Il Dialogo de’ giuochi by Girolamo Bargagli and the Women of Siena: Culture, Independence, and Politics

The history of sixteenth-century Siena contains, hidden in the folders of its official documentation, extremely rich and extremely fragmented glimpses of many women. ¹ In this essay, I intend to identify several women named in Girolamo Bargagli’s 1572 Sienese parlor-game book Dialogo de’ giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare (Dialogue of the games that are usually played in Sienese meetings). ² The Dialogo, while an imagined exchange and not a historical record, is a significant archival source because of the prominence Bargagli gives to the surnames of many of its women protagonists. Using these surnames, and my own archival work on Sienese women from the beginning of the sixteenth century up to the 1570s when the Spanish and Florentine conquests had modified forever the legal status of the Sienese Republic and introduced it as a Stato nuovo (new state) into the Florentine dominium, I aim to establish the historical identities behind the names in the Dialogo. These women left notable traces through Siena’s history and in some cases its poetry as well. In addition to identifying them, I will retrace their social lives and cultural engagement, paying particular attention to their families, community, and personal connections. By doing so, I will amplify these women’s cultural role, rather than letting their presence and influence slip through the cracks of written history.

The history of medieval Siena is well known, but it is useful to review its complex situation in the mid-sixteenth century, and in particular its political context, in order to better understand women’s role. Siena was one of only a few Italian city-republics to remain independent until the 1550s. With a geographical position in the middle of the country, Siena struggled to limit its incorporation by both the Empire and the French crown; powers that were eager to position themselves politically in Italy. Siena was reluctant to accept that the world was rapidly changing, or that its geographical position was considered strategic for the control of Italy. While societal and political balances evolved, Siena continued to present itself as a free republic based on wide access to public offices, open – theoretically – to all men who were citizens. Both offices and appointments in the city and the contado (countryside) required very frequent turnover and access, in reality, was limited to a select few.

From the beginning of the Quattrocento, citizens were divided into five monti (groupings). Each took its name from the social, political, and economic group that governed the city during its history. The Monte dei Gentiluomini was made up of the most ancient and feudal families whose superior rank was defined by wealth and nobility, such as the Piccolomini and the Tolomei families. The Monte dei Nove was created after the government described as leading Siena’s golden age from 1289 to 1355 fell. The Monte dei Dodici took its name from the government that overthrew the Noveschi and then held power from 1355 to 1368. The Monte del Popolo was made up of the descendants of the members of the government that ruled from 1368 to 1385. Finally, the Monte dei Riformatori took its name from the government that ruled from 1385 to 1399, when Siena for a brief period of time experienced the lordship of Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan. At the end of the century, when theoretical discussions on the shape of government began, the monti were reduced to three as each struggled for power. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Siena defined itself as a Ghibelline and strongly anti-Florentine city. But from the end of the fifteenth century onwards, the Monte dei Nove opposed this tradition – and it was to this monte that Pandolfo Petrucci “the Magnificent,” Siena’s only officially recognized lord, who ruled from 1494 to 1512, belonged.

After Pandolfo’s death, the city tried to make different political and institutional adjustments to resist both Florentine flatteries and also an attempt to reintroduce a government based on wider access to political office, which the Noveschi fiercely opposed. Political discussion focused on the merits of a “wide” government theoretically accessible to everyone versus a “narrow” government in which only select groups of citizens, composed always of the same individuals, held real power. This discussion had already taken place in Florence at the beginning of the Cinquecento, when in 1502 Piero Soderini was elected gonfaloniere for life after Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici was expelled in 1494. In Siena this happened some years later. As David Hicks writes, “the Sienese governors were aristocrats and the five parties comprised an aristocracy – an aristocracy founded on and nourished by political privilege, having as its economic base agriculture, and as its social idea the leisurely life.” ³

In 1527, the Noveschi were exiled after Pope Clement VII (Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici), supporter of Fabio Petrucci, the youngest son of Pandolfo and disapproved lord of Siena, attempted – and failed – to conquer the city. Siena rejected both Fabio’s political decision to side with Florence (his wife was Caterina, daughter of Florentine Galeotto de’ Medici) and the pro-French politics that the papacy supported at that time. ⁴ In order to limit the local factionalism that was neither justifiable to the Emperor nor manageable outside or in, the Empire tightened its military presence in Siena. The first Spanish garrison was sent into the city in 1530 anyway, even if Siena strongly defended, by words, its Ghibelline, and thus imperial – although not Florentine – side.

Even if history has been concerned mainly with men in Siena’s political evolution, women of the upper social classes left significant traces in both official and private records. Many documents were thrown away in a disastrous eighteenth-century reorganization of the city archive, but those that bore important and famous family names escaped destruction. ⁵ Information on women who belonged to families that were politically involved in the government or had notable surnames such as Piccolomini, Petrucci, or Chigi is more available than information on those who did not.

One window through which to examine Sienese women and their social and cultural agency is Bargagli’s Dialogo. Bargagli dedicated his text to “donna Isabella de’ Medici … ma dilettevole alle donne ancora” (lady Isabella de’ Medici … but delightful to women, too), ⁶ and quotes a selection of those dedicatees within its pages. To better understand women’s presence in the Dialogo and within Sienese society, I turn first to their role in the Accademia degli Intronati, an important Siena cultural institution – of which Bargagli was a member – that promoted a forward-looking attitude about women and their activities.

The Accademia was established in 1524 by Antonio Vignali (“l’Arsiccio Intronato”) ⁷ first as an acting company. ⁸ In 1527, Vignali together with Marcantonio Piccolomini (“il Sodo Intronato”) and Francesco Bandini Piccolomini – the future archbishop of Siena – reorganized it as an intellectual academy, with its statutes and crest depicting a pumpkin with two crossed pestles above the motto “meliora latent” (the better things are hidden), taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Voltaire was later listed among its members. ⁹ The Accademia’s maxims were “Orare, Studere, Gaudere, Neminem laedere, Nemini credere, De mundo non curare” (to pray, to study, to relish, not to harm anyone, not to believe anyone, to neglect worldly matters). It underwent many closings and reopenings, until in 1568 the duke ordered it, together with all other Sienese academies, closed over public security issues. A chapter in the Accademia’s statute prohibited the Intronati not only from speaking about politics, but also from participating in them. Despite the statute and the maxim to neglect worldly matters, it is difficult to imagine that its members, who were directly involved in government, would not talk about politics when they convened as a group. ¹⁰

The official goal of the Accademia was to widen the rank of intellectuals, spreading to people unfamiliar with Latin and science “a knowledge which is creation and focus of a specific kind of audience.” One of its members’ most important spaces for doing so was the veglia, a social gathering that could be held in the city or the countryside and that could take place in the context of other activities such as weddings and christenings. The veglie typically involved after-dinner intellectual games in which participants played a form of charades, mimicking social behaviors to be guessed; quoted from well-known books; and asked quibbling questions drawn from the details of texts they had read. Participation required members to possess a common literary knowledge, one that often included Dante and Petrarch, but also trendier works such as “Amadigi di Gaula,” ¹¹ which Bernardo Tasso later took as a model, readapted poetically, and published in 1560. ¹² The veglie were politically neutral spaces in which, in the years before the Spanish conquest at least, political differences were not considered a barrier to sociability. ¹³

While women were excluded from intellectual activity within the official school culture of Siena, they could participate in the Accademia within the context of a veglia or within the physical space of a salotto (reception room). Here, they could have an active – even crucial – intellectual role in guaranteeing the liberal, open, and civil tone of the exchanges taking place. As McClure writes, “Somewhere between the fully public male contests (e.g., tournaments) and fully private games in women’s quarters, parlor games – occurring in the public room of the private home among mixed company – comprised a playing and viewing public that afforded a novel venue for discourse on a variety of literary, social, and political issues.” ¹⁴ Women also comprised a large part of the audience at the Accademia’s annual Carnival comedy performance. As Eisenbichler points out: “Firmly grounded in the realities of their time, these Sienese women used the Petrarchan idiom to correspond, to plead, to congratulate, and to lament.” ¹⁵ The Dialogo suggests they were also encouraged to do so, as McClure observes: “Girolamo’s Dialogo clearly emphasized the activist role of women, who should not demur from participation for reasons of modesty but rather show the same ‘boldness of mind’ as men.'” ¹⁶ The Accademia transmitted its attitudes in mediums such as comedies, prologues, orations, and other texts – and as an intended audience, women’s literary tastes were as a result influential in the Intronati’s choices and developing culture.

Bargagli, born in 1537, entered the Accademia with the sobriquet of “Materiale” in 1557 and wrote the Dialogo around 1563–64. The book refers to a recent but already lost “mythical” golden age, arguably the 1540s, ¹⁷ when Siena, while trying to limit Spanish control, was not yet split into two opposing factions incapable of civil coexistence. (The Dialogo references Enea Piccolomini, who in 1552 led the citizens’ revolt against the Spanish garrison sent by Charles V.) ¹⁸ The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, Bargagli refers to ancient times, in which Marcantonio Piccolomini (“il Sodo Intronato”) recalls to an unspecified audience the “molto onorate imprese” (very respectable feats; here meaning the honest intellectual entertainment) and the “pura e onesta dimestichezza” (pure and honest familiarity) with the women of the city. In the second part, Bargagli complains about the “severi sindacatori” (harsh judges) who supported the superiority of philosophy and law over literature. In both parts of the Dialogo, Bargagli describes the most common games played during a veglia. To illustrate the core of the gioco (game), Bargagli describes it as “una festevole azzione d’una lieta e amorosa brigata, dove sopra una piacevole od ingegnosa proposta fatta da uno, come autore e guida di tale azzione, tutti gli altri facciano o dicano alcuna cosa l’un dall’altro diversamente, e questo a fin di diletto e d’intertenimento” (a festive action of a happy and amorous group, where atop a pleasant or clever proposal made by one, as author and guide of this action, all the others make or say something each of them differently, and that for the purpose of amusement and entertainment). ¹⁹

Women participate in the veglie as Bargagli fictitiously describes them. But who exactly are these women? ²⁰ While the full names and identities of every woman quoted by name in the Dialogo are yet unknown, largely they were real women associated in the text with their real names. Not all works take such a clear approach. Scipione, one of Girolamo’s two younger brothers, wrote his I Trattenimenti presumably around 1567 and published it in Venice in 1587. ²¹ I Trattenimenti has a similar context to the Dialogo, as McClure points out: “Although written in the 1560s, both works are set in the previous decade in the course or aftermath of the siege and fall of Siena.” ²² Scipione gives his protagonists classical nicknames, citing the desire to protect them and their honor. ²³ Girolamo Bargagli, however, openly identifies women known to Sienese society and establishes their social agency within the context of the Accademia’s veglie.

The Women of the Dialogo

Given that ready knowledge of literate culture was a requisite at the veglie, it is not surprising to find that the women Bargagli names as participants were also involved – a few of them directly – in literary activity. Following the Accademia’s ideas about spreading knowledge and culture, writings by its members as well as important translations of Latin texts were dedicated to some of these Sienese noblewomen, including Aurelia Tolomei, Giulia and Aurelia Petrucci, Girolama Carli Piccolomini, and Eufrasia Venturi. ²⁴

The presence of Laudomia Forteguerri in the group named by Bargagli is particularly interesting. Laudomia was born in June 1515, ²⁵ preceded by a likely dead sister, born in 1511, with whom she shares a name. ²⁶ The younger Laudomia married Giulio Cesare di Alessandro Colombini around 1535, and gave birth to three children, Olimpia, Antonia, and Alessandro. In 1544, Laudomia, recently widowed, married Petruccio Petrucci. ²⁷ Laudomia was the dedicatee of a number of works by Alessandro Piccolomini. One pair in particular was a program of scientific translations in 1540, De le stelle fisse (On the fixed stars) and De la sfera del mondo (On the sphere of the world), both compilations of scientific information on the heavens drawn from classical sources. ²⁸ Piccolomini noted that he undertook this project to provide Laudomia with astronomical information that might help her when she explained Dante’s Paradiso to her women friends, as he had had occasion to see her do. Piccolomini also addressed to Laudomia a volume written in 1539 when her son Alessandro was born: a text on the education and upbringing of noble children, De la institutione di tutta la vita de l’homo nato nobile e in città libera (About the upbringing of the entire life of a noble man, born in a free city).

Laudomia is also notable as a possible leader of a group of women, together with Livia Fausti and Fausta Piccolomini, who in 1553 were described as helping to build and defend a small fortress known as “fortino delle donne” (the women’s little blockhouse) to resist the Spanish and Imperial troops. ²⁹ Blaise de Monluc, ³⁰ the French officer in charge of the defense of Siena, arrived at the fortress in June 1554, more than a year after the supposed fact, and reported that “la signora Forteguerra” was Laudomia, though his statement is not confirmed. ³¹ While women, especially those who belonged to lower social classes, were usually workers and helpers, the description of three noblewomen working and singing while helping build the fortress is particularly remarkable, although almost entirely fictitious.

Even less definitive information has been found for Livia Fausti (or Fausta) and Fausta Piccolomini. The name “Fausta” is based on the Latin faustus, which means favorable, benevolent, happy, and lucky. But the usual Sienese form of the name for women was “Faustina,” not Fausta. It is intriguing that the only two women leaders indicated by both a first and last name (Livia Fausti/a and Fausta Piccolomini) bear the same, Fausta, while “la signora Forteguerra” bears none. While no traces of Livia Fausti are extant up to now, the only reference to Fausta Piccolomini that I have found is an undated, but possibly seventeenth-century, document that names a “Fausta di Francesco Piccolomini.” ³² But, while it is possible that Fausta Piccolomini was born and baptized outside the city, there is no trace of her in the baptismal records or in other documents.

In addition to their possible leaders, there were many Sienese women poets who formed a loose-knit familial and social ensemble of literate noblewomen, several of whom were related by blood or marriage and many of whom were in their twenties and thirties. ³³ In the Dialogo, Bargagli only references women who belonged to monti that were economically and politically strong and lined up behind the Empire and Spain.

Aurelia Petrucci is one such woman. She was born in 1511 to Vittoria Piccolomini, who was married to Borghese Petrucci, heir of Pandolfo the Magnificent. ³⁴ Aurelia, together with her sisters Giulia, Agnese, and Pandolfina, was raised by her mother and her maternal Piccolomini family when Borghese was banished from Siena and voluntarily exiled in Naples. In 1531 Vittoria Piccolomini married all of her four daughters, each with a hefty dowry. Aurelia seems to have married for the first time in 1524, at age thirteen, to one of her paternal cousins, Iacomo di Giovanfrancesco Petrucci, in order to end a familial feud. ³⁵ From this marriage two daughters were apparently born: up to now, I have found reference to at least one of them, Ersilia, baptized in 1525. ³⁶ In 1531, Aurelia, already widowed, married Camillo di Girolamo Venturi, with whom she had a daughter, Isabella, born 6 July 1534, and a son. ³⁷ Of her sisters, Giulia, born in 1512–13, married Enea di Antonio Borghesi; Agnese, born in 1514, ³⁸ married Giovanni di Alessandro Sozzini, then Alessandro di Mariano Sozzini, and then finally Ghino di Bartolomeo di Ghino Bandinelli; Pandolfina, born in 1515, married another paternal cousin, Anton Maria di Giovanfrancesco Petrucci. ³⁹

In 1535, Mariano Lenzi dedicated the first edition of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore to Aurelia. ⁴⁰ In the 1530s, Bartolomeo Carli Piccolomini dedicated a translation of book four of Virgil’s Aeneid to her. (Meanwhile Bernardino Borghesi dedicated book three to Giulia, while book six was translated by Alessandro Piccolomini and dedicated to Eufrasia Venturi.) In 1540, Vignali did the same with the dialogue Dulpisto. On Aurelia, Eisenbichler writes:

Aurelia Petrucci was not only an exceptional beauty but also a keen observer of contemporary politics and extremely well-connected person. Possibly part of a frivolous brigade of noblewomen who enjoyed dressing with great elegance, Aurelia was also a politically savvy person who realized that internecine fighting between the various Sienese factions was opening the way to a foreign invasion that would bring about the end of the centuries-old republic. … Admittedly a complex individual, in her personal life she clearly accepted current social conventions and obediently carried out her familial obligations as daughter, wife, and mother. ⁴¹

Aurelia’s political talents ⁴² can be compared to those of her aunt Sulpizia, married to Agostino Chigi, and are likely the result of an exceptional familial milieu in which women had access not only to an elite upbringing but also to political dialogue. ⁴³ Even though the women could not appear to be publicly involved in politics, they were party to “sensible” and confidential information, and their opinions led to analysis and action. ⁴⁴ They were consulted during daily life and invited to gatherings held by the government when important visitors came to the city: the family names are also the ones that belong to women quoted in the Dialogo. But it is noteworthy that, except for the women of the Petrucci family and Laudomia Forteguerri, some other women are identified by their husband’s family name and not with their paternal name, as if to confirm a homogeneity stemming from not only social but also political class in which the monti became confused and diluted.

Porzia Pecci is another woman whose name appears in the Dialogo. Porzia was the only daughter of the jurist Mariano Sozzini the younger and in 1539 she married Lelio Pecci, scion of an important family of the Noveschi. The Sozzini belonged to the Monte dei Dodici, economically strong but politically in decline since 1403, up to the exile of many of its members in the following years of the Quattrocento and its disappearance as a political reference. In 1550, Lelio Pecci was sent as ambassador to Charles V Habsburg to ask the emperor not to build in the city a fortress that would accommodate the Spanish garrison. Porzia, whose intellectual works, if any, did not survive, is referred to in the Dialogo as Pecci (her husband’s family name), and not Sozzini (her own family name). This may have been to conceal the intellectual links and friendship between Bargagli and Fausto Sozzini, the famous heretic who escaped to Poland to avoid the Inquisition, ⁴⁵ when they were both young and both part of the Accademia (Sozzini’s sobriquet was “il Frastagliato”).

