The Eloquent Body: Dance and Humanist Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy

Appendix 1. Transcription and Translation of MS from Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Magl. VII 1121, f. 63r–69v

Appendix 1. Transcription and Translation of MS from Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Magl. VII 1121, f. 63r–69v G I O VA N N I C A R S A N I G A An anonymous poem in terza rima from 1459 in praise of Cosimo de’ Medici and his sons and the celebrations made for the visit to Florence of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and the pope. The visit to Florence in 1459 of the heir to the duchy of Milan and Pope Pius II was an event that resonated throughout Italy. At least two anonymous works describing the festivities have survived: one manuscript, a portion of which is transcribed below, and a second, shorter poem in terza rima of thirty folios in length, found in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Magl. XXV 24. (It has been published in Rerum italicarum scriptores: Raccolta degli storici italiani dal 500 al 1500, revised and edited by Giosuè Carducci and Vittorio Fiorini, vol. 27, part 1 [Città di Castello, 1907].) Interest in the event has continued to this day, as descriptions of the various feste performed in 1459 have found a place in a large number of studies of fifteenth-century Italian cultural history. But in spite of this interest , the poems themselves have not received much scholarly attention in the form of published transcriptions and translations. In 1895 Vittorio Rossi published a transcription of 168 lines (f. 66v line 13 to f. 67r line 20, then f. 67v line 11 to f. 69v line 15) of the poem from Magl. VII 1121, that is, part of the description of the ballo in the Mercato Nuovo (Vittorio Rossi, Un ballo a Firenze nel 1459 [Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1895]). Guglielmo Volpi in 1902 published a short work that described this same manuscript and paraphrased the contents of the entire poem. Included in his paraphrase were brief quotations, usually only a few lines (Guglielmo Volpi, Le feste di Firenze del 1459: Notizia di un poemetto del secolo xv [Pistoia, 1902]). In 1995, as part of his translation of the fifteenth-century Italian dance treatises, A. William 142 Appendix 1 Smith included a transcription and translation of the portion of Magl. VII 1121 that described the ballo. Once again the translation is only partial, as only selected excerpts—sometimes isolated, individual lines—have been included (A. William Smith, trans., Fifteenth-Century Dance and Music: Twelve Transcribed Italian Treatises and Collections in the Tradition of Domenico da Piacenza [Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1995]). Therefore the transcription and translation given here are the first to be published of f. 63r–69v. This section of the poem describes in vivid detail the preparation and setting of the ballo, the participants and their luxurious costumes , and the dance itself, together with the associated feast. For precise details on the different types of headdresses, hoods, hats, clothes, and jewelry mentioned in the poem, see Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), especially pages 228–30. The text has been modified by adding punctuation and diacritics ; separating words and all proclitics (articles, prepositions, conjunctive pronouns, etc.) from following words; and making conjectural corrections whenever the text does not seem to make sense. The spelling is unchanged, except that ç has been modernized to z, u to v, and y to i. Obscure or untranslatable passages, their attempted translations, and conjectural changes have been placed between [square brackets]. Added words are placed between ⬍chevrons ⬎. The transcription was made from a microfilm of the original manuscript without reference to the earlier, partial transcriptions . MS from Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Magl. VII 1121 f. 63r–69v 63r Et quella sera molto si parloe That night people talked a lot della gran giostra & poi a pposar vanno. about the great joust; then they went to sleep. & chome l’altro giorno ritornoe And as the new day dawned ciaschun levossi & molto allegri stanno everyone got up, and they were very merry però che ‘l giorno in sul merchato nuovo because on this day in the New Market far si dee il ballo: & già l’ordine danno. a ball is to take place: and they have to already given the order. Et chome già ti dissi ora t’approvo And as I told you already, now I can confirm Appendix 1 143 che ‘ntorno è lo stecchato & più riseggi that there is a fence around, and also seats...