The eighteenth-century libertine
print this pageMarsili was a frequent visitor to theatres and parties, especially during the Carnival period in Venice. A few hints in this regard transpire from the correspondence with Gennari to whom he writes, in a letter dated 9 January 1750:
"Here the masques have already been licensed and everyone runs to the masques. The Theatres are open, and one hears nothing but talk about Comedies. The Chiaristi of St. Samuele, and the Goldonisti of St. Angelo are in a fight. There is the promise of great things, and there are expectations on every side... "
And not only! He liked to play cards and probably even bet; on December 14, 1747 he writes to Gennari: "if only I had money, I would buy some books; but even when I have some Ducat, I gladly trade it, but not to read them; rather, one occasionally plays the honourable game of Ombre, to keep busy ..."
A gambling house in the century XVIII represented in the painting of a disciple of Pietro Longhi (from Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)
Forced to go home due to a cold, on 5 February 1759 he tells Gennari that "the eight card games purchased by Lazzero have already been put to work. It is therefore necessary that you have the courtesy to provide me with another ten or fifteen...". He has a passion for cards, played over the years and cultivated together with friends of a lifetime:
"Yesterday evening, with placid shouts, there was a jamboree at Bresciani’s house. Borromeo, Mussati, Uccelli, and the Abbé Fovel were invited there with me. We had a good meal, and we drank as required. The only thing missing to complete the party was you", he tells Gennari on 6 March 1752.
To reveal this less inhibited and formal aspect that makes him a product of his time, a member to all effects of that cosmopolitan and sparkling society recounted by Goldoni and painted by Tiepolo and Longhi, which would shortly afterwards be devastated by Napoleon's Armies, below is a small exposition of volumes ranging from religious to social provocation through the licentious novel, the burlesque poetry, and a printed account of a baroque festival, all of which document a curious mind, open and without prejudices.
PAGE INDEX
- Des Periers, Cymbalum mundi (1732)
- Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, Le sopha (1742)
- Bartolomeo Vitturi, La serenata di Ciapino e il lamento della Ghita... (1750)
- Le feste d'Apollo (1732)
Bonaventure Des Periers, Cymbalum mundi (1732)
The Cymbalum mundi, a precocious pamphlet in defence of the French language against Latin and an anti-Christian satire of the Revelation was put on the index as early as 1538, almost disappearing from the bibliographic panorama until when Marchand, in 1711, and again in 1732, presented it to the public: Mercury, the protagonist of the first three dialogues, is sent to the earth by Jupiter to deliver the book of Destinies, discusses with philosophers about the philosopher's stone, and gets angry after being robbed of the precious volume; two dogs, having obtained the ability to speak after having devoured Actaeon’s tongue, close the story by discussing the silly curiosity of men for extraordinary things.
Frontispiece and title page of Cymbalum mundi (from Phaidra)
Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, Le sopha (1742)
In its first edition of 1742, Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon’s Le sopha in the guise of the moral narrative and justifying itself as an oriental story, tells of the strange mutation of Amanzéï who, transformed into a sofa, becomes – against his will – the backdrop and witness of various romantic adventures and misadventures, the story of which he recounts in full to the Sultan Shah-Baham.
Bartolomeo Vitturi, La serenata di Ciapino e il lamento della Ghita. Stanze rusticali (1750)
Marsili was a member of the Granelleschi Academy founded by the Gozzi brothers, Daniele Farsetti and other writers in 1747, with the aim of fighting rhetoric and defending the purity of the Italian language, above all from Gallicisms, and where he himself had the opportunity to cultivate his passion for the burlesque compositions that he composed in imitation of Berni: here La serenata di Ciapino e il lamento della Ghita of his friend and brother Bartolomeo Vitturi, who participates with a conclusive octave while Gaspare Gozzi writes the wonderfully illustrated opening sonnet with two full-page plates engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815), a vignette engraved on copper on the title page, a running head and three large endnotes, of which two are Piazzetta's invention, engraved by Fiorenza Marcello and Felicita Sartori, who anticipate that eighteenth-century and preromantic sensitivity for nature and the idyllic. The miscellany also contains Gozzi’s response, La Ghita e il Piovano, and the Epistola in versi by Giuseppe Gennari, as the manuscript index to the volume specifies.
Le feste d'Apollo... (1732)
This volume documents the show set up in Parma on August 24, 1769 for the wedding of Duke Ferdinand I of Bourbon and Archduchess Maria Amalia of Habsburg-Lorraine: a “total show” in the tradition of the Baroque Feasts, which includes all the arts and a theatrical moment in which the Court stages itself.
The prologue is followed by three scenic actions – Filemone and Bauci, Aristeo, Orfeo – which have as their subject faithful love capable of overcoming time and death, set to music by Christoph Willibald Gluck, also with pieces used before, such as the famous aria "Che farò senz'Euridice, dove andrò senza il mio bene". In the libretto each of them is preceded by an engraving.
Two illustrations of Le feste d'Apollo (from Phaidra)