Vincenzo Danti

Vincenzo Danti’s Deceits
MICHAEL COLE, Columbia University

DILETTA GAMBERINI, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz
The great sculptor Vincenzo Danti wrote one of the longest poems to have survived from
a Renaissance artist, but the text’s close thematic and conceptual connections to its author’s art
have gone entirely unnoticed. What Danti’s poem and sculpture share, this essay argues, is a concern
with mystified identity. Danti’s poetic sensibility stands at odds with the biographical frameworks
that typically guide the interpretation of Renaissance art and literature. At the same time, his
example shows how much there is to be gained from an investigation of how artists learned to be
writers, and of what came of those efforts.
INTRODUCTION
THE POEMS OF Renaissance painters and sculptors should be of interest in
part for the light these writings shed on their authors’ art. Yet seldom have
scholars closely examined the connection between the Renaissance artist-poet’s
fields of production.1 A case in point is Vincenzo Danti (1530 76), the
goldsmith, sculptor, and later architect who studied in Perugia and Rome, but
who spent his most productive years in Florence. Scholars who have written on
Danti’s beautiful marbles and bronzes have often noted his family’s literary
concerns. The artist’s grandfather, Piervincenzo Ranaldi, had changed the
family name in honor of the poet Dante, and Vincenzo, as a young man, was
educated in rhetoric and composition. While in Florence, the artist wrote verse
and began a treatise on proportion. Two contemporaries, Piero di Gherardo
Capponi and Raffaello Borghini, and a later biographer, Lione Pascoli, admired
his skills, and in 1565 the works Danti penned earned him admission into
the Accademia Fiorentina, the city’s literary academy. Nevertheless, studies of
We owe thanks to Deborah Parker for her helpful comments on a draft of this essay.
1
One of the few exceptions to this neglect comes from the burgeoning scholarly attention to
Bronzino’s dual identity as a painter and a poet, on which see at least the pioneering monograph
by Parker, 2000; and the recent studies by Campbell; Rossi; Tanturli; Geremicca. Nearly every
serious study of Michelangelo has at some point quoted from his poetry, though few art
historians have delved into the literary context of these writings, and few students of his poetry
have given extensive consideration to his art. See, however, Cambon; Barkan; and, on
Michelangelo’s letters, Parker, 2010.
Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 1296–342 Ó 2016 Renaissance Society of America.
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D A N T I ’ S D EC E I T S 1297
Danti’s art have treated these achievements as a separate chapter of his

activities.2
Danti’s longest extant poem is his “Capitolo in dispregio dell’archimia”
(Capitolo in disparagement of alchemy), which went unpublished until the late
twentieth century.3 The poem recounts the trials of its narrator, who falls into dire
poverty after a friar induces him to become an alchemist. Art historians and
literature scholars who have commented on the text have mostly treated it as an
autobiographical document and have scoured it for insight into Danti’s life and
career. They have noted the connection between the practice of goldsmithery — in
which Danti received his initial training — and alchemy, both of which involve
expertise in the transformation of metals. They have inferred that the hardships the
poem’s narrator describes have something to do with Danti’s own tribulations. Most
of all, they have been seduced by the first-person voice in which the text was written.4
At the same time, the poem, unlike most others Danti wrote,5 has been
difficult to date, largely because nothing in the text refers in a clear way to any
historical person or event or to any object Danti produced. The friar, the only
2
Borghini, 522, wrote that Danti “had a significant talent for composing Tuscan verses, and
especially for assembling centos of lines from Petrarch and other famous authors”; Borghini also
published a poem by Capponi asserting that Danti would live on “on paper” no less than in bronze
and marble: ibid., 523. Pascoli, 1:293, reported: “[Danti] left several manuscripts, among which were
some centos on Petrarch’s Canzoniere and his own life in terza rima. He was a proficient anatomist,
a perfect draftsman, an excellent mathematician . . . an eloquent writer and a graceful poet.” For Danti
as a writer, see Berti, 1907, 44; Summers, 1969, 501–12; Butters, 1:241; Nicolai; Proctor, 174–241.
3
For the editorial history of the poem, see the appendix, which also contains the full text of
the “Capitolo,” as well as a translation.
4
It seems likely that Pascoli had the “Capitolo” in mind when reporting that Danti wrote an
autobiography in terza rima. Butters, 1:241, concluded from the poem that “Vincenzo Danti
went broke pursuing the Great Work, as Felice Feliciano had before him, and was summoned
before the authorities for debt six times in a single year.” Nicolai, 11, writes, “We cannot
exclude the possibility that a real biographical experience lies behind the episode narrated by
Danti. As a sculptor — if one thinks for example of techniques required for casting bronze —
he would have been familiar with the manufacture of metals and the techniques associated with
that. In the passage from one art to another, the incautious sculptor ruined himself.”
5
The sonnet “Ahi ch’errai nel sentier con false scorte” (Alas, I erred in my path with the false escort)
can be dated to the months after Danti repeatedly failed to cast the bronze group of Hercules and
Antaeus; it was most probably written soon after the sculptor received the consolatory text Timoteo
Bottonio wrote to him in November 1559, “Se la profana Erculea imago, e ’l forte” (If the profane
herculean image, and the strong): see Pizzorusso, 159–60. The other known poems by the artist date
to the early sixties of the century: the sonnets “Voi ben dal Ciel, voi Ben venuto sete” (You, well come
from the heavens are welcome) and “Non vogliate, signor, prendere a sdegno” (Sir, please do not take
offense), composed in praise of Benvenuto Cellini’s marble Crucifix (completed in 1562), and “Beate
colpe, che di tali, e tante” (Blessed faults, which of such and many), assembled in Benedetto Varchi’s
final years (d. 1565) and published posthumously in his Sonetti Spirituali: see Varchi, 1573, 93.

1298 R EN AI S S A N C E QU A RT E R L Y V O L U ME L X I X , N O . 4
personage in the “Capitolo” other than the narrator, goes unnamed. No

contemporary refers to Danti’s interest in alchemy or to his impoverishment,
not even Vasari, who presented this trajectory as a common one when writing of other
artists.6 If the poem contains little demonstrable autobiographical content, so too
does it have comparatively little to say about what it calls the “art” of alchemy.7 The
question, then, is what to make of the text’s story: whether it might be largely fictional
and how — if it tells us less than expected about its author’s life — it in fact bears on
his artistic career. The present essay sets out to reevaluate Danti’s literary achievement
and to show how this might matter for an understanding of his sculpture.
FALSE BIOGRAPHY
Though they recognize that a sculptor like Danti would have had to treat the
same figure different ways when making a relief or a bronzetto or a monumental
work in stucco or stone, art historians tend to think little about genre when
considering the Renaissance literature of art: how it is that the choice to write about
art in the form of a poem as opposed to a dialogue or a biography or a treatise shaped
the ideas such a text might contain. Danti’s “Capitolo,” however, demonstrates that
artists could have a highly sophisticated awareness of such matters.
The protracted enumeration of the author’s tribulations aligns the sculptor’s
poem with a popular Italian genre that went back as far as the thirteenth century:
the miserable self-portrait, decrying in absurdly exaggerated terms the hardships
of the poet’s life. Even if unfamiliar with unpublished examples by writers like
Cecco Angiolieri, Antonio Cammelli, or Niccolo Machiavelli, literate Florentines
in Danti’s time would probably have known early fifteenth-century sonnets by
Domenico di Giovanni, alias il Burchiello, depicting with an evident tone of self-
mockery their author’s desolation, illness, and imprisonment.8 Yet the meter
6
Compare Vasari’s biography of Cosimo Rosselli, which tells how the artist’s interest in alchemy
led him, “like all of those who attend to it,” to poverty. A more famous example is Vasari’s biography
of Parmigianino, which characterizes the painter’s fondness for alchemical experimentations as the ruin
of both his life and his career. See Vasari, 3:446, 4:543–44. See also the discussion in Newman, 124.
7
Proctor, 222: “Indeed, the capitolo includes no details about alchemical practice that could
not be learned from passing conversations.”
8
Martın’s comments on the reality behind Cecco Angiolieri’s comical poetry are especially relevant
here: “The Cecco of the sonnets should not be given biographical, factual credence. He is a literary
persona, no more ‘real’ and credible than the Dante of the Vita Nuova. Burlesque and satire are built
upon deformed caricature and exaggeration; to assume that their images faithfully reflect true reality or
authorial ‘sincerity’ would be critically naive” (10–11). For Machiavelli’s burlesque self-representation
as an inmate, see Scarpa. The poems by Burchiello, among which are numerous grotesque
self-portraits, enjoyed special popularity in Florence, where the anthology I sonetti del Burchiello et di
Antonio Alamanni alla burchiellesca (Sonnets by Burchiello and by Antonio Alamanni in the manner of
Burchiello) was edited by the comical poet Antonfrancesco Grazzini, alias il Lasca, in 1552.

Danti chose and the title he gave his poem indicate that he also had in mind
another established genre, the burlesque capitolo written in praise or blame. The
capitolo was a poem consisting of a sequence of concatenated tercets, the first and
third lines of which rhymed with the second line of the preceding stanza (ABA
BCB CDC, etc.). This was the metrical structure of the terza rima, first used by
Dante in his Divine Comedy and standardized by Petrarch’s Triumphs, though
more important for an author like Danti were the ironically laudatory verses
Francesco Berni had popularized in the early sixteenth century, praising trivial and
even abominable things such as the eel and the plague. Danti’s composition inverts
the most common rhetorical structure in Berni’s comical writings, using
a sequence of verses not to elevate but to attack his subject.9 Standing at the
intersection between two veins of Italian burlesque poetry, Danti’s “Capitolo”
seems to represent a real person’s hapless condition and a heartfelt protest
against alchemy. In truth, though, the poem pursues the misleading “effect of
transparency” that is characteristic of ironic self-portraits, leading the reader to
misjudge the artful construction of a literary persona.10
That a biographical interpretation has been the typical one in the scholarly
literature attests less to the veracity of its narrative than to Danti’s sophistication
as a writer: it demonstrates how effectively he deployed the conventions of the
burlesque tradition to which his poem belonged. This is not to say that his
“Capitolo” was pure fiction: a more complex relationship between authorial
experience and literary representation underpins his work. Although self-
portraits like Danti’s were highly conventional texts, the best ones did not
simply rely on familiar topoi, but rather used elusive points of congruence
between life and convention to create a literary persona that was not entirely
detached from the identity of its historical author.11 While the story behind
Danti’s poem, that is, was probably invented, both its effectiveness and its
consistency with formal norms required its author to generate a credible alter
9
Danti’s “Capitolo” can be compared to similar exercises by il Lasca, like his capitoli “In
biasimo della caccia” (In disparagement of hunting) and “In disonor del pensiero” (In dishonor
of thinking): Grazzini, 1882, 548–52, 580–84. Within the Bernesque tradition of the sixteenth
century, a capitolo in dispregio (capitolo in disparagement) was often conceived by its author in
tandem with a corresponding capitolo in lode (capitolo in praise); Danti does not appear to have
followed this practice.
10
See especially Longhi, 119: “After Berni, the self-portraits of burlesque poets will regularly
be ambiguous and ‘double’: the effect of transparency will be replicated, but with a different
underlying ghost-model.”
11
Michelangelo wrote a bitterly ironic depiction of his own miserable condition as a sculptor
in the capitolo “I’ sto rinchiuso come la midolla” (I am closed in here, like the doughy middle),
on which see Corsaro; Barolsky. On the interplay between conventions and reality in burlesque
self-portraits, see Botterill, 44–45; Orvieto and Brestolini, 127–46.

