Parentino a New York. Un antefatto del Polifilo

Abstract

The paper focuses on a drawing by Bernardino da Parenzo, the Antique scene (Triumph of Jupiter?) in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Starting with a critical revision of the chronology of Parentino's drawings, the New York Antique scene's subject will be considered in the light of the inscription, bearing the unusual dedication to a mysterious «dio ambiguo». By presenting different possibile identifications, none of them really convincing, Triumph of Ambiguity will be proposed as a new title for the drawing, since for the humanist collectors in the late XVth century Veneto Ambiguity had a positive meaning. The same dedication to the «dio ambiguo» appears in a xylography in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a novel written by Francesco Colonna and published in 1499 in Venice by the famous printer Aldo Manuzio. Bernardino da Parenzo was well known among venetian typographies and he was employed by the monks of Santa Giustina in Padua in the years immediately preceding the publication of Colonna's work. The monks were also commissioners to Benedetto Bordon, a paduan miniaturist who was the principal draftsman involved in the realization of Hypnerotomachia's xylographic illustration. Therefore, we can assume that drawings like Parentino's New York sheet were known to Colonna, who, conforming to his habits, re-used elements from the drawing, treating a modern antique scene as a real roman triumph. The conclusion of the article is devoted to this particular 'anachronic' attitude towards time and to the relationship with antique sources in the late Quattrocento Veneto.