An Ongoing Project

Many questions concerning the names of the women quoted in the Dialogo remain open. Who is Delia, the woman Sozzini loved? Who is Matilde Tolomei, if her first name is not among the recurring Tolomei family names? Who is Emilia Pecci? ⁴⁶ Who was “la Saracina” – perhaps Camilla, born in 1512, to whom Vignali sent the vernacular translation of the Aeneid XI and XII from Seville in 1540 and 1541? ⁴⁷ While it is unquestionable that this unnamed woman belonged to the Saracini family, up to now a Camilla appears only in an unpublished dialogue by Marcantonio Piccolomini written in 1538, which references a veglia held at her house that the marquis of Vasto Alfonso d’Avalos and Frasia Venturi attended. ⁴⁸ Who is Francesca Sozzini (again, not a family first name)? Who is Onesta Venturi, whom I have not found in baptismal records (unless she has been confused with Onorata)? Is Countess Urania, quoted in the Dialogo, really Urania Bellanti, married to count Carlo d’Elci? ⁴⁹ Who is Porzia Agazzari? The only reference I have found for her is not her birth date (if she existed, she may have been born and baptized outside the city), but a marriage record between a Porzia Petrucci and Buoncompagno di Mino Agazzari. ⁵⁰ Notably, though these many women appear, the Dialogo does not reference women (or poets) who wrote against the government or in favor of France, such as Virginia Salvi. ⁵¹ This may have been a way for the author to erase the memory of his father, who in the same years became a fugitive involved in a plot against the city with, among others, the same Salvi and her husband.

It is possible that, at the heart of the Dialogo, Bargagli wanted to celebrate the Petrucci family and a golden age lost forever by illuminating its women. Many women who appear in the text are connected, by birth or by marriage, to this family, such as the Sozzini family through Agnese Petrucci and the Agazzari family through Porzia, Laudomia Forteguerri, and Petruccio Petrucci. The Bargagli, too, sided with the Petrucci through political links. In fact the families were tightly connected at least since 1456, when Mariano Bargagli, at the time the operaio (supervisor) of the Duomo in Siena, was removed from his appointment because he was a strong supporter of Antonio Petrucci, who in turn supported the Aragonese king Alfonso. Both Mariano and Antonio were at the time strongly anti-Florentine. Mariano refused to hire Donatello, because the sculptor was a protégé of Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder. ⁵²

Biographical work is an ongoing project that requires time and patience. My aim in this essay has been to prove that the women featured in the imagined, idealized past of Siena were neither invented nor fictitious. It is equally important to determine that, even if some of the women in the Dialogo produced literary works or texts that do not survive, they were all participants in a defined social and political group that shared interests and goals. The veglie, the private gatherings, the countryside meetings, and the dedications of important translations were all directed to women tied by family, social class, and political identity. The women of the Dialogo were real, and they were socially and politically engaged. This was the group of Sienese intellectuals, women included, which, within the city, supported the Imperial, Spanish, and Florentine side. Men or women against the Empire, or who were clearly pro France, do not seem to have belonged to the Accademia, or if so they have been cancelled from the historical memory recalled in Bargagli’s work in acceptance of the new, unavoidable indeed, Medici regime.

