Chapter 1 Landino and His Works

Cristoforo Landino—Florentine Professor of Poetry and Oratory, author of prose and poetry, innovative moral philosopher—was among the circle of cultural leaders of for much of the second half of the Quattrocento. A student of Chancellor Carolus Marsuppini, he was the teacher of both Lorenzo de’ Medici and , and a close associate of Marsilio Ficino. As a popular teacher at the Studio of Florence for two generations of students and the author of commentaries on Dante and Virgil that were best sellers into the sixteenth century, his influence was significant. He represents what Florentine humanism in the second half of the fifteenth century was for the majority of those who came through the Studio. This study is the first in English to consider the overall scope and develop- ment of Landino’s works from his poetry collection of the , the Xandra; through his course lectures and opening orations to courses; to his philosophi- cal works, the De anima and Disputationes Camaldulenses; and finally to his printed commentaries on Virgil and Dante of the 1480s. These works span nearly forty years of his career. From them we can see his development, both literary and philosophical, and what these show about Florentine culture in the second half of the fifteenth century. I will argue that his famous allegorical method of literary interpretation develops hand in hand with his philosophical interests, which are fundamen- tally scholastic in nature and as much Aristotelