L’intelletto e lo scultore, la statua e la bellezza: il Minturno di Tasso e la ‘funzione Ariosto’

Abstract

This article analyses the sources behind Torquato Tasso’s Minturno overo della bellezza. The most evident of these include Plato’s Hippias Major for its narrative outline, Plotinus’ Enneads and Nifo’s De Pulchro, as evidenced by the volumes annotated by Tasso and now preserved in the Vatican Library (Stamp. Barb. Cr. Tass. 46, 19 e 15). Tasso’s reinterpretation of the Platonic model, however, was also moulded by a continuous ‘dialogue’ with one of the most important literati of the 16th century, i.e. Ludovico Ariosto, who is cited throughout the text and whose influence proves much greater than what emerges at first glance. The presence of Ariosto and a personal consideration of Orlando furioso were in fact essential to Tasso for any discussion on beauty. In Tasso’s later judgement, Orlando Furioso would come to represent the highest example of courtly literature, a genre whose triumph had inevitably faded.