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Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) |
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Italian poet, remembered primarily for his Orland Furioso, published in its final version in 1532. Ariosto's work was the most celebrated narrative poem of the Italian high Renaissance. Numerous artists have used its characters and incidents for paintings and musical works. Titian's (c. 1488-1576) painting Portrait of a Gentleman (c. 1512), formerly called Ariosto, presents a young, noble man, who seems to be at the same time approachable and formally restrained. Although deceit is mostly disapproved, Ludovico Ariosto was born in Reggio Emilia, the son of Count
Niccolò Ariosto. Originally the surname appears to have been Da Risto,
there was also a place called Risto in the Bolognese territory. The family moved to Ferrara when the young Ludovico was ten. From 1489
to1494 Ariosto studied law at the University of
Ferrara without much enthusiam. But he also started to study Latin and
Greek language and
literature under the tutelage of the humanist scholar and Augustinian
monk Gregorio da
Spoleto. Ariostos's Latin verse later won him praise. ""In those days
fortune was very much my friend, for she provided me with Gregorio da
Spoleto, whom I must with reason forever bless. He knew the beutiful
secrets of both languages and was able to judge whether the son of
Venus or the son of Thetis had the better trumpet," Ariosto wrote in Satire VII. (The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto: A Renaissance Autobiography, translated by Peter Desa Wiggins, Athens, Ohio University Press, 1976, p. 161) When his father died in 1500, Ariosto took care of family estates for some years as the eldest of 10 children. In 1502 he was appointed commander of the fort of Canossa. Next year he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este. As familiare, he was at present when the cardinal ate, he was ready to welcome him whenever he came home, helped him undress, and gave him drinks made of medicinal plants. Gradually Ariosto received higher duties. In 1513 Ariosto met Alessandra Benucci. After the death of her husband, Tito Strozzi, she became Ariosto's mistress. Because the family had settled comfortably in Ferrara, Ariosto
refused in 1517 to accompany Cardinal d'Este to Hungary - Ariosto told he had a flu. He was dismissed
from the court and in 1518 he entered the service of Alfonso I, Duke of
Ferrara, the Cardinal's brother. In 1522 he was sent to govern the
Garfagnana region in the wildest part of the Apuan Alps, where he was
not happy with his duties. After three years, he returned from the
bandit-ridden post to Ferrara. Around 1527 Ariosto secretly married the widow Alessandra
Benucci, and spent the last part of his life revising and enlarging Orlando
Furioso. Ariosto never finished the sequel to his famous work, Cinque
canti (Five Cantos), about the breakup of the chivalric world of
Charlemagne, which he wrote between the 1516 and the 1532
editions. This poem was first published by his son Vincenzo at the
end of the 1545 edition of Orlando Furioso and separately in
1548. Ariosto died in his house at Ferrara on July 6, 1533. He had two
sons, Giambattista (born 1503); his mother was a domestic servant, and
Virginio (born 1509); his mother Orsolina Catinelli da Sassomarino had
been Ariosto's mistress for several years. "In any case, as poet Ariosto was boundless in invention and, therefore, prone to imperfections; was extravagant; as perhaps unheroic. But as man he was tender, good-humoured, patient. And so a great deal of his tenderness seeps through into his poem and makes it really more epic than that of the formally epic-heoic Tasso." (in The March of Literature: From Conficius to Modern Times by Ford Madox Ford, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1947, p. 386) Orlado Furioso
was written for enjoyment, but Ariosto also was concerned his own time:
the Ottomans showed their power in 1499 by defeating the Venetian fleet at Lepanto,
Suleiman marched into Hungary in 1521, and sieged Vienna in 1527.
Ariosto began writing the romantic epic in about 1505,
but he constantly expanded the work, polished its metre, and revised it
to fit in the Tuscan vernacular. In 1507 he read the unfinished work to
the convalescent Isabella Gonzaga d'Este, "causing two days to pass not
only without boredom but with the greatest of pleasure". (A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel, New York: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 252) It took
sixteen years before Ariosto published the 1532 edition, a year before
his death. Galileo Galilei said in a letter: "[W]hen I enter into the Furioso, I see a wardrobe upen up, a stage, a production gallery, ornate with a hundred statues by the most celebrated sculptors, with an infinite number of complete stories, and the best ones by illustrious painters, with a large number of vases made of crystal, agate, lapis lazuli, and other gems, and then finally filled with rare, precious things, marvellous and of utmost excellence." ('Introduction' by Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi, in Ariosto Today: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella and Roberto Fedi, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, p. 5) The plot revolves around the conflict of the Christian versus the Moor, the war between Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Agramante, King of North Africa, and Marsilio, King of Spain. With the defeat and death of Agramante, the conflict ends, and Marsilio returns to Spain. Orlado Furioso was a self-conscious continuation of
Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, which was left
unfinished upon the author's death in 1494. Ariosto started the story
more or less at the point where Boiardo left it, "Le
donne, i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori, / le cortesie, l'audaci imprese
io canto". (Of loves and ladies, knights and arms, I sing, / of
courtesies, and many a daring feat." (The Orland Furioso,
translated into English Verse, from the Italian of Ludovico Ariosto,
with Notes by William Stewart Rose, Vol. I, London: Henry G. Bohn,