1. For explorations of the literary, social, and historical aspects of this important time for Sienese culture, see D. Robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth Century Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); K. Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics, and Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Siena (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012); G. McClure, Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).[↑]
2. G. Bargagli, Dialogo de’ giuochi che nelle vegghie sanesi si usano di fare, ed. P. D’Incalci Ermini, intro. R. Bruscagli (Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati, 1982). [↑]
3. D. Hicks, “Sienese Society in the Renaissance,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 2, no. 4 (1960): 420.[↑]
4. A.K. Isaacs, “Popolo e Monti nella Siena del primo Cinquecento,” Rivista storica italiana 82 (1970): 32–80.[↑]
5. In 1775, the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo I (formerly Leopold II Habsburg-Lorraine) hired a priest, Cesare Scali, to reorganize the city archives. Scali dismembered many collections and began to organize them in thematic order. This activity was soon abandoned, but not before more than two hundred volumes of letters and other documents were discarded and sent to the paper mill in Colle Valdelsa; more would have been destroyed had Scali not been dismissed. Scali argued that these documents were redundant. Inventario generale del R. Archivio di Stato in Siena (Siena: Tipografia Sordo-Muti di Lazzeri, 1899), xxvi–xxviii.[↑]
6. Isabella de’ Medici, duchess of Bracciano, was born to Eleonora de Toledo and Cosimo I in 1542. In 1558, she married Paolo Giordano Orsini, and in 1576 he killed her.[↑]
7. L. Kosuta, “Notes et documents sur Antonio Vignali (1500–1559),” Bullettino senese di storia patria 89 (1982): 119–54.[↑]
8. Traces of its function as an acting company – some surviving small terracotta masks – are still visible where the Accademia was located. See G. Pallini, “Han preso di nuovo casa a San Giusto. Note su una antica sede degli Intronati,” Bullettino senese di storia patria 120 (2013): 153–64. For further discussion of the Accademia’s theatric past, see D. Seragnoli, Il teatro a Siena nel Cinquecento: “Progetto” e “modello” drammaturgico nell’Accademia degli Intronati, Biblioteca teatrale 35 (Roma: Bulzoni, 1980), 23n3. Seragnoli also quotes Alessandro Piccolomini reporting: “ancor altre volte eletto con altri accademici Intronati a trovarci presenti in palco alla cura di recitazion di commedie di quella già tanto fiorita accademia” (being more times elected, with other Intronati academics, to meet on stage to take care of acting comedies of this prosperous academy) (27). All translations are my own.[↑]
9. “Monsieur de Voltaire detto ‘Il Mirabile'” (Monsieur de Voltaire nicknamed “Il Mirabile”) is listed in the Catalogo degli Accademici Intronati viventi al dì primo di luglio 1766: Segue de i viventi al primo luglio 1770, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, ms. Y.II.21 (not foliated).[↑]
10. A. Mauriello notes that “nonostante l’ostentata indifferenza per le vicende politiche, l’Accademia accoglie tra le sue fila i più bei nomi dell’aristocrazia spagnola e filo-imperiale, rimanendo così tenacemente legata agli interessi medicei ed al favore imperiale” (despite the displayed indifference to political events, the Accademia welcomes to its ranks the most important names of the Spanish and pro-imperial aristocracy, remaining tenaciously bound to Medici interest and to imperial favor). “Cultura e società nella Siena del Cinquecento,” Filologia e letteratura 17 (1971): 31.[↑]
11. Rothstein writes: “The Spanish Amadís, by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo (the first four books were written in the last decades of the fifteenth century; first edition, Zaragoza 1508), may reasonably be taken as the earliest extant version of the story, despite claims of Portuguese and Picard texts centuries before.” M. Rothstein, “Clandestine Marriage and Amadis de Gaule: The Text, the Word, and the Reader,” Sixteenth Century Journal 25, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 873. See also W. Schleiner, “Laughter and Challenges to the Other in the French ‘Amadis de Gaule,'” Sixteenth Century Journal 32, no.1 (Spring 2001): 91–107. Thanks to Suzanne Magagnini for referring me to these articles. [↑]
12. Bargagli recounts in the Dialogo that Iacopo Griffoli, back in Siena for the summer, while attending a veglia at the home of Porzia Pecci and her husband, was not able to play the games because he had no knowledge of the book Amadigi, which “ella fuor di misura si dilettava” (she found very amusing). Griffoli immediately asked Marcantonio Piccolomini to loan him “un poco di questi libri spagnuoli, ch’io me li voglio ingollar leggendoli, acciò che non m’intervenga più quel che oggi da madonna Porzia mi è avvenuto, dove mi è paruto d’essere un grande ignorante, non avendo saputo ragionare punto” (some of those Spanish books, which I want to ingest while reading them, so that what happened today at lady Porzia’s where I appeared as an ignorant, not able to discuss at all, will never happen to me again). Bargagli, Dialogo de’ giuochi, 102.[↑]