ego. This is probably the best way to understand Danti’s choice of an alchemical
theme: for a man whose profession required metallurgic knowledge, the subject
was particularly appropriate, even if Danti did not himself actually practice that
craft. The same can be said for the Perugian author’s recollection (lines 109 11)
of the countless times he had ascended the mountains of Norcia, a place not far
from Perugia that had long been associated — in literary sources as well as in
folklore — with magical and alchemical practices.12 The poem’s friar-alchemist
is likewise compatible with the author’s historical identity: Danti’s brother
Ignazio was a member of the Dominican Order, as was his Perugian friend and
supporter Timoteo Bottonio.13 Yet the author-poet’s central encounter with the
friar-alchemist was also a literary convention: alchemy was conceived by its
pursuers as a way of accessing the divine, and this consequently played a role
in other satires of the practice.14 Erasmus’s 1524 colloquy “Alcumistica,” for
example, consisted of a dialogue between a dupe and a fictitious alchemist-
priest:15 there is no reason to believe that the friar in Danti’s capitolo
corresponded any more than Erasmus’s to a historical individual.
ALCHEMY IN POETRY
However Danti’s choice of an alchemical theme accorded with his own
circumstances, it certainly also picked up on conversations happening at the
Florentine court and in Danti’s literary circle.16 In 1544, Danti’s friend Benedetto
Varchi had written a long philosophical reflection entitled “Questione
sull’Archimia” (Discourse on alchemy). This was not published until the
nineteenth century, and it may not have circulated widely, but Danti counted among
those who seem most likely to have had access to it.17 From the 1550s to the 1570s,
precisely when Danti was in Florence, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici was the dedicatee
of a great number of alchemical manuscripts written by intellectuals working at his
12
For the identification of Norcia with the cave of the Sybil, see Berni, 160 (“Capitolo di
Gradasso,” line 45). For the association with necromantic practices, see Cellini, 2004, 245 (Vita
1:65). For Norcia’s connection with magic interpretation of dreams, see Bronzino, 271 (Il Piato
8.263–64). For a Florentine audience, the alchemical connotation of the toponym could have
been even more significant after 1563, when the famous alchemist Sisto de’ Bonsisti da Norcia
entered the service of Cosimo de’ Medici: see Conticelli, 334–35.
13
See Fiore; Comparato.
14
The divine aspirations of the alchemist are central, for example, to the Pimander, which
had appeared in Florence in a translation by Tommaso Benci in 1548.
15
The text was available to Italian readers from 1545 in the translation by Pietro Lauro.
16
For alchemical debates at the court of Florence under Cosimo I and Francesco, see Berti,
1967; Perifano; Conticelli.
17
Varchi, 1827, xxviii. On the book, see also Devlieger, 176–87. For Danti’s friendship with
Varchi, see Davis.

court, including Basilio Lapi, Bartolomeo Concino, Sisto da Norcia, and Orazio
Rosselli da Sassoferrato.18 In 1554–55, the humanist and astrologist Antonio
Allegretti had even written a long and erudite didascalic poem on alchemy, “De la
trasmutatione dei metalli” (On the transmutation of metals), which was
published with a dedication to Cosimo in 1572.19
This background once again points up the distinctive relationship between
form and content in Danti’s own text. Allegretti, for example, dedicated long
passages to the ways nature forms metals under the earth, made extensive
allegorical use of the Roman gods, referred repeatedly to famous alchemists past,
and offered lengthy discussions of alchemical ingredients and techniques. That
Danti did none of these things was a consequence of the choice of a burlesque
register. In conformity with the proclaimed humility of the genre, the author
of a Bernesque capitolo, even the most cultured one, tended to avoid the
philosophical and scientific topics associated with high style. If anything, the
genre in which Danti worked compelled him to conceal the extent of his
knowledge, for convention held that burlesque poetry was written from genuine
inspiration, “without art.”20
Serious writers built their discussions around citations from recognized
authorities, but Danti’s poem contains only one explicit reference to such a figure —
Albertus Magnus — and that is rather generic.21 Mostly he acknowledges historical
and contemporary alchemical debates with understatement and allusion. For
instance, Danti’s claim that “silver and gold are extracted from their proper veins;
never is it possible to imitate them, for Nature does not wish that, nor is it fitting”22
can be connected with the position of Aegidius Romanus, who had contested
alchemy in his Quodlibeta, asserting that gold and silver can only be produced in
their proper “generative place,” that is to say in “the bowels of the earth” or in “its
veins.”23 When Danti writes, “And if anyone wishes to say that this art is simply
18
Conticelli, 151.
19
See Allegretti.
20
Longhi, 214, with reference to the programmatic statement in Giovanni Mauro’s
“Capitolo della caccia” (Capitolo on hunting, lines 16–17): “As Nature dictates and shows
to me, / so do I write and speak without art.” Berni, 162, himself had underscored the gap
between his inspiration and noble contents in his “Capitolo al Cardinale de’ Medici” (lines
37–45). Also relevant, because they similarly imply a natural inspiration, are the sonnets Cellini
wrote in the late 1550s, a number of which involve an alter ego he calls il Boschereccio (the
Sylvan). For the poems and commentary, see Cellini, 2014, 125–63.
21
See Danti, “Capitolo,” lines 94–96. Line numbers for the “Capitolo” refer to the text in
the appendix. For Albertus Magnus’s status as a defender of alchemy, compare Varchi, 1827,
32–33.
22
Danti, “Capitolo,” lines 91–93.
23
Newman, 54, makes it possible to identify the passage from Aegidius Romanus implied by
Danti with Quodlibet 3, Membrum 3, Quaestio 3, Quodlibeti 8. See Aegidius, 34.

hidden, and that someday it will be discovered,”24 he nods to arguments from

Averroes’s commentary on book 3 of Aristotle’s De anima, which admitted the
possibility of alchemical transformations, stating that alchemy counted among the
arts whose causes remain “hidden” because of human ignorance, but could one day
be discovered through experience.25 It is not necessary to infer that Danti had read
Aegidius or Averroes: he employs basic ideas that anyone could have learned through
exchanges with the likes of Varchi or Allegretti.26 Danti’s allusions aim at showing
conversance with court debates rather than making a contribution to them.27 The
knowledge on which he depended was discursive rather than artisanal.28
Put another way, Danti’s poem sounds just informed enough to make his
would-be alchemist a plausible character. To create this character, Danti would
have been helped by the fact that an array of literary sources had crystalized the
representation of the figure of the alchemist into a stock type, the “fool, the
pitiful victim of a hopeless obsession with alchemical success.”29 His most
important model for the persona his poem constructs was probably the dialogue
on alchemy that had appeared in the first book of Petrarch’s De Remediis
Utriusque Fortunae (Remedies for fortune fair and foul). Throughout Europe,
the De Remediis had enjoyed enormous popularity, and by the time Danti wrote
his “Capitolo” it was available in several Italian translations.30 Petrarch’s concise
dialogue between the incarnations of Joy and Reason offered a paradigmatic
representation of the alchemist as a man driven insane by greed, victimized by
the belief that transmutatory practices will make him rich, even as those practices
vainly waste his savings and lead him into poverty: in the course of the exchange,
24
Danti, “Capitolo,” lines 124–25.
25
See Averroes, 124v–125r (book 3, chapter 36).
26
Compare Proctor, 216: “Danti had contact with the scientists, poets and philosophers at
the Medici court who discussed the practical and philosophical uses of alchemical study.”
27
This is evident, for example, in his vague use of alchemical terms. When Danti writes
(“Capitolo,” lines 49–50), “This is the mother of the art,” he is probably referring to the vase
containing the alchemist’s “first Matter”: see Fumagalli, 125. The “tower” in line 59 is almost
certainly a kind of alchemical still: see Perifano, 115. More difficult are lines 55–56, which one
manuscript has as “moon with many ampoules [bocce],” and another as “moon with many
mouths [bocche].” Danti’s words might describe a group of rounded vessels full of silver (see
Fumagalli, 123) or a moon-shaped vessel with many openings.
28
In this sense, Danti is a different kind of figure than the ones discussed in Smith. Compare
Proctor, 219: “Danti’s capitolo . . . showcases his determination to participate in court
discourse, via the alchemical content that would appeal to his prince and a burlesque take [on]
Petrarchan verse that would appeal to fellow poets.”
29
See the discussion in Nummedal, 40–72, here quoting page 50.
30
See Trapp. Closest to Danti in date was the translation by Remigio Nannini (1549). See
Petrarch, 1549, fols. 180v–182r (book 1, chapter 111).

Reason demonstrates that alchemy is a sham, that only Nature and Mother
Earth can create metals.
The same themes constitute the core elements of Vincenzo Danti’s satirical
self-portrait in the guise of an alchemist and of his depiction of the friar who
initiated him to alchemic practices.31 The pronounced Petrarchan frame of
Danti’s poem and the popularity of the De Remediis together make it likely that
the significant similarities between the two texts were intentional. But the larger
point is that Petrarch had established the contours for the alchemist as a type,
one that reappeared in various Renaissance texts and images before and after
Danti’s, for instance, in the controversial section on alchemy in Cornelius
Agrippa’s De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum (The vanity of arts and
sciences), which the polymath Lodovico Domenichi had published in an Italian
translation in 1547.32 It is telling that all the unappealing features Danti assigns
his narrator — insanity, gauntness, greed, misery — appear once again in
Tommaso Garzoni’s La piazza universale di tutte le professioni (The universal
workplace of all professions, 1585), an encyclopedia that assimilates the
alchemist into a prose inventory of cliches.33
31
A brief sampling shows the significant parallels between the two texts. Petrarch writes that the
alchemist’s greed is hopeless, because the only outcomes of alchemy are “smoke, ashes, sweat, sighs,
deceits and shames,” adding that “we never saw a pauper become rich, but we saw many rich people
become beggars,” while it is common to see men “throw away rightly acquired wealth”: Petrarch,
1549, 180v–181r. Similarly, Danti points out his own misery, emphasizing that he squandered “by
this route, what one struggles over many years to acquire” (lines 5–6). According to Petrarch, the
alchemist is “pointed at as a miser, having a thin, skinny face because of the fire, tinged and
blackened by soot”: Petrarch, 1549, 180v–181r. Danti indicates his own “gaunt appearance” (line 8)
as the proof of alchemists’ failures and as the reason why “every man point(s) at what I am,
identifying me from my stride, voice, face, and attire” (lines 14–15).
32
See Agrippa, 169v–171r. On Agrippa’s representation of alchemy in De Incertitudine, see
Lehrich, 233–38. It should be noted that Danti’s depiction of the insolvent debtor, oppressed
by hordes of creditors and jailed on different occasions (lines 77–80), which has been
traditionally interpreted as an indication of the author’s supposed financial problems, is
a commonplace not only in discussions of alchemy, but also in Bernesque poetry. See Berni,
157 (“Capitolo in lode del debito” [Capitolo in praise of debt], lines 139–44).
33
In the context of Danti’s “Capitolo,” the author recognizes that his quest led him to waste
all his belongings and to be registered in the list of bankrupts (lines 4–6). The author is not the
only one fooled by alchemy, since he declares, “I see entrapped not just idiots but important
people: popes, kings, and emperors” (lines 142–44). Garzoni’s text emphasizes that those who
practice the art are “miserable,” that “it is not possible to recount the fatigue, the struggles, the
efforts . . . , the sales, the pawns, the loans, the reckless and extreme expenses” that drive
alchemists “to the ultimate extermination of their belongings”: Garzoni, 138–39. He also writes
that alchemy possesses a “great retinue . . . of rich and noble (not to say most important)
people”: ibid.

