go against the rules and your judgement.)211
By comparison to those in Libro del Cortegiano and most sixteenth-century dialogues, Vitauro’s protestations in La Villa seem weak. Late in the dialogue (p. 159) Vitauro says, “But I am a farmer of little esteem, and I cannot satisfy your desire well.”
Taegio did not take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the dialogue form’s inclusion of multiple voices to diminish his authority or conceal his opinions, nor did he use a cornice to project an appearance of modesty, even though that device was a characteristic feature of sixteenth-century dialogues. Although modestà was a trait generally admired as much in gentlemen as in courtiers in Taegio’s day, it is possible that his esteem for it was not especially high; of the more than two hundred villa owners flattered by Taegio in La Villa, only two are praised for their modesty.
Taegio did capitalize on another capabilitiy of the dialogue form. The value of the opportunity afforded by the dialogue form to praise acquaintances, and to invent flattering portraits of those presented as interlocutors, was attested by several sixteenth-century Italian writers. Sforza Pallavicino, in his Trattato dello stile e del dialogo (1662) wrote,
[Il Dialogo] si col divisato colloquio di moderni Letterati, si col premesso racconto della lor condizione, apre un’ illustre campo ad onorar le memoria di quei defonti a cui dottrina onorò il secol nostro mentre fur vivi.
(As an imagined conversation between modern men of letters, prefaced by an account of their circumstances, the dialogue offers a splendid opportunity for honoring the memory of those men, now deceased, who honored the world with their learning while they were alive.)212
Giovanni Fratta, in 1590, said that the dialogue is a way “ampliar la riputatione a gli amici” (to increase the fame of our friends).213 In a letter to Curzio Ardizio dated 27 June 1584, where he described his project for a commemorative dialogue to be set in the court of Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Torquato Tasso wrote that “il buon duca Guidobaldo … in guisa col suo testimonio m’onorò, ch’io al valor di lui non debbo alcun testimonio negare” (the good duke Guidobaldo so honored me with his testimony that I cannot grudge him any testimony I can give his valor).214
The literary dialogue provided the cultural elite of a society that was in an almost continual state of political siege with a means of satisfying a deeply felt need for self-definition. In Italy generally and particularly in Milan, a series of foreign occupations and economic upheavals in the sixteenth century resulted in a loss of distinct identity for the old aristocratic orders of society, which was just as serious as the erosion of their political control. One reaction to this loss was an increased demand for the kinds of self-images that literary dialogues can supply. In response to this demand, authors of dialogues in the sixteenth century often presented acquaintances as interlocutors. In his dialogue on horsemanship, Il Cavallarizzo (1562), Claudio Corte stated that one of his reasons for using the dialogue form was “per nominare alcuni patroni, e amici” (to name a few patrons and friends).215 Because positive self-images had commercial value, an author like Corte could expect to profit from their publication. In exchange for favorable publicity and perhaps a chance of gaining literary immortality, he might have received patronage, political protection, or even something more tangible. Pietro Aretino, in his Lettere, wrote that to be portrayed as an interlocutor in one of Sperone Speroni’s dialogues was “un tesoro che per sempre spenderlo mai non iscemerà” (a treasure that one can keep spending forever, without it ever running out).216
The expectation of reward may have motivated Bartolomeo Taegio to honor villa owners who were contemporaries of his by mentioning them, and by praising them for their virtue and erudition, in La Villa.217 Many of those Taegio mentioned were his “patrons,” thirteen were friends to whom he addressed Le Risposte, and one, Alessandro Castiglione, had been his schoolmate at the University of Pavia. The names of at least two members of the Academy of the Shepherds of the Agogna, Giovanni Pietro Testa and Giovanni Iacopo Torniello, appear in La Villa. It is possible that other “shepherds” known only by their pseudonyms in the Academy are also named.
Taegio’s Dialogue with His Sources
La Villa can be read not only as a conversation between interlocutors but also as a dialogue between the author and his literary sources. The arguments on both sides in La Villa rely heavily on the accepted authority of sources cited, and they are supported almost exclusively with references to ancient and Renaissance philosophical writings. In this respect too Taegio departed from the tradition of Italian Renaissance dialogues based on the model of Cicero, who wrote, “Non enim tam auctores in disputando quam rationis momenta quaerenda sunt” (indeed, in discussion the weight of reason rather than authority is sought).218 In La Villa, Vitauro’s proposition is demonstrated to have more validity than Partenio’s, not because it is reasoned better, but because it is represented as having more authority. Taegio argued from the authority of Greek writers such as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and Hesiod, as well as Latin ones, including Cato, Varro, Columella, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Seneca, and both the elder and the younger Pliny. Taegio also drew from the works of the Italian authors Angelo Poliziano and Jacopo Sannazaro, as well as Petrarch and the Florentine humanists. Taegio did not, as a rule, identify his sources, and he usually referred to them indirectly, either by alluding to the author’s oeuvre in general, rather than to a specific work, or by simply mentioning the author’s name. Often he neglected to identify the authors whose words or ideas he clearly was borrowing. Not once in La Villa did Taegio provide the title of a literary source, although here and there he dropped a hint, such as “Virgil in his rustic poem” (meaning the Georgics). Nowhere did he quote a classical text in its original language or render a literal translation; rather, he consistently presented paraphrases of Greek and Latin works. There is no reason to doubt that Taegio could have composed the paraphrases of classical texts himself; his seventeenth-century biographers praised him for his scholarship, and his ability to write verse is evident from the fact that he published his own poetry in Italian. Wherever Taegio’s classical source is poetry, his paraphrase appears in his native Italian with a rhyme scheme and meter of its own. Taegio quoted verbatim some of his Italian sources, such as Sannazaro’s Arcadia, but where he quoted Petrarch’s Rime sparse he did so without mentioning the poet’s name or in any way giving him credit for his verses.
Taegio used literary sources to support virtually every point of his argument for the superiority of country life over city life. He put his argument in the mouth of Vitauro, whose literary references are both more numerous and more effective than Partenio’s. In the first thirty-three pages of the dialogue, Partenio makes four references to literary sources. First he alludes to Aristotle, whose “man is by nature a social being” from the Nichomachean Ethics Partenio recalls with the words “Man came into this world not for himself alone but also for others” (p. 10). Then Partenio’s summarizes the plot of Homer’s Odyssey, in which, he says, Ulysses is praised for action, not contemplation. The third reference, which is unattributed, is an expression that appears more than once in fourteenth-century Italian literature. Partenio’s phrase “Cities are made for men and villas for beasts” (p. 15) echoes the words of the raconteur Franco Sacchetti who, in the 1380s, wrote that “la citta buon’ uomini de’ fare, la villa buone bestie a notricare” (the city should produce good men, the villa good livestock).219 Sacchetti was apparently retelling the same proverb quoted by Paolo da Certaldo in his Libro di buoni costumi. Finally Partenio makes a specific and attributed reference to Virgil’s Georgics, which he paraphrases to support his claim that men were happier in the age of iron, after cities were built, than in the golden age.
Responding to Partenio’s assertion that men in the country are less virtuous than those in the city, Vitauro replies, in words that bring to mind the ideas of Pico, Ficino, Bovillus, Petrarch, and Pomponazzi, that the vices of city dwellers outweigh their virtues
