Constructing Isabella d'Este's musical decorum in the visual sphere
Author(s): Tim Shephard
Source: Renaissance Studies , NOVEMBER 2011, Vol. 25, No. 5 (NOVEMBER 2011), pp. 684706
Published by: Wiley
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Renaissance Studies Vol. 25 No. 5 DOI: 10.1111/j.l477-4658.2011.00741.x
Constructing Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum in the
visual sphere
Tim Shephard
Isabella d'Esté was born in 1474, the eldest daughter of the Duke and D
of Ferrara in north-central Italy. At the age of sixteen she married Fr
Gonzaga, the ruler of the neighbouring state of Mantua. Over the co
her life as Marchesa of Mantua, she won fame as a leader in fashion and taste,
and as an enthusiastic patron of artists, musicians, poets and scholars. Her
motivations in this respect were, inevitably, neither entirely personal nor
entirely philanthropic, but served the purpose of presenting to the world an
appropriate image of the noblewoman at leisure. In this study I will discuss
aspects of her image-making in visual, literary and poetic spheres that relate
directly to Isabella's music patronage, and particularly to her own musician
ship. I will characterize the persona thus manifested as a social construction,
grounded in and shaped by the realities of its performance.
MUSICAL DECORUM
Modern scholars have examined Isabella frequently and from a great
of perspectives.1 Historians such as Stephen Kolsky have studied
striking courtly personality, in touch with many of the leading figures
day, a participant in a pan-Italian literary culture. For art historians
Egon Verheyen, Rose Marie San Juan and Stephen Campbell, sh
demanding patron of Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa, Leonardo and other
a pioneering role in the introduction of subjects from classical myth
visual art. Clifford Brown, alongside other historians of collecting,
tigated her as a voracious purchaser of antiquities, reputed discernin
friends and artists. For Mario Pras, Evelyn Welch, and others inter
design, she was at the forefront of fashion in clothing, ornament a
Most of the work on this study was completed with the help of an AHRC Doctoral Award. I am
number of scholars who have generously read and commented upon various versions of this stu
Bonnie Blackburn, Lisa Col ton, Jeffrey Dean, Flora Dennis, Melanie Marshall, Philip Weiler, Peter
the anonymous reviewers. My thanks also to Philip Weiler and Gregorio Bevilacqua for checking my
from Italian and Latin. Translations not otherwise credited are my own.
1 I will refer to specific publications by all of the scholars mentioned in this paragraph in the co
rest of the article.
) 2011 The Author
Renaissance Studies © 2011 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 685
ics. In the field of musicology, William Prizer and Ia
her as an accomplished amateur as well as an enthusi
Isabella was similarly hailed, with a vigour hardly m
porary women, for her learning, her taste in fashio
musical accomplishments. However, recognition in
without its potential drawbacks. During Isabella's lif
in scholarly and artistic fields was more usually ac
accomplishments in both domains could be subject
izing as well as acclamatory readings.
Isabella's reputation as a literata with classical inte
dealings with poets, scholars and artists, was open t
ings. Lisa Jardine has shown that classical learning,
contemporaries Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta an
sometimes considered inappropriate and even ser
women.2 In the cases studied byjardine, some Italian
to have been willing to engage with their female cou
level, sidestepping a serious engagement with their
offer bland assertions of their chastity. Their learning
could be distanced from the action of philology by, eff
into personifications of scholarship. As Stephen Kols
actual learning was very likely rather below the level of
and her classical interests were perhaps closer to a court
to a philological pursuit; but it was through her rep
reality, than Isabella was most widely known and jud
It is important to acknowledge that none of th
Jardine shared the exceptional social status enjoyed
factors suggest that neither she nor her rank we
conventional moral concerns. Recent research sugge
mother Eleonora d'Aragona and her sister-in-law Lu
sive duchesses of Ferrara, operated to a significant
and reserve advised for women of the lesser wealth
behaviour manuals (such as those studied exhaus
restricting their cultural agency largely to the fie
Rose Marie San Juan has shown with particular clari
Isabella was evidently aware of moral difficulties in
2 Lisa Jardine, ' "O Decus Italiae Virgo", or The Myth of the Learned Lady
Journal, 28 (1985), 799-819, esp. 813.
3 Stephen Kolsky, 'Images of Isabella d'Este', Italian Studies, 39 (1984), 4
4 See in particular Werner L. Gundersheimer, 'Women, Learning and Po
Court of Ferrara', in Patricia Labalme (ed.), Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of
York University Press, 1984), 43-65; and Gabriela Zarri, La religione di Lucrezia B
(Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2006). Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of th
Illinois Press, 1956). I gave a paper putting forward new arguments to this ef
patronage at the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference 2010.
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686 Tim Shephard
of her private apartments. Finally, sever
and her ladies-in-waiting were indeed cri
than one occasion.6
Isabella was also known to her contemporaries for her interest in poetry,
particularly that associated with Petrarch and the Petrarchan revival. She was
an early purchaser of the Aldus edition of Petrarch's works, and corre
sponded with such figures as Pietro Bembo and Niccolô da Correggio.
Although poetry itself sometimes came under fire in the Renaissance, these
activities were perhaps easy enough to defend; but Isabella appears also to
have been herself a poet.7 Many years ago, Alessandro Luzio published a
letter in which Isabella appears to ask a literary correspondent for his reac
tion to her own work; since then, occasional attempts have been made to
identify poetry attributable to her.8 A significant body of research has grown
up around the subject of female authorship in the Renaissance, cataloguing
the various difficulties, both practical and moral, to which it was often
subject. Ann Rosalind Jones, in particular, has uncovered the strategies
adopted in the verse of women-poets a generation or two younger than
Isabella operating in varying social contexts (including Pernette du Guillet,
Catherine des Roches and Tullia d'Aragona) to counter the legal, physical
and verbal silence imposed upon women by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
writers on women's education and conduct.9 Meanwhile, a generation
earlier than Isabella, the Florentine matriarch Lucrezia Tornabuoni (wife of
Piero I de' Medici), apparently a more active poet than Isabella whilst of
similar social standing, was known to contemporaries not primarily for her
(lost) sonnets, but for her more conventionally virtuous sacred and devo
tional verse.10
Musical interests could similarly prompt moral concerns, along with ideals
of behaviour that sought to avoid them, as I will shortly describe. Whilst a
degree of musical accomplishment was relatively common among Italian
3 Rose Marie San Juan, 'The Court Lady's Dilemma: Isabella d'Este and Art Collecting in the Renaissance',
Oxford Art Journal, 14 (1991), 67-78.
6 See in particular Roger Jones, ' "What Venus Did with Mars": Battista Fieri and Mantegna's Parnassus',
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 44 (1981), 193-8; and Lisa K. Regan, 'Ariosto's Threshold Patron:
Isabella d'Este in the Orlando Furioso', MLN, 120 (2005), 50-69.
7 On the discourse contra poetry in Renaissance Italy, see, for instance, Stephen J. Campbell, Cosmè Tura of
Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450-1495 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), esp. 40-51.
