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This book is centered on the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), on his ascent of Mount Etna in 1493, and above all on the striking artistic originality of the elegant Latin work that he wrote about his climb after his return to Venice in 1494: his
De Aetna, published at the Aldine press in Venice in 1496.
List of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. The Etna Idea
- I: Pindar, Pythian 1
- II: Virgil and Lucretius
- III: Seneca, Ovid and the Aetna Poet
- IV: The Open-Ended Etna Idea
- Chapter 2. From Memory to Modernity
- I: Mnemonic Topography
- II: Antiquarian Travel before Bembo
- III: Urbano Bolzanio
- IV: Etna as an Island, Noniano as a Memory Place
- V: Petrarch on Mont Ventoux
- VI: De Aetna and the History of Mountaineering
- VII: Banishing Hellish Myth and Legend
- Chapter 3. From Venice to Sicily: Bembo's Greek Education, His Teachers,
- His Inspirers
- I: Poliziano, the Bembine Terence, and Bembo's Sogno
- II: Bembo's Greek Studies in Messina
- III: Absent Presences: Giorgio Valla and Ermolao Barbaro
- IV: The Half-Story So Far
- Chapter 4. De Aetna in the Context of Quattrocento Venetian Humanism
- I: Ermolao Barbaro, Born for Letters, Bred for State-Service
- II: The Evolution of Quattrocento Venetian Humanism
- III: Pietro's Peers, Gli Asolani, and the Leggi della Compagnia degli Amici
- (i) Angelo Gabriele
- (ii) Gli Asolani, and Pietro's Correspondence with Trifone Gabriele
- (iii) Vincenzo Quirini and Tommaso Giustiniani
- Chapter 5. Physical Form and Textual Meaning in the Aldine Book: The Symbolic
- Significance of Typeface
- I: Venice, the Rise of Printing, and the Aldine Press
- II: The Aldine Octavo Hand-Book
- III: The Interrelationship of Physical Form and Textual Meaning
- IV: Bernardo Bembo, Petrarch's Laura, and Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de'
- Benci
- V: End-Point, Start-Point
- Chapter 6. Activations of Landscape in De Aetna
- I: Venice, the Veneto, and Villa Culture
- II: Father and Son in Pietro's Early Verses
- III: The Recalibration of Perspective Through Contrasts of Landscape
- IV: Shaping Etna's Landscape Through Poetic Inscription
- Chapter 7. The Bembo Collection, and Evocations of Noniano
- I: Pietro Bembo the Collector
- II: Coins, Medals, and Valerio Belli's Bembo
- III: Titian, Bembo, and Evocation of Sweet Noniano
- IV: De Aetna and Naturalist Collecting
- V: Bembo and Giovanni Bellini
- Text and Translation
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages
- General Index
- Index of Latin Words
- Index of Greek Words
About the author
Gareth D. Williams is Violin Family Professor of Classics, Columbia University. His previous OUP publications include The Cosmic Viewpoint (2016) and Roman Reflections (with Katharina Volk, 2015).
Summary
This book is centered on the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), on his ascent of Mount Etna in 1493, and above all on the striking artistic originality of the elegant Latin work that he wrote about his climb after his return to Venice in 1494: his De Aetna, published at the Aldine press in Venice in 1496.
Additional text
Williams's volume is a carefully-crafted delight which interweaves rigorous scholarship on the Classical intertexts and Humanist influences of Bembo's De Aetna with a beautiful thread detailing the painfully human relationship between Bembo father and son.