13. For an example of this neutrality, in 1542 Marcello Landucci (“il Bizzarro Intronato”) wrote to archbishop Francesco Bandini, who was away from Siena, about the wedding of his brother Iacomo to Sulpizia Lotterenghi and the veglia that took place there. While Marcello, who belonged to the Popolari, sided with one political party (the one against the Spanish but supporting the moderate Bandini), his kin sided with the Spanish (and the extremist Salvi family). Landucci’s report suggests that, despite different political positions, friendly exchange was possible.[↑]
14. McClure, Parlour Games, ix. [↑]
15. Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 2.[↑]
16. McClure, Parlour Games, 55–6.[↑]
17. The date 1559–60, which is immediately after the end of the war and which Bruscagli suggests in the “Introduzione” to the Dialogo, seems a bit too late. Aurelia Petrucci, for instance, died in 1542.[↑]
18. Bargagli, Dialogo de’ giuochi, 102.[↑]
19. Ibid., 69.[↑]
20. In describing some of the women gathering at the veglia, Bargagli reports: “in ogni occasione discorsi, motti e ragionamenti miracolosi si sentivano uscir da loro, donde madonna Aurelia e madonna Giulia Petrucci, madonna Frasia Venturi, la Saracina, la Forteguerra, la Toscana e alcune altre s’acquistarono eterno grido” (in every occasion amazing discourses, remarks, and reasonings were heard from them, whence lady Aurelia and lady Giulia Petrucci, lady Frasia Venturi, the Saracina, the Forteguerra, the Toscana, and some others attained eternal fame). Bargagli, Dialogo de’ giuochi, 92.[↑]
21. A. Morenduzzo, “Notizie intorno a Scipione Bargagli con appendice bibliografica,” Bullettino Senese di Storia Patria 7 (1900): 339.[↑]
22. McClure, Parlour Games, 55. The years McClure suggests the two books were composed – 1557–8 for the Dialogo and 1555 for I Trattenimenti – differ from the dates usually accepted. For a detailed comparison of the two works by Girolamo and Scipione, see McClure, Parlour Games, 55–80.[↑]
23. He writes: “Rimangomi dal raccontare in propria forma i nomi di simili gentildonne, non perché io sia preso da verun timore che alcuno in ciò con ragione potesse mai pigliare attacco di dire o di pensar cosa meno che convenevole alla loro onestissima vita, ovver che elle medesime sentir dovessero mai rossore niuno per quello che, in opere in atti od in parole, trovassero in alcun modo essere stato scritto che fatto o detto fosse da esse” (I restrain myself to enunciate in a real way the names of these noblewomen, not because I worry that someone might, without reason, tell or think something unsuitable about their most honest life, or that they might blush because of what, in someone else’s deeds, acts or words, may have been said or written by them). S. Bargagli, I Trattenimenti, a cura di L. Riccò (Roma: Salerno editrice, 1989), 38.[↑]
24. According to Eisenbichler, the identification of Eufrasia Placidi Venturi, one of the women who was part of this intellectual group, is muddy. Her birth is recorded twice but on different dates: 9 April 1507, or 3 November 1514. Archivio di Stato di Siena (henceforth ASSi) Battezzati 18, fol. 115v; ASSi, Battezzati 24, fol. 145r. She was the dedicatee of the translation of the sixth book of the Aeneid, published in Venice in 1540 and then again in 1544, and also the dedicatee of the translation of the Oeconomicon by Xenophon published in 1539. See Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 294n12.[↑]
25. ASSi, Battezzati 25, fol. 51v.[↑]
26. ASSi, Battezzati 22, fol. 149v. It was common to give a dead child’s name to a newborn; see Ch. Klapisch-Zuber, “Le nom ‘refait’: La transmission des prénoms à Florence (XIVe–XVIe siècles),” L’Homme 20, no. 4 (1980): 77–104.[↑]
27. For more on Laudomia, see Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 101–63.[↑]
28. On Piccolomini and his interest for Laudomia, see McClure, Parlour Games, 35–43; Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 136–45.[↑]
29. A detailed discussion of Laudomia is provided by Robin, Publishing Women, esp. 124–59. See also Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England, eds. D. Robin, A.R. Larsen, and C. Levin (Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2007), 151–3. [↑]
30. B. de Monluc, Blaise de Monluc all’assedio di Siena e in Montalcino, 1554–1557: Dal 3. e 4. Libro dei suoi Commentari, trans. and ed. M. Filippone (Siena: Cantagalli, 1992; 2nd ed. 2004), 129–30.[↑]
31. For a description of this episode, see D. Robin, Publishing Women, 124–7; Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 153–61; McClure, Parlour Games, 48–54.[↑]