8 On Isabella as a poet, see Alessandro Luzio, I Precettori d'Isabella d'Este: Appunti e Documenti (Ancona: A.
Gustavo Morelli, 1887), 51-68; and Claudio Gallico, 'Poesie musicali di Isabella d'Este', Collectanea historiae
musicae, 3 (1962), 109-19.
9 See in particular Ann Rosalind Jones, 'Surprising Fame: Renaissance Gender Ideologies and Women's
Lyric', in Nancy K. Miller (ed.), The Poetics of Gender (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 74-95; Ann
Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990); and Diana Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century
Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
10 See Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici, Sacred Narratives, ed. and trans. Jane Tylus (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001), in particular the introductory essay. Lucrezia, however, took the opportunity presented
by her sacred themes and narratives to address limitations upon the status accorded contemporary women.
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 687
noblewomen, Isabella's interests went beyond the conv
temporaries frequently acknowledged).11 She was well
benefitting from the tuition of her father's chapelmast
and was proficient on several of the stringed instruments a
entertainment, including lute and lira da braccio. Like
courts, she particularly valued the practice of singing v
niment of a lute or lira', and she was praised by contempor
so doing. In a letter written to her in 1502 by Bern
Aretino), himself a famous musician, Isabella is complem
taste and her practical accomplishments in this vein:
[. . .] Ove fiorisce el suono, el canto, la liberalità, le comedie
tusche composition! di quali forse non sai dar iudicio con n
donna e di tanta alteza e di tanta inventute, quelle non
perfectamente componendo e perfectamente in viola o leuto
[Where do music, song, liberality, plays and Tuscan com
perhaps you cannot judge) flourish with wondrous novelty i
nobility and intelligence, [such] that [she] not only can judg
also perfectly compose and perfectly recite to viola or lute?]
Some indication of the occasions and locations for Isabella's own musical
performances can be gleaned from the surviving evidence. At hom
Mantua, her court and her patronage centred on her private apartment
particular, two rooms known as the studiolo and grotta, associated with liter
leisure and collecting.13 The decoration of both rooms featured music p
nently, a fact that has led Iain Fenlon and others to propose them as ch
teristic venues for her music-making.14 In these rooms, which were private
a rather restricted sense, Isabella would have been attended by her donze
11 On Isabella as a musician, see William F. Prizer, 'Una "Virtù Molto Conveniente a Madonne": Is
d'Esté as a Musician', Journal of Musicology, 17 (1999), 10-49. Isabella was relatively conventional in the
not the extent and insistence, of her musical accomplishments: on other Italian noblewomen-musicians o
fifteenth century the fundamental text is Howard Mayer Brown, 'Women Singers and Women's So
Fifteenth-Century Italy', in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (eds.), Women Making Music: The Western Art T
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 62-89, esp. 64-74; a recent effort to integrate this musical p
with more up-to-date perspectives on gender and culture can be found in Judith Bryce, 'Performin
Strangers: Women, Dance, and Music in Quattrocento Florence', Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001), 107
esp. 1094-1102.
12 Prizer, 'Una "Virtù" ', 32-3.
13 On these rooms, see most recently Stephen J. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting
and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
14 On the musical aspects of the decoration of these rooms and the probability that she played music therein,
see Iain Fenlon, 'Music and Learning in Isabella d'Este's Studioli', in Cesare Mozzarelli, Robert Oresko and
Leandro Ventura (eds.), La Corte di Mantova nelTetà di Andrea Mantegna, 1450-1550 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1997),
353-67.
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688
Tim
Shebhard
well as her paid retainers, but
marchesa also occasionally per
foreign
courts,
extremely
for
small
example
in
gathering,
M
bu
group at a banquet.16
Isabella's activities as an
her music patronage: it
amateur
has been
she was herself interested in perfo
of singing verse to the accompan
unwritten and partly improvised
such as Serafino d'Aquilano, cou
During Isabella's lifetime, and pa
practice grew a similar, but writte
misleading, as is the designation
ally in the musicological literatur
strambotti, barzellette, capitoli, ca
to courtly-Petrarchan. The deve
with Isabella's court, and with th
lomeo Tromboncino and Marche
well as singer-lutenists, with the
facilitating Isabella's own music
from the Mantuan court, sent ve
set, and for her to sing.
A growing body of recent scho
culties and limitations that coul
later sixteenth century, and a m
brought a similar approach to b
Prominent
connect
social
music
commentato
with
seduction,
an
15 On access to Isabella's studiolo and grotta, s
Collections: Isabella d'Este's Apartamento della G
in
Hermann
(Wien:
16
For
17
On
Fillitz
Böhlau,
a
conspectus
Isabella's
Lucrezia
Borgia
Society,
38
18
is
The
that
classic
alia
Olschki,
G.
connections
(eds.),
Akten
see
specifically
particularly,
of
Music:
The
do
from
Frotto
1-33.
Kelso,
of
the
esp.
identità
Chapter
Caccini
however,
between
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'
fema
228.
"Quel
pedagogico
A
the
recent
my
del
S
c
r
nellltalia
Medici
import
Court:
mode
experience
another whose life ended in the seventeenth seems unwise.
of
and
nobiliare
4.
at
whilst
the
52-3
Lorenzetti,
nell'ideale
e
decorum
Doctrine,
Stefano
Francesca
2009);
Isabella's
Patrons
Musica
2003),
Pippal
4:37-41.
of
account
in
musica
Cusick,
Press,
as
period,
Lorenzetti,
Martina
frottola
(1985),
given
Isabella's
one
and
1986),
of
of
M
analy
one
w
Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 689
tion. raolo Cortese, tor instance, in his t5tt) De carainalatu, notes (without
restricting his comments to one sex or the other) that:
[. . .] multi a communium sensuum natura auersi non modo earn praua quadam
nature peruersitate respuunt, sed earn etiam inutilem esse opinantur. Prop
tereaque ea quedam sit ignauae uoluptatis inuitatrix, maximeque eius iucundi
tate soleat libidinum excitari malum
[many, estranged from the natural disposition of the normal sense, not only
reject it [music] because of some sad perversion of their nature, but even think
it to be hurtful for the reason that it is somehow an invitation to idle pleasure,
and above all, that its merriment usually arouses the evil of lust]19
Pietro Aretino explained similarly, but directing his comments specifically at
women, that 'I suoni, i canti e le lettere che sanno le femmine [sonno] le
chiavi che aprono le porte della pudicizia loro' [Music, songs and letters are
among the accomplishments of women that are the keys to open the door to
their modesty].20 Pietro Bembo cautioned his daughter Elena along slightly
variant lines that playing musical instruments 'è cosa da donna vana e leggi
era' [is a thing for silly and superficial women] ,21
Such views of music could facilitate an association of musical activity with
vices to which women were conventionally thought susceptible, most obviously
vanity and questionable chastity. In some circumstances, the application of
such moral perspectives could result in a curtailing of women's freedom to
pursue musical interests, and in most circumstances the pursuit of such inter
ests left open the possibility of censure. Summarizing the findings of her
extremely large survey of Renaissance conduct books, Ruth Kelso describes a
reluctance to concede that women of good social standing can perform music
at all. If they are allowed to sing and play, it is in private, preferably alone, as
a counterpart to spinning and weaving in the battle against idleness, and
always tempered by proper and prudent judgement of the occasion. Public
performance, entered into unwillingly, should be undertaken 'in a low voice'
and 'with reverence and shame', or else (in the case of the lady of the court in
particular) in the company only of other noblewomen.22 Addressing the ques
19 Paolo Cortese, De cardinalatu libri très (Castel Cortesiano, 1510), fol. 72v. Published in facsimile and
translation in Nino Pirrotta, 'Music and Cultural Tendencies in lö^-Century Italy', Journal of the American
MusicologicalSociety, 19 (1966), 127-161, quotes at 148 and 152 respectively. I have spelled out abbreviations and
updated punctuation. It should be noted that, as Cortese points out at some length elsewhere in the same
passage, it was also possible to take an entirely positive moral view of music. However, as Cortese also
unintentionally makes clear, such a position needed justification.
