Between Dante and Caesar. The Vernacular Policy of Filippo Maria Visconti

Abstract

This paper offers a new perspective on vernacular literature in Milan in the 1430s, when Duke Filippo Maria Visconti commissioned from the humanists of his court vernacular translations of ancient histories and commentaries on Dante’s Comedy and Petrarch’s Canzoniere. These works, often dismissed as courtly products, were part of an ambitious cultural project that was carried out by humanists like Filippo Maria’s secretary Pier Candido Decembrio and Guini-forte Barzizza, but their attitude toward the duke’s commissions betrays their uneasiness with vernacular literature. It was the duke of Milan who, having sensed the political impact of promoting vernacular literature in Milan, intended to take over from Florence the role of driving force of Italian literature. Had not the Visconti army been defeated at Anghiari in 1440, Filippo Maria would have further pursued his ambition to politically and linguistically unify Italy under Milan’s rule.