delivered. Ed. and trans. Anthony M. Esolen. Baltimore, 2000.Google Scholar
Unglaub, Jonathan. Poussin and the Poetics of Painting: Pictorial Narrative and the Legacy of Tasso. Cambridge, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaccaluzzo, Nunzio. Galileo nella poesia del suo secolo. Milan, 1910.Google Scholar
Van Helden, Albert. The Invention of the Telescope. 2nd ed., Philadelphia, 2008.Google Scholar
Vivo, Filippo de. Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics. Oxford, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westfall, Richard. “Scientific Patronage: Galileo and the Telescope.” Isis 76 (1985): 18–22.Google Scholar
Whitaker, Ewen. “Galileo’s Lunar Observations.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 9 (1978): 155–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wlassics, Tibor. Galileo critico letterario. Ravenna, 1974.Google Scholar