ABSTRACT
In 1581 Francesco Sansovino published one of his leading studies,1 titled: Venetia Città Nobilissima. This work includes the author’s descriptions of the narrative painting of Venice’s Great Council Hall. The painting was begun by Gentile Bellini in 1474 to replace, with oil on canvas, the trecento fresco cycle then in existence. The undertaking took considerable time and its first phase was not completed before 1523. In addition to Gentile Bellini, other artists became involved: Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, and Vivarini. In the custom of the period, it included portraits of well-known individuals. Carpaccio’s “section” portrayed the ritual of the consignment of the ducal umbrella. In spite of the purely Venetian character of the scene, Carpaccio went out of his way to include a number of Greek scholars, who had come to Venice as refugees after the gradual annexation of Greece by Ottoman Turkey and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. According to Sansovino’s description, these well-known scholars were Janos Argyropoulos, Demetrios Chalcondyles (= Khalko[ko]ndyles), Theodore Gaza, George Trapezountios (so designated and erroneously identified as “George of Trebizond”), and Manuel [= Emmanuel] Chrysoloras. They were all dressed, as Sansovino notes, alla greca with capelli in capo. These were important figures who contributed much to the education of Venetian noblemen in the studia humanitatis. Carpaccio labored on this painting in 1511, by which year nearly all of these scholars were already dead, with the possible exception of Khalkondyles, who appears to have been still alive, at least at that moment.2 In fact, as has been justly noted,3 this portrayal of the five Greeks “constituted a virtual chronology of Hellenic studies in quattrocento Italy.” The complete monumental opus was eventually destroyed in the fire of December 20, 1577. Portraits of these famous individuals were included in the engravings executed by Tobias Stimmer for Paolo Giovio’s book.4 It would not be surprising if we were to discover that Stimmer had 1 After its initial edition, this work was edited and reissued by Giovanni Stringa in the following century (Venice, 1604). It was again reworked, with additional material, and re-edited by Giustiniano Martinioni, who reissued it in two volumes in Venice in 1663 with a slightly expanded title: Venetia città nobilissima et singolare descritta in XIIII libri. 2 Geanakoplos, Interaction, p. 231, places his death in 1511. 3 Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity, p. 147; on this program and the difficulties involved with chronology of the cycle of paintings, which does not seem to have been completed before 1531, cf. Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven and London, 1988), items 272-279 of the catalogue. 4 Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum literis illustrium (Basel, 1577): Manuel Chrysoloras: fig. 41;
actually seen the Venetian paintings before their destruction and included elements of the lost work in his engravings. Manuel Chrysoloras’ commanding personality contributed considerably to the introduction of the ancient Greek language to Renaissance Europe.5 He wrote the first grammar of ancient Greek, which played an instrumental role in the circle of the new intellectuals of the Italian Renaissance, the humanists, who went to great lengths in their quest to learn Greek. Chrysoloras’ tome, jErwthvmata or Quaestiones, was printed and reprinted, once Guttenberg’s invention of the printing press began to replace the manuscript with the modern book. Thus there are numerous examples of early incunabula editions of this handbook and for a long time it served as the most basic tool available to humanists who wished to study Greek.6 Chrysoloras was a Greek by birth, traveled widely throughout Europe, accepted Catholicism, and died abroad. His career prefigures the professional lives of various Greek scholars who had abandoned their homeland in search of comfortable professorial positions in the humanistic environment of Renaissance Italy. Under less fortunate circumstances in subsequent years, other Greek intellectuals sought to escape the economic hardships of their homeland and its precarious position under the constant threat of annexation by the Ottoman Turks. They came to Italy in an endless stream, searching for comfortable professorial chairs. At first, this wave of migrating intellectuals from Constantinople was welcome. Thus George Gemistos Plethon, the famous Neoplatonist philosopher and the most original thinker of the Greek Middle Ages, received a warm welcome in Florence as a member of the Greek delegation that participated in the famous Council of Florence in 1438/1439.His presence in Florence revived the study of Platonism in Italy. Chrysoloras had paved the way, as his student, Leonardo Bruni, the Chancellor of the Signoria at Florence, had already translated about
