Commentariorum rerum suarum Libri tres. Accessit liber quartus Παραλειπομενων auctore Josepho Marotto. Quos Valentius Gonzaga Card, primum edidit et Cajetano Fratri inscripsit

FIRST EDITION OF SCIPIONE GONZAGA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY - PRINTED ON BLUE PAPER

Large 4to (276x200 mm). [16], 430, [2] pp. and one engraved plate between fols. Zz2 and Zz3, bearing a portrait of Gonzaga along with his family's coat of arms. Engraved vignette on the title page presenting an allegory of the city of Mantua, executed by M. di Pietro, who was also responsible for the engraved vignettes on fols. A1r, K1r, and Aa4r. Another full-page engraved portrait of the author on the verso of fol. b4. Engraved decorated initials and headpiece. Contemporary Roman red morocco, covers within an elaborate gilt frame, spine with five raised bands, compartments richly gilt tooled, title in gold on olive morocco lettering-piece, board edges decorated with small foliate tools, marbled pastedowns and flyleaves, inside dentelles, gilt edges, green silk bookmark (spine slightly discoloured and with a few tiny worm holes, three small scrapes on the back panel). On the front flyleaf bookplate of the twentieth-century bibliophile Arturo Dazza. Some occasional minor foxing on a few leaves, but a very good, wide-margined copy, printed on thick blue paper.

First edition of the autobiography of Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga, composed at the age of thirty-seven in 1579, then extended to the year 1587. For unknown reasons the Commentarii remained unpublished for over two centuries and was printed for the first time only in 1791.

Scipione speaks of himself in the third person, recounting only events he witnessed directly, many of which regard episodes from the life of the Gonzagas, particularly of his father Carlo and of Cardinal Ercole. But he also narrates his relations with the most powerful people of his age, including several popes and Emperor Maximilian II.

In 1563 Scipione founded in Padua the literary Accademia degli Eterei (Academy of the Ethereals) and in his youth composed verses from which he takes distance in the Commentarii as he probably considered them as not suitable anymore to his role of cardinal. Probably for the same reasons the name of Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) is never mentioned in the work, despite the fact that Scipione was a great patron of Tasso, who dedicated to him several of his works, and personally transcribed and edited Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (Mantua, Osanna, 1584). The Commentarii includes only one reference to a manuscript of the Gerusalemme liberata, then in the hands of the Gonzaga family.

“Se esiste nelle pagine dei Commentarii uno sforzo di persuasione attraverso cui Scipione cerca di fare accettare al lettore la plausibilità d'un autoritratto ‘ragionevolmente' edificante, vi sono anche moventi irriducibili alle stratificazioni retoriche di tale sforzo; momenti di assoluta e sconvolgente verità della cui sincerità è difficile di poter dubitare […] Abbiamo avuto modo di notare che i Commentarii obbediscono nel loro schema generale al modello retorico della narrazione selettiva, ma capillare ed esauriente, di eventi considerati come veramente rilevanti. Per quanto riguarda la costruzione del ritratto del protagonista l'autore però fa ricorso a modelli ideali di perfezione sui quali lo sviluppo della personalità del giovane come dell'uomo risulta in qualche modo esemplato. Proprio all'inizio dei Commentarii s'impongono alla nostra attenzione i ritratti di Carlo Gonzaga, padre di Scipione, un guerriero irrefrenabile e spericolato, e di Ercole Gonzaga, suo zio, precettore e mentore nel campo della vita religiosa […] La lotta per la propria sopravvivenza e in ultima analisi per un rilancio del proprio successo nelle cose del mondo s'identifica con lo studio delle strutture della dissimulazione; uno studio incessante da cui egli [Scipione] trae gli itinerari della propria condotta. Si tratta, senza dubbio, del capitolo ‘letterario' più importante in cui c'imbattiamo nel nostro itinerario di scoperta dei Commentarii […] L'educazione di Scipione alla scuola dello zio abituato alle sottigliezze delle deliberazioni ecclesiastiche e alla calcolata prudenza della Chiesa, frutto d'una secolare conoscenza delle vie degli uomini, conta certo molto, ma in questo caso, assume peso notevole l'esperienza diretta, acquisita prima nell'ambiente mantovano-padovano, quando ancora Scipione viveva sotto l'egida dello zio, poi alla corte di Massimiliano, e poi infine nel lungo tirocinio alla corte papale” (D. Della Terza, op. cit., pp. XIX-XX and XXVI).

The work -originally comprising three books- is supplemented in this Roman edition with a fourth book, titled ‘Paralipomeni', which was compiled by the abbot and then professor of eloquence at the Jesuit Collegio Romano, Giuseppe Marotti (1741-1804). This additional book integrates the Commentarii with the information that Scipione Gonzaga for choice and priority reasons had purposely omitted.

Scipione was born on 11 November 1542 into the branch of the Gonzaga family of the dukes of Sabbioneta. His father, the condottiero Carlo Gonzaga, was Marquis of Gazzuolo. Second-born, he was destinated since his childhood to the ecclesiastical life. He passed his youth under the care of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, having as tutor Antonio Possevino, and subsequently he studied at Bologna and Padua. After completing his theological studies he went to Rome, where he entered the service of Pope Gregory XIII. In 1585 Sixtus V appointed him Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and in 1587 cardinal priest of Santa Maria del Popolo. Sixtus also made constant use of Scipione's services in the execution of his policies, and sent him on frequent missions to Florence, Trent, Venice, Innsbruck, Vienna, Prague, and Nurnberg. Scipione was religiously close to Carlo Borromeo and Filippo Neri. Throughout his life he patronized literature and men of letters, including Torquato Tasso and Battista Guarini, who dedicated to him his Il pastor fido. He died on 11 January 1593 in San Martino dall'Argine, where he was buried (G. Benzoni, Gonzaga, Scipione, in: “Dizionario biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 57, 2001, s.v.).

Another copy issued on blue paper is preserved in the library of the University of Illinois.

D. Della Terza, Dottrina e pietà, disprezzo ed amore del secolo nei ‘Commentarii' di Scipione Gonzaga, in: S. Gonzaga, “Autobiografia. Introduzione e traduzione di Dante Della Terza. In appendice ristampa anastatica dell'edizione latina del 1791”, Modena, 1987, pp. VII-XXX; S. Gonzaga, Autobiografia: commentariorum rerum suarum libri tres, Milan, 2017.

[13127]