INGANNO
Writers on the burlesque capitolo form have often remarked on its deceptiveness,
and Danti’s poem helps show why. The cultural understatement in its treatment
of alchemy and its low, apparently natural voice disguise a sophistication equal to
that of its more serious counterparts, paradoxically challenging erudite readers
to identify the allusions scattered in the text. Its seemingly autobiographical
narrative leans on ambiguities, challenging the reader to sort fact from fiction. As
in many other Bernesque capitoli of the sixteenth century, first appearances turn
out to be mendacious, and equivocal language functions as a “deceptive game of
allusions.”34 Indeed, Danti’s attentiveness to these matters of genre is suggested
by the fact that deception — the sometimes humorous, sometimes painful
consequences of being fooled — is, from the very first line, the central
preoccupation of his poem.
The association between alchemy and deceit was another topos in a rich
literary tradition from which Danti could have drawn. Still, the absolute,
unmistakable centrality of the theme of deception in the sculptor’s poem finds
no real analogue in the likes of Petrarch or Agrippa, where the identification of
alchemy with error and deceit was simply one of the numerous indictments of
the practice.35 If Danti depended on a predecessor for this emphatic identification
it was probably his family namesake, Dante, whose Inferno (29.73 139) places
alchemists in the last bolgia of the Malebolge, among falsifiers, those sinners who
were guilty of the most serious form of fraud. As the damned heretic Capocchio
recognizes in his dialogue with Dante the pilgrim, alchemists are punished (being
afflicted by a revolting leprosy) for adulterating metals in an attempt to
counterfeit nature.36
The passage could have interested Danti at multiple levels. He was a man
whose profession required him to change the surface appearance of metals (by
gilding bronze, for example). He was also an artist celebrated by contemporaries
for his ability to imitate nature.37 And Danti’s sculptures, no less than his poetry,
invited writers to think about deception. In 1559, after Danti failed in his
attempt to cast a monumental bronze statue of Hercules and Antaeus to complete
34
See Longhi, 2. The quotation comes from one of the few great experts on the genre,
Danilo Romei. See Romei, 104: “The exegesis is laborious, uncertain, approximate, nor could it
be otherwise: equivocal language is not a mechanical crossword puzzle with prearranged
solutions, but a deceptive game of allusions.”
35
See, for instance, Petrarch, 1549, 181r: “And even though the deceit that is produced by
fire is often punished by fire, in any case you will be fooled by it.”
36
Dante, 1996, 457 (Inferno 29.136–39): “then you will see that I am the shade of /
Capocchio, who falsified metals with alchemy; and / you must remember, if I eye you well, /
how good an ape I was of nature.”
37
Vasari, 7:631.

a fountain by Niccolo Tribolo for the Medici villa at Castello, Bottonio consoled
him with a sonnet that enjoined him to “follow a most honored and worthy
thought.” The sonnet Danti wrote in response began with the lament, “Alas, I
erred in my path with the false escort of my labor,” blaming the failure on some
unspecified deception.38 For the 1565 wedding of Prince Francesco and
Giovanna of Austria, Danti produced a monument in ephemeral materials
that centered on the opposition of honor and falsehood, depicting Duke Cosimo
conquering a serpentine personification of Fraud.39 Bottonio wrote on this, too,
remarking on the wisdom and strength of the ruler who “defeats every fraud,
every foolish ardor.”40
Neither of these sculptures survive, but the image of “perfidious Fraud”
(“bugiarda froda”), which the first line of the “Capitolo” emphatically
associates with alchemy, does appear in one other sculpture by Danti
(fig. 1), the multifigure marble statue that he produced around 1561 for
the ducal chamberlain Sforza Almeni. The human-headed snake (fig. 2) on
the base of this work would have reminded educated sixteenth-century
Florentines of Geryon, the monstrous personification in the Inferno that
marked Dante’s descent to the Malebolge, the dark realm of fraudulence
and deception: 41
And that filthy image of fraud came over and

beached its head and chest, but did not draw up its
tail as far as the bank.
Its face was that of a just man, so kindly seemed
its outer skin, and the rest of its torso was that of a serpent.42
The reptilian beast that Danti carved in marble does not exactly conform to
Dante’s description of Geryon, which gives it furry paws and a surface strangely
adorned with knots and small wheels.43 Still, by the time the sculptor completed
the group, textual exegeses of the Commedia had long associated human-headed
38
The poems by Bottonio (“Se la profana Erculea imago, e ’l forte”) and Danti (“Ahi ch’errai
nel sentier con false scorte”) are available in Schlosser, 78–79.
39
Summers, 1969, 227–36.
40
Schlosser, 79 (“Chi e costui, che ’l bello alto Destriero” [Who is that man, who a beautiful
and imposing steed], line 10): “vince ogni frode, ogn’ardir folle.”
41
See Falvo.
42
Dante, 1996, 261; Dante, 1966–67, 1:278 (Inferno 17.7–12): “E quella sozza imagine di
froda / sen venne, e arrivo la testa e ’l busto, / ma ’n su la riva non trasse la coda. / La faccia sua
era faccia d’uom giusto, / tanto benigna avea di fuor la pelle, / e d’un serpente tutto l’altro
fusto.”
43
Dante, 1996, 261 (Inferno 17.13–18).

Figure 1. Vincenzo Danti. Allegory of Deceit, marble, completed ca. 1561. Museo Nazionale del
Bargello, Florence. Photo: Alinari / Art Resource.

Figure 2. Danti. Allegory of Deceit. Detail: Geryon. Photo: Diletta Gamberini.
serpentine creatures with Dante’s image of fraud.44 Nor was Danti the only artist
to draw on this tradition: both Bronzino in his great London Allegory from the
early 1540s and the sculptor of a slightly later marble now in the Accademia delle
Arti del Disegno in Florence represented something like this figure.45 These
artists gave their personifications of fraudulence a feminine face. Danti instead
44
Landino, 115v–116r, in his popular commentary on the Divine Comedy, related Geryon to
the snake of Genesis: “Fraud has the face — that is the first appearance — of the just man,
because the fraudulent man at first shows humanity, benevolence and every form of justice.
And all the rest of its body was a serpent. . . . In the first chapter of Genesis we find described the
diabolic temptation of the first man in the form of a snake, which had a human face to indicate
what we said.” In 1561, Dante’s Inferno 17 was the subject of a lecture at the Accademia Fiorentina
by Giovan Battista Gelli, who gave a lengthy interpretation of the representation of Geryon: see
Gelli, Ciiir–Cviv. On the basis of Dante’s Inferno, the association between Fraud and Geryon was
also adopted in iconographic handbooks: see, for example, Cartari, 473–74; Ripa, 97.
45
Robert Gaston argued that Bronzino’s serpentine creature in the London Allegory
represented “Inganno,” but Dante’s Inferno and the responses it generated makes “Fraude”
a more plausible identification, as Stefano Pierguidi has demonstrated: see Gaston, 249–88;
Pierguidi, 2000–01 (with further references). Detlef Heikamp attributed the sculpture in
the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno to Danti and described the subject matter as “Apollo
Pitio.” Pizzorusso cautiously suggested that the author might rather be Battista Lorenzi, but
he maintained Heikamp’s title. The standing figure holds no attribute that identifies it as
Apollo, however, and sixteenth-century images of Python do not normally give him
a human face; furthermore, early inventories listed the marble as a representation of “La
Virtu vincitrice dell’Inganno” (Virtue triumphing over Deceit). See Heikamp’s entry in
Acidini Luchinat et al., 50; Pizzorusso’s in I grandi bronzi del Battistero, 308.

followed the passage from the Inferno more closely, showing the attractive and
benign countenance of a just man.46
What did the rest of this sculpture represent? When standing before the
side of the sculpture that shows the face of Fraud (fig. 3), or when looking at
the statue from the angles that historians and photographers have generally
treated as its front (including fig. 1), the viewer sees a beautiful youth bent
uncomfortably backward while standing over a still more painfully bent older
man.47 The youth is wrapped twice in a band, but his right hand suggests that
this is a device he owns or at least controls; from that hand the band rises to the
youth’s right shoulder, where it disappears from sight, then somehow reaches
down to bind and compress the man below, the youth’s apparent captive, who
displays a laced hand to the viewer. The mysterious path of the band, together
with poses that do not fully reveal what is happening, invite the viewer to walk
around to the back of the sculpture, where a surprising new set of attributes
becomes visible (fig. 4). On the youth’s back is a kind of dragon, a snake with
bat wings and a ring through its nose. On the boy’s shoulder stands a small
nocturnal bird of prey, a civetta (fig. 5). Although this has gone unnoticed
until now, Danti could have found something very close to this combination
of elements in Giuseppe Betussi’s 1547 Italian translation of Boccaccio’s
Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, a book that enjoyed great popularity at the
Medici court.48
Under the heading “Inganno,” this mythographic encyclopedia describes the
son of Erebus and Night. Inganno is a nocturnal, sometimes serpentine creature
who darkens the mind and obscures vision. The most distinctive action of
Inganno, who corresponds to the snake of Erebus, is that of tangling his
victims in falsity:
Deceit, The Sixth Child of Erebus
. . . The veil of fiction here is very thin and light, so let us see why he was called
the son of Erebus and Night. I believe this is demonstrated by the sacred
scriptures, by which we are taught that the enemy of humanity, after taking
the form of a serpent from Erebus, came to earth, and in the Tartarean night
with false persuasion he darkened the minds of our fathers. . . . And since
foolish men are the ones more easily taken by deceit, once this is made up with
46
For the view that Danti’s snake has feminine features, see Summers, 1969, 145; Pizzorusso, 157.
47
This reading implicitly follows the view of Poeschke, 235, that despite its Mehransichtigkeit,
the sculpture does have a front. The present essay takes no position on Poeschke’s dispute with
Summers on just which angle best represents that front.
48
For the reception of the Genealogia in the period broadly, see Longo; for the February
1566 Mascherata devised on the basis of Boccaccio’s book, see, most recently, Pierguidi, 2007
(with further references).

Figure 3. Danti. Allegory of Deceit. Photo: Archivio del Gabinetto fotografico del Polo Museale
Fiorentino.

false thoughts, he binds himself and those he catches with his mortal lace. And
this is how deceit was born from the night . . . through dishonest paths.49
It is tempting to conclude that Danti, in making his beautiful young man, has
created a closely related personification of Deceit, but with several witty twists.
Any Florentine admirer of sculpture who saw the nocturnal symbols — night
bird and bat wings — would have thought immediately of Michelangelo’s Notte
in the New Sacristy.50 Danti, presenting himself as Michelangelo’s heir, carved
Night’s mythological son, shoring up the allusion by adding, barely visible at the
ground, a mask (fig. 6), a motif Michelangelo had associated with sleep and
dreams.51 Yet Danti also made the masking theme a more central element of
duplicity. In the same way that the face of the just man hides the real nature of
Fraud,52 so too is the identity of Inganno revealed only from behind. (The rope from
the dragon’s nose disappears in a knot at the youth’s hip, and both the civetta and the
snake-like creature of Erebus are carefully positioned so as not to extend beyond the
figure’s frame.) This is a kind of conceit Danti could have known from any number
of temptation scenes (fig. 7), wherein a man cannot see the true nature of the
49
Boccaccio, 19v–20r: “INGANNO SESTO figliuolo dell’Herebo . . . Assai sottile, & liggiero e il velo della
fittione, & pero, perche sia detto figliuolo dell’Herebo, & della notte hora veggiamo. Il che a mio
parere si dimostra nelle sacre lettere; per le quali siamo ammaestrati (tolta la forma di serpente
dall’Herebo) l’inimico del genere humano esser venuto in terra, & nella notte tartarea con false
persuasioni haver offuscato le menti de nostri padri . . . Et perche piu facilmente i pazzi sono presi
dall’inganno formato quello con falsi pensieri, lega se stesso, & quelli, ch’ei piglia con mortal laccio. Et
cosı l’inganno nasce dalla notte . . . passando per strade poco honeste.” Boccaccio’s text makes
reference to “Tullio” as the classical source for this identification: this is an allusion to Cicero’s De
natura deorum 3.44, where “Dolus” is simply listed among the sons of Erebus and Night: see Cicero,
2:1062–64.
50
See Zikos, 286.
51
On masks in the New Sacristy, see Paoletti; Dempsey. Cellini’s poetry from the late 1550s
or early 1560s had used the imagery of sleep and dreams as part of a paragone of media,
counterposing the shadowy illusion of painting to the truth of sculpture. It is possible that
Danti intended a rejoinder to this topos as well, making sculpture into an art of inganno.
Among Cellini’s poems, see, for example, the prosimeter “Quella gentil bugiarda a queste
notte” (That gentle liar, on these nights): Cellini, 2014, 134–44.
52
Boccaccio’s Genealogia describes Fraud as the closest sister of Deceit, but presents her in the
form of Dante’s Geryon, that is, with a male face. See Boccaccio, 20r–v: “Fraud is called the daughter
of Erebus and Night. Indeed, she is a deadly and wicked pestilence, and an abominable vice of the
evil mind. Between her and Deceit there is this difference, that at times Deceit can be used for good
purposes, but Fraud never. . . . The Florentine Dante Alighieri in his poem . . . describes her
appearance as follows: She has the face of a just man, and all the rest of her body is a serpent . . . and
he calls her Geryon. Through the benign . . . face of a just man, the author aims to express the
external aspect of fraudulent men, because their faces and words are benign.”

Figure 4. Danti. Allegory of Deceit (view of the back). Photo: Scala / Ministero per i Beni e le
Attivita culturali / Art Resource, NY.
beautiful woman who stands before him since her disquieting features — often a tail
or a pair of demonic wings — extend only from her back. Working in three
dimensions, it was possible for Danti to allow the viewer of the work to experience
deceit and revelation in the course of walking around the sculpture.
The Genealogia does not characterize Inganno as an entirely negative figure:
the book, for example, celebrates the deception Ulysses perpetrated with the

Figure 5. Danti. Allegory of Deceit. Detail: dragon and civetta. Photo: Archivio del Gabinetto
fotografico del Polo Museale Fiorentino.
Trojan Horse. With this in mind, it is easy to imagine that the deceit (and
revelation) in Danti’s sculpture would have been as pleasurable as that in his
poem.53 Certainly it appealed to the artist: Danti in fact returned to the idea of
using the front and back of a sculpture to hide and disclose the identities of
allegorical personifications in the middle of the decade. After Danti’s Rigor and
Equity were installed on the testata of the Uffizi in 1566 (fig. 8), Raffaello
53
On the relevance of the concept of “pleasurable deceit” in the art of Bronzino and his
contemporaries, see Barolsky and Ladis.

