Italian Humanists at Home: Villas, Libraries, and Collections (2015)

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LES LABYRINTHES DE L’ESPRIT

Collections et bibliothèques à la RenaissanceRenaissance libraries and collections

Sous la direction de Rosanna Gorris Camos et Alexandre Vanautgaerden

LIBRAIRIE DROZ S.A.11, rue Massot

GENÈVE2015

3_551_01_liminaires.indd 5 08.09.15 10:57

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Ill. I.2.1. Petrarch’s study in Arquà (photo by the author).

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Early modern intellectuals, and humanists in particular, cherished an acute sense forthe spaces they lived and worked in, linking these dwellings quite often to what theyconsidered their intimate identity. However, there is only a limited amount of evi-dence that enables us to understand how these spaces looked like, which materials(including collections of antiquities, art works and books) they contained, and howthey were used. Today, we still have a few fine examples of early modern scholarlydwellings, from Constantijn Huygens’ country retreat Hofwijk near The Hague – designed and built by the poet and diplomat around 1640 1 – going back to Petrarch’slast home in Arquà near Padua, dating to the 1370s. 2 But the objects nowadays presentin these important sites of literary memory, like the poet’s chair and library case inwhat is believed to be the Italian humanist’s study [Ill. I.2.1], were placed there onlyin the 1530s, when the building was first turned into a tourist attraction. These cultobjects thus can hardly be taken as evidence for Petrarch’s accomplishments as an in-terior designer of his own home. Hence the rise of alternative reconstructions, likethe one done by Andrea Moschetti for the 1911 Mostra Regionale di Roma [Ill. I.2.2],

partie i - chapitre 2

italian humanists at home :

villas, libraries, and collections

harald hendrix

Ill. I.2.2. Reconstruction of

Petrarch’s study in Arquà

by Andrea Moschetti, 1911

(from Bollettino del Museo

Civico di Padova, 1910).


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where we see a richly decorated room containing many more elements of « scholarly »furniture besides the topical chair and bookcase. 3 Since to my knowledge no otheroriginal humanist interior has been preserved, at least in the Italian context, we needto resort to circumstantial evidence in order to reconstruct such dwellings, using tes-timonies by humanists and their visitors, as wells as material documentation comingfrom what remains of these houses. The aim of this essay is to do so, in order to offeran overview of the phenomenon of the Italian humanist’ house in its developmentover time, from the late fourteenth to the mid sixteenth century.

Having first a look at the typology of the buildings conceived and used by Italianhumanists as private dwellings, it hardly comes as a surprise that we find remarkablyfew houses, be it in towns or in the countryside, and that the villa is the dominanttype of humanist dwelling. 4 This corresponds to a likewise remarkable lack of docu-mentary evidence on humanist town houses. Only quite recently the lay-out of Petrarch’s last town house in Padua has been reconstructed in broad outlines : it wasa rather up-market house, containing on both floors four to six rooms as well as astable, a private well, a vegetable garden and a courtyard for poultry. 5 For his work,Petrarch used a studio and a studiolo, both on the outer part of the first floor, but thispart of the building was demolished in the mid-sixteenth century, and no documen-tation on its lay-out or contents has survived. This seems exemplary for the lack ofhumanists’ interest in urban dwellings, since in fact the only well documented townhouse we might define as « humanist », the apartment of Ludovico Beccadelli in hisBologna family residence at Piazza Santo Stefano, dates from a much later period –it was constructed as of 1555 –, and was meticulously described not by himself butonly after his death, in 1586, by his secretary Antonio Giganti in order, as the arch-bishop had stipulated in his will,

che delle cose dello studio mio, cioè libri et ritratti etc si faccia con diligenza l’in-ventario et si conservino fedelmente, né si danno via [...] ma stiano in Casa permia memoria et a benefitio delli nepoti et descendenti di Casa. 6

The humanist preference for what we generally call the villa was indeed groundedin an ideology that up to a certain degree might be coined as anti-urban, since it cher-ished the idea of a distance to the centres of power and commerce while aspiring toall enjoyments comprised within the continuously evoked vision of the otium litte-ratum. 7 That such aspirations to construct one’s own tranquillity and independencewere not without a touch of hypocrisy is underlined by the fact that what most hu-manists had in mind and effectively realised was not a villa in the countryside but a

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villa suburbana, which was both distant and close to the urban realities they hopedto leave behind. This also explains why especially in today’s context it is not immedi-ately clear that some buildings, like Trissino’s Villa Cricoli in Vicenza, although quiteclose to the city centre are in fact suburban villa’s. Interestingly, it also produced hybridarchitectural forms like the Palazzo Bembo in Padua, which the poet transformedinto a magnificent suburban villa situated still within the town walls.