20 Letter published in 1537, given in Alfred Einstein, The Italian Madrigal, trans. Alexander H. Krappe, Roger
H. Sessions and Oliver Strunk, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), 1:94.
21 Letter of 10 December 1541, published in Einstein, Madrigal, 1:94-5; it has since been widely republished
and discussed.
22 Kelso, Doctrine, 53 and 228 (as is her usual practice Kelso is summarizing many sources, rather than quoting
one in particular).
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690 Tim Shephard
tion of courtly women directly, Castiglio
was certainly aware of the need to diver
lines suggested above. He prefers women
spectly', and if they must perform to wa
with a certain shyness, suggesting the dig
cannot understand'. He further advises t
dance 'wear clothes that do not make her see
a marchesa, Isabella enjoyed agency beyon
women, her rank was not exempt from th
which her musical interests stand out fr
porary ruling women suggests that a relativ
among them.
Isabella's musical experience certainly bro
moral difficulties sometimes associated wi
different ways. Perennial anxieties over
sensuality, seductive appearances and the
paradigmatic expression in the myths rel
Agrippa makes a not unusual (if perhaps c
his De vanitatis of 1530: 'songs, surpassin
certain venomous sweetness, like to Merm
tures, and lascivious sounds, do destroy
danger of the Sirens, as configured throu
Agrippa implies), is their ability to by
instincts directly. Isabella's vulnerability
evident in Giangiorgio Trissino's Ritra
describes various contemporary beauties t
has Pietro Bembo draw Isabella's singing
the Sirens, but he is careful to displace th
singer to the listener and thus avoid the d
Siren herself:
[. . .] la onde, se voi l'haveste una sola volta udita cantare, son certo, che vi
sarebbe come a coloro, che udirono le Sirene, e la patria, e la propria casa uscita
di mente [. . .]
[thus, if you were to hear her singjust one time, I am sure that you would be like
those who heard the Sirens, and forgot their country and their own house]26
23 These quotes are all drawn from Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. George Bull
(London: Penguin, 1967), 215.
24 Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Of the Vanitie and Uncertainty of Artes and Sciences, trans. James Sanford, ed.
Catherine M. Dunn (1569; repr. Northridge: California State University, 1974), fol. 29v.
25 Giangiorgio Trissino, Iritratti (Roma, 1524), [19] (the copy I consulted is unpaginated, but I have counted
page numbers from the first page of text). The dialogue is set in 1507 in Milan; the text was sent to Isabella for
approval in 1514.
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Isabella d'Este's musical decorum 691
As an obvious result of the potential moral uncer
music, a connection was sometimes drawn in the s
the female singing voice and the courtesan's arts
discussed destabilizing proximity of the courtesan
terms of dress and accomplishments certainly st
agency, and touched Isabella directly.26 She was in
at the Ferrarese court of the musical tools of the c
then resident, which, encompassing poetry, lute an
her own.2' The Ferrarese court was also home to D
musician in the employ of Lucrezia Borgia, but late
Isabella's brother Cardinal Ippolito d'Este (until th
On at least one occasion Dalida performed alongsi
cino (who moved from Isabella's to Lucrezia's servi
directly alongside Tromboncino in Oriolo's Monte
that she too was able to perform in the idiom th
speciality.28
Isabella and her female attendants provoked documented censure on more
than one occasion.29 For instance, in early 1502, Isabella and several of her
attendants and courtiers went to Ferrara for the lengthy celebration of the
marriage of her brother Alfonso to Lucrezia Borgia. In May, after the wedding
was over, Isabella was surprised and displeased to receive a letter from Rome
giving a biting critique of her behaviour. Her detractors protested that 'she
was not well dressed, that she put on airs during the celebrations, and many
other things, that she wanted to appear a boy'.30 Isabella's position at the
forefront of clothing taste suggests that her correspondent did not mean her
clothing was not fashionable, rich and impressive.31 The decorum of dress was
a hotly contested area in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy, with infringe
ments of established codes even attracting fines under some circumstances
(although this form of censure evidently would not apply to a marchesa) ,32
26 On the sixteenth-century courtesan's musical accomplishments, and for an assessment of musical styles
and genres associated with her that places her very close to Isabella's interests, see Martha Feldman, 'The
Courtesan's Voice: Petrarchan Lovers, Pop Philosophy and Oral Traditions', in Martha Feldman and Bonnie
Gordon (eds.), The Courtesan's Arts: Cross-CulturalPerspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 105-23,
at 108-18, and other essays in the same volume.
27 On Tullia d'Aragona and the Ferrarese report to Isabella see Feldman, 'Courtesan's Voice', 107-8 and
110-14.
28 Prizer ('Isabella and Lucrezia', 10-11) notes these two points, and appears to court the implication that she
sang frottole, though he does not state it explicitly.
29 For further instances not discussed here, see Regan, 'Ariosto's Threshold Patron', 60-62 with n. 25.
30 '[...] non era ben conza, che magnava nella festa et multe altre cose, che voleva parere pucto [. ..] '. Letter
of 5 May 1502, in which Mario Equicola reported to Margherita Cantelma on a critical letter sent to Isabella
from Rome (no longer extant). Text and translation Prizer, 'Isabella and Lucrezia', 6 and n. 17.
31 A quantity of information on Isabella's dress and her interest in fashion can be found in Evelyn Welch,
Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400-1600 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
2005), 245-73.
32 See, for instance, Evelyn Welch, 'New, Old and Second-Hand Culture: The Case of the Renaissance
Sleeve', in Gabriele Neher and Rupert Shepherd (eds.), Revaluing Renaissance Art (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000),
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692 Tim Shephard
Messages about status, dynasty, affiliatio
conveyed successfully in a variety of sit
Perhaps it is appropriate in this case to ca
a woman's dress should not make her 'seem vain and frivolous'. The com
plaint that Isabella 'wanted to appear a boy' is somewhat more cryptic,
difficult to interpret with confidence. Certainly, it is true that women who
culturally active in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy were somet
praised in terms that configured them as male, either explicitly or implicitl
that is, they were praised for embodying virtues and accomplishments u
thought masculine.33 Perhaps such favourable rhetoric could be turned
ends of attack, as Castiglione implies when he warns women off 'manly
tions' in their music-making and dancing.34 To choose 'boy' rather than
may have been simply a means of belittling the marchesa, although it
equally have carried a more nuanced resonance yet to be uncovered.