1858, p. 1) Although Ariosto called his poem a gionto or addition, it can be read without reference to the earlier text. The first edition of the work appeared in Venice in 1516. Ariosto revised his poem in 1521 and 1532. During this period Castiglione completed The Book of the Courtier (1528) and Machiavelli was writing his Discourses on Livy (1531). Ariosto's work was a great success, but Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, to whom it was dedicated, scorned his achievement. Ariosto complained of Ippolito's attitude in his first satire. Ariosto's invention was that he "sings" the poem to his audience, as a traveling troubadour. Every now and then he remembers to flatter the family of d'Este, addressing his patron Cardinal Ippolito d'Este as generosa erculea prole (noble descendant of Hercules). Twice he mentions Lucrezia Borgia, whom he praised as a model for feminine virtue. (The Borgias, especially Lucrezia, allegedly had a habit of poisoning all. Lucrezia had lovers as well as several husbands.) The legendary main character, Orlando, was reputedly Charlemagne's nephew. He goes mad (furioso) because his love for the beautiful Angelica is not returned. Eventually he recovers his wits and joins the army ranks. Other themes are the war between Christians and Saracens, and the secondary love story of Ruggiero, one of Agramante's pagan champions, and Bradamante, a Christian woman warrior. Their marriage is destined, although Ruggiero falls under the spell of Alcina on her magic island; she is the sister of Morgan Le Fay from the Arthurian legends. One of the most interesting tales is the wizard Atlante's magic castle, where knights wander through its loggias and passageways, lured by their unsatisfied desires. At that time Chivalric epics, such as Pulci's Morgante and Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, and traditional tales of knights, were highly popular. Orlando Furioso presented a rich variety of characters, mixed romance, epic, and lyrical poetry, and made fun of outmoded chivalric manners, but not in the spirit of Don Quixote, which appeared much later (1605-1615). The leader of the Moors, Rodomonte, is cruel and treacherous, but otherwise the Christian knights and the Moors ride together in French woods in their search of adventures. Ariosto, who was well aware of the latest geographical discoveries, had a cosmopolitan vision, but for the sake of the story he mixed imaginary and real places and landscapes. There is even a scene set on the Moon, where Orlando's friend Astolfo (or Astolpho) visits the Valley of Lost Things. "A place wherein is wonderfully stored / Whatever on our earth below we lose. / Collected there are all things whatsoe'er, / Lost through time, chance, or our own folly, here." (The Orlando Furioso, translated by William Stewart Rose, Vol. II, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858, p. 214) Astolpho finds Orlando's lost wit: "The fullest vessel and of amplest round / Which held the wit Orlando erst possessed, / Astolpho took; nor this so light he found, / As it appeared, when piled among the rest." (Ibid., p. 217) The first English translation of Orlando Furioso did not appear until 1591. Though John Harington adopted the metre of the original, ottava rima, his version was not faithful to the original work. Ben Jonson dismissed it "under all translations the worst". John Hoole, who also translated Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata, used heroic couplet. Richard Hodgens and Guido Waldman have made prose versions. Ariosto's poem had a profound influence on such poets as Tasso, Spenser, and Lope de Vega. It also fascinated artists, and in the mid-1700s Tiepolo painted in Villa Valmarana in Vicenza frescoes illustrating its scenes. In the Renaissance mausoleum that Count Pier Francesco Orsini's built to the memory of his wife, several of the inscriptions in the garden were derived from Orlando. Gustave Doré's (1832-1883) illustrations for Orlando are among his finest works. Ariosto also wrote seven satires, beginning in 1514, and five
comedies. As a member of a group organized to produce plays by Plautus
and Terrence at the Este court of Ferrara, he became especially
familiar with their approaches to comedy, and their work provided the
model for his own dramas. In La cassaria (The Coffer, prose
version in 1508, verse version in 1531) two servants succeed in
arranging desirable marriages for their masters. I suppositi
(The Pretenders, prose version 1509, verse version 1528/31) was based
on Terence's The Eunuch and Plautus's The Captives.
Shakespeare used parts of the work in his play The Taming of the
Shrew. Il Negromante (The Necromancer, 1520), centered on a marriage kept secret, Gli studenti (The Students, written ca. 1519, published 1547), was an unfinished comedy set in Ferrara. La Lena (Lena, 1528) was based on the story of Peronella in Boccaccio's Decameron. Ariosto's younger brother Gabriele completed and produced Gli studenti as La scolastica for the Duke of Ferrara, but no performance date is known. Ariosto's son Virginio produced the play under the title L'Imperfetta. This version was probably performed in 1556 for the Duchess of Parma, and was discovered by a scholar named Abdelkader Salza in the early 20th century. For further reading: King of the Court Poets: A Study of the Work, Life and Times of Lodovico Ariosto by E.G. Gardner (1906, new edition in 1982); Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille by B. Croce (1920); Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti by M. Catalano (1931); Sul teatro dell' Ariosto by C. Grabher (1946); Ludovico Ariosto by R. Griffin (1974); Ludovico Ariosto: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1956-1980 by Robert J. Rodini, Salvatore di Maria (1984); Ariosto's Bitter Harmony by Albert Russell Ascoli (1987) The Poetics of Ariosto by Marianne G. Shapiro (1988); The Orlando Legend in Nineteenth-Century French Literature by D.A. Kress (1996); Orlando Furioso: A Stoic Comedy by Clare Carroll (1997); Life and Genius of Lodovico Ariosto by J. Shield Nicholson (1914, rep. 2002); Ariosto Today: Contemporary Perspectives by Donald Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, Roberto Fedi (2003); Hopeless Love: Boiardo, Ariosto, and Narratives of Queer Female Desire by Mary-Michelle DeCoste (2009); The World Beyond Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto by Jo Ann Cavallo (2013); The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court, Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo; preface by Lina Bolzoni (2021) Selected bibliography:
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