Senza Vestimenta: The Literary Tradition of Trecento Song by Jennings Lauren McGuire;

Author:Jennings, Lauren McGuire;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-11-06T04:00:00+00:00

5

Ovid’s Heroides, Florentine Volgarizzamenti, and Unnotated Song in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II.II.61 and Magliabechiano VII 1040

If Magliabechiano 1078, with its exceptional visual ambiguity, reveals its mysteries slowly, our next object of study does just the opposite. The collection of lyric poetry copied at the end of Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II.II.61 flaunts its individuality through its arresting appearance.1 It is fitting, then, that we begin not with music or with poetry but rather with an image. Figure 5.1 shows fol. 100r of Florence 61. Here, we find two ballate set elsewhere to music by Nicolò del Preposto, Non più dirò giamai così farò and Ciascun faccia per se, presented with a conspicuously unorthodox mise en page. Replacing the precision and symmetry so characteristic of late medieval manuscripts are disproportionate columns delineated by thick, awkward lines.

Even more bizarre than the lopsided layout is what fills the surplus space at the bottom of the right-hand column. Several knights in armor and one man in quotidian medieval clothing stand sketched against the background of a large dome-like pavilion. Shields and flags with various family stems decorate the scene, and on the top of the pavilion a trumpeter peeks out, instrument to mouth, calling the knights to battle. The men, far from nondescript, appear with labels relating their names or titles, while their shields display the heraldry of specific families. The simple heraldic devices are too vague to identify without the assistance of color. However, the most prominent shield—that with an eagle, repeated several times on surrounding pages as well—is specific enough even in this ink sketch to be identified as the stem of the Bonaguisi family.2

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