From these two prominent and relatively well preserved examples, constructedboth in the 1530s on the basis of pre-existant buildings and by notoriously wealthyhumanists, we may gather that there was no one architectural template to be used,which might easy our endeavour to reconstruct the humanist interior. Also to the hu-manists themselves this must have been something of a problem, since their cult ofthe villa was directly related to their admiration for those antique authors who haddescribed their predelection for a life in their countryside residences, notably Ciceroand Pliny the Younger. 8 But their texts on villa life were inconclusive as to the build-ings’ design, up to a point that even today the debate on the reconstruction of Pliny’svilla’s is still going strong. To compensate for this lack, some humanists built theirvilla’s on locations they directly associated with the antique authors they admired :Sannazaro’s villa and mausoleum were purposely built near Virgil’s alleged grave, asBembo’s epitaph on the poet’s tomb eloquently recalls ; 9 Annibale Caro compensatedthe modest dimensions of his Caravilla in Frascati by locating it on the very spotwhere he believed Lucullus had built his magnificent residence ; 10 and Giovio’s villaon lake Como notoriously imitated Pliny’s model, rising up from the very ruins ofhis villa Laurentinum presumably still present just beneath the lake’s shore. 11

Where the antique sources remained opaque in architectural detail, they werecristal clear in their description of the villa’s functions, and it was this aspect that fas-cinated many generations of humanists : this was a place for the cultivation of « let-ters », offering opportunities for concentrated work and study as well as for theentertainment of guests equally disposed. The spatial arrangement of the villa, com-prising both buildings and gardens, both culture and nature, was supposed to offeran ideal framework for individual and social activities, in a context outside the citythat was considered to be basically free. Such is the idea of villa-life we encounter inthe many humanist texts specifically dedicated to the argument, from Alberti’s chapteron the villa in his Libri della Famiglia (1438) 12 and Erasmus’ Convivium religiosum(1535) 13 to descriptions of what actually went on when humanists lived in their villa,as in this account from 1485 by the florentine humanist Michele Vieri.

Here I am to satisfy your curiosity about how I pass my time in my villa at Lecore,

italian humanists at home 27


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in what way I consume the summer days and what are my literary diversions. Irise early, go for a walk in my dressing-gown in a little garden, where I am re-freshed by the cool morning breeze, I retire to my study, glance through somepoet, study the precepts of Quintillian, read with wonder the Orations of Cicero.I enjoy the letters of Pliny, my greatest delight, compose epigrams or, more will-ingly, elegiac verse. After lunch I sleep a little. My father, who is here with me,dedicated as he is to literary pursuits, corrects, adds, adorns and reorders mycompositions here and there, as needed. After sleeping I enjoy myself at checkersor the royal board. Near the villa is a vineyard with much fruit and in the middleruns a stream of freshest water full of small fish, the hedges are thick and dayand night the nightingales lament past wrongs. Here I read a little and sing someimprovised or familiar verses to my lute. When the sun goes down I take someexercise with the ball. This is how I spend the summer, while the spread of dis-eases in the city continues. I do not cultivate my fields but engage myself withletters. I do not have the library of the Sassetti or the Medici but I have a smallshelf of the right books which are dearer to me than the richest possessions. 14

In repeating all the topical elements of the classical villa praise, Vieri is well awareof the conventions his countryside life has to conform to. When in his last phrase hementions that his villa hosted only a small but choice collection of books, he thereforedescribes a factual situation that was in line with such conventions. We in fact findan analogous indication some 35 years later in Erasmus’ Convivium religiosum. Butarrangements such as the preference for only a limited collection of books are notstatic or even stable, precisely because there is not one template to be followed or ap-plied. The dynamism of such arrangements, though clearly also dependent on thepersonal choices of particular humanists, shows a gradual but clear development overtime. It corresponds to three rather distinct phases that for the argument’s sake mightbe summarized under the three conventional captions of Studio, Academia and Museo.

