La Plume et le pinceau: Nicolas Denisot, poète et artiste de la Renaissance (1515–1559). Par Daniele Speziari.

Abstract

This volume, a revised version of a joint French–Italian PhD awarded in 2013, examines the life and works of Nicolas Denisot du Mans, a French Renaissance poet and painter also known under the anagrammatic pseudonym of the ‘Conte d’Alsinois’. It aims to rehabilitate this minor figure, famous certainly for his connections to the poets of the Pléiade, in particular Pierre de Ronsard, but more renowned for the quality of the portraits he engraved (for example, that of Marguerite de Navarre on the book cover) than for his poetry. Divided into six chapters of uneven length, the book retraces the ‘Pathways of an Existence between Poetry and Painting’ (Chapter 1) and provides an analysis of Denisot’s poetic works. Born in Le Mans, the young Denisot got involved in a literary argument between Clément Marot and the obscure François Sagon, and wrote, in defence of the latter, verses that were ‘so clumsy that [Denisot’s] name was used by his opponents to imply that he was a fool (sot)’ (DNB), or under the influence of Bacchus (Dionisius). He counterbalanced this inauspicious literary debut with his talent as a draughtsman, or calligrapher, collaborating on a map of Maine, his native province (1539) as well as on a map of Peru (1545). In 1545, Denisot published a collection of religious songs about the Nativity, the Noelz, under the pseudonym of the Conte d’Alsinois, before he left for Paris and then for London, where he acted as tutor to Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, the three elder daughters of Edward Seymour, first Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England. He ingratiated himself by writing in Latin verse a declamation on the death of Henry VIII and the accession of Edward VI. Back in France, he became acquainted with Parisian literary circles and above all the young poets of the Pléiade, who appreciated his talents as a portraitist. Upon the death of Marguerite de Navarre in 1549, he published two collective tombeaux, and gave a collection of cantiques to the press. He contributed to the French capture of Calais in 1558 by drawing a plan of the town, which he sent to the French king, and died a year later at the age of forty-four, as established by his unpublished will, examined and analysed here by Daniele Speziari. Chapter 2 is devoted to the study of Denisot’s religious poems, the Noelz and the Cantiques, with an exposé on these specific genres. (The influence of poets such as Marcantonio Flaminio and Nicole Bergedé has unfortunately been neglected.) Chapter 3 explores the illuminated manuscript, London, British Library, MS Royal 12 A VII. Chapter 4 examines the two volumes edited by Denisot commemorating the late Queen Marguerite de Navarre. Denisot first published the Hecatodistichon (1550), an elegy written by the Seymour sisters consisting of 104 Latin distichs. Meant to reinstate Anglo-French relations, as well as promote Denisot’s own glory, this volume was followed by another edition with translations in Greek, French, and Italian by famous poets of the Pléiade (1551). Chapter 5 comments briefly on Denisot as an artist, while Chapter 6 critiques the attribution of certain works to Denisot, in particular the prose novel L’Amant resuscité de la mort d’amour (1557). This scholarly work offers serious research, although some imprecision in its grammatical and stylistic analysis, and, above all, some clear overstatements of Denisot’s poetic skills, may be attributed to the enthusiasm of their promising young author.