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Portraits of Sitti Maani Gioerida Della Valle in Baroque Rome Cristelle Baskins

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Portraits of Sitti Maani Gioerida Della Valle in Baroque Rome Cristelle Baskins Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2012, vol . 7 Lost in Translation: Portraits of Sitti Maani Gioerida della Valle in Baroque Rome Cristelle Baskins he following case study asks whether transculturation is a trans- Thistorical analytical concept. Transculturation, as coined by Fernando Ortiz in 1940 and still largely associated with Latin American Studies, examines various processes by which disparate individuals come into con- tact and are thereby transformed. While not ignoring violence and oppres- sion in the contact zone, the transculturation narrative ultimately affirms resilience, mutual understanding, and integration. The term has not gotten much traction in art history to date. If art historians have gradually shifted away from politically engaged critiques of orientalism, colonialism, and hybridity, they now turn to the discourse of “globalism.” Contemporary awareness of the ceaseless flow across borders of people, goods, and infor- mation cannot help but inform our work on the connected histories of the early modern world.1 Yet this very identification with an earlier global culture may distort the historical enterprise, resulting in a caricature rather than a portrait of the past. Among other possessions collected by her husband, Pietro della Valle (1586–1652), Sitti Maani Gioerida (Arabic: Ma’ani Juwayri, ca.1600– 1621) arrived in Rome in 1626 as a mummified corpse after years of travel in a lead-lined box. Nicknamed “il Pellegrino,” Pietro came from a Roman 1 See Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, ed. Stephen Greenblatt and Ines Županov (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Introduction,” Three Ways to be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), 1–22. 241 EMW12.indb 241 8/28/12 12:30:40 PM 242 EMWJ 2012, vol . 7 Cristelle Baskins noble family, and he was famed as a traveler, poet, musician/composer, linguist, and academician.2 Thus, a news report from Rome to Florence explained “Signore Pietro della Valle of Rome is back home after twelve years of pilgrimage, having visited the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and having seen almost all of the East, including the Turkish lands, Arabia and Persia, in which countries he traveled in the company of . his wife, a [Syrian Christian] woman . whom he married in the course of his travels. Due to her death during their journey [della Valle] had her corpse trans- ported [back to Rome for burial] as well as some other things of his.”3 The transfer of Sitti Maani’s physical remains was only the final act in a series of moves between cultures, between religious confessions, and between gender norms. Upon Pietro’s return to Rome in 1626, Sitti Maani’s mummified remains were deposited in the della Valle family vault at the church of S. Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill. But a lavish public funeral did not take place until March 27 of the following year. The 1627 funeral at the Araceoli organized by Pietro della Valle and the Accademia degli Umoristi shaped Sitti Maani into a spectacle of wifely virtue, both exotic and exemplary, alien yet utterly assimilated. The funeral commemorated Maani as a femme forte or Amazon and as a modern Zenobia but also as an Eastern Christian, specifically a Chaldean, eager to submit to the 2 See Ignazio Ciampi, Della vita e delle opere di Pietro della Valle il Pellegrino (Rome, 1880); Ettore Rossi, “Pietro della Valle orientalista romano (1586–1652),” Oriente Moderno 33 (1953): 49–64; Peter G. Bietenholz, Pietro della Valle, 1586–1652: Studien zur Geschichte der Orientkenntnis und des Orientbildes im Abendlande (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1962); John D. Gurney, “Pietro Della Valle: The Limits of Perception,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986): 103–16; and Nathalie Hester, “Performing Baroque Travel: Pietro della Valle’s Viaggi,” Literature and Identity in Italian Baroque Travel Writing (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 51–92. 