Studi gioviani: Scienza, filosofia e letteratura nell'opera di Paolo Giovio (review)

There are few figures who better illustrate the complexity of the disciplinary mix that characterized the scholarly world of sixteenth-century Italy than Paolo Giovio of Como. As a young man, he studied arts and philosophy at Padua with some of the leading thinkers of his time, including Pietro Pomponazzi and Alessandro Achillini, and was respected by Agostino Nifo. But philosophy, narrowly construed, did not define his interests. He went on to earn a degree in medicine and immersed himself in a wide range of scientific, literary, and artistic issues. His contributions in all these areas would win him a reputation as a major force in many disciplines. This equally wide-ranging collection of studies by Franco Minonzio brings together many of the themes and areas of competence which characterize Giovio's work and in so doing underscores how difficult — and problematic — it is to categorize early Cinquecento scholars, researchers, and writers retrospectively from our current disciplinary menu of the arts and sciences.

Divided into two volumes, the studies focus on six different topics, all tied together by Giovio's breadth of interests. The first piece centers on his treatise on Roman fishes, De romanis piscibus, which first appeared in print in 1524. Minonzio emphasizes Giovio's use of classificatory models and schemes for the division of matter, a major aspect of the development and spread of biological taxonomy in the Renaissance. He sees Pliny as the archetype for Giovio's schema, rather than Aristotle, and relates the views expressed in this major work to studies on the nutritional and medical use of fish in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The second essay discusses Carlo Zancaruolo's vernacular translation of Giovio's De romanis piscibus, published at Venice in 1560. It provides a careful comparison of the translated version with other icthyological sources from the period 1550–60.

The third chapter is devoted to a detailed study of Giovio's De optima victus ratione, with particular emphasis on the scientific paradigm it embodies. Although the work was not published until 1808, it was based on the physical illnesses of Giovio's friend Felice Trofino, who may or may not have died in the Sack of Rome in 1527. In any event, the treatise advocates an alternative therapy to the one Trofino was receiving from his physician, emphasizing moderate exercise, balanced diet, and avoidance of a drug-based system. Major attention is paid to diet, though Minonzio clearly notes that Giovio's work was focused more on medical than gastronomic issues.

The fourth essay centers on the Pavian background of Giovio's work on emblematics. The author compares Giovio's Dialogo delle imprese militari e amorose, which was written in 1551, with similar works by Andrea Alciati and Nicolò d'Arco, all of whom were at Pavia in the early sixteenth century. As Minonzio rightly notes, interest in imagery in the period in which these works were written was frequently tied to Egyptian sources and the flourishing interest in Hermeticism. He makes good use of the researches of Lina Bolzoni on this topic. Minonzio stresses that Giovio's unpublished (though forthcoming) Noctes, preserved in the Bibliotheca Nazionale Centrale in Rome, reveal a deep connection to "prisca theologia" and show how medicine can be seen as playing a role in astrology, much as it did for Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, both of whom Giovio refers to as "nostri" (170). While the author sees a common "Pavese" theme underlying all three authors on emblematics, he acknowledges T.C. Price Zimmermann's thesis that Giovio's use of images was in part a method of limiting disclosure of content to the educated and keeping it from the vulgar.

The fifth essay is devoted to analyzing the claim found in Paul Oskar Kristeller's Iter italicum, derived...