Abstract

This chapter compares the dissimulatory strategies of Pietro Bembo's philology (1501-1530s), Castiglione's model courtier (1507-28), and Perino del Vaga's trompe-l'oeil figures in the Sala Paolina of the Castel Sant'Angelo (1545-47). Bembo declares that the monuments of the Roman forum are irreparably "castrated," signaling the failure of both bodily and philological imitation. By contrast, Castiglione rewrites Cicero's De Oratore to offer a corrective to the ancient "virile" orators. Instead of proposing heroic exemplars as models for the courtier, Castiglione nuances the rhetoric of monuments to associate intransigent virtue with women and erasure from history, while the more adaptable courtier uses "effeminate" arts to create-and dissimulate his ability to create-history's statues, edifices, and empires. In both cases, the changing political climate, and the sense that genuine imitation of ancient writers and politicians is impossible, results in a discourse of emasculation that parallels the marginalization visible in Perino del Vaga's trompe-l'oeil courtier in the Sala Paolina frescoes. Yet both authors-like the courtier and the apes in the frescoes-dissimulate their isolation from power to model instead a masculine control over discourse, from which, however, the ideal philologist or courtier is safely distanced.

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