Studi sulle fonti di Leon Battista Alberti.

Rinaldo Rinaldi. Melancholia christiana: Studi sulle fonti di Leon Battista Alberti.

Biblioteca di "Lettere italiane": studi e testi 58. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002. Pbk. 246 pp. index. bibl. [euro] 26. ISBN: 88-222-5080-X.

The essays in this volume offer detailed source studies of Alberti's works, ranging from his early Italian dialogue Deifira to the late De iciarchia, with particular emphasis on the Latin works Vita S. Potiti, Apologi, and Momus.

"'Melancholia albertiana': dalla Deifira al Naufragus" examines two works in which Alberti discusses love and passion. Rinaldi cites parallels from Alberti's other amatory works and from late medieval theories of love, but his lodestar is Plato. In Deifira, he associates the interlocutor Filarco with the timocrat described in book 8 of Plato's Republic, which he considers the "la vera chiave di lettura" of the dialogue (39). In the dinner piece Naufragus, he views the shipwreck survivors as trapped in the "soul's prison" described in the Phaedo. Rinaldi concludes that in these two works on love "Alberti si rivela un importante predecessore del Ficino, futuro brillante studioso della melancolia" (49).

"La morale opaca: techniche di negazione satirica negli Apologi" analyzes satirical elements in Alberti's Latin fables of 1437, noting their affinity with the Intercenales and the aphorisms of the Vita. Rinaldi observes that Alberti's metaphor of fruitfulness echoes the preface of Ermolao Barbaro's version of Aesop; and that his dedicatee, Francesco Marescalco, links the author to Leonello d'Este and Poggio Bracciolini.

"Un travestimento agiografico: la Vita S. Potiti" examines this strange biography of an obscure boy saint, which was commissioned when Alberti first entered the papal Curia. Adducing parallels from Alberti's Momus and his visual allegory Picture, Rinaldi detects a pervasive antipathy toward Hercules, an aversion also evident in Alberti's name Leo, as well as in his encomia of the fly and his pet dog. He shows how Alberti's initial experience of the Curia has left its mark in the work, and how his dedicatory letter to Marino Guadagni reveals an anti-Medici bias. Commenting on thematic parallels in several Albertian apologues, Rinaldi argues (less convincingly) that the lion is a figura Christi and the fox a figura diaboli.

"Parodia come allegoria. Il Momus e la parodia classica" provides a rich survey of classical models for Alberti's satiric masterpiece, oddly concentrating more on Plato than on Lucian. Rinaldi interprets Momus as a response to Pier Candido Decembrio's 1440 translation of the Republic, and the comic characters Gelastus and Charon as a parody of classical philosophers. As the dedicatee of the work, Rinaldi plausibly proposes Leonello d'Este, to whom Alberti also addressed his Theogenius and De equo animante.

"'Momus christianus': altre fonti albertiane" shifts the focus from Plato to the Christian apologetics of Tertullian and Lactantius. In Alberti's Apologue 96, for example, Rinaldi finds an echo of Tertullian, De spectaculis. In Momus, he detects numerous patristic sources: Lactantius's denunciation of pagan simulacra behind the farce of the statues, Tertullian and St. Paul behind Democritus's dissection of a crab, and Tertullian's phrase "Epicuri stupor" behind Alberti's description of Democritus as "stupens." Rinaldi also suggests that the etymology "homo-humus" found in Tertullian and Lactantius prefigures the final transformation of Momus, whose choleric nature he links both to Alberti's personal emblem of the lion and to the God of Lactantius's De ira Dei.

"Momo come Giuda? Leon Battista Alberti e la leggenda di San Brandano" ranges even further afield, if more persuasively. Rinaldi notes how, in the medieval legend of Brendan, Judas appears seated on a rock in the ocean--a punishment assigned to Momus, who yet "redeems" himself by offering political advice to Jupiter.

"La barriera delle lettere. Infelicita e autodifesa negli ultimi dialoghi albertiani" draws on the recent studies of Luca Boschetto to show how Alberti's later Italian dialogues reveal a disaffection with politics after the 1444 creation of the Medici Balia. Rinaldi highlights Alberti's implicit contrast between the despotic Polyphemus and the patient Ulysses, discusses the pedagogical dimension of the later dialogues, and reviews the Albertian notion of "mosaic" as an architectural metaphor for humanist composition.

While Rinaldi's notion of "melancholy" is heuristically useful in describing the tensions in Alberti's writings, not all readers will embrace Rinaldi's vision of the humanist as a Christian allegorist. Does Alberti read Plato parodically, only to take Lactantius seriously? In any event, this kaleidoscopic survey of Albertian intertextuality opens new perspectives that enhance our image of this complex and conflicted humanist.

DAVID MARSH

Rutgers University