Cervantes in Italy: Christian Humanism and the Visual Impact of Renaissance Rome

Abstract

Toward end of 1569, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Miguel de Cervantes arrived in Rome to serve as chamberlain to young monsignor Giulio de Acquaviva, soon to be made a cardinal by Pope Pius V.1 The event marked beginning of a six-year sojourn about which surprisingly little is known with certainty. From scattered semiautobiographical references we can infer that Cervantes traveled widely and that he developed a particular fondness for Italy. We know for sure that he fought bravely against Turks at battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he received wounds that rendered his left arm useless for rest of his life, and that he remained in service as a soldier, based in Italy, until his ill-fated attempt to return to Spain in 1575. Ten years later, in dedication of his pastoral romance La Galatea to Ascanio Colonna, he reminded his dedicatee that reverence he had for him did not only stem from having served under his illustrious father, famous general Marco Antonio Colonna, but also from many things that he had heard Cardinal Acquaviva say, like prophesies, about him in Rome. There follows a brief encomium about virtues, magnificence, goodness, and Christianity that sustain clear and generous line of Colonnas, known to all for virtuous and heroic deeds that have been their mark since time immemorial.2 Some of Cervantes's best lyric poetry dates from these years. In it, as in rest of his work, unmistakable mark of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Ariosto, and Bembo, to name but most explicit ones, leaves us in little doubt about his genuine love of Italian literature.For good reasons, modern biographers have been loath to take these scattered references too candidly. Can we, for example, assume that Cervantes had more than a very superficial acquaintance with Colonnas and Acquavivas? Could a writer still widely regarded as a self-taught, untutored mind realistically have attracted favors of some of most illustrious Roman and Neapolitan noble families? More pointedly, is it safe to take varied and abundant observations about Italy scattered throughout his works as reliable reflections of his own personal experiences? After all, between latter and written page there is a time lag often approaching forty years. Add to this weight of subsequent intellectual influences and of literary conventions, of novelistic invention and of viewpoints of characters themselves, and we are left on rather shaky ground. As Jean Canavaggio has remarked, it is not Cervantes keen visual observer, but rather Cervantes devoted reader of Boccaccio and novellieri who brings Italy and Italian themes into his fiction. Even memorable descriptions of Italian cities to be found in some of his novelas are rather formulaic passages, perfectly in tune with rhetorical canons of time.3Our topic, however, is not biography but intellectual history; and here we can afford to be more candid. There can be no doubt that many of Cervantes's descriptions have unmistakable ring of genuine experience. Take Tomas Rodaja's arrival, soaked, sleep-deprived and with bags under eyes, in Genoa's sheltered Mandraccio,4 where he becomes acquainted withthe smoothness of Trebbiano, fullness of Montefiascone, strength of Asperino, generosity of Greeks Candia and Soma, grandeur of one from Five Vineyards, sweetness and mellowness of lady Vernaccia, rustic touch of Centola, while lowly one from Rome dared not appear in presence of such illustrious gentlemen.5Charmed by gallantry of Genoese, Rodaja leaves by land for Rome, the queen of cities and mistress of world. Just as size and ferocity of a lion can be gauged by its claws, Cervantes observed,so Rome's greatness became manifest by its broken marbles, its statues . …