It is conceivable that Isabella's detractor was reacting in part to a m
occurrence. During a banquet held in the course of the 1502 weddi
ebrations for a number of important dignitaries, both male and fe
Isabella allowed herself to be persuaded to perform as a musician befo
assembled guests, following a performance given by her professional
musician Marchetto Cara. She reported the incident to her husba
Francesco:
Dopo cena, facessimo il ballo dil capello. Finito che'l fu, per tante preghe et
croci mi furono facte, fui necessitata fare li mei atti nel cantare in lo lauto.
[After dinner we did the hat dance. After that was done, so many prayers and
appeals were made to me, that it was necessary to do my performances in singing
to the lute.]35
Whilst the circumstances as narrated by Isabella accord well with Castiglione's
general (and non-gender-specific) advice that 'the courtier should turn to
music as if it were merely a pastime of his and he is yielding to persuasion',
they perhaps contravene his qualification that the courtier should not
perform 'in the presence of [. . .] a large crowd'.36 The attendance at the
banquet may not have been exactly a 'crowd', but it was certainly a step
removed from the company of the donzelle in Isabella's private apartment, and
101-20; and Jane Bridgeman, ' "Pagare le Pompe": Why Quattrocento Sumptuary Laws did not Work', in Letizia
Panizza (ed.), Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), 209-26.
33 See, for example, the various examples and relevant discussion scattered throughout Jardine, ' "O Decus
Italiae Virgo" and Thomasin LaMay, 'Madalena Casulana: my body knows unheard of songs', in Todd Borgerding
(ed.), Gender, Sexuality and Early Music (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 1-25.
34 Castiglione, Courtier, 215.
35 Transcription and translation Prizer, 'Una "Virtù" ', 25 and n. 60.
36 Castiglione, Courtier, 120. The same point of decorum is conveyed in infinitely more poetic terms in Pietro
Bembo's Gli asolani (Venezia, 1505) - see Lorenzetti, ' "Quel celeste cantar" ', 253.
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 693
indeed from the intimacy and privacy suggested by
performances. The moral frameworks and the beha
above certainly leave room for some at the banquet t
inappropriate to a musical performance by an hones
In this analysis, Isabella's musical interests emerge
practice and in concept, with a range of contemp
perspectives. Several of these perspectives could, an
peers to configure her interests as problematic. The
activities was, it seems, not something that she could
but something that required design, negotiation an
thing that might inflect her musical practice. In the re
I will explore aspects of the visual decoration of Isab
that appear to contribute to this effort of legitimat
connections between the strategies of decorous mu
found in the visual sphere and Isabella's documente
LEGITIMIZING ISABELLA'S MUSICIANSHIP
In a classic essay, Rose Marie San Juan argued persuasively that
adopted moralizing strategies in the painted decorations of her priv
ment to counterbalance social concerns over the morality of verbal ab
classicizing interests in women.37 It seems, in light of the above, th
making should be added to the list of potential difficulties requirin
tion, and in fact a detailed study reveals that music was given a su
priority. The images that Isabella and her supporters built around h
manifestation of her identity evidence a clear concern to countera
short-circuit the uncomfortable associations of her favoured pastim
Study of Isabella's patronage of the visual arts has centred on the
series of paintings made for her studiolo, at the heart of her priv
ment.38 Between 1497 and about 15S0, with the help of advisers and
she conducted negotiations with many of the leading artists of the d
ing works by the Gonzaga court artist Mantegna as well as Perugino,
Costa and Correggio. Throughout, Isabella exercised unusually close
over the subjects and visual designs used by her artists, calling on th
courtier Paride da Ceresara to invent subjects and prepare detailed
tions as the involvement of each painter was secured. The first of the w
be installed, the Parnassus completed by Mantegna in 1497 (Fig. 1), s
take on a certain self-sufficiency in presenting and justifying
scholarly-artistic persona. It is also the most explicitly musical of the pa
37 San Juan, 'The Court Lady's Dilemma', 72-4. See also Caroline Elam, 'Mantegna at Mantua',
Chambers and Jane Martineau (eds.), Splendours of the Gonzaga (London: Victoria and Albert Museu
15-25, at 24.
38 The most recent comprehensive study of Isabella's studiolo and the paintings made for it i
Cabinet.
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694 Tim Shephard
Fig. 1 Andrea Mantegna, Parnassus, 1497, oil on canvas, 159
The Bridgeman Art Library)
(although all of the other canvases, as well
room and the grotta, also merit musical in
example.
My reading of the Parnassus is a little different from that offered by other
scholars, although plentiful and varied interpretations are already available.
Some have stressed its humour, some its edifying message, and some have
sought to tie it at a perhaps improbable level of detail to classical prototypes,
both literary and visual.39 Most recently, Stephen Campbell has argued that
the painting aims at a productive and multivalent intertextuality. He views the
Parnassus as making reference to the origins of poetry, through the Hippo
39 See in particular Edgar Wind, Bellini's Feast of the Gods (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948),
9-20; Ernst Gombrich, 'An Interpretation of Mantegna's Parnassus', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, 26 (1963), 196-8; Egon Verheyen, The Paintings in the 'Studiolo' of Isabella d'Este at Mantua (New York:
New York University Press, 1971), esp. 35—41; Phyllis Williams Lehmann, 'The Sources and Meaning of
Mantegna's Parnassus', in Phyllis Williams Lehmann and Karl Lehmann, Samothracian Reflections: Aspects of the
Revival of the Antique (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 59-180; Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna
(Oxford, 1986), 194-201. Iain Fenlon (Fenlon, 'Music and Learning', 355-8) has offered a musical assessment
of the Parnassus based on Lehmann's study, which otherwise has not won universal support.
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Isabella d'Este's musical decorum 695
crene spring, through the employment of Greek rat
material (both visual and literary), and through Plin
the fecundity of nature.40
The 'subject' of the painting, it is usually assumed, i
Venus, but it is depicted in a way that seems to con
between Vulcan's cave and a fantastical triumphal arch o
in the context of this 'subject' to simply and adequate
looser association of characters in the foreground singing and dancing to the lyre, Mercury with a sy
Hippocrene Spring.
It has been noted more than once that it is with this scene of the Muses,
rather than with the story of Mars and Venus, that the Parnassus makes its
connection with dynastic and other precedents in the decoration of studioli.il
I suggest, therefore, that the Muses are the starting point of the painting, and
that the story of Mars and Venus is the subject of their song, conjured above
them by their singing. Such an arrangement is not at all out of character for
the Muses, who according to Hesiod and other ancient writers were known
specifically to sing about the gods, and thus to inspire mortal poets to recount
their mythologies.42 The subject of the painting is therefore, in a sense, song
itself.
It might be thought that such a conceit was without visual precedent, but in
fact one was close to hand, in the Eikones of Philostratus, a late antique text
already known to have been used by Isabella and her advisors in the decora
tion of her studiolo,43 The author of this work describes and interprets in turn
all the paintings on display in his friend's villa, and among them we find one
that is similar to the Parnassus both in narrative conception and in appear
ance. Whilst the painting clearly does not copy it exactly, it is easy to imagine
that one was prominent among the inspirations for the other:
[Here we see] An Aphrodite, made of ivory: delicate maidens are hymning in
delicate myrtle groves. The chorister who leads them is skilled in her art [. . .]
