Mythography and the Reception of Classical Mythology in the Renaissance, 1340–1600

Abstract

Abstract This chapter surveys the Greco-Roman mythological tradition from the mid-14th century to the late 16th. It begins with Bersuire, who continued the medieval tradition of allegorizing Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Boccaccio, who continued the genealogical tradition in his Genealogia deorum gentilium and wrote several additional influential works. Boccaccio was the first humanist scholar to incorporate ancient Greek texts, albeit only the Homeric epics. They were followed in the early 15th century by Salutati, Christine de Pizan, Chaucer, Lydgate, and several others. The subsequent expansion of Greek studies inspired both poets (Poliziano) and painters (Pollaiuolo, Botticelli) associated with the Medici court, and the late 15th-century interest in ancient theater, sponsored by other northern Italian dynasties, revived Plautus’s Amphitryon and inspired Niccolò da Correggio’s Cefalo. Poliziano’s Orfeo established a mythological pastoral tradition that in the 16th century produced such popular dramas as Tasso’s Aminta and Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido, and such comprehensive syntheses as Sannazaro’s and Sydney’s Arcadia poems. The nonclassical epics of Tasso (La Gerusalemme Liberata) and Ariosto (Orlando Furioso) adapted numerous myths and Greco-Roman motifs. The survey concludes with the important scholarly contributions of Giraldi, Cartari, and Conti, the Florentine Masquerade of 1565, and the mid-16th-century paintings of Titian.