Studio > Academia > Museo

When Petrarch in 1369 planned the transformation of the building he had bought inArquà, he intended it to become an ideal shelter for his work as a new man of letters. 15

He wanted the house to be modern, and thus changed the old fashioned romanesquewindows into fashionable gothic ones. He built himself a private apartment at theend of the building, distinct from the part with his family members, clerks and ser-vants. But most notoriously, he opened his private apartment up to the beautiful nat-

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ural landscape of the surrounding Colli Euganei, by adding a large panoramic balconyto his bedroom, and by inserting two windows, one big and one small, in the outerwall of his study. Particularly significant seems the small window, since it was con-structed expressly for the purpose of allowing the poet to look outside from his work-ing desk. This is what we can gather from the eldest, and to my mind indeed realisticrepresentation of Petrarch in his study, a fresco placed in the Sala dei Giganti of theprincely palace in Padua which followed an iconography presumably designed by Pe-trarch himself in the late 1360s. 16 While the fresco was heavily damaged in a firearound 1500, a drawing of the original representation of Petrarch in his studio hassurvived, and thus is the only surviving documentary evidence for Petrarch’s workingenvironment [Ill. I.2.3]. This is a small, closed room full of the typical furniture usedby scholars and piled up with working material, mainly books and manuscripts. As alaboratory for an intellectual, this is typically a room of the Studio-type as it was fre-quently portrayed in the contemporary Jerome-iconography. 17 What distinguishesPetrarch’s study from this overall category is the small window allowing a view on thesurrounding nature, indicating a cautious yet fundamental shift to a still implicit villa-ideology with its fusion of natural and built environment, a subtle but essential shiftwell captured in later representations of Petrarch in his study, including the restoredversion of the fresco in the Sala dei Giganti dating from the 1540s, when in nearbyArquà the poet’s house was turned into a literary monument [Ill. I.2.4].

This ideology is then made explicit some sixty years later, in the ambitious build-ing activities employed by Poggio Bracciolini at the moment he gets finally married,in 1438. The elaborate housing complex he builds in Terranuova is not very well doc-umented, but from his own writings, particularly the conversations reported in DeNobilitate situated in his new Terranuova villa, it becomes clear that this is a spacenot only for study but also for entertaining guests and, perhaps primarily, for pre-senting himself as a humanist knowledgeable about the antiquities with which he hasadorned his gardens.

Quando, alcuni anni fa, lasciai Roma per un soggiorno in patria, vennero a visi-tarmi Niccolò Niccoli e Lorenzo dei Medici, uomini coltissimi e miei cari amici :li avevo invitati soprattutto per mostrare loro alcune statue che avevo portato conme da Roma. Quando essi furono nel giardino della mia villa, che io con queimarmi di provenienza straniera mi sforzavo di rendere illustre sfoggiando in giar-dino pochi oggetti di pregio, Lorenzo disse, muovendo gli occhi tutto intorno eridendo : – Il nostro ospite, poiché ha letto che era costume antico – in uso pressoquei famosi ed eccellenti uomini di un tempo – ornare le case, le ville, i giardini,



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Ill. I.2.3. Petrarch in his study (photo by the author).


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Ill. I.2.4. Petrarch in his study, Padova, Sala dei Giganti, restored ca. 1540 (photo by the author).


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i portici e le palestre con statue di vario tipo e anche con i ritratti degli antenati,allo scopo di illustrare la propria gloria e nobilitare il proprio lignaggio, ha deciso,mancando a lui le immagini degli antenati, di rendere nobile questo luogo e anchese stesso grazie a codesti miseri e malridotti pezzi di marmo, affinché a causa dellanovità da ciò rappresentata rimanga presso i posteri una qualche memoria di lui.– Se è questo che ricerca – commentò Niccolò – egli deve ricavare altrove la so-stanza della nobiltà, non da statue e da rottami muti, oggetti non degni della pas-sione di un saggio. Dall’animo, cioè dalla sapienza e dalla virtù, noi dobbiamotrarre la nobiltà, che sola può condurre gli uomini fino alla gloria. 18