The type of the goddess is that of Aphrodite goddess of Modesty, unclothed and
decorous, and the material is ivory [. . .] However, the goddess is unwilling to
seem painted, but she stands out as though one could take hold of her.
40 Campbell, Cabinet, 117-44.
41 As, for example, in Keith Christiansen, 'The Studiolo of Isabella d'Esté and Late Themes', in Jane
Martineau (ed.), Andrea Mantegna (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1992), 418-26, at 421. On Apollo and the
Muses as a 'definitive studiolo subject' see Campbell, Cabinet, 118-20 and 126-7.
42 For various examples of antique references to the Muses' song, see Graham Wheeler, 'Sing, Muse ... : The
Introit from Homer to Apollonius', The Classical Quarterly, 52 (2002), 33-49. The classic example is the opening
of Hesiod's Theogony.
43 On a translation of Philostratus' work produced for Isabella and kept in the room next to her studiolo, see
(among others) Michael Koortbojian and Ruth Webb, 'Isabella d'Este's Philostratos\ Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, 56 (1993), 260-67. On the prior use of the work to design the Cornus, a painting begun by
Mantegna c.1506 but ultimately painted by Lorenzo Costa c.1510, see most recently Campbell, Cabinet, 208-15.
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696
Tim
Shebhard
Do you wish us to pour a libation of
and cinnamon and myrrh it has enou
a fragrance as of Sappho. [. . .] the a
because
he
chorister
even
to bring her
impede their
the
makes
frowns
chiton
at
one
us
hear
who
is
the
off
th
into tune ... As to thei
movements if they sho
that
leaves
the
arm
free,
a
on the tender grass and drawing r
decoration of their garments, and
harmonize the one with the other-a
to the figures of the maidens, if we
Paris or any other judge, I believe h
rivalry
voices',
among
to
use
them
the
in
rosy
arms
charming
an
expres
Eros, tilting up the centre of his bo
bow-string resounds with a full harm
of a lyre [. . .] What, then, is the so
the subject has been expressed in t
was born from the sea through an
Philostratus describes a group o
'such as not to impede their mov
grass', who occupy 'myrtle grov
naked and ivory-white, whilst s
Eros playing his bow as a lyre. W
'something of [it] has been expre
be found in the descriptive deta
With this interpretation in min
was put to work on the behalf
celebrates the power of the ultim
cultural agency - the Muses, id
invocation, the ultimate author
tributes Isabella was frequently
and
such
might
of the circle
the adjacent
identifying the
exemplary song
44
Imagines
Fairbanks
2.1-1
well
be
the
implica
of muses - large en
muses even hold ou
Muses as exemplar
as love - precisely
have
(London:
used
Loeb
the
edition
Classical
Elder
Library,
P
19
45 On Isabella's adoption of the Muse as a 'per
see in particular Lightbown, Mantegna, 197-2
the comparison of a praiseworthy woman to th
correspondence of Cassandra Fedele and Ange
805-6.
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 697
enthusiastically by Isabella. And if there is any doubt as to
as a subject for song, we have only to understand that M
the mother of love, Venus, as 'Aphrodite goddess of Mo
decorous' (as Philostratus stipulates).
I see the Parnassus as an assertion of the legitimacy of
tailored to precisely the interests and identity of Isabell
in what was very likely a primary site for her musical activi
emblem of the singing Isabella, and it appears to have
these, or at least very similar, terms by Isabella's contempo
instance, appears to use the idea that the Parnassus is l
Isabella as the frame for the literary 'portrait' he gives of h
1514, describing the painting obliquely:
un ritratto faremo, il quale sarà di molta varietà, e di molte fi
tutti i beni di Castalia, e di Parnaso facciamola havere; e non un
Calliope, Clio, Polymnia, o l'altre sapere; ma quello di tutte
appreso di Mercurio, e di Apolline esserli manifesto; e di tu
i Poeti ornano in versi [. . .]46
[we will make a portrait, which will be of great variety, and of
In it will be all the assets of the Castalian Spring, and of Par
thing only, such as Calliope, Clio, Polyhymnia, or the other
[i.e. the asset, or virtue] of all the Muses, together with th
Apollo have to be evident in it; and all those things that th
verses]
Both Stephen Campbell and Mary Rogers have mentioned the Parnassus in
discussing this text to different ends, but neither has sought to develop a close
connection.47 However, my interpretation of the painting appears to confirm
Trissino's ekphrastic intent: he focuses precisely on the scene of the Muses
together with Mercury and Apollo, mentioning the story of Mars and Venus
only obliquely as a subject suitable for the Muses' poetic treatment.
The Muses and their song are the most obvious, but perhaps not the only
strategy of legitimation implemented through the Parnassus. It is no coinci
dence that the text which I have suggested inspired the painting makes
multiple references to Sappho. The ancient lyric poet, famously female and
yet taken by later antique writers as the exemplary, even paradigmatic expo
nent of her genre, would have made a very attractive ancient exemplar for
46 Trissino, I ritratti, [21].
47 Campbell, Cabinet, 200; Mary Rogers, 'The decorum of women's beauty: Trissino, Firenzuola, Luigini and
the representation of women in sixteenth-century painting', Renaissance Studies, 2 (1988), 47-88, at 51-2.
Campbell writes in passing that the passage 'seems to draw on the imagery of the Parnassus, Rogers similarly
mentions that the passage 'immediately calls to mind' the Parnassus, suggesting that Isabella is to be loosely
identified with Venus in the picture.
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698 Tim Shephard
Isabella, as has recently been argued by St
in fact, indicated by Trissino in his 'portr
quoted above:
[. . .] et insomma è tale, che se Hipparcha, Anete, Aria, et Hypatia; se Sappho,
Corinna, Praxilla, con le altre sei lyrice donne, di che Grecia si vanta, fosseno
tutte in una sola ridotte, a quella non anchora bene si potrebbe questa nostra
figura assembrare [. . .]49
[and in sum it is such, that if Hipparcha, Anete, Aria and Hypatia; if Sappho,
Corinna, Praxilla, with the other six woman lyric poets, of whom Greece boasts,
could be reduced to one alone, with this you still could not assemble our portrait
[of Isabella] well]
Though little of her poetry was known at the beginning of the sixteenth
century, Sappho's legacy was held in the custody of a large body of references,
lauds and motifs, among which we find several also applied to Isabella.50 An
epigram from the Greek Anthology (well known among Mantuan poets in this
period), identifying Sappho as the tenth Muse appears to give in words precisely
the effect intended by the painting: 'Some say there are nine Muses . . . but how
careless, look again, . . . Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth.'51 Boccaccio fleshes out
Sappho's muse-like persona, claiming that she too 'sings upon the lyre/ the
loves of the gods'.52 The Sapphic phrase 'honeyed voices', adopted by Philos
tratus to describe the singing of his dancing maidens, was elsewhere applied to
Sappho herself, who won the epithet 'sweet-voiced', a laud echoed in several
descriptions of Isabella's singing voice (although also given to other musicians
of her period) ,53 Furthermore, classical descriptions of Sappho addressing her
songs to her lyre may have inspired the adoption of the same conceit in two
sonnets written by Niccolô da Correggio especially for Isabella to sing.54 In 'Non
è in me foco' and 'Conscio fidel', of which the musical settings are sadly
lost, Isabella addresses her stringed instrument (perhaps a lute) throughout,
48 Campbell unfolds his arguments concerning Isabella and Sappho in his Cabinet, 199-204, in the context of
an interpretation of Lorenzo Costa's Coronation, which he reads as a Coronation of Sappho partly through a rather
loose interpretation of the painting's various musical elements. Whilst his specific arguments about the painting
may not be entirely convincing, his points about Isabella and Sappho are more broadly useful.