Figure 6. Danti. Allegory of Deceit. Detail: mask. Photo: Archivio del Gabinetto fotografico del
Polo Museale Fiorentino.
Borghini complained that their identifying attributes could not be seen by

viewers standing in the courtyard below. The placement of the figures against
windows, however, ensured that the devices were easily visible from behind.54
The marble Inganno group was every bit as ambiguous as these later
personifications. Indeed, nearly every viewer from Danti’s time to our own
has inverted the identities of the figures. Bottonio, writing on the sculpture in
1561, admired the work’s concetto (concept/conceit), but then went on to
remark that he saw “false and ignoble Deceit wrapped in his lace and pressed to
the ground by true Honor.”55 Vasari, following Bottonio, reported that Danti
had carved two figures from a single block of marble, “Honor who has Deceit
below him.”56 These texts have often been treated as authoritative evidence of
54
See Borghini, 66, for his criticism of Danti’s Rigor and Equity. In the marble groups
made for Palazzo Almeni and for the Uffizi, the owners of the statues may have had
access to a different kind of knowledge regarding the subject of the works than the
passing visitor.
55
For Bottonio’s poem, see Schlosser, 76 (lines 2–4): “avvinto / Nel proprio laccio vide, e n’
terra spinto / Da vero onor fallace inganno, e indegno.”
56
Vasari, 7:631: “l’Onore che ha sotto l’Inganno.” Vasari, who corresponded with the
Perugian friar, may well have appropriated Bottonio’s thought rather than reflecting on the
work himself.

Figure 7. Master of the Osservanza. Temptation of Saint Anthony, tempera and gold on panel,
ca. 1435. Yale Art Gallery, New Haven.
the work’s intended and understood meaning; neither, however, describes the
group in a way that suggests the author had studied it carefully, nor does either
mention any of the work’s more challenging motifs (the monster of Erebus, the
mask, the figure of Fraud, the civetta). Both make the statue conform to the
authors’ own literary interests.57 What’s more, a little-known Latin epigram
57
Bottonio’s spiritual sonnets on Danti’s works always push a religious interpretation of his
art: for instance, in his sonnet “Se la profana Erculea imago, e ’l forte,” the friar states that the
cast of the Hercules and Antaeus had failed because the sculpture dealt with a pagan theme, and
that bronzes and marbles once again obeyed Danti when the artist turned to pious subjects: see
Schlosser, 78. In the final tercet of his poem on the Inganno, Bottonio offers a Christian
interpretation for the typically secular theme of honor, while at lines 7–8 he reads the marble
group as a paradigm of Danti’s honor defying professional envy: ibid., 76. Vasari’s reading of
the group in the Vite (7:631) similarly describes the work “as Danti’s assertion of his virt u over
the will of fortune”: Proctor, 64.

by Benedetto Varchi identifies the group as a representation of Honor and

Envy, demonstrating that its subject was not obvious even to people in
Danti’s immediate circle.58 Inventors of allegories in this period, on the
other hand, favored ambiguous, esoteric images that encouraged competing
interpretations.59
From 1568 to the present, nevertheless, writers on the work have generally used
Vasari’s identifications, and it is easy to understand why. Honor was frequently
counterposed to Deceit. This is evident, for example, in the poems written on
Danti’s Hercules and Antaeus and on his Duke Cosimo Defeating Fraud. More
generally, the norm of the psychomachia as well as of heroic statuary in the mode
of Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus or Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa was to
have the hero on top. It was also standard to make the hero the more beautiful of
the two figures. But to accept that Bottonio’s and Vasari’s reading was the
intended one is to allow that the statue is deceptive in another way: it assigns the
signs of Deceit — the beautiful face, the creatures of the night, the action of
binding himself and the one he catches — not to Inganno but to his antagonist.
The triumphal format in a way allows for this, opening the possibility that Honor
has taken, along with the lace mentioned by Bottonio, Deceit’s other devices as
trophies. More coherent with the connotations of the group’s assembled symbols
presented and with its underlying literary source, though, is the alternative
explanation: Danti has worked precisely against the conventions of heroic statuary,
playfully and ironically carving a deceptive work of art that seems to celebrate
Deceit’s triumph.60
58
For Varchi’s epigram, which reads “With Ignorant envy chained, Danti has sculpted
Honor so that you ask whether they are one statue or two,” see Summers, 1969, 191. Varchi’s
alternative identification is not completely arbitrary, since the snake is a typical attribute of
envy. Another indication of the ambiguity of Danti’s marble is that derivative works tend to
normalize his imagery. An example is the terracotta in the Museo Nazionale, once thought to be
another depiction by Danti of Honor and Deceit: this omits the devices (the lace, the nocturnal
symbols) that make the marble statue so challenging and ambiguous. The same is true of
a related bronze in the Palazzo Pitti. For the history of the attribution of the statuette, see
Fidanza, 80–81; for the most recent discussion, see Pizzorusso, who ventures an attribution to
Valerio Cioli but believes the subject still to be Honor and Deceit. Pizzorusso also comments on
the bronze.
59
On this, see Cole, as well as Jonietz’s entry in Eclercy, 268.
60
The irony and paradox of the choice would have been all the more flagrant in the light of
Boccaccio’s Genealogia, which describes Honor as the son of Victory. Yet Danti does not seem
to have drawn on Boccaccio’s descriptions of Honor. His figure lacks the crown of laurel, the
defining attribute of the man described as “public honor.” See Boccaccio, 52r. A depiction of
vice triumphant would be consistent with an Italian pictorial tradition that includes such works
as Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Bad Government fresco, Andrea Mantegna’s Virtus Combusta, and
Sandro Botticelli’s Calumny of Apelles.

Figure 8. Danti. Rigor and Equity, marble, 1566. In situ on the testata of the Uffizi, Florence.
Photo: Ralph Lieberman.
That Bottonio, Vasari, and everyone since actually were deceived would then
be all the more appropriate. Indeed, this would have proved the moral
conclusion the author gives to his “Capitolo,” where he claims that even the
wisest among men cannot escape deceit. The history of the statue’s interpretation,
in fact, is comparable to the one generated by Danti’s “Capitolo,” which
convinced most of its readers of its autobiographical status. And the
connections between poem and statue are richer still. If line 1 of Danti’s
“Capitolo” describes the art of alchemy as a “fraud” (an association reaffirmed

in line 145), line 133 attributes the art’s invention to the “Devil of Hell.”
Line 13 laments the narrator’s “sophistic deceits.”61 In line 84, the narrator
recognizes “how people are deceived.” Line 32 of the poem refers to the moment
when the “lace” of alchemy captured its narrator. Lines 121 and 137 pick up the
nocturnal theme, comparing deception to sleep and to a state of lethargy.
In the poem, inganno is ostensibly the narrator’s chief enemy; the trajectory of
the poem, as line 121 emphasizes, is toward disinganno, the narrator’s ultimate
awareness of what has happened. This is something like a victory, making it
significant that Danti’s terza rima scheme comes from Petrarch’s Triumphs; still,
the triumph here is highly questionable, with the narrator escaping deception
but only at the price of poverty and despair. The sculpture, likewise, manipulates
the triumphal scheme. Bottonio and Vasari saw Deceit overcome: centuries before
Francesco Queirolo, their Danti depicted something like disinganno, the once
captive young man struggling to free himself from Deceit’s knots. But if Danti in
fact proceeded by giving his Inganno the identifying elements he knew from
Boccaccio, then the statue re-created something still more like the incident the
poem describes, of a man becoming Deceit’s lamentable victim. Only the viewer
achieves a kind of disinganno, and this depends on him having been fooled.
To read Danti’s poem is to follow its narrator’s path. Temporarily seduced by
the first-person voice, the reader eventually begins to disentangle author and
persona. Something like this experience may bear on the sculpture, too: recent
studies have argued that the imagery of the Inganno in some way reflects the
circumstances either of its maker or of its patron, Sforza Almeni. Following his
public failure with the bronze Hercules and Antaeus, Danti may have felt his
honor was in question.62 Meanwhile, Almeni, another Perugian and an ally of
Danti’s, had had his own moments of difficulty at Cosimo’s court. In 1558, after
Almeni diverted water from the property of Baccio Bandinelli to feed a fountain
in his own garden, Bandinelli complained both to Duke Cosimo and to Duchess
Eleonora about what Almeni had done, using the opportunity to accuse Almeni
of sodomy — a crime that had landed Benvenuto Cellini in prison in the
previous year. It may be that the statue relates to that episode, alluding to
Bandinelli’s slander or to Almeni’s recovery of his honor.63 Yet taking a cue from
61
Writers on alchemy traditionally differentiated between true and sophistic alchemy; see,
for example, Varchi, 1827, 24–26.
62
The sharpest and most recent version of this argument, which draws on the fundamental
elements in both Bottonio’s and Vasari’s readings, is Pizzorusso, 159, which raises the
possibility that the statue of “Honor might also be Danti’s self-defence, his vengeful smiting and
silencing of all his malevolent enemies.”
63
Pizzorusso, 151–55, introduced but then rejected this possibility. Waldman, 682,
suggested that the figure of Inganno may be a portrait of Bandinelli. Proctor, 45–49,
similarly argued that the event might provide an explanatory context for the sculptures.

Danti’s “Capitolo,” which at first seems to be biographical but gradually reveals

itself to be otherwise, one might equally question the impulse to read the
sculpture as a representation of its maker’s or patron’s life, and resist the
temptation to link it to a particular historic event. Deceitfulness and honor were
likely concerns of most men at most times in Renaissance Florence. No
documentary evidence has emerged to establish when the block entered Danti’s
shop or when he received payment for his work, but Bottonio’s poem bears the
date 1561, and Vasari writes that Danti finished the work very quickly,
separating it from the Bandinelli episode by as much as three years and from
Danti’s Hercules by two. More to the point, it was unusual in sixteenth-century
Florence for those looking at sculptures to read them in such documentary
terms. More commonly, writers looked for ways to multiply readings of the
depicted narrative, to imagine themselves into the work, or to bring the work to
life, allowing it to interact with the viewer or with other sculptures.64 In this
respect, the importance of Almeni’s patronage was that it freed Danti from the
limitations of a state symbol. The private destination of the marble group
allowed for a more open, poetic work that showcased a witty invention and
a kind of acutezza recondita (hidden acuity) that was typical of allegorical art of
the age.65
CENTONIZATION
In looking from Danti’s “Capitolo” to his sculpture and back, it is difficult to say
whether his poetic interests informed his art or the other way around. When
Danti pursued his aspirations as a sculptor and poet, the audience was largely the
same. Both as a writer and as an artist, he was performing before other poets and
artist-poets, even as he watched and took inspiration from them. Poetry was the
form in which viewers responded to his works, just as it was the form in which he
was expected to respond to other statuary. What, then, was the relationship
between visual and textual invention when Danti created works in two different
media on the theme of inganno? What did the principle ut pictura poesis here
amount to?
In the two most important late twentieth-century discussions of the Inganno,
David Summers directed attention to the range of works on which Danti likely
drew. The composition of the pair, he observed, depended on several works by
Michelangelo, including the Bearded Slave and the model for the Samson. The
stocky proportions of the figures, along with their taut surfaces and carefully
drilled and polished hair, seem closer in manner to Baccio Bandinelli. Motifs like
the older man’s bent arm could well have been inspired not by other sculptors at
64
See Cole.
65
See Fenech Kroke, 15.

