Agrippina, "the truest woman that ever wed

Notes Agrippina, “the truest woman that ever wed”’ z GORDON POOLE Istituto Universitario Orientale,Naples t was partly geographical coincidence, my living on the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy, that brought me to Herman Melville’slong poem, Naples in Ithe Time of Bornba. When I published my edition of that work, together with the linked poems At the Hostelry and “Pausilippo,”in 1989,z I wondered about the sources of the pictures and statues Melville described. Hostelry, a symposium of long-deceased artists, is particularly replete with references to works of art, real or imagined. Real or imagined: this was one of the problems.3There is no doubt that when Spagnoletto cites his “Flaying of St. Bartholomew” or his “Lawrenceon the gridiron lean,” or Giotto his “Damned in Hell,” we are meant to think of works of art actually executed by those artists, as I have said in my commentary to the text, making the identifications. Often they are works Melville had seen in museums during his journey through the Middle East and Europe between October 1856 and May 1857,as Howard Horsford has noted in his scrupulously annotated edition of Melville’sjournal. But then we find a passage like the following: “Nay,nay: but see, on ample round Of marble table silver-bound Prince Comus, in mosaic, crowned; zyxw V i v lzyxwvuts dbro there in crystal flutes zyxw Shapelyas those, good host of mine, You summoned ere our Sillery fine We popped to Bacchusin salutes;- ’My son, Federico Poole, has helped me generously with the art history aspects of this article. zyxw 1 also thank the Iibrarians and archivists of the National Museum of Naples for their courteous and eiiicient assistance, especially Dr. Maria Rosaria Bornrllo. “At the Hostelry” and “Naplesin zyxwvutsrqp the Time o f Bomba,” ed. Gordon Poolc (Naples. lstituto Universitario Orientale, 1989). Further quotations from Hostelry or Bomba are referred to this edition. Studies of the influence of painting and sculpture on Melville’s writings include. Ekaterini Georgoudaki, Melvilleb Artistic Use of hisJourneys to Europe and the Near East, Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University, 1980,and “Ancient Greek and Roman Pieces of Art in Herman Melville’s Iconography,” ANATYHO AIIO THN EIIICTHMONIKH EnETHPIAA TEZ @IAOZO@IKHI MOAEE TOY APIZTOTEAEIOY HANEnIZTEMIOY @EZZAAONIKHZTOMOC KA (Thessalonike, 19831, 85-95; Robert K. Wallace, Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1992) and “Melville’sPrints: The E. Barton Chapin, Jr., Family Collection,” Leviathan 2.1 (March 2000). 5-65, Douglas Robillard, Melville and the Visual Arts: Ionian Form, Venetian Tint (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997).Among these, only Wallace (1992) mentions Agrippina. with a reference to and reproductton of Turner’s “Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus.” Howard C. Horsiords edition of Melville’sjournal ofa Visit to Europe and the Levant (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955) zyxwv is a valuable repertor), for references 10 works of art seen by Melville, hereafter cited asJoumal. ~ ~ ~ ~~ L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L ES T U D I E S 6 7 G O R D O N P O O L E Well, cavaliers in manhood’s flower Fanning the flight zyxwv 0’ the fleeing hour; Dames, too, like sportful dolphins free: zyxw Silks iridescent, wit and glee. Midmost, a Maltese knight of honor Toasting and clasping his Bella Donna; One arm round waist with pressure soft, Returned in throbbed transporting rhyme; A hand with minaret-glass aloft, Pinnacle of the jovial prime! What think? I daub, but daub it true; And yet some dashes there may do.” zyxwv (Hostelvy,11. 408-426) We know from thejournal (221) that similar tables were seen by Melville at the Pitti Palace in Florence, but I was unable to find any in that museum corresponding to what is described here. One assumes that the poet needed to get a convivial scene with Comus, the late-Roman god of revelry, into his poem and invented the tableau. In fact, Veronese, who is the painter speaking these lines, is imagining - daubing, as he says - this...