49 Trissino, I ritratti, [21-2].
50 The Renaissance reception of Sappho is conveniently summarized in Margaret Reynolds, The Sappho
Companion (London: Chatto and Windus, 2000), 81-94.
51 Trans, in Reynolds, Sappho, 70. On knowledge of the Greek (or Palatine) Anthology within Isabella's orbit, see
Campbell, Cabinet, 200, with the further references given there.
52 Boccaccio's Eculogue XII on Sappho is discussed and quoted extensively in translation in Campbell,
Cabinet, 202-3.
53 For instance, those of Trissino and Bembo - see Prizer, 'Una "Virtù" ', 35 and Appendix, Document 5
respectively.
54 On the sonnets and the reasons for believing them to have been written for Isabella, see Prizer, 'Una
"Virtù" ', 36-8. They are published in Anna Tissoni Benvenuti, Niccolö da Correggio: Opere (Bari: Laterza, 1969),
at 132-3.
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 699
praising it for the solace it offers her in her (strict
amorous suffering, a solace that is achieved throug
opportunity the instrument presents her to vent h
describes Sappho similarly 'complaining to her Aeolia
her city' (Carmina 2.13.21-5). Perhaps, through Phil
stand the exemplary Sappho to be another of the le
invoked by the Parnassus, and (as Sappho was remember
is, as a singer) another with a specifically musical rel
DESIGNING ISABELLA'S VOICE
Isabella's efforts to use visual culture to shape and legitimate her m
identity were not restricted to her studiolo. Drawing on the conte
vogue for cryptically meaningful devices, she turned her singing voi
multivalent and portable sign - her so-called impresa dellepause (Fig. 2).56
perhaps the most important of Isabella's devices, appears repeatedly
decoration of her private apartment as well as elsewhere: on the ceilin
grotta, on the wall of a corridor leading to her private garden, on items
Este-Gonzaga majolica service, and on a camorra. It is an arrange
musical notation signs, consisting of a short stave on which appears a cle
mensuration signs, a symmetrical pattern of rests and a repeat sign.
The interpretation of imprese'va general, and of Isabella's impress m
lar, is a treacherous business.07 By their nature, imprese often invite a v
creative readings, rather than a single obvious one, and disting
between intended and unintended meanings is difficult. Scholars hav
times failed to keep in mind the fact that many noble men and wom
less than fully versed in the writings of contemporary philosophe
excessive complexity can often be an interpretative mistake. Respond
treatise written by her close associate Mario Equicola on her motto
nec metu', Isabella herself chided that the device '[...] cum tanti miste
fu facto cum quanti lui gli attribuisse' (with all its mystery does not con
that you have attributed to it) .58
55 As, for example, 'D'ogni passion, d'ogni mio affanno e sdegno/ mentre teco io ragiono, mi disp
every passion, of all my trouble and scorn/ whilst I talk with you, I am divested], and 'Conscio fidel
mie doglie,/ con il quai parlo e piango il mio dolore' [Faithful confidante of all my pains/ with whi
and weep my sorrow], from 'Non è in me foco' and 'Conscio fidel' respectively.
56 On Isabella's imprese generally see Ivy L. Mumford, 'Some Decorative Aspects of the Impres
d'Este (1474—1539) ', Italian Studies, 34 (1979), 60-70; and Mario Praz, 'The Gonzaga Devices', in C
Martineau (eds.), Splendours, 65-72, at 65-6. Mumford gives details of the various decorative uses to
impresa delle pause was put.
57 For a helpful introduction to the subject of imprese, see Kristen Lippincott, 'The Genesis and S
of the Fifteenth-century Italian Impresa', in Sydney Anglo (ed.), Chivalry in the Renaissance (Wood
Rochester: Boydell, 1990), 49-84.
58 Quoted in Adalberto Genovesi, 'Due imprese musicali di Isabella d'Esté', Atti e memorie: Accadem
da Mantova, 61 (1993), 73-102, at 85.
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700 Tim Shephard
Fig. 2 Isabella d'Este's impresa délie pause 2& it appears on the ceilin
Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (© Archivio di Stato di Mantova, reproduced
e le Attività Culturali - Italia)
Modem interpretations of the impresa dellepa
improbable Neoplatonic complexity or dismis
with James Haar's distinctly sceptical assessm
d'Este set the tone for several later readings,
context of Ficinian philosophy as a symbol fo
spheres. In his opinion, the clef refers to the O
to the universe'. The various mensuration signs si
(read up the stave) from imperfect to perfect
meanwhile the central rest represents the har
other rests orbiting around it, which are the
elements, Fallay d'Este continues, are located w
by the five lines of the stave. The ensemble re
Isabella's penetration of the world soul, and her
'inspired music'.60 The dismissive approach, on
59 James Haar, 'Music as a Visual Language', in Irving Lavin (ed.), M
Outside (Princeton: Institute for Advanced Study, 1995), 265-84,
60 L. Fallay d'Esté, 'Un symbole néo-platonicien: la devise du sil
Arasse (ed.), Symboles de la Renaissance (Paris: Presses de l'Ecole Nor
vein is Genovesi, 'Due imprese musicali'; and, in greatly simplified
and Learning', 361-2. The most recent interpretation is to be fou
del mondo": Isabella d'Este's Musical Impresa, its Conception, and
Gioia Filocamo and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (eds.), Uno gentile et s
Honour of Bonnie J. Blackburn (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 569-76. B
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Isabella d'Este's musical decorum 701
sented by Stephen Campbell, who draws out of the imp
silence, but almost completely suppresses the self-eviden
the impresa, finding it insufficiently 'philosophically weigh
In my view, the arrangement of the impresa's various com
as much as musically determined - which, given the decorat
sign, is not altogether surprising. The stack of mensuration
is present, very likely, as much to give the beginning
symmetry with the repeat mark at the end as to convey an
meaning. Similarly, the arrangement of the rests does n
music-technical significance beyond indicating a lengthy
are placed to form the letter 'M' (that is, Musica). As Iai
out, the clef of the impresa is one that implies a set of s
would have suited Isabella's voice, and the repeated silen
tates must therefore be hers.62
Mario Equicola, in eulogising Isabella and her grotta, e
delle pause as a symbol of prudence - of knowing when
remain silent:
Habia in memoria il sapientissimo Biante di haver parlato, esserse piu volte
pentito ne mai de haver taciuto. Questo in figure ingeniosamente ha significato
la prudentissima Isabella da Este de Mantua Marchesa [principe deleted] con
tucte le pause délia musica pratica le quali ci admoniscono et quelli ad viva voce
ne dicono "ad tempo taci"63
[I remember the very wise Biante to have said, that he often regretted not having
remained silent. This the most prudent Isabella d'Este, Marchesa of Mantua, has
signified in an ingenious metaphor with all the rests of practical music, which
admonish us and those who speak boldly, telling them 'stay silent at the right
time']
d'Este's, though not in detail, proceeding from an unexpected reading of the arrangement of rests. He argues
that, by a rather arcane process that involves respelling the rests in terms of breves, both the Latin and Greek
alphabets are to be mapped onto Isabella's sign. This represents, for Benthem, the artful combination of'tone,
time and text' for which Isabella, in her muse-like persona, was celebrated. Within this system, the set of rests
as represented in the finished impresa stands for 'n', which Benthem reads as 'Nomen', referring to Isabella
'shining from heaven in eternity' (576) via the symbolism of the number 13 (there are thirteen rests).