This intersecting and merging of an individual and a social dimension typifiesthe humanist house during its period of glory, roughly from the mid-fifteenth till themid-sixteenth century. What distinguishes it moreover from the earlier Studio-typewe have seen in Petrarch’s houses is the limited space given to the library and a lackof attention for books as material objects in general. The humanist’s intellect and hisart of conversation with his peers is, it seems, no longer stimulated primarily by read-ing books in a library or studio, but by walking around his house and gardens, aloneor with friends, while meditating on what stimulæ these spaces offer. Those may benatural stimulæ – the sound of water, the color of flowers – but they may also be ‘cul-tural’ in the sense that they are purposely constructed. The arrangement of such ma-terial elements located in the villa becomes an element of pride in humanistvilla-culture, since it allows the villa’s owner to exercise his knowledge and share itwith others in what Chastel poignantly has coined a « réunion libre de beaux esprits » 19

and what others, including some humanists themselves call an Academia. 20

In Bracciolini’s case, the objects added to the villa’s architecture were exclusivelyantiquities, but later generations of humanists, starting from Ficino, added other el-ements able to provoke thoughts and conversations. Ficino’s modest private villa nearthe grand Medici villa in Careggi, although surrounded by a small garden with someantiquities, had its focus in a multifunctional space where the master worked, receivedhis guests and occasionally taught from a rostrum strategically placed in the room,which he himself called Nostra hæc sive academia, sive bibliotheca. 21 Although thisstudy therefore contained Ficino’s library, little mention of it is made by contempo-raries, who instead were fascinated by the mottos the master had painted on his walls(A bono in bonum monia diriguntur – Lætus in præens, neque censum existimus, nequeappetas dignitatem – Fuge excessum, fuge negotiam, laetus in praesens) and by the frescodecorations figuring the earth, Plato, Democritus and Heraclitus.

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Haveva Marsilio nella sua Academia, dove egli leggeva, fatto dipingere la spheradel Mondo e da una parte Democrito che rideva e dall’altro Heraclito che pian-geva percioche Democrito si rideva della pazzia degl’ huomini che procurano diconseguirsi le cose eterne come le richezze e gl’ honori, la sanità e bellezza e leproprie che sono i beni dell’anima dispregiano. Heraclito poi piangeva la pazziadegl’ huomini per la medesima cagione. Quegli inoltre rideva perche si deside-rano le cose che appariscono buone ne si pensa d’usarle bene. Questi perche sicercasse di medicare e corpi e non l’anima e forse rideva l’uno e piangeva l’altro,percioche se gl’ huomini si dovessero honorare e reverire per le richezze e talvoltanon bene acquistate, si doverebbe costumare di far’ portare loro in fronte unapiastra o lama d’oro per come dire una borsa appicata al collo, ma essendo l’ho-nore, come diceva Aristotele e Platone un’ premio divino, si doverrebbe dare allevirtu e alle honeste attioni. Ridendo adunque Marsilio con quelli che ridevano epiangendo con quelli che piangevano accomodandosi alle occasioni e alle per-sone. Non poteva essere la sua pratica se non gioconda e grata. 22

Precisely because such decorations and motto’s become a recurrent and even pre-dominant element in early Cinquecento villa-culture, it is clear that this generationof humanists operates from an ethical stance, giving moral and philosophical glanceto their dwellings. Trissino even decorates the main rooms of his Villa Cricoli withmotto’s in Greek, and further strenghtens this building’s connection with Platonicheritage by inscribing above its entrance Academia Trissinæ lux et rus. 23

This was however something of a nostalgic anachronism in 1535 – as contempo-raries acknowledged –, since at that time leading humanists like Sannazaro first andBembo slightly later had switched to other principles guiding them in the construc-tion and decoration of their dwellings. 24 While not neglecting the ethical dimensiontypical of the humanist house, they expanded their interest in objects able to stimulatethoughts and conversations from the Antique to the Modern, gathering in their homesimportant collections of contemporary art, alongside other objects – coins, medals,artful terracotta, manuscripts, etc., both antique and modern – that might do well aswhat we perhaps should call « conversation pieces ». What distinguishes these collec-tions is their heterogeneity, the high quality and rarity of the single objects, and theattention to the unfamiliar, as we can see in the famous Tabula Bembina, 25 the pred-election for Northern-European masters we find in both humanists, and their interestin local craftmanship as evidenced by the series of monumental terracotta figures or-dered by Sannazaro to adorn his Christmas crèche. Given their extraordinary impor-tance, these humanist collections immediately attracted the attention of contemporaries