and in Staikos, Cavrta th`~ JEllhnikh`~ Tupografiva~. Stimmer’s engraving of Chrysoloras does not derive from a pen drawing of Chrysoloras teaching Greek in the Studium at Florence and probably was executed by one of his students (Musée du Louvre Paris, Département des Dessins, no. 9849); cf. Cammelli. 5 Cf. among others, Geanakoplos, Byzantium and the Renaissance; idem, Interaction, pp. 226 ff.; Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus, passim; and Zakythinos, Metabuzantina;kai;Neva JEllhnikav, pp. 209-231. In addition, cf. Sabbadini, “L’ultimo Ventennio,” pp. 321-336; Mercati, “Una notiziola su Manuele Crisolora,” pp. 65-69; Thomson, pp. 76-82; and Staikos, Cavrta th`~ JEllhnikh`~ Tupografiva~. In addition, cf. now Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks: Fashioning the Other in 15th Century Italy (Philadelphia, 2004). 6 The editio princeps in Venice ca. 1471 by the printer Adam de Ambergau [= Oberammergau]: mostly a Latin rendition, perhaps under the care of Chrysoloras’ famous student, Guarino Veronese (1370-1460); cf. R. Sabbadini, Guarino Veronese e il suo epistolario (Salerno, 1885); idem, Vita di Guarino Veronese (Genoa, 1891); and idem, La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese (Catania, 1896). Next appeared an edition of Chrysoloras’ Greek text facing a Latin translation. Giovanni da Reno in Vicenza probably printed it in 1475/1476. An anonymous printer, in all likelihood Stephanus Corallus, in Parma ca. 1481, then produced an edition. The first dated edition (Venice, 1484) was by the printer Pellegrino Pasquale (in the house of Pasqualibus and Dionysius Bertochus). Furthermore, the jErwthvmata qualifies as the first printed Greek book to include a table of Corrigenda: the edition was by Demetrios Khalkokondyles (Chalcondyles) in Milan, ca. Erwthvmata. Per la storia e le
six works of Plato in the early decades of the quattrocento. And during Plethon’s visit, Candido Decembrio attempted to complete a translation of Plato’s Republic that his father, Uberto, had begun earlier. Plethon himself established personal contacts with important humanists such as Nicolaus Cusanus, Cardinal Cesarini, Ambrogio Traversari, Poggio Bracciolini, Leon Battista, Peter of Calabria (Pietro Vitali), Ugo Benzi, and Paolo Toscanelli. At Florence Plethon gave a series of lectures on the differences between Aristotle and Plato, which had an important impact, as Marsilio Ficino later claimed that they inspired the formation of the Platonic Academy that was established by Cosimo de’ Medici.7 Under the influence of such Greek scholars Constantinople came to be regarded by Italian humanists as a living museum, a virtual library of Alexandria, and western intellectuals entertained hopes of discovering in Constantinopolitan private and monastic libraries manuscripts of classical texts that had been lost to Europe since the beginning of the Middle Ages. This unfulfilled hope provided the basis for the famous lamentations over the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who was destined to become Pope Pius II. The sack of 1453 eliminated, to his dismay, this museum in one day and he voiced expressions of sorrow over the event on a number of occasions. His remarks underscore the distinguished role that Constantinople had played for western humanists, as the Greek capital had stood for so long as the only remaining bridge between their world and ancient wisdom:8
…nemo Latinorum satis videri doctus poterat, nisi Constantinopoli per tempus studuisset. Quodque florente Roma doctrinarum nomen habuerunt Athenae, id nostra tempestate videbatur Constantinopolis obtinere. Inde nobis Plato redditus, inde Aristotelis, Demosthenis, Xenophontis, Thuchididis, Basilii, Dionisii, Origenis et aliorum multa Latinis opera diebus nostris manifestata sunt, multa quoque in futurum manifestanda sperabamus…. Nunc ergo et Homero et Pindaro et Menandro et omnibus illustribus poetis secunda mors erit. Nunc Graecorum philosophorum ultimus patebit interitus. …no Latin could ever be considered educated, unless he had studied in Constantinople. The famous name that Athens enjoyed when Rome flourished was held by Constantinople in our own age. From there returned to us Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Thucydides, Basil, [Pseudo-]Dionysius [the Areopagite], Origen, and many others that became available to the Latins nowadays. There were many other works, which we hoped to uncover…. But now this will be the second death of Homer, of Pindar, of Menander, and of all the illustrious poets. This will be the final passing of the Greek philosophers.