61 Campbell, Cabinet, 76-7.
62 Fenlon, 'The Gonzaga and Music', in Chambers and Martineau (eds.), Splendours, 87-94, at 88. Byway of
comparison, the song Cantai mentre nel cor, to be discussed shortly as one sung by Isabella, placed the can tus line
in the neighbouring clef C2 (in Andrea Antico's Canzoni, sonetti, strambotti et frottole. Libro tertio (Roma, 1513)).
63 I quote from the autograph manuscript of Mario Equicola's Libro de natura de amore preserved in the
Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Turin, cod. N.III. 10, fol. 240r. The transcription is that given in Kolsky, 'An
Unnoticed Description of Isabella d'Este's Grotta', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 52 (1989),
232-5, at n. 23. The impresa is ascribed the same significance again elsewhere in the same manuscript (fols.
197r-98r): 'La volta in lamnia con le pause del musico concento che ad tempo tacere dénota et le cartule delle
sorte insieme colligate in candidissimo colore impie non satia Ii occhi.' [The gilded ceiling with the symmetrical
musical rests that signify [that you have to] leave silent time [i.e. sometimes remain silent], and the small papers
of chance tied together [referring to Isabella's lotto impresa], are very brightly coloured though not taxing to the
eyes.] - transcription ibid., 235.
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702 Tim Shephard
Prudence can be considered the ultimate c
Renaissance in the judgement required to
most morally appropriate action (more or l
ately, Trissino, in proposing to treat Isab
names prudence as the chief among them,
things that guide man to happiness'.64 Pr
quently equated (although silence was mor
speech, rather than song).65 For instance, i
contemporary Ferrarese scholar Celio Calc
prudent man judges his speech or silence
advising that one 'should not say anything no
[. . .] either say something better than sil
Somewhat later in the sixteenth centur
women's silence was particularly praisewo
common opinion of her prudence.67
Equicola's interpretation is certainly in acc
anxieties over Isabella's musical agency desc
safe because it knows when not to sing. Th
reassures the world that prudent Isabella,
plished, will not endanger herself and her
inappropriately, and thus inviting opprob
element in Isabella's private apartment, su
At the wedding of 1502 mentioned earlie
another, somewhat different way. At a critic
appeared before the eyes of all wearing a
invencione di tempi e pause' [beautiful cam
of time signatures and rests].68 The practi
and imprese on items of dress was a comm
64 '[...] de i quali quello de la Prudentia sarà il primo; la qu
felicità, préparatrice.' Trissino, / ritratti, [22].
63 For an introduction to Renaissance writings on silence, see
e ascoltare come fondamenti dell'apprendere', in G. Patrizi a
parola: nella trattatistica del Rinascimento (Roma: Bulzoni, 199
66 The treatise is called Descriptio silentii. The full passage ru
[in Greek], id est, Vulpes non garrit. Prudentes enim dilig
rimantur: omniaque id observant ne quid praeter rem aut p
obijciunt, [...], id est aut die quippiam silentio melius, au
following is customarily said, that the fox does not chatter. [
all things diligently [and] more readily; and indeed they all obs
not to the point or too little fitting. And indeed they object t
than silence, or else hold your voice.] Celio Calcagnini, Caelii Ca
aliquot (Basilea, 1544), 493.
67 In the well-known La Civil conversazione published in 1574
'Pédagogie del Silenzio', 415.
68 Letter of Marchesa Eleanora of Crotone to Marchese Fra
in Alessandro Luzio and Rodolfo Renier, La coltura e le relazion
Albonico (Milano: Edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard, 2005; orig. a seri
italiana 1899-1903), at 34. The event is recorded by Mario Sa
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 70S
particularly at events such as jousts and weddings. Suc
serve to advertise dynastic connections, as well as to en
personality that were thought particularly famous or
certainly well known for her musical interests, and on
played them as a defining accomplishment, allied to
doing, she may have envisioned an interaction of those
visual strategies deployed in her private apartment sugge
of the need to negotiate a moral license for her agency in a
spheres. As I have described, the feminine vices at stak
against musical women were concerned with the body:
able chastity. In response to the continuing (indeed,
negotiation within the more public forum of the weddin
sought with her camorra to present upon her body
decorum of her musical identity. Isabella may have aimed, w
inscribed upon her, to avert the possibility of negativ
stemming from the unusual visibility of her musical acc
Nonetheless, as Stephen Campbell has argued in respe
decorations, the strategies of self-definition that Isabe
enacts are double-edged: though it cannot endorse it
evidences a sympathy with the sensual body. Though in
voice is silent, the presence of the stave, clef and rests i
that her silence unfolds within song. Thus, whilst Equic
cautiously as a symbol of prudent silence, the device actuall
Giovio may intend to invoke precisely this irony when h
duction to his 1555 Dialogo dell'imprese militari e amoro
d'esser passata con silentio la Signora Isabella, Marchesa
Lady Isabella, Marchesa of Mantua, does not deserve
silence].70
The point is made even clearer when the impresa is placed within the
immediate context of Isabella's song - that is, of her poetic interests. In
amatory lyric poetry both in antiquity and in Renaissance Italy, silence and the
destruction of voice are associated paradigmatically with desperate, uncon
trollable, hopeless, burning desire. Several examples of this trope can be
found in the Canzoniere of Petrarch (in whose poetry Isabella took an active
interest).
Nancy Vickers has analysed Petrarch's pointedly 'scattered' verse in terms of
the destructive encounter of Diana and Actaeon.71 Actaeon's desire, however
unintentionally it is aroused, prompts Diana to turn him into a stag, effectively
removing his voice, whereupon he is literally scattered (that is, torn apart) by
his hounds. To pre-empt a similar silencing at the hands of his Laura, Petrarch
69 See, for instance, the examples given in Welch, 'New, Old and Second-Hand Culture', 103-4.
70 Paolo Giovio, Dialogo delVimprese militari e amorose (Roma, 1555), 2.
71 Nancy J. Vickers, 'Diana Described: Scattered Woman and Scattered Rhyme', in Elizabeth Abel (ed.),
Writing and Sexual Difference (Brighton: Harvester, 1982), 95-110.