32. ASSi, Deposito Piccolomini Naldi Baldini, 13.[↑]
33. On Sienese women poets, see especially Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen.[↑]
34. “Aurelia Maria figliola di Borghese di Pandolpho di Bartolomeo Petrucci si baptezò adì xvi di decembre (1511) fu compare il reverendissimo messer Francesco de Soderini cardinale di Volterra et per lui tenne a battesimo messer Victorio di Piero Caiani cittadino fiorentino et canonico volaterrano” (Aurelia Maria daughter of Borghese of Pandolpho of Bartolomeo Petrucci was baptized on 16 December [1511], her godfather was the most reverend lord Francesco de Soderini, cardinal of Volterra replaced at the baptism by lord Victorio of Piero Caiani florentine citizen and canon of Volterra). ASSi, Battezzati 23, fol. 19r. Francesco Soderini (1453–1524) was elected bishop of Volterra on 11 May 1478 by nomination, received the title of cardinal of Santa Susanna on 12 June 1503, and was named bishop of Cortona on 6 May 1504. He was one of the brothers of Piero, the chancellor of the Florentine Republic in 1502.[↑]
35. I have not yet found any archival trace of this information, which is referred to only by a chronicler: “Fabio Petrucci maritò Aurelia figliuola maggiore di Borghese suo fratello, a Giacoppo di Giovanni Francesco” (Fabio Petrucci married Aurelia elder daughter of Borghese his brother to Giacoppo di Giovanni Francesco). G. Tommasi, Dell’historie di Siena: Deca seconda, vol. III, libri VIII–X (1512–1553), ed. M. De Gregorio (Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati, 2006), 49.[↑]
36. Hersilia Antonia was baptized 20 January 1524 (1525). ASSi, Battezzati 29, fol. 123r. In Siena, the year started on 25 March, the day of the Incarnation.[↑]
37. “Isabella ‘Emilia’ Flavia Fulvia Caterina (corr su Lucretia) figla di Camillo di Girolamo Venturi nata ali vi di luglio (1534) si battizò il dì medesimo.” (Isabella ‘Emilia’ Flavia Fulvia Caterina [corrected on Lucretia] daughter of Camillo of Girolamo Venturi born on July 6 [1534] was baptized on the same day.) ASSi, Battezzati 39, fol. 124r. [↑]
38. Angniesa Rombula (sic, Romola) Maria was baptized on 19 November 1514. ASSi, Battezzati 24, fol. 140v. [↑]
39. Pandolphina Romula Maria was baptized on 30 November 1515. ASSi, Battezzati 25, fol. 108r.[↑]
40. J. Nelson Novoa, “Appunti sulla genesi redazionale dei Dialoghi d’amore di Leone Ebreo alla luce della critica testuale attuale e la tradizione manoscritta del suo terzo Dialogo,” Quaderni di Italianistica 30, no. 1 (2009): 45–66. [↑]
41. Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 8–9.[↑]
42. Aurelia’s poem “Dove sta il tuo valor, Patria mia cara” was written between 1530 and 1540 when, Eisenbichler writes, “Siena was in a state of internal chaos, with pro-Spanish and pro-French factions in the city openly battling it out in the council chambers.” Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 73.[↑]
43. Sulpizia Petrucci Chigi is not named in the Dialogo, but she is a good example of the positive social and familial turns some women could contribute, particularly in difficult moments. On Sulpizia, see E. Brizio “‘Sebben che siamo donne…’: Sienese Women in the Troubled Years at the End of the Republic (ca. 1500–1560)” in A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Siena (Leiden-Boston: Brill, forthcoming).[↑]
44. The most renowned example is Margherita Bichi, a Franciscan tertiary, whose military directions defeated Papal and Florentine troops in 1527. See “Bichi, Margherita,” www.treccani.it/biografie.[↑]
45. Bruscagli, “Introduzione,” 11–12.[↑]
46. “Emilia di Giovanni di Bartolomeo Pecci” was born in 1521, according to Manenti, Battezzati famiglie nobili esistenti, N–P, ASSi, Manoscritti A 51, fol. 143r. Nothing else about her is known.[↑]
47. Camilla Maria was born 8 August 1512. ASSi, Battezzati 23, fol. 75r; L. Kosuta, Notes et documents, 147[↑]
48. The unpublished manuscript is held at Biblioteca Comunale di Siena, ms. P.V.15; L. Riccò, Giuoco e teatro nelle veglie di Siena (Roma: Bulzoni, 1993), 16.[↑]
49. A sketched genealogical tree seems to confirm this hypothesis; see ASSi, Particolari: Famiglie senesi, 11. [↑]
50. In 1525, Buoncompagno di Mino Agazzari married Porzia di Pandolfo Petrucci with a dowry of 5250 florins. ASSi, Manenti, Matrimoni famiglie nobili esistenti, A–B, fol. 26r. Porzia was born 8 March 1540 and baptized the same day. ASSi, Battezzati 17, fol. 2v.[↑]
51. On Virginia, see Eisenbichler, L’opera poetica di Virginia Martini Salvi (Siena, c. 1510 – Roma, post 1571) (Siena: Accademia senese degli Intronati, 2012). [↑]
52. P. Pertici, “La pagina perduta di Enea Silvio Piccolomini,” in Forte Fortuna: Religiosità e arte nella cultura senese dalle origini all’umanesimo di Pio II ai restauri del XIX secolo, Quaderni dell’Opera 7–9 (Siena: Opera della Metropolitana, 2006), 33–117.[↑]