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eager not only to visit these homes, but also to document their holdings. Thereforethanks to the efforts of men like Pietro Summonte and Marcantonio Michiel we arewell informed on the highlights of these collections, 26 while later and even quite re-cent scholarship has tried to give detailed reconstructions of the collections and theirhistories. 27

What at this point however still remains unclear is the way these objects werearranged spatially in the various rooms of the humanist’s homes. The lay-out of thetwo Bembo houses, the palazzo in Padua and the Villa Noniana, suggests howeverthat these heterogeneous collections were displayed in a fashion close to what somehundred years later a painter like Frans Francken the Younger would depict in his ex-traordinary series of scholarly interiors, where we see careful compositions of a greatvariety of objects able to fascinate scholars and to provoke their thoughts and con-versations [Ill.5]. In fact, like Trissino’s Villa Cricoli and the even more closely relatedvilla of Bembo’s intimate friend Giovan Battista Ramusio in San Giorgio in Bosco,that up to this day has preserved its original appearance of the 1520s [Ill. I.2.6], thetwo Bembo houses, given their status as villa suburbana and thus their stress on theinterplay between building and garden, were centred completely on the ground floor,where in both cases a large entrance hall alla veneziana called introytu was flanked byonly two smaller rooms, one on each side, that were used as dining room, aula domus,and as study : camera. These smaller rooms housed most part of the elaborate Bemboart collection, whereas the antique statues and inscriptions were placed in the largerentrance hall and throughout the gardens. Apart from some spectacular showcasemanuscripts like the famous Virgil codex shown to visitors of his Padua residence,Bembo held most of his rich library in the Villa Noniana which to him had a moreprivate character and was used as a place of study, reflection and writing, as he himselfrepeatedly declared in his letters.

Giunto che in Padova fui, visitai gli amici, e da essi visitato me ne son venutoqui alla mia villetta, che molto lietamente mi ha ricevuto, nella quale io vivo intanta quiete, in quanto a Roma mi stetti a travaglio e fastidj. Non odo nojose espiacevoli nuove. Non penso piati. Non parlo con procuratori. Non visito audi-tori di Rota. Non sento romori se non quelli, che mi fanno alquanti lusignuolid’ogni intorno gareggiando tra loro, e molti altri uccelli, i quali tutti pare, ches’ingegnino di piacermi con la loro naturale armonia. Leggo, scrivo, quanto iovoglio ; cavalco, cammino, passeggio molto spesso per entro un boschetto, cheio ho a capo dell’orto. Del quale orto assai piacevole e bello talora colgo di manomia vivanda delle prime tavole per la sera, e talora un canestruccio di fragole la

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Ill. I.2.5. Frans II Francken, A collector’s cabinet, ca. 1625, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (public domain).Ill. I.2.6. The villa of Giovan Battista Ramusio in San Giorgio in Bosco, ca. 1520 (photo by the author).


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mattina, le quali poscia m’odorano non solamente la bocca, ma ancora tutta lamensa. Taccio che l’orto e la casa ed ogni cosa tutto ‘l giorno di rose è piena. Nèmanca oltre a ciò che con una barchetta, prima per un vago fiumicello, che di-nanzi alla mia casa corre continuo, e poi per la Brenta ; in cui dopo un brevissimocorso questo fiumicello entra, e la quale è bello ed allegrissimo fiume, ed ancoraessa da un’altra parte i miei medesimi campi bagna, io non vada la sera buonapezza diportandomi, qual ora le acque più che la terra, mi vegno a grado. In que-sta guisa penso di far qui tutta la state e tutto l’autunno, tale volta fra questotempo a Padova ritornandomi a rivedere gli amici per due o tre dì, acciò che, percomparazione della città, la villa mi paja più graziosa. 28

This very description, by the way, allows us to exactly localise the spot whereuntil its compete destruction the Villa Noniana was situated in Santa Maria di Non :at the point in the river Brenta where it meets the Piovego, the « vago fiumicello chedinanzi alla mia casa corre continuo», as can be seen in this photograph taken sometime ago [Ill. I.2.7].