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704 Tim Shephard
dismembers her and scatters her body thro
according to this reading, sets out specific
and his poetic identity, from the silence a
Vickers's argument proceeds from an an
tempo de la prima etade' (No. 23 in the Can
Petrarch's voice suffers violence through s
those that suppress it (he is changed into
voice turns inward: 'E dicea meco [. . .]'); t
it (he is turned into a swan, 'chiamando co
his inability to sing properly); to those tha
'e cosi scossa voce rimasi de l'antiche some'
his beloved: 'dicendo a me: "Di ciô non far
What Petrarch called '1 tacito focile d'Amo
No. 185] found more straightforward exp
Vergognando talor ch'ancor
Ashamed sometimes
sithat
taccia,
your beauty,
Donna, per me vostra lady,
bellezza
is still silent in my
in
verses,
rima,
time when
I first saw it,
ricorro al tempo ch' i'1 recall
vi that
vidi
prima
such thatche
no-one else
could piaccia;
ever please me.
tal che null'altra fia mai
mi
[• • ■]
[•••]
Piü volte già per dir le labbra apersi,
poi rimase la voce in mezzo '1 petto;
ma quai son poria mai salir tant'alto?
Many times my lips have opened to speak,
then my voice is stilled in my chest:
but what sound could ever climb so high?
[...]
[• • ■]
A list of further examples in the Canzoniere might include Nos. 18, 46, 105,
125, 164, 171, 176 and 205 (and my search was by no means exhaustive).
The idea turns up frequently in the poetry set by the musicians associated
with the frottola (including Tromboncino and Cara who worked at times for
Isabella), where its use suggests the status of a stock motif. For instance, in a
poem set by Francesco di Dana and published in 1505, the author complains
that 'nel tormento la mia lingua tace' [my tongue is silent in its torment].
Another, set by Tromboncino, turns on a list of Petrarchan paradoxes pro
voked by desire, including 'tacendo parlo et ragionando taccio' [in silence I
speak, and talking I am silent]. And in a barzelletta set by Cara, 'Mentre io vo
per questi boschi', an unhappy lover asks 'Ucelin, bel'ucelino,/ come sa' tu
ben can tar?' [Little bird, pretty little bird, how do you know good singing?],
complaining that he, in contrast, is reduced to 'angoscioso e amaro pianto'
[anguished and bitter weeping] ,73 It is impossible that Isabella was not aware
of this trope, and one can only conclude that she was willing to court the
72 For an analysis of Canzone 23 in terms of love and silence, see John Brenkman, 'Writing, Desire and
Dialectic in Petrarch's "Rime 23" ', Pacific Coast Philology, 9 (1974), 12-19, esp. 13-18; and Vickers, 'Diana
Described', 97-9.
73 The verses set by Dana and Tromboncino are given in transcription and translation in Prizer, 'Games of
Venus: Secular Music in the Late Quattrocento and Early Cinquecento', Journal of Musicology, 9 (1991), 3-56, at
13-14. The verse set by Cara is discussed in Prizer, 'Isabella and Lucrezia', at 39-40.
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Isabella d'Esté's musical decorum 705
implication that her silence, far from evidencing her pr
by the Petrarchan desire described in the verses she san
The various aspects of Isabella's equivocal voice are bro
veniently in one of the very few frottok we can identify s
Isabella's documented musical performances.74 In De
visiting Naples, Isabella spent an evening in the nearby
company of Francesco Aquaviva, the Marchese of Biton
following year, Francesco wrote to Isabella to thank her
canczoni' she had sent him in settings by Marchetto Car
further song called 'Cantai', because 'de la quale son
maxime recordandome de quella sera de Piczolo' [of that
ate, largely in memory of that evening in Pozuolo]. A furth
absolute clarity to a musical performance given by Isabella o
not much of a stretch to conclude, as William Prizer has do
on that occasion a song called 'Cantai', and to connect 'C
one's sonnet 'Cantai mentre nel cor', which survives in a
Cantai mentre nel cor lieto fioria de' suavi
I sang while in my joyful heart blossomed the
pensier' 1'alma mia spene.
hope of my soul with gentle thoughts.
Hör che la mancha, e ognor crescon laNow that it is missing, and the pain grows
pene, conversa al lachrimar la voce mia.
apace, my voice changes to tears.
E'l cor, che ai dolci accenti aprir la viaAnd my heart, which to sweet words used to
solea, senza speranza hormai diviene open the way, now without hope has become
de amor toscho albergo, onde convene the poisoned home of love, so that all which
derives from it must be bitter.
che ciö che indi dériva, amaro sia
Cosi in foscho pensier Talma ha'n governo
Thus my soul remains in dark thought
che col freddo timor dî e notte a canto
de far minaccia il mio dolor eterno.
Perö se provo haver Tanticho canto,
tinta la voce dal dolor interno esce in rotti
sospir' e duro pianto.
That has cold fear with it day and night
To menace my endless sorrow.
If, nonetheless, I try again that old song, my
voice is coloured by my internal sorrow [and]
it emerges in broken sighs and hard tears.
Castiglione's sonnet, which in 1514 emerged from Isabella's lips as song,
adopts the trope of the voice destroyed by desire as a framing conceit. It serves
to locate the sensuous implication of Isabella's voice-symbol in her actual
voice. At the same time, it makes clear the further implication of the impresa
that Isabella's silence is only figurative, and in fact evidences her voice: we
know that Isabella's voice is 'broken' not because she is silent - not because it
is actually broken - but because she has sung it.
However, in revealing the subversive face of the voice-as-sign, the verse also
reveals the conciliatory. Prizer notes that the poem is especially appropriate a
74 On Isabella's documented musical performances, including the one discussed here, see Prizer, 'Una
"Virtù" ', 25-30.
75 Prizer, 'Una "Virtù" ', 26-8. I supply his translation, slightly altered.
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706 Tim Shephard
the song of a gentlewoman, on account of
courtly'. I would add that it achieves this
cosmetically, utterly androgynous - it is
physical or experiential reference points th
between the lover and the object of their love
a result, the speaker is effectively disemb
signalled only by heart, soul, voice and tea
characteristic, an analogue of the impresa
presence of the subject position is overwr
which at the same time is concerned to em
mance scenario, whilst a guest at a fore
thought it prudent to temper her agency
those deployed in her own apartment, and
We are to conclude, then, that Isabella's im
poetic and literary) spheres was frequently
negodation of her identity as a performin
singer. Despite her elevated status, it seem
accomplishments were not always welcome
it appropriate sometimes to take steps clear
of her pastime. Some of the steps she took
the impresa delle pause, and indeed some of
studiolo are open to interpretation along
through poetic strategies such as those de
hope to exercise a degree of control over
courtiers and peers of her musical interest
private apartment, at foreign courts, at publi
domain. Equally, it was through them that he
and expressed, to be reported and lauded
University of Nottin
76 Paula Higgins briefly discusses the importance of the 'neu
in her 'Parisian Nobles, A Scottish Princess, and the Woman's
10 (1991), 145-200, at 171-2. See also LaMay, 'Madalena Ca
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