The Death of the Child Valerio MarcelloMargaret King shows what the death of a little boy named Valerio Marcello over five hundred years ago can tell us about his time. This child, scion of a family of power and privilege at Venice's time of greatness, left his father in a state of despair so profound and so public that it occasioned an outpouring of consoling letters, orations, treatises, and poems. In these documents, we find a firsthand account, richly colored by humanist conventions and expectations, of the life of the fifteenth-century boy, the passionate devotion of his father, the feelings of his brothers and sisters, the striking absence of his mother. The father's story is here as well: the career of a Venetian nobleman and scholar, patron and soldier, a participant in Venice's struggle for dominion in the north of Italy. Through these sources also King traces the cultural trends that made Marcello's century famous. Her work enlarges our view of the literature of consolation, which had a distinctive tradition in Venice, and shifting attitudes toward death from the late Middle Ages onward. For the depth and acuity of its insights into political, cultural, and private life in fifteenth-century Venice, this book will be essential reading for students of the Renaissance. For the grace and drama of its storytelling, it will be savored by anyone who wishes to look into life and death in a palace, and a city, long ago. |
Contents
1 | |
CHAPTER TWO The Birth of a Book | 24 |
CHAPTER THREE Marcello in Word and Image | 60 |
CHAPTER FOUR Marcello in War and Peace | 95 |
CHAPTER FIVE Father and Son | 136 |
CHAPTER SIX In Sympathy | 173 |
APPENDIX ONE Marcello Family and Monuments | 203 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adda Ambrosian Republic animi Anon April army atque Attendolo August Barbaro Bevilacqua Brescia captain Casalmaggiore cello chap child Chron condottiere Consolatio consolation consolatory letter Crema death doge Dolfin enim etiam father filii Fortebraccio Foscari Francesco Filelfo Francesco Foscari Francesco Sforza Gattamelata George of Trebizond Giorgio Giovanni Girolamo Giustiniani grief grieve Guarino honor humanist Jacopo Antonio Marcello King Lecoy letter to Jacopo Lodi Ludovico Manetti manuscript Marcello family Marco Mascarello mihi Milan military modo Monselice mourning Niccolò Niccolò Piccinino nobleman Nogarola November nunc obitu October oration Orsini Padua palace Pannonius Pasquale Malipiero pater peace Perleone Perleone's Piccinino Pietro provveditore quae quam quibus quid quod Renaissance René d'Anjou Sagundino San Cristoforo Sanuto Senate letter September sorrow tamen Texts tibi tion Valerio Marcello VatS Venetian Veneto Venice Venice's Verona Veronese Visconti vita
Popular passages
Page xi - JEG-P Journal of English and Germanic philology JHI Journal of the history of ideas JMH Journal of modern history MLN Modern language notes MLQ Modern language quarterly iThe year of a review is 1944 unless otherwise specified.
Page 437 - Cenci, Promozioni agli ordini sacri a Bologna e alle dignità ecclesiastiche nel Veneto nei secoli XIV-XV, Firenze 1968, pp.