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Ill. I.2.7. The location of Bembo’s Villa Nonianum (photo by the author).


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The careful and ambitious arrangement of the humanist house we see in Bembo’sactivities was however brought to its peak only a decade later in the Giovio villa onLake Como [Ill. I.2.8], my final case, and indeed the most spectacular one, in its di-mensions, its holdings, and in the rich documentation on it at our disposal, both bycontemporaries and by Giovio himself, who notably wrote a detailed description, the1546 Musæi Ioviani Descriptio. This allows me to be brief, since others, also quite re-cently, have given detailed reconstructions of this humanist’s house, 29 which as theowner proudly declares is by all means a Museum. In this building, designed meticu-lously according to Pliny’s indications regarding his nearby Villa Laurentinum, Giovioon the one hand follows the conventions of the humanist villa-ideology, limiting forexample his book collection to a bibliotheca, parva quidem sed lectissimis referta libris. 30

But in his monumental villa the balance between building and collection is completelyturned over, as is the balance between quantity and quality, heterogeneity and homo-geneity. The main function of the house, which in itself is a perfect example of hu-manist villa, is to host the famous collection of portraits and biographical profiles,more than 400 in total, an intrinsically homogeneous collection moreover that prefers


Ill. I.2.8. Giovio’s villa in Como (Como, Museo Civico Archeologico Paolo Giovio, inv. P 596).


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completeness over quality. 31 Therefore, alongside spectacular paintings by masters likeTitian and Bronzino, it accomodates many modest works, since it’s main goal is to be-come a monument to the memory of famous persons, humanists and poets in primis.

Paradoxically, Giovio himself was well aware that for such goal not a villa or an-other kind of building was the most suited instrument, but writing itself. His lastinglegacy therefore is not his villa, completely destroyed already in the early seventeenthcentury, but his seminal collection of Elogia based on the villa’s holdings, which inmany ways anticipates modern historiography.

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1

On Hofwijk, see Ton van Strien & Kees van

der Leer, Hofwijck. Het gedicht en de buiten-

plaats van Constantijn Huygens, 2002, and

the modern edition in : Constantijn Huygens,

Hofwijck, 2008.

2

Petrarch’s home in Arquà has attracted quite

some scholarly attention; cf. in particular

Claudio Bellinati, Loris Fontana, Arquà e la

casa di Francesco Petrarca con guida breve e

itinerari sui Colli Euganei, 1988; Gianni Flori-

ani, Francesco Petrarca. Memorie e Cronache

padovane, 1993, p. 111-136, and my « The early

modern invention of literary tourism :

Petrarch’s houses in France and Italy », 2008.

3

On reconstructions of the interior of

Petrarch’s Arquà house, see Giovanna Baldissin

Molli, Il poeta e il marangone. L’artigianato

padovano al servizio di Petrarca e del letterato

umanista, 2004 ; Moschetti provided an elabo-

rate report on his 1911 reconstruction in

Andrea Moschetti, « Elementi e forme per

la ricostruzione di uno studiolo padovano

trecentesco alla Mostra Regionale di Roma

del MCMXI », 1910.

4

See also Amanda Lillie, « The Humanist Villa

Revisited », 1995.

5

Cf. Claudio Bellinati, « La casa canonicale

di Francesco Petrarca a Padova. Ubicazione e

vicende », 1979, and Floriani, 1993. The lay-

out of the house is detailed in an explanatory

tourist plaque recently erected in front of the

building, which reads «Si estendeva su due

piani : al piano terra si trovavano quattro

camere, due caneve, una corte, una stalla per

i cavalli, un’altra corte per le galline e un

bellissimo pozzo. Al piano superiore c’erano

altre quattro camere, tre depositi per vivande

e cereali, lo studio e lo studiolo del poeta ».

6

Quoted in Gigliola Fragnito, In museo e in

villa. Saggi sul Rinascimento perduto, 1988,

p. 68.

7

On this topical theme, see Marina Beer, L’ozio

onorato. Saggi sulla cultura letteraria italiana

del Rinascimento, 1996.

8

On the history of the villa-ideal, cf. notably

James S. Ackerman, The Villa. Form and

Ideology of Country Houses, 1990, and Pierre de

la Ruffinière du Prey, The Villas of Pliny From

Antiquity to Posterity, 1994.

9

Cf. Cristiana Anna Addesso, «Un sepolcro di

candidissimi marmi, & intagli eccellentissimi.

Sannazzaro nelle ’guide’ di Napoli », 2005, and

Francesco Divenuto, « ‘Deos nemorum invo-

cat in extruenda domo’ : Iacopo Sannazaro e

la sua casa a Mergellina », 2009.

10

See Carl L. Franck, The Villas of Frascati, 1550-

1750, London, Alec Tiranti, 1966, p. 81-98 ;

Franz-Eugen Keller, Zum Villenleben und

Villenbau am Römischen Hof der Farnese.

Kunstgeschichtliche Untersuchung der Zeugnisse

bei Annibal Caro, 1980, p. 44-50, 73-84.

11

In the rich extant literature on Giovio’s villa,



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cf. part. Franco Minonzio, « ‘Il museo di

carta’ di Paolo Giovio », 2006, p. XVII-LXVIII ;

Sonia Maffei, « Lo spazio delle parole. Gli

Elogia e il Museo di Paolo Giovio tra inno-

vazione e tradizione », 2007 a ; Id., « ‘Scultor

di sensi e non miniator di vocaboli’. Alcune

considerazioni sul rapporto tra Giovio e Plinio

il Vecchio », 2007 b ; Id., « ‘Iucundissimi em-

blemi di pitture’. Le imprese del Museo di

Paolo Giovio a Como», 2008.

12

Cf. Grazia Gobbi Sica, La villa fiorentina.

Elementi storici e critici per una lettura, 1998,

p. 19-20.

13

On Erasmus’ villa praise, cf. Martin Wacker-

nagel, « Der ideale Landsitz eines christlichen

Humanisten der Renaissancezeit », 1950 and

Lucy L.E. Schlütter, Niet alleen : Een kunsthis-

torisch-ethische plaatsbepaling van tuin en

woning in het « Convivium religiosum» van

Erasmus, 1995.

14

Grazia Gobbi Sica, The Florentine villa :

architecture, history, society, 2007, p. 19, note 5.

15

On the building history of Petrarch’s house in

Arquà, see Bellinati & Fontana, 1988, p. 86-

96.

16

See Giulio Bodon, Heroum Imagines. La Sala

dei Giganti a Padova, un monumento della

tradizione classica e della cultura antiquaria,

2009, p. 345-348, ill. on p. 552.

17

Cf. Wolfgang Liebenwein, Studiolo. Storia e

tipologia di uno spazio culturale, 2005.

18

Poggio Bracciolini, La vera nobiltà, 1999, p. 28-

31 : Nam cum olim ex Urbe in patriam secessis-

sem æris mutandi gratia, venerunt eodem rogatu

meo doctissimi mihique amicissimi viri Nicolaus

Nicolus et Laurentius de Medicis, quos ad id

pellexeram precipue nonnullorum, que ex Urbe

advexeram, signorum ostentatione. Hi cum

essent in ortulo, quem peregrinis quibusdam

marmoribus celebrem reddere cupiebam parvule

supelectilis inditio, ridens cum oculos circum-

tulisset Laurentius : – Hic hospes noster –

inquit – cum legerit fuisse moris antiqui apud

priscos illos excellentis viros, ut domos, villas,

ortos, porticus, gymnasia variis signis tabulisque

maiorum quoque statuis exornarent ad gloriam

et nobilitandum genus, voluit, cum progenito-

rum imagines deessent, hunc locum et se insuper

his pusillis et confractis marmoru reliquiis

nobilem reddere, ut rei novitate aliqua eius ad

posteros istis rebus gloria emanaret. – Si hoc

appetit – Nicolaus inquit – aliunde eruenda est

materia nobilitatis, non ex signis et marmorum

fragmentis, mutis et viro sapienti non admodum

appetendis. Ex animo, hoc est ex sapientia et vir-

tute, excutienda nobis est que sola erigit homines

ad laudem nobilitas.

19

André Chastel, Marsile Ficin et l’art, 1954, p. 7.

20

On the meaning of the concept of Academy

for (Florentine) humanists, see notably James

Hankins, «Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Pla-

tonic Academy», 1990, and Id., «The Myth

of the Platonic Academy of Florence », 1991.

See also Marc Fumaroli, «Academia, Arcadia,

Parnassus : trois lieux allégoriques de l’éloge du

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loisir lettré », 1995.

21

Quoted in Arnaldo Della Torre, Storia dell’

Accademia platonica di Firenze, Firenze,

Carnesecchi, 1902, (reprint Torino, Bottega

d’Erasmo, 1960), p. 640. Ficino’s Careggi villa

has attracted quite some scholarly attention ;

see Chastel, Marsile Ficin et l’art, 1954,

Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin (1433-1499),

1958, p. 250-263, and more recently Raffaella

Fabiani Giannetto, Medici Gardens. From

Making to Design, 2008, part. p. 30-52, and

Christophe Poncet, « Ficino’s little academy of

Careggi », 2013.

22

From the Vita by Pietro Caponsacchi, ca. 1591,

quoted in Marcel, Marsile Ficin, 1958, p. 703-

704.

23

On the Cricoli villa, still pertinent the infor-

mations gathered in Bernardo Morsolin,

Giangiorgio Trissino o monografia di un letterato

nel secolo XVI, 1878, p. 219-240. More recent

scholarship in Lionello Puppi, «Un letterato

in villa : Giangiorgio Trissino a Cricoli », 1971 ;

Manuela Morresi, «Giangiorgio Trissino,

Sebastiano Serlio e la villa di Cricoli. Ipotesi

per una revisione attribuita », 1994.

24

On Sannazaro’s mausoleum and villa, see

Attilio Carrella, La chiesa di Santa Maria

del Parto a Mergellina, s.a. [= 2000], and

Divenuto, « ‘Deos nemorum invocat in extru-

enda domo’ : Iacopo Sannazaro e la sua casa a

Mergellina », 2009, For an overview of the

rich extant scholarship on Bembo’s house and

collection, see now Pietro Bembo e le arti, ed.

Guido Beltramini, Howard Burns, Davide

Gasparotto, Venezia, Marsilio, s.a. [2013],

part. p. 373-504, and the catalogue of the 2013

Padua exhibition Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione

del Rinascimento, 2013. On Bembo’s library,

see Massimo Danzi, La biblioteca del cardinal

Pietro Bembo, Genève, Droz, 2005.

25

On this bronze table, cf. now Pietro Bembo e

l’invenzione del Rinascimento, 2013, p. 340-342.

26

[Marcantonio Michiel], Notizia di opere di

disegno nella prima metà del secolo XVI

esistenti in Padova, [ca 1550], Bassano,

Remondini, 1803 ; Pietro Summonte’s letter

of 20 March 1524 on art collections in con-

temporary Naples is in Fausto Nicolini,

L’arte napoletana del Rinascimento e la lettera

di Pietro Summonte a Marcantonio Michiel,

1925, p. 141-176.

27

See besides the works quoted in note 24,

Elisa Curti, «Gli ozi di Pietro Bembo. Echi

letterari e passione antiquaria nella descriptio

horti bembesca », 2010 ; Irene Brooke, « “Per

farne poi di esse donationi … per lasciar

perpetua memoria a i posteri de i nomi di

coloro”. Gifts of Ancient Coins to Pietro

Bembo», 2011 ; Susan Nalezyty, «From Padua

to Rome : Pietro Bembo’s Mobile Objects and

Convivial Interiors », 2013, and the mono-

graphic issue dedicated to Bembo’s collection

of Padova e il suo territorio, 161 (2013).

28

Letter sent on 6 May 1525 from the Villa

Noniana to Agostino Foglietta in Rome,

now in Pietro Bembo, Lettere, ed. Ernesto



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Travi, Bologna, Commissione per i Testi di

Lingua, 1992, vol. I, n° 528, p. 246.

29

Cfr. note 11.

30

From Giovio’s own description as quoted in

Paolo Giovio, Scritti d’arte. Lessico ed ecfrasi,

ed. Sonia Maffei, Pisa, Scuola Normale Supe-

riore di Pisa, 1999, p. 120.

31

On Giovio’s portrait collection, cf. also Santi,

poeti, navigatori ... Capolavori dai depositi degli

Uffizi, ed. Francesca De Luca, 2009.

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Documents

Italian Humanists at Home: Villas, Libraries, and Collections (2015)