all but by painters like Francesco Salviati.66 In short, Summers concluded, Danti
“followed a procedure of centonization much more typical of artists of the
maniera than of Michelangelo, and although Michelangelo’s example inspired
the dominant figure of the group, none of his sculptures determined the
conception of the whole.”67 When Summers compared Danti’s sculptural
procedure to a poetic practice, he was pointing in the first place to the artist’s
tessellation of sources. Something similar could be said of the “Capitolo,” with
its many half-concealed memories of expressions taken from Petrarch and from
other authors.68 For instance, the alchemist’s apostrophe “Oh greedy and infinite
Avarice” could be compared to that of Ariosto: “Oh execrable Avarice, o greedy
hunger of possession.” Danti’s line “the abandoned cities, the encampments and
villages” echoes Luigi Pulci’s “through cities, villages and encampments,” while
the hemistich “if anyone wishes to say” is reminiscent of Dante’s “and in case
anyone wishes to say.”69
The essential requisite for a cento, nevertheless, was not this kind of echoing
but a more direct and unmistakable kind of borrowing. The cento, a form
codified in late antiquity, was a poem in which every line, in its entirety, came
from another poem; sixteenth-century Italian centoni typically took their lines
from Petrarch. Composing such works was a skill for which Danti was admired
in his time: both Borghini and Pascoli emphasized the artist’s special expertise in
the assembling of centos. Such complimentary remarks demonstrate that the
practice of centonization, which has long been the object of a sort of damnatio
memoriae and has been considered by modern literary historians as the most
passive and slavish form of imitation,70 had a far more dignified status in the
cultural context to which Borghini and even Pascoli belonged.
66
Summers, 1969, 133–45; Summers, 1972, 190–91.
67
Summers, 1972, 191–92.
68
Borghini, 522, had written that Danti assembled centos “of lines from Petrarch and other
famous authors.”
69
Compare, respectively, “Capitolo,” line 16, “Oh Avaritia ingorda, et infinita,” with
Ariosto, 1:1262 (Orlando Furioso 43.1.1–2), “O esecrabile Avarizia, o ingorda / fame d’avere”;
“Capitolo,” line 98, “le lasciate citta, castella, et ville,” with Luigi Pulci, 644 (Morgante
21.99.4), “per le citta, per ville e per castella”; “Capitolo,” line 124, “S’alcun vuol dir,” with
Dante, 1966–67, 2:219 (Purgatorio 13.101), “e se volesse alcun dir.”
70
In the late nineteenth century, Arturo Graf condemned Petrarchism in general as a chronic
disease of Italian literature and judged centonization to be the lowest expression of this malady:
see Graf, 3. On Petrarchan centoni as a literary genre in the sixteenth century, see Erspamer; for
a treatment of the Latin centos of Lelio Capilupi, who was responsible for the revival of the genre
in Cinquecento Italy, see Tucker, cited in Nickel, 157, who like the present authors considers
the connection of the cento form to pictorial invention; for a thorough treatment of centos in the
Italian Renaissance, see Hoch.

Historians of sculpture have increasingly devoted themselves to investigations

of facture and technique, asking how artists actually executed their works.
Literature scholars have been less interested in these questions, but Danti’s
“Capitolo” allows a useful window onto process. The sculptor was working in an
age when men and women without traditional humanist educations were not
only reading, but also writing lyric as never before.71 These writers provided
a market for a significant array of new compositional aids, including a series of
widely read handbooks that offered ready-to-use solutions to the technical and
rhetorical challenges of writing a poem. Valuable for a Petrarchist centonista like
Danti, for instance, would have been the Rimario prepared by the Florentine
Lucantonio Ridolfi and first edited by Guillaume Rouille as an appendix to Il
Petrarca con nuove, e brevi dichiarationi in 1551.72 Ridolfi included in his
rhyming dictionary not just rhyming words from the Trecento source but entire
lines, alphabetized by last syllable, intended specifically to serve as a tool for those
who wanted to write elegant centos. Rouill e’s introduction to the 1558 edition
insisted on the literary dignity of composing centos by recalling that the authors
of such works included some of the most celebrated Italian poets of the sixteenth
century, Jacopo Sannazaro and Vittoria Colonna among them. In referring to
illustrious precedents, Rouill e no doubt intended to ennoble a genre being
practiced by the new field of versifiers to whom the book was addressed. At the
same time, the French editor emphasized the difficulty of composing a well-
ordered, ornate, and graceful poem, capable of delighting readers.73
e’s discussion helps show that Danti’s “Capitolo” could have been
Rouill
appreciated for its subtle construction, which, as Rouille put it, demonstrated
the true grace of the respectable writer. To begin with, Danti’s poem was
71
On this, see Dionisotti, 227–54.
72
On the sixteenth-century rimari, see Quondam, 123–50, with further references.
Significant evidence of the use that aspiring artist-poets made of such handbooks appears in
the copy of Girolamo Ruscelli’s Del modo di comporre in versi volgari nella lingua italiana that is
now preserved in the Bibliotheque Municipale of Lyon. The first blank leaf contains what
seems to be the note of ownership of the Flemish-born Florentine painter Johan Bilivert
(1576–1644).
73
Rouille, 6–7: “this rimario is, in truth, exceptionally useful for those who aim to compose
graceful verses without abandoning Petrarch’s footsteps, for we have placed here all the rhymes
that Petrarch used, and these can help others create their own poems with facility and grace.
Truly this is a necessary instrument for anyone who aspires to be a respectable versifier. . . . It is
also extremely useful for those who love to create the kind of poems that are called centos. And if
creating a well-ordered and well-woven composition of this kind — one from which some
beautiful and elegant conceit would stand out — is a very difficult task, it is also true that when
it is well composed, [such a poem] ultimately brings marvelous pleasure and delight to its
readers. The most graceful Sannazaro and the Divine Marquise of Pescara once created similar
poems.”

a peculiar kind of cento, because only the final line of each tercet constitutes a
perfect citation. In sixteenth-century terminology, what Danti created here was
a capitolo in centona.74 As such, Danti’s poem adheres more to Petrarch’s own
example than to that of the integral cento, since canzone 70 of the Rerum
Vulgarium Fragmenta (Fragments of vernacular things) (“Lasso me, ch’io non so
in qual parte pieghi” [Woe is me, for I know not on what part to pin]) had
concluded every stanza with a quotation from a Provençal or Italian lyricist.75
What Danti wrote, in short, is a poem that imitates Petrarch on at least four
levels, taking (by way of Bernesque capitoli) the meter from the Triumphi,76 the
general content from the De Remediis, the mode of quotation from “Lasso me,”
and, on top of that, a series of individual lines from other poems, mostly the
Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta and, again, the Triumphi. With this choice, Danti
probably aimed to show that it was possible to write something like a cento that
was anything but mechanical or naive in its relationship to its models, and that
his skills allowed him to accomplish what was perceived to be one of the most
difficult tasks for contemporary poets, the creation of a text based on Petrarch’s
lines that was capable of bringing its readers a “marvelous pleasure.”77 At the
same time, he probably sought to align his capitolo in centona with those
composed by leading authors of the age. An amatory capitolo in centona
interwoven with Petrarch’s verses had been attributed to Ludovico Ariosto in
a poetic florilegium edited in 1546.78 And the Giunti edition of the Secondo libro
dell’opere burlesche (1555), a popular Florentine anthology of comic poetry,
contained two similar poems, Pietro Aretino’s “Capitolo alla sua diva” (Capitolo
74
Such a definition is to be found, for instance, in the small printed anthology Opera venuta
nuovamente in luce, n.p.
75
For the identification of this poem in Danti’s day as the model for centonisti, see Ruscelli,
1558b, n.p.: “This is a sonnet . . . made entirely of lines from Petrarch, and we call this genre
centos. . . . Petrarch did not make this kind of text. . . . Still, it is evident from the quoted lines
of other authors (even French and Provençal) that he used to conclude the stanzas of the
canzone Lasso me that somehow he had had the wish to create something comparable.”
76
See also Ruscelli, 1558a, cxv–cxvi: “The terza rima is the meter for writing gracefully on
any kind of subject . . . [it can be] subdivided in parts, like Petrarch’s Triumphs. . . . And the
beautiful invention — generally attributed to Berni — of writing in terza rima on some
pleasant, and burlesque subject, or for paradox, or for showing wit, turned out to be very
delightful.”
77
Rouille, 7.
78
See the Opera venuta nuovamente in luce, n.p. Even if the poem ascribed to Ariosto (“Arsi
nel mio bel foco un tempo quieto” [Once it was calm, I burned in my beautiful fire]) was most
probably apocryphal, its alleged authorship would have contributed to the literary dignity of the
form. Only in recent years was an alternative attribution, to Alfonso d’Avalos, proposed: on
this, see Toscano.

to his goddess) and Valerio Buongioco’s “Capitolo de’ tre contenti” (Capitolo on
the happy threesome).79
Returning to the marble Inganno and to Summers’s suggestion that Danti
followed something like a procedure of visual centonization, it must be said at
once that nothing in the statue is exactly a quotation from another work. Still,
the manuals on centonization that Danti likely read when composing his verses
give us new terms for considering his sculpture. When explaining the principle
behind the centone, for example, Ridolfi remarks that “Petrarch did not always
wish to enclose a complete sense in a single line.”80 The centonista, he asserts,
relied on the openness of the earlier writer’s words, establishing the meaning of
a given line by placing it in a particular setting. Ridolfi went on to explain that in
assembling a rimario, he aimed to make it easier for the aspiring poet to compose
his centoni, “annexing the lines [from Petrarch] that suit his purpose.”81
Arranged alphabetically, with no indication of the poems from which they
had come, the lines in that rimario gave its user no sense of the function they had
originally held: their connotations were determined entirely by their new setting.
Those who have written on the poetics of sixteenth-century art have largely
concerned themselves with style. For the centonista, however, the real issue was
rather that of sense — not original, intended sense, but something more
deconstructive.82 In the case of the “Capitolo,” Danti proceeded by borrowing
lines that originated largely in lyrics about the effects of love and putting them to
a different end.83 To take one characteristic example, Danti adopts the line
“made miserable by the very thing from which I hoped to gain happiness” at line
79
These represent an extreme parodic deformation of the Petrarchan model, because the
final lines of the tercets — taken, like in Danti’s text, from the Fragmenta and the Triumphi —
are placed in an obscene context, radically alien to the spiritual and literary purposes of the
fourteenth-century source. See Secondo libro dell’opere burlesche, 117, 164. Proctor, 224, rightly
emphasizes the wit of the “Capitolo,” then less plausibly finds “titillating secondary meanings”
of a sexual nature in the text. Even if the burlesque capitoli did often contain obscene allusions,
the systematic and mechanical interpretation in sexual terms that was promoted by Jean Toscan
in his Le carnaval du langage has since been questioned, with good reasons, by several scholars:
on this, see Romei, 85–107.
80
The letter to readers by Ridolfi was published as a preface to the Tavola di tutte le rime,
which appeared as an appendix to the 1551 edition of Rouille’s Il Petrarca con nuove e brevi
dichiarationi. See Ridolfi, 6: “il Petrarca non tutte volte rinchiude in un verso solo una sententia
perfetta.”
81
Ibid., 4: “annestando i versi, che faranno al proposito suo.”
82
Compare the remarks of Velli, 118, who described the cento as having “its own new
expression, obtained by assembling existing literary pieces from other authors, radically
distorting the goals and the concerns that had inspired the original contexts.”
83
The numeration of Petrarch’s Fragmenta and Triumphi follow the modern editions,
Petrarch, 1964 and 1997.

12 from poem 210 in Petrarch’s Canzoniere. Petrarch had used the words to
describe his suffering at his beloved’s indifference; Danti frames the line so that it
instead points to the impoverishment that has befallen the young alchemist.
When, similarly, he places line 33, “sixteen years have now passed,” after the
line “from the moment this lace snared me,” he indicates that sixteen years
have passed since alchemy ensnared the narrator. In Petrarch’s Canzoniere,
the line opens poem 118, about the sixteen years that have passed since the
author fell in love. Danti also employed Petrarch’s nonerotic lines. His line
51, for example, “of triangles, circles, and square forms,” adopts a line
Petrarch had used to illustrate the figures on Euclid’s attire in the Triumphus
Famae (3.60) so that the words instead describe the shapes of the alchemist’s
vessels.
Something similar could be said to happen in Danti’s statue. Whatever its
other debts, the marble’s first point of reference, as all scholars have recognized,
was Michelangelo’s Victory (fig. 9). The derivations were multiple: broadly, the
idea of excavating a vertical, two-figure composition from a single block of stone;
more specifically, the band that runs across the upper figure’s chest; the position
of the same figure’s legs, the right straight and the left placed bent on top of his
collapsed counterpart; the curly haired youth’s long, straight nose, strong lips,
beardless chin, and pupil-less eyes; the bending of the bearded man’s arm (left in
Michelangelo, right in Danti) across his back; the raising of the same figure’s
head; even the tension between completion and non finito, in Danti’s case
particularly with the struts that extend from the lower figure’s left foot. None of
these elements are exactly quotations, nor are they carried out in a manner that
resembles that of Michelangelo. But they are, like the Petrarchan lines in Danti’s
“Capitolo,” overt instances of transposition. Danti knew Michelangelo’s
sculpture exceptionally well; it is even possible that he partially recarved it.84
And in a city where Michelangelo was regarded nearly as a saint, where artists
committed his local sculptures to memory and writers argued about his
thoughts, viewers could be expected not just to recognize Danti’s source, but
also to consider what he had done to it.
This suggestion was first put forward by Wittkower, 133. Though others have rejected it,
84
Acidini Luchinat, 229, recently revived the proposal: “On the advice of Giorgio Vasari,
[Michelangelo’s] heir Lionardo abandoned the idea of employing [the statue] in his uncle’s
tomb and instead gave it to Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, who is believed to have entrusted it to
Vincenzo Danti, so that he could continue work on the sculpture. Close analysis of the statue,
made possible by the 1998–99 restoration, suggests that the further working affected at least the
victor’s entire head, the shaping of the vanquished man’s face and perhaps his hair. All of this
supports the attribution [of these zones] to the Perugian sculptor, a great admirer of Michelangelo,
and we cannot exclude his interventions of finish in the now polished areas of the youth’s
body and hand.”

Figure 9. Michelangelo. Victory, marble, underway 1520/34. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Photo:
Alinari / Art Resource, NY.
In Michelangelo’s statue, the overwhelming impression is that the young man

bound the old one, but there is also some ambiguity, since the band of the
conquerer snakes around the extended leg of the youth. Danti’s new allegorical
framework gives meaning to this very feature, following Boccaccio’s idea that
Deceit “wraps itself and others.” In Michelangelo, the captive has been
conquered. In Danti, he has rather been snared, or trapped: the civetta is

a night bird, but it was also used by hunters to entice prey, which allowed
Renaissance artists and writers to use its image as a symbol of illusion and
deception.85 In Michelangelo, the band also evokes the process of sculpting the
block, embodying the container of the figure within. By compressing his figures
into a column, Danti preserves this effect, even while representing the fiction
that Deceit has pressed the figures into their apparent form. The left eye of
Michelangelo’s Victory seems to lack a pupil because the carver stopped work
before getting there — the right eye is more fully cut. Danti’s omission of pupils
is rationalized instead by the blindness that Deceit produces.86
That Michelangelo’s Victory was Danti’s primary source is doubly important,
for the statue represented not only a repertory of reusable motifs, but also
a lesson in how an artist could repurpose an idea, changing its meaning by
shifting its context. Michelangelo first occupied himself with the victory theme
around 1506, when working on the tomb of Julius II. He only began carving it,
though, sometime later in Florence. In that later context, the statue took on
a kinship with the Petrarchan poems Michelangelo had begun writing in the
same period. This is particularly evident in the common theme of binding,
the very thing that would later so interest Danti. One traditional reading of the
work, for example, places Michelangelo in the role of the enslaved old man
below, captivated by his love for the beautiful form — perhaps a real or abstract
portrait of Michelangelo’s actual beloved, Tommaso Cavalieri — above.87 Danti
85
Handbooks of emblems, such as Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata (1546), Pierio Valeriano’s
Hieroglyphica (1556), and Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini (1556), attributed various meanings to
the bird, which could designate night, wisdom, death, victory, money, Christ, etc.: see Alciato,
41r; Valeriano, 146v–148v; Cartari, LXXIIIv. Still, the placement of the attribute may help
specify the meaning it was meant to convey. In Danti’s sculpture, just like in Bronzino’s portrait
from behind of the dwarf Morgante (before 1553), the civetta stands on the subject’s shoulder,
hinting at its function as a bait-bird. In Aelian’s De Natura Animalium, a standard reference for
the emblematic encyclopedias of the Renaissance, the civetta is a “deceitful creature that
resembles those women who use evil charms and spells” and an animal capable of enchanting
both men and prey: the author specifies that the bird was, for these reasons, deployed by
hunters, who used to “carry it about like a pet . . . or a charm on their shoulders”: Aelian, 13. In
Conrad Gessner’s 1556 edition, an index besides this passage identifies the bird with the ideas
of “illusion” and “capture through enticing.”
86
Boccaccio, 20r: “deceit . . . emerged first from Erebus, conceived in the womb of the blind
mind.”
87
Two good introductions to the historiography of the sculpture are Tolnay, 110–13;
Poeschke, 102–04. Tolnay is sympathetic to the idea that the Victory is “a kind of spiritual
self-portrait reflecting Michelangelo’s love for Cavalieri,” adding that in this case, “the youth
would be an idealized image of Cavalieri and the vanquished old man would be a portrait of
Michelangelo himself.” Poeschke rejects this interpretation. The connection between the statue
and Michelangelo’s love poetry goes back at least to Brinckmann.

may or may not have understood the statue in anything like these terms, but
once one notices the way that Michelangelo’s act of excising the Victory from the
tomb project allowed him to give it a new significance, Danti’s similar use of
Michelangelo begins itself to look like a form of imitation. Michelangelo
transposed an allegorical motif from a political monument into an image of love,
in the process turning it from a figure of victory to one that implied a more
affective subjugation. Danti transformed Michelangelo’s image of love into one
of false allure, a favorite theme in the context of the court.88 In both cases, the
artists demonstrated an ability to change an earlier idea by reframing it.
To read Danti’s “Capitolo” as something other than autobiography is to
appreciate its constructedness; it is not a sincere lament but a display of wit.89 As
Quintilian wrote when discussing the rhetoric of humor, “Still more ingenious is
the application of one thing to another on the ground of some resemblance, that
is to say the adaptation to one thing of a circumstance which usually applies to
something else, a type of jest which we may regard as being an ingenious form of
fiction.” He added, “Apt quotation of verse may add to the effect of the wit. The
lines may be quoted in their entirety without alteration, which is so easy a task
that Ovid composed an entire book against bad poets out of lines taken from the
quatrains of Macer.”90 Savvy readers of Danti’s poem would have admired it for
just this kind of surprising congruity: when the copyist who penned the Palatino
apograph remarked below the title that “every third line is from Petrarch,” he
showed that contemporaries noticed and appreciated what Danti was doing. The
copyist dwelled not on Danti’s understanding of Petrarch, but on his ability to
make Petrarch’s words say something different than they had originally. It is
harder to judge the tone of Danti’s sculpture — with Deceit on top it seems
humorous or paradoxical, with Honor victorious, less so — but a similar strategy
served him well when faced with the task of authoring the work.
UT SCULPTURA POESIS?
When Bottonio praised the “concetto” behind Danti’s statue, he credited the
inventor of the Inganno with a kind of ideation that long stood between poetry
and art. To a certain extent, that possibility was suggested by Danti’s choice of
a secular, allegorical subject. It was sustained by Danti’s deliberate construction
of the work as a sequel in marble to the Florentine legacy of Michelangelo, whose
poem on the sculptor’s conceit — “Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto” (The
88
Gaston, 269.
89
See Proctor, 220: “This hopeless language and Danti’s inclusion of details about how his
life was ruined by alchemy are so believable as to have led previous authors to overlook the
satirical content of the poem.”
90
Quintilian, 2:471 (6.3.61) and 2:491 (6.3.96).

excellent artist has no concept), itself a Petrarchan reflection on the relationship

between poetic and visual inspiration — had been made famous in Florence
through the 1547 lecture at the Accademia Fiorentina of Benedetto Varchi. The
present essay has asked to what extent the connection between art and writing
in Danti extends to the inventive process: whether the practice of making
a sculpture, in the Florentine world of literate artists, paralleled in any
meaningful way the practice of making a poem.
The essay’s answer is divided. Danti’s Deceit, no less than his “Capitolo,” was
an experimental work — for all we know, the Deceit was the first freestanding
marble Danti carved and the “Capitolo” was the first cento he ever composed.91
But Danti was neither an amateur artist nor a dilettante poet of the sort newly
enabled by the unprecedented mid-Cinquecento expansion of Italian literary
culture. His poem and sculpture each show a deep understanding of the
possibilities a given medium allowed. When writing and carving, he relied on
ideas and structures that could not simply be translated from one medium to the
other: the sequence of direct quotations in the case of the verse, the differentiated
front and back views in the case of the three-dimensional stone.
Still, there are ways in which Danti’s approach to word and image seem to
echo, or illuminate, one another. Both the poem and the sculpture show him
thinking in terms of inherited characters or types. Readers of the “Capitolo”
would have found a familiar story with familiar protagonists, made all the more
generic in that they go unnamed. Viewers of Danti’s sculpture would have seen
a near reenactment of a scene Michelangelo had staged several decades before,
with only slightly different actors in the two leading roles. More than anything,
though, Danti’s poem and sculpture pursue similar effects: a feeling of the
uncanny, placing before us a recognizable figure in which something is slightly
off; a disorientation, evoking but also holding at some distance the real life of
a real author; and, above all, the surprise, revealed only in time, that first
appearances are not what they seem.
91
For the marble, see Vasari, 7:631.

AP PEND IX
Danti’s “Capitolo”
Vincenzo Danti’s “Capitolo” was rediscovered by David Summers, who
included a transcription from a manuscript in the Palatina collection of
the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence (hereafter BNCF) in his
doctoral dissertation. Elena Nicolai subsequently published a more accurate
transcription from the same codex. More recently, Louis Waldman identified
a second apograph of the poem in the Magliabechiana collection, and Anne
Proctor used that in her own dissertation. But though Proctor recognized
that the Magliabechiano “may provide a version of the capitolo that more
closely approximates Danti’s original than the seventeenth-century copy that
appears in the Palatino manuscript,”1 she opted to give her readers another
transcription from the Palatino, indicating differences in the Magliabechiano
only in her notes. A close codicological and philological comparison between
the surviving versions of the poem, nevertheless, clearly demonstrates that the
Palatino should not be taken as basis for a study of the “Capitolo.”
The Magliabechiano manuscript (BNCF Magl. cl. VII 877; hereafter M ) is
on paper bound in leather, in 4o, fols. I 243 I’, with old and modern
numbering. It is written in a single late sixteenth-century hand; on the spine is
the modern title Raccolta di poesie sec. XVI. The manuscript inventory of the
BNCF (Classe VII. 2, fol. 411) indicates that the codex was assembled and
written by the Florentine bibliophile Giovanni Berti. Berti is known for
having collected, in the late sixteenth century, several other books of artists’ writings,
including an abridged apograph of Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting and
a manuscript of Bronzino’s burlesque poems.2 M contains, among other works, a series
of comical verses attributed to Agnolo Bronzino, Benedetto Varchi, Benvenuto
Cellini, and Francesco Berni, as well as several anonymous verses. Danti’s “Capitolo”
is at fols. 35v–39r.
M is relatively close in date to the composition of Danti’s “Capitolo,” which
was undoubtedly written while the sculptor was in Florence (1557 73) and was
probably composed in the same years as his other poems, between 1559 and the
early 1560s. Compared to other surviving transcriptions, it contains few clear
errors. In several cases, single letters have been changed: for instance, at line 17,
the second-person verb “conduci,” required in the context of a rhetorical
apostrophe, becomes a third person “conduce”; at line 114, the verb “fo”
replaces the pronoun “io,” required because the verse is a citation of Petrarch’s
Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (hereafter RVF ) 336.10, where the pronoun had
apocope: “i.’” There is one loss of a compendium sign, at line 33: “rimansi,”
1
Proctor, 233.
2
See Pedretti, 149–70; Nardelli in Bronzino, 468, 508.

present in the quoted Petrarchan verse (RVF 118.1) and certainly written
“rimasi”
in the original, becomes “rimasi.” There are also several other easily
explicable paleographical misreadings: at line 115, the copulative conjunction
“et,” which is not compatible with the meaning of the verse, has taken the place
of the causal “che.” A more significant mistake occurs at lines 136–37, where the
reading of the manuscript cannot be correct because it produces an anacoluthon.
On the whole, though, the errors in this codex are minor.
The Palatino manuscript (BNCF, Palat. 264; hereafter P) is on paper bound
in tissue, in 4o, fols. II 371 III’, old numbering. The contents are written in
different seventeenth- and eighteenth-century hands; the spine bears the modern
title Poesie di vari autori. Cod. Cart. sec. XVII. The codex contains, among other
works, verses by Lorenzo Bellini, Benedetto Menzini, Francesco Berni, and
several anonymous authors. The section to which Danti’s “Capitolo” belongs
(fols. 71–84) was written in a single hand, apparently between the final two
decades of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth.3 The
“Capitolo” is at fols. 76r–78r.
P, which has until now been taken as the basis for every study of the
sculptor’s poem, presents a very problematic testimony. Its questionability
is not simply a matter of its later date: it is a principle of modern philology
that more recent apographs are not necessarily worse than older ones.4 The
difficulties lie with the text itself, for the Palatino version of Danti’s
“Capitolo” is profoundly different from the one in M. In some lines, the
alternative readings might seem acceptable, even allowing the impression
that P preserves a different version of the poem by the author himself. Yet
there is considerable evidence that the variations rather reflect a copyist’s
arbitrary rewriting of the text he was transcribing.
In the first place, the copyist’s innovations sometimes fail to maintain
rhymes: an example is line 86, where “calle” takes the place of “callo,”
rhyming with “metallo,” line 88. On other occasions, the copyist fails to
maintain the proper syllabic length of the verses: in line 74, “alchimista”
replaces “alchimia,” making the line hypermetric. There are various errors
that stem from misunderstandings: for instance, in line 104, which has
“costanti” instead of “cotanti.” Although the heading of the poem in the codex
indicates that the third line of each tercet is a quotation from Petrarch, the
copyist did not refrain from modifying even these passages, obscuring the
fundamental frame of the text: in line 126, for example, “prima sara
ogn’impossibil cosa” replaces “esser po in prima ogn’impossibil cosa” of
RVF 195.12. More difficult to detect are the improprieties that come with
complete modifications of individual lines, though in some cases it is possible
3
Kindly suggested by Alfonso Mirto (oral communication).
4
Pasquali, 41–108.

to notice a deterioration of the syntactical grip of the text. For instance, P ’s

lines 24–25, “Voi che, filosofando, il naturale / tra zolfi e tra metalli ve
n’andate,” are not acceptable because the intransitive verb “ve n’andate”
cannot govern the object “il naturale.” These examples, among others,
demonstrate that the copyist of P tended rather arbitrarily to rewrite the
verses he was transcribing.
For all of these reasons, M rather than P should be regarded as the preferable
source for studying Danti’s poem. This appendix makes available the first
complete transcription of that text, along with a prose translation in English.
This edition expands abbreviations without using round brackets, transcribes j
as i and as s, separates u and v, modernizes word divisions, and rationalizes
punctuation. Apostrophes, accents, and capital letters follow modern usage. One
particular challenge was the indication of quoted speech. Danti’s text moves
back and forth between narration and address, and there are a number of
passages that might fall into either category; the most coherent reading of the
poem, however, is to take the entire thing as a long address, with several entities
(Avarice, line 16; “voi,” line 24; Albertus Magnus, line 95) entering the audience
as the addressee. The transcription and translation consequently use quotation
marks only to enclose reported speech, not the narrator’s apostrophes.
Square brackets [ ] indicate editorial emendations at places where the
transmitted text appears to be corrupt; the original text of M can be found in
the apparatus. Integrations (also to the hypometric line 128) are indicated within
angle brackets ‹ ›. The copyist sometimes integrated words with apocope that
he was transcribing from his antigraph, resulting in hypermetric lines: in these
cases, the transcription reestablishes the exact measure and the apparatus
contains the text from the manuscript. The apparatus also registers the most
substantial textual deviations of P.
Di Vincentio Danti Scultore Perugino in dispregio dell’Archimia
A mal mio grado, la bugiarda froda

dell’arte in che s’aggira l’alchimista,
3 qual io mi sia, per la mia lingua s’oda.
Io son un di color descritto in lista
ch’hanno mandato mal, per questa via,
6 quel ch’in molti anni a gran pena s’acquista,
et chi nol crede, guardi questa mia
mal condotta presenza, la qual dice:
9 “povera e nuda vai, Filosofia.”
Pover’a me, meschino et infelice,
che gia fui lieto et hor vivo in affanni;

12 misero, onde sperava esser felice,

cagion degl’empi miei soffisti inganni
che per tal, qual io son, ogn’huom m’addita
15 a l’andare, alla voce, al volto, a’ panni.
Oh Avaritia ingorda, et infinita,
ch’altrui conduc[i] ov’io tra quei son messo
18 ch’hanno s e in odio, et la soverchia vita!
Meco di me pur mi vergogno spesso
pensando a quel ch’io son, et ch’io son stato,
21 ch’a pena riconosco homai me stesso;
ecco quel che cercando ho ritrovato,
un desio, che la lingua mia sia tale
24 che stringer possa il mio infelice stato.
Et cosı dico a voi, ch’il naturale
de’ solfi, et de’ metalli transformate:
27 deh, restate a veder qual e ’l mio male,
et se punto vi cale et punto amate
uscir d’errore, il mio perpetuo danno
30 talhor vi muova, et con pieta guardate,
e a me si creda, com’a quei che sanno,
che dal tempo che tal laccio mi prese
33 rima‹n›si adietro il sestodecim’anno.
Allhor lasciai tutte mie buone imprese
per seguir quest’errore iniquo e fero,
36 hor con voglie gelate, hor con accese:
pensai diventar ricco, e non fu vero,
anzi la poverta mi misse poi
39 ugualmente in non cale ogni pensiero.
L’Alchimia ando facendo i gesti suoi
tal che m’ha fatto esempio, onde guardate
42 che similmente non avvenga a voi.
Nacque ’l principio del mio mal da un frate,
ch’era in quest’arte per fino alla gola,
45 et parvemi mirabil vanitate:
dietro al convento una stanzetta sola
teneva, dove mi condusse ’l padre,
48 dicendo a me di cio non far parola.
Com’io fui dentro, disse: “Ecco la madre
dell’arte, hor guarda ben questa fornace
51 di triangoli, tondi, et forme quadre.
Non posso di quest’altra darmi pace
che vedi in terra: al mondo era quest’una,

54 tre volte cadde, et alla terza giace.

Hor vien pi u innanzi, et guarda questa luna
con tante bocce, et hor ti vo’ mostrare
57 tutte le mie fatiche ad una ad una.
Qui si puote ogni cosa lambiccare,
quest’e quanto di torre et di fucina
60 arte, ingegno e natura e ’l ciel puo fare,
et quest’e quel fornel, ove s’affina
l’argento et l’or ch’io faccio; insomma sono
63 gratie ch’a pochi ’l ciel largo destina.
Ma questo poco curo, che non pono
ricchezze in me, ma ben prezzato haria
66 quand’era in parte altr’huom da quel ch’i’ sono.
Hor povertade e la profession mia:
sol per piacer di quest’arte lavoro,
69 poco prezzando quel ch’ogn’huom desia.”
Insomma, il padre m’insegno il lavoro
in poco tempo, et m’hebbe transformato
72 come l’avaro, ch’[e] ’n cercar tesoro,
che quando pensa haverlo ritrovato,
piu ne desia: cosı l’alchimia ogn’hora
75 e per lassar piu l’animo invescato
et fare arcifallir chi ne lavora,
com’hor son io, ch’i creditor mi fanno
78 la sera des€ıare, odiar l’Aurora.
Sei volte son per debito quest’anno
stato tra’ birri; o qual sorte e cagione,
81 qual mio destin, qual forza o qual inganno?
Non altro che la mia ostinatione,
ch e chiarir non mi volsi, et hora veggio
84 come sono ingannate le persone
et come disperato ogn’hor vaneggio,
et tra me dico, al cor facendo il callo:
87 “la mia fortuna, hor che mi puo far peggio?”
Voi, che pensate questo et quel metallo
mutar in oro, levate ogni spene
90 mentre emendar potete il vostro fallo:
l’argento et l’or ciascun da le sue vene
si cava, ne imitar puossi giammai,
93 che Natura non vuol, n e si conviene.
Et tal vo’ mantenere, et tu che n’hai
descritto, Alberto, viemmi contro, et anzi

96 venghin quanti filosofi f^ ur mai.

Ove son di costoro i ricchi avanzi,
le lasciate citta, castella, et ville?
99 Sogni d’infermi, et fole di romanzi!
Non bisogna ch’alcun pi u si destille
il suo cervel, che ben sa questa mano
102 ch’io ho cercate gia vie pi u di mille;
pi
u legne, pi u carboni ho arsi invano,
ch’in Etna non ne tien cotanti accesi
105 l’antichissimo fabro siciliano.
Ancora gl’anni, nonch’e’ giorni et mesi,
per ricercar secreti a chi destilla,
108 cercar m’ha fatti deserti paesi:
oh quante volte, a lume di favilla,
salsi di Norcia i monti ove sta in cima
111 l’antichissimo albergo di Sybilla!
Deh, fugga ognun quest’arte, et faccia prima
ch’in lui s’invecchi (come dianzi disse),
114 [i]o com’huom ch’erra, et poi pi u dritto stima.
Non crediate ad [alcun, ch e] chi ne scrisse
non l’intese quant’io, se fusse bene
117 Nestor, che tanto seppe, et tanto visse.
Et meco dica, a chi tal sete viene
per cui son fatto macilente, et veglio:
120 “del tutto e cieco ch’in te pon sua spene.”
Et bench e tardi dal sonno mi sveglio,
conchiudo, et dico: “sopr’ogn’altra cosa
123 obbedire a Natura in tutto e ’l meglio.”
S’alcun vuol dir che tal arte e nascosa
et ch’un dı troverassi, et io li dico:
126 “esser puo in prima ogn’impossibil cosa.”
Certo non vi vorrei un mio nemico
in quest’error‹e›, ch’a me nulla riesce,
129 ch e m’e nascosto, ond’io son sı mendico;
ma piu di me che d’altri alfin m’incresce,
et pria che questo sia, fia state il verno
132 et corcherassi ’l sol la oltre ond’esce.
L’Alchimia dal Demonio dell’Inferno
fu ritrovata, et le miniere sole
135 usc^ır buone di man del Mastro eterno.
O Alchimisti, [ch’il tempo et le parole
indarno] consumate in tal letargo,

138 hor vi riconfortate in vostre fole.

Vorrei pi u lungo esser parlando, et largo,
ma tra me dico a questi pazzi humori:
141 “forse che ’ndarno mie parole spargo.”
Et veggio incorsi in questi tali errori,
con la gente id€ıota, gente magna,
144 pontefici, regnanti e imperadori:
e questa fraude qual rabbiosa cagna,
che d’ogni sorte genti va mordendo
147 da India, dal Cataio, Marocco e Spagna,
et io son un di quei, che ben comprendo
il perfido venen ch’ogn’hor s’accrebbe,
150 ond’ho gia molto amaro, et pi u n’attendo,
u saggio di me ’ngannato havrebbe.
che pi
Di Vincentio Danti Scultore Perugino in dispregio dell’Archimia] Capitolo di Vincenzo Danti

scultore perugino contro l’Alchimia, del quale ogni terzo verso e del Petrarca P
1. A mal mio grado] Il falso inganno e P 4. Io son un di color descritto in lista] N e diro sol
di udita ne di vista P 5. ch’hanno mandato mal] ma di mandato mal P 7. et chi nol crede,
guardi] E che sia il ver, guardate in P 8. la qual dice] che vi dice P 10. Pover’a me, meschino et
infelice] Cascato in poverta, che si disdice P 11. che gia fui lieto et hor vivo in affanni] al grado
mio, e vivo in molti affanni P 12. onde sperava] ond’io sperava P 13. cagion degl’empi miei
soffisti inganni] cagion di tai sofisti iniqui inganni P 14. ogn’huom] ognun P 15. al volto] al
viso P 17. conduci] conduce M, P 18. vita] vista P 19. Meco di me pur mi vergogno] Ma pur
di me mi maraviglio P 20. et ch’io] e che P son stato] sono stato M 22. ecco quel che cercando
ho ritrovato] ora resti ciascun maravigliato P 23. un desio, che la lingua mia sia] mentre che la
mia lingua sara P 25. Et cosı dico a voi, ch’il naturale] Voi che, filosofando, il naturale P 26.
de’ solfi, et de’ metalli transformate] tra zolfi e tra metalli ve n’andate P 31. e a me si creda]
e da me il credan P 32. dal] del M 33. rimansi adietro] rimane ’ndietro P 34. Allhor lasciai
tutte mie buone imprese] Tutte l’altre mie buone, e sante imprese P 35. per seguir
quest’errore iniquo e fero] lasciai per questa, che sciopra il pensiero P 37. pensai diventar
ricco, e non fu] e pensai d’arricchir, ma non fu P 38. anzi la poverta mi misse] ch’io son qual
mi vedete, e messi P 40. ando facendo] pur facendo P 41. tal che m’ha fatto esempio, onde]
m’a fatto vostro esempio, deh P 44. per fino] per sin P 46. stanzetta] stanzotta P 47. teneva,
dove mi condusse ’l padre] aveva, et ivi menommi il buon padre P 48. dicendo a me]
dicendomi P 54. tre volte cadde] cade tre volte P 55. questa] quella P 56. bocce] bocche P 60.
ingegno e natura e ’l Ciel puo] ingegno, natura e ’l Ciel puon P 63. gratie ch’a pochi ’l Ciel
largo destina] grazie ch’a pochi ’l Ciel larghe destina P 64. pono] ponno P 65. prezzato haria]
sprezzate avria P 71. in poco tempo, et m’hebbe trasformato] e mi trovai da quel poi
trasformato P 72. e ’n] ’in M 74. l’alchimia] l’alchimista P 75. lassar pi u l’animo invescato]
lasciar piu l’animo invischiato P 76. et fare arcifallir chi ne lavora] e per arcifallir chi non lavora
P 78. des€ıare, odiar] des€ıar, e odiar P 80. e cagione] o cagione P 85. et come disperato ogn’hor]
pur come disperato ogn’or P 86. et tra me dico, al cor facendo il callo] e poi concludo di viltade
il calle P 88. Voi, che pensate questo et] Ma voi, ch’amate questo e P 89. spene] speme P 92. si

cava, ne imitar puossi] si cavi, ne imitar poss’io P 94. Et tal vo’ mantenere] Tal mantener
vogl’io P 97. Ove son di costoro i ricchi avanzi] E di questi mi mostrino gl’avanzi P 102. ho
cercate gia vie piu] n’o cercate gia P 103. carboni ho arsi] carbon io arsi P 104. ch’in Etna non
ne tien cotanti] ch’in Etna non ne tien costanti P 107. ricercar secreti] dimandar segreti P 108.
m’ha fatti deserti] m’an fatto diversi P 109. oh quante volte a lume] pi u volte l’erte al lume
P 113. ch’in lui] che vi s’invecchi P 114. io com’huom ch’erra, et poi pi u dritto] fo com’huom
ch’erra, et poi pi u dritto M; com’uomo ch’erra, e poi pi u ’l dritto P 115. alcun, ch e] alcuno,
e M 118. Et meco dica, a chi tal sete viene] A poco a poco tal sete ne viene P 119. per cui son
fatto macilente, et veglio] consumando la vita, ond’io son veglio P 121. Et bench e tardi
dal sonno mi sveglio] Ma or che da tal sonno mi risveglio P 123.obbedire a Natura in tutto
e ’l meglio] obbedir a Natura in tutto e meglio P 124.S’alcun vuol dir] Alcun vuol dire P 125.
li] le P 126. esser puo in prima ogn’impossibil] prima sara ogn’impossibil P 128. in quest’errore,
ch’a me nulla riesce] in questo error, ch’a me nulla riesce M; in quest’errore, ch’a me non riesce
P 131. che questo sia, fia state il verno] che sia, sara state et inverno P 132. et corcherassi ’l sol
la oltre ond’esce] e colcherassi il sol la oltre ond’esce P 134. fu] fur P 135. usc^ır buone] usciron
buon P 136–37. O Alchimisti, ch’il tempo et le parole indarno consumate] o alchimisti, il
tempo et le parole ch’indarno consumate M; E voi ch’avete il tempo e le parole indarno spese
P 139. Vorrei pi u lungo esser] Vorrei lungh’esser pi u P 140. pazzi humori] tali humori P 141.
che ’ndarno] ch’indarno P 142. Et veggio incorsi in questi tali errori] Da poi ch’io veggio incorsi in
tali errori P 145. e questa fraude] onde tal fame P 146. che d’ogni sorte genti] va per il mondo questo
e quel P 148. et io son un di quei che] e son uno di quei se ben P 149. il perfido venen ch’ogn’hor
s’accrebbe] il pessimo veleno ch’il mal crebbe P 150. ond’ho gia molto amaro, et pi u n’attendo] onde
n’o molt’amaro, e pi u n’attendo P.
Quotations from Petrarch’s “Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta” and “Triumphi”

3. RVF 128.16 6. RVF 269.14 9. RVF 7.10 12. RVF 210.8 15. RVF 282.14 18. RVF 53.59
21. RVF 349.5 24. RVF 360.21 27. RVF 161.14 30. RVF 128.88 33. RVF 118.1 36. RVF
173.10 39. RVF 360.34 42. RVF 103.4 45. Tr. Temp. 40 48. RVF 23.74 51. Tr. Fam. 3.60
54. Tr. Cup. 2.81 57. RVF 223.6 60. RVF 193.14 63. RVF 213.1 66. RVF 1.4 69. RVF 13.11
72. RVF 190.7 75. RVF 99.8 78. RVF 255.1 81. RVF 221.1 84. Tr. Et. 108 87. RVF
266.3 90. Tr. Temp. 81 93. RVF 350.5 96. RVF 262.12 99. Tr. Cup. 4.66 102. RVF 207.27
105. RVF 42.4 108. RVF 360.51 111. Tr. Pud. 167 114. RVF 336.10 117. Tr. Fam. 2.19
120. RVF 319.6 123. RVF 361.5 126. RVF 195.12 129. RVF 270.6 132. RVF 57.7 135. RVF
70.42 138. Tr. Temp. 70 141. Tr. Temp. 73 144. Tr. Mor. 1.80 147. Tr. Mor. 1.76 150. RVF
270.23 151. RVF 89.8.
Translation
In Disparagement of Alchemy, by Vincenzo Danti, Perugian Sculptor
(1) In spite of myself, the perfidious fraud of the art in which the alchemist
rambles shall be heard (whatever my capacity) from my tongue. I am among
those described on the list of people who squandered, by this route, what one
struggles over many years to acquire, and whoever does not believe that
should just take a look at my gaunt appearance, which says “go poor and

naked, Philosophy.” (10) Woe is me, sorry and unhappy: once I was content
and now I live in anguish, made miserable by the very thing from which I
hoped to gain happiness, a consequence of wicked, sophistic deceits, which
make every man point at what I am, identifying me from my stride, voice,
face, and attire. Oh greedy and infinite Avarice, you lead others to where I
have been placed, among those who hate themselves and their all too long
lives! (19) When I am alone, I am often ashamed of myself, thinking about
what I am and what I used to be, so that I barely recognize myself. What my
long search produced is this: a desire that my tongue will be able to express
my miserable condition. And so I say to you, who change the nature of
sulfurs and metals: oh, stop and look how great is my suffering! (28) And if
you care even a little and wish to escape from error, be moved from time to
time by my perpetual loss, and look upon me with compassion, and believe
me, as one who knows, for sixteen years have now passed since this lace
snared me. From that moment, I abandoned all my good endeavors to pursue
this evil and cruel error, at times with frozen desires, at times with burning
ones. (37) I believed I would become rich, but it was not true: on the
contrary, poverty made me forget every other thought. Alchemy kept
carrying out her deeds, so that she made an example of me: beware that
the same does not happen to you.
The start of my suffering came from a friar, who was up to his neck in this
art, which at that point seemed to a me an extraordinary futility. (46) Behind
the convent, he kept a small room, and there he brought me, telling me not to
say a word about it. As soon as I was inside, he said: “This is the mother of the
art, now look carefully at this furnace of triangles, circles, and square forms.
And I cannot get my mind off this other one that you see on the ground: in all
the world, it was unique; it fell three times, and on the third time it lay there.
(55) Now come closer, and look at this moon with many ampoules. And now
I want to demonstrate all my labors to you, one by one. Here it is possible to
distill everything, this is what art, wit, nature, and heaven can produce from
a tower and a forge, and this is the little oven in which it is possible to refine
the silver and gold I create: in short, these are the graces that the generous
heavens bestow only on a few. (64) But I care little about this, as I don’t seek
to make myself rich — though that would have been important to me when I
was, in part, a different man than from who I am. Now poverty is my
profession, I work with this art only for pleasure, giving little value to the
things others desire.” Thus the father taught me the craft in a short time, and
he transformed me into the kind of miser who is caught up in searching for
treasure, (73) and who, just when he thinks he has discovered one, at that
moment wants still more: in the same way alchemy leaves the mind more and
more entangled, and makes those who work with it fail all over again, as is the
case now with me, persecuted by creditors, who make me long for the

evening and hate the dawn. Six times this year have I been called before the
jailers for debt: Oh, which fate is the reason for this? Which destiny of mine,
which force or deceit? (82) It was nothing other than my stubbornness, as I
didn’t want to clarify things, and now I see how people are deceived and how,
desperate, I keep on raving. And, alone, I ask myself, hardening my heart:
What could fortune possibly do to me that is worse than this? You who
believe it possible to change this or that metal into gold, abandon every hope
while you still can mend your error! (91) Silver and gold are extracted from
their proper veins; never is it possible to imitate them, for Nature does not
wish that, nor is it fitting. And this is the view I intend to maintain, and you,
Albertus, who have written on this, go ahead and come against me: indeed,
let every philosopher who ever existed come! Where are their rich spoils?
Why are their cities, encampments, and villages all now abandoned? They are
just dreams of sick men and follies of romances! (100) There is no need for
anyone to distill his brain any longer, since this hand of mine knows that I
have already searched countless ways: I burned more wood and coals in vain
than [Vulcan,] the most ancient Sicilian smith, keeps burning in Etna. The
search made me explore deserted lands, not just for days and months but for
years, seeking secrets from those who distill: (109) Oh, how many times, by
the light of a glowing ash, did I ascend the mountains of Norcia, at the
summit of which the ancient seat of the Sybil stands! Oh, everyone should
escape this art, and escape it before it becomes inveterate in him — as I said
before, I, like a man who goes astray and then comes to his senses. Trust no
one, since no one who has written on this could understand as much as I do,
not even a Nestor, who knew so much and lived so long. (118) And whoever
has this thirst, from which I have become scrawny and old, should say with
me: “whoever places his hope in you is completely blind.” And even though I
awake late from this sleep, I conclude and say: obeying Nature is in all things
best. And if anyone wishes to say that this art is simply hidden, and that
someday it will be discovered, I would respond: every impossible thing will
be possible before that! (127) Truly I wouldn’t wish to see even an enemy of
mine fall into this error, from which I have been completely unable to get
anything, because it is concealed to me, and that is why I am so miserable.
But in the end I care more about myself than about others, and before this
changes, winter will be summer, and the sun will lie down in the place
whence it rises. Alchemy was discovered by the Devil of Hell, and mines were
the good creation only of the eternal Master’s hand. (136) Now you
Alchemists, who waste your time and words in similar slumbers, take
comfort in your follies. I wish I could speak at greater length and breadth,
but alone I say to these crazy humors: it might be that I waste my words. I see
entrapped not just idiots but important people: popes, kings, and emperors.
(145) This fraud is like a rabid dog, which bites peoples of all kinds, from

India to China, from Morocco to Spain. I am one of them, and [now] I fully
understand the wicked venom that has grown continuously, from which I
have received much bitterness, and from which I expect still more, because it
would have deceived even those who are wiser than me.

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Vincenzo Danti’s Deceits

MICHAEL COLE, Columbia University

Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 1296–342 Ó 2016 Renaissance Society of America.

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Danti’s art have treated these achievements as a separate chapter of his

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personage in the “Capitolo” other than the narrator, goes unnamed. No

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hidden, and that someday it will be discovered,”24 he nods to arguments from

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And that ﬁlthy image of fraud came over and

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Figure 2. Danti. Allegory of Deceit. Detail: Geryon. Photo: Diletta Gamberini.

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Borghini complained that their identifying attributes could not be seen by

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by Benedetto Varchi identiﬁes the group as a representation of Honor and

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Danti’s “Capitolo,” which at ﬁrst seems to be biographical but gradually reveals

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Historians of sculpture have increasingly devoted themselves to investigations

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In Michelangelo’s statue, the overwhelming impression is that the young man

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excellent artist has no concept), itself a Petrarchan reﬂection on the relationship

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to notice a deterioration of the syntactical grip of the text. For instance, P ’s

Di Vincentio Danti Scultore Perugino in dispregio dell’Archimia

A mal mio grado, la bugiarda froda

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12 misero, onde sperava esser felice,

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54 tre volte cadde, et alla terza giace.

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96 venghin quanti ﬁlosoﬁ f^ ur mai.

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138 hor vi riconfortate in vostre fole.

Di Vincentio Danti Scultore Perugino in dispregio dell’Archimia] Capitolo di Vincenzo Danti

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Quotations from Petrarch’s “Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta” and “Triumphi”

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