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A New Naldi Manuscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

W. Leonard Grant
W. Leonard Grant*
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
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Extract

In his now classic study of Italian vernacular and Latin pastoral Enrico Carrara briefly mentions the only eclogue of Naldo Naldi (1436-ca. 1513) known to him, a panegyric of Cosimo de' Medici expressed as a dialogue between two shepherds, Alpheus and Gnomon, stigmatizing it as pretty mediocre stuff; Vittorio Rossi is a great deal kinder, describing it as‘un’ egloga di temperato sapore classico, la migliore delle sue poesie’. Carrara based his opinion of Naldi's ability as a Latin eclogist on this single effort (one that the poet himself may have regretted), and might well have revised his estimate had he seen Naldi's best pastoral work, the ten other eclogues that appear in a manuscript (BN anc. fonds lat. 8389) rediscovered over twenty years ago in the Bibliothèque Nationale by Alice Hulubei and subsequently examined by her in a lengthy article.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Winter 1958 , pp. 249 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2004

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References

1 La poesia pastorale (Milan, [1907?]), pp. 275-277.

2 Ecloga de laudibus Cosmi, printed by Giovanni Bottari (or Tommaso Buonaventuri?) in Carmina illustrium poetarum Italorum (Florence, 1719-26), vi, pp. 456-461, from a manuscript (unique?) in the Medicean Library listed in Bandini Catalogus codicum latinorum bibliothecae Mediceo-Laurentiae II, col. 650 (= pluteus liv, codex x, item 57, ff. 160-163); cf. also Montfaucon Bibliotheca bibliothecarum manuscriptorum nova 1, 343a.

3 Cf. Alice Hulubei's remark on p. 171 (and n. 3) of the article cited below in n. 5.

4 Il Quattrocento (Milan, 1949), p. 388; Professor Kristeller describes Naldi as ‘poeta latinus… suis temporibus satis celeber’, and addsv ‘poeta et eius carmina temporum et amicorum causa digna sunt quae diligentius investigentur’: Supplementum Ficinianum (Florence, 1937), II, 328.

5 ‘Naldo Naldi: Etude sur la joute de Julien et sur les bucoliques dédiées à Laurent de Médicis’, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance III (1936), pp. 169–186, 309-326.

8 It also contains elegiac poems addressed to the famous Florentine beauty, Albiera degli Albizzi, who died at the age of seventeen in 1473, various poems addressed to Pietro de' Medici, a eulogy of Cosimo, some miscellaneous odds and ends, and the Carmen de ludicro hastatorum equitum certamine, ad julianum.

7 In addition to the Naldi manuscript I came across a manuscript (BN anc. fonds lat. 8368) containing the eclogues, hither to unknown (so far as I have been able to discover) of Francesco Filelfo's eldest son, Giovanni Mario (1426-80). This manuscript (unique?) was written by the author (unfortunately, for Giammario was no calligrapher) in 1473, probably as a presentation copy. It contains, in its 146 leaves, three books of eight bucolics each, plus a final ecloga accessoria, the structure being rather similar to that of a three-act play with epilogue; each book is preceded by an elegiac epistle to Filelfo the Younger's patron. Although contemporary with Naldi's poems, they are closer in tone to the eclogues of an earlier generation—of an earlier century, even; in expression they firequendy exhibit a truly remarkable flatness. There are also various minor pastoral inedita of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Bibliotheque Nationale which appear not to have been noticed—eclogues by (for instance) Balthasar Novellinus of Vercelli (anc. fonds lat. 8371—two poems) and the ever-prolific Pierre Pestel (Réserve m. Yc. 932, no. 43—one poem).