3 Medici Archive Project online database, http://www.medici.org/highlights/ read-all-about-it (accessed May 22, 2012). Things collected by Pietro della Valle include Coptic manuscripts, Egyptian mummies, gifts from Shah Abbas (Persian saddles, chain mail, bow and arrows), Turkish costumes, and an unknown portrait of Queen Maria de’ Medici. See Antonio Invernizzi, “Pietro della Valle collezionista in Oriente,” Il fasci- no dell’Oriente nelle collezioni e nei musei italiani, ed. Beatrice Palma Venetucci (Rome: Artemide, 2010), 53–58. EMW12.indb 242 8/28/12 12:30:40 PM Portraits of Sitti Maani Gioerida della Valle 243 authority of the Roman Church. As Joan-Pau Rubiés explains, “Marrying an Oriental Christian opened the door to the prospect of a restored unity between East and West under Catholic patronage . a romantic as well as an aristocratic solution to the problem of cultural diversity. .”4 Despite the emphasis on physical and social mobility throughout Pietro della Valle’s textual production — on “transvestments,” “transfigurations,” and “transmutations” — the ultimate stage for the performance of identity remained Counter-Reformation Rome.5 The Umoristi Academy The Umoristi were officially formed in 1603 by a group of men dedicated to literary studies with an uplifting, comic bent. Their name can be glossed as the “humorists,” cleverly referring both to the physical humors and to wit.6 On the more serious side, the Umoristi staged an impressive number of funerals for their past presidents, or principi, as well as other promi- nent members of the society. Each of these funerals featured portraits of the deceased, often by well-known artists including Orazio Borgianni, Francesco Crescenzi, Guido Reni, and Pietro da Cortona. We know that with a few notable exceptions, Italian academies like the Umoristi barred women from membership; on the other hand, it was customary to invite women to academic lectures during the Carnival season when lighter, enter- taining subjects might be discussed.7 In contrast to the funerals produced 4 Joan-Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 368. 5 Hester, “Baroque Travel,” 61. 6 Michele Maylender, “Accademia degli Umoristi–Roma,” in Storia delle Accademie d’Italia (Bologna: Lincino Cappelli, 1930), vol. 5. 370–81; Francis Gravit, “The Accademia degli Umoristi and its French Relationships,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 20 (1934): 505–21; Piera Russo, “L’Accademia degli Umoristi. Fondazione, struttura, leggi: il primo decennio di attività” in Esperienze letterarie 4:4 (1979): 47–61; Laura Alemanno, “L’accademia degli Umoristi,” Roma moderna e con- temporanea 3 (1995): 97–120; Idem, “Le ‘Rime degli Accademici Umoristi’,” Letteratura italiana e utopia, vol. 2 (Roma: Riuniti, 1996), 275–90. 7 Conor Fahy, “Women and Italian Cinquecento Literary Academies,” Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), EMW12.indb 243 8/28/12 12:30:40 PM 244 EMWJ 2012, vol . 7 Cristelle Baskins for fellow members of the academy — men they knew intimately — the Umoristi could never have personally known Sitti Maani. Her funeral was created around a blank, an absence. Even her name was an empty signifier: “She was called Maani, after the Arabic, to denote significance, intelligence, concepts, eloquence, or rather proverbs, whether in prose or in verse. .”8 If women who associated with academicians risked accusations of sexual impropriety, Pietro della Valle’s deceased wife posed no lasting threat to the homosocial bonds of the Umoristi.9 On the contrary, their corporate identity was strengthened through this public display of erudite consola- tion, rhetorical virtuosity, and esoteric knowledge.10 The primary source of information about Sitti Maani would have been the grieving widower Pietro della Valle, who was also a prolific author. Pietro gave the Umoristi the fifty-four letters he had written to his Neapolitan friend and patron Mario Schipano during his travels.11 Some of these letters were eventually published as the Viaggi.12 In addition to his correspondence, della Valle kept a journal, wrote a sonnet cycle (the Corona Gioerida), and penned a lengthy funeral oration to commemorate his deceased wife.13 A pamphlet published by Umoristi member Girolamo 438–52; Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 279, 640, 655; Virginia Cox, Women’s Writing in Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 36, 118, 256, 322; and Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters, ed. Julie D. Campbell and Anne R. Larsen (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009). 8 Fvnerale della signora sitti Maani Gioerida della Valle . Celebrato in Roma l’anno 1627 . E descritto dal signor Girolamo Rocchi (Roma: Appresso l’erede di Bartolomeo Zannetti, 1627), 6. 9 Elisabetta Graziosi, “Arcadia femminile: presenze e modelle,” Filologia e critica 17 (1992): 321, quoting Pietro della Valle’s friend Traiano Boccalini: “. literary exercises involving women and academics resemble those tricks and games that dogs play, which after a short time end with each trying to mount the other.” 10 George W. McClure, Sorrow and Consolation in Italian Humanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Armando Petrucci, Writing the Dead: Death and Writing Strategies in the Western Tradition (Stanford: Stanford University
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