Rime di Gandolfo Porrino

8vo (149x100 mm). [8], 100 leaves. Collation: *⁸ a-m⁸ n⁴. Printer's device on title page. Italic type. Later half vellum. Small worm track skillfully repaired to the first three leaves slightly affecting the text, last leaf a bit browned and soiled, all in all a good copy.

Rare first edition dedicated by the author to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. “Si tratta di una raccolta di poesie che esula dal modello canonico del canzoniere petrarchista sia per la ridotta presenza di sonetti e canzoni a fronte di una ben più cospicua incidenza di componimenti di maggiore estensione (oltre ai capitoli di cui stiamo trattando, soprattutto stanze in ottava rima), sia per la struttura dell'opera che pare riprodurre in successione le occasioni legate ai vari periodi di servizio dell'autore. Si inizia infatti con l'opera sua più famosa, le Stanze per il ritratto di Giulia Gonzaga (cc. 1-9r) eseguito da Sebastiano del Piombo, composte su commissione del cardinale Ippolito de' Medici e in competizione con l'amico Molza cui era stato assegnato il medesimo incarico. Seguono poi alcuni componimenti ancora dedicati alla Gonzaga (cc. 9r-11r) e poi le Pompe funerali (cc. 11v-30r), stanze in morte del fratello di lei e padre di Vespasiano, con una breve giunta di altri sonetti nuovamente legati alla figura di Luigi Gonzaga (cc. 30v-33r). Poi un altro componimento in ottave, le Stanze di lontananza (cc. 33v-35r) e una più ampia sezione di rime (cc. 35v-51r) per lo più legate alla figura di Ippolito de' Medici o a personaggi gravitanti intorno alla sua corte; si passa poi agli anni trascorsi al servizio di Alessandro Farnese con le Stanze dedicate alla sua amante Livia Colonna (cc. 51v-69r) e una successiva serie di rime (cc. 69v-79r); e infine (finalmente, verrebbe da dire) i componimenti di ispirazione più personale, non commissionati, le Stanze in laude della bella Susanna romana, la donna della sua vita (cc. 79v-88r), e appunto i capitoli per Vespasiano Gonzaga (cc. 88v-100r)” (D. Chiodo, Missive in versi: i Capitoli del Porrino a Vespasiano Gonzaga, in: “Italique”, XIX, 2016, p. 41-54).

At l. 75r is a sonnet addressed to Michelangelo Buonarroti, in which Porrino asks “Bonaroti sovran” to make a portrait of a woman, presumably Faustina Mancini Attavanti, who was considered as one of the most beautiful women in Rome at the time and died giving birth in 1543. Michelangelo replied with two poems refusing the proposal (cf. Lina Bolzoni, Poesia e ritratto nel Rinascimento, Bari, 2008, pp. 193-199).

The Stanze sopra il riratto della Signora Donna Giulia Gonzaga Colonna, which open the collection, were written between ca. 1530, when Sebastiano del Piombo is supposed to have composed his portrait of Giulia Gonzaga from which the Stanze take their subject, and 1538, the year of their first publication under the name of Francesco Maria Molza, together with the latter's poems on the same subject (Rime del Brocardo et d'altri, Venezia, 1538). “Le ottave in onore di Giulia Gonzaga che aprono la raccolta di Rime del 1551, costituiscono, all'interno di una produzione non del tutto disprezzabile, una autentica rarità poiché in esse il Porrino coniuga felicemente il genere del poemetto economistico-celebrativo in ottava rima con il tema particolarmente caro al classicismo cinquecentesco dell'ut pictura poesis […] Nelle Stanze del Porrino infatti la pratica della scrittura si sovrappone e si confonde con quella della pittura là dove la parola cerca di delineare il corrispettivo del tratto pittorico: vale in questo senso la descrizione del soggetto ritratto, contenuta nelle ottave 22-34, dove, anche attraverso l'uso ripetuto e insistito di metafore, il poeta tenta di fermare tra le carte ciò che il pittore fissa sulla tela […] La descrizione si limita ai membri più nobili (capelli, fronte, occhi, guance, bocca, petto) con un breve cenno alle braccia e al pargoletto pié, e procede nella enumerazione delle parti anatomiche per ordine, dalla testa ai piedi […] Subentrano tuttavia nella descriptio personae anche le motivazioni secondarie della durezza-mollezza e della levigatezza-tenerezza, che inseriscono così nel campo visivo anche connotazioni tattili: è il caso delle crude braccia / che di candor han già l'avorio stanco (st. 32 vv. 1-2) e del pargoletto pié tenero e bianco (st. 32 v. 6). È significativo che le motivazioni secondarie, sconosciute alla pratica poetica del Petrarca, si inseriscano proprio nella descrizione dei membri normalmente esclusi dal canone breve” (G. Porrino, Stanze per Giulia Gonzaga, L. Sguazzabia, ed., Parma, 2000, pp. 73, 79-80).

Gandolfo Porrino was born in Modena at an unspecified date but, most likely, in the last years of the 15^th century. The little information we have about his life comes from Girolamo Tiraboschi's Biblioteca modenese, which, together with the present edition of the Rime and with Porrino's epistolary and that of the two close friends Annibal Caro and Francesco Maria Molza, is the only available source. From what were the later developments in his literary career, it can be inferred that his course of study was similar to that of his fellow citizen Francesco Maria Molza, with whom he shared a friendship that lasted until the latter's death. Several humanists trained in the Ferrara school of Guarino Veronese were active in Modena at the time, and it was probably with one of these that Porrino made his first studies. As his fellow citizen Jacopo Sadoleto had already helped Molza to get into the papal court of Leo X, it is to be assumed that he similarly recommended Porrino for employment at the court of Clement VII. In Rome Porrino probably arrived in the years when Molza was in the service of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, that is, after 1529; he was certainly also in the cardinal's service in December 1531. In Rome Porrino, employed in the magnificent court of Cardinal Medici and enjoying Molza's protection, was able to win thanks to his personal and intellectual talents the sympathies of the literary community, so much so that he became close friends with the major protagonists of the city's cultural life, from Annibal Caro to Giovanni Della Casa, from Paolo Giovio to Claudio Tolomei. On commission from the cardinal Ippolito and in poetical competition with Molza, who was entrusted with the same task, Porrino composed various poems in praise of Giulia Gonzaga, Duchess of Fondi and Ippolito's mistress (cf. S. Peyronel Rambaldi, Giulia Gonzaga: A Gentlewoman in the Italian Reformation, Rome, 2021), especially his most famous composition, the Stanze on the portrait that Sebastiano del Piombo had made of her, ‘stanze' that Pier Antonio Serassi mistakenly attributed to Molza in the eighteenth-century edition of his works: as a matter of fact, it was not a work in two parts, but a sort of poetic contest in which both friends composed on the same theme, and the two collections of poems had a common manuscript circulation before they ended up in print. Alongside the gallant inspiration dedicated to Gonzaga, the poetic service rendered to Ippolito de' Medici also concerned more properly political themes, particularly in some sonnets that attracted the attention of Benedetto Croce and have now been studied by Rossana Sodano (Da Gandolfo Porrino “Rime”, in: “Lo Stracciafoglio”, II, 2001, pp. 15-24), in which the occasion of Cardinal de' Medici's legation to Hungary offers the cue for strongly anti-Spanish and anti-imperial sentiments, and Ippolito de' Medici is presented as a rebel against the tyranny of Charles V and as the only hope for beautiful Italy to counter the rule of the Habsburg eagle. Two letters sent to him by Molza show that Porrino was later destined to serve as secretary to Giulia Gonzaga. The death of Cardinal Ippolito in August 1535 changed the lives of both Giulia and Porrino himself, who followed the duchess in their frequent moves between Fondi, Rome, and Naples. In Naples, although he shared the dangerous acquaintances of Giulia Gonzaga, who was linked to Juan de Valdés' circle and in direct contact with Reginald Pole's ‘Ecclesia Viterbiensis', he had to maintain his own autonomy of judgment and a certain disenchantment with the group's heterodox devotional practices, if one considers the expressions with which years later he would define Bernardino Ochino in one of the poems devoted to Vespasiano Gonzaga: ““Il pazzo se n'andò ne l'ora ispana / sul lago di Genevra o di Gostanza, / e là si gode una moglie puttana” (‘The fool went away in the Spanish hour / to the lake of Geneva or Constance, / and there enjoys a whore wife'). In the spring of 1538 Porrino met in Rome a widow called Susanna, who from then on would become the love of his life. It was probably as a result of this new relationship and his desire to stay in Rome that Porrino ended up asking Giulia Gonzaga for leave and became secretary to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, in whose service Molza had also passed; he thus returned to employ his pen in praise of his master's beloved, this time Livia Colonna, considered in those years as the most beautiful woman in Rome along with her rival the above-mentioned Faustina Mancini. To Cardinal Alessandro Farnese was also dedicated the volume of Rime that was printed in Venice in 1551, Porrino's only published work, apart from a letter he sent to Giulia Gonzaga that ended up in the 1564 Poalo Manuzio collection of Lettere di diversi. Porrino was very close to many members, if not a member himself, of the Accademia della Vigna and the Accademia della Virtù, namely Giovanni Della Casa, Francesco Berni, Claudio Tolomei, just to mention a few. Porrino died in Rome in September 1552 (cf. D. Chiodo, Porrino, Gandolfo, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 85, 2016, s.v.).

Edit 16, CNCE35216;  A. Tinto, Annali tipografici dei Tramezzino, Florence, 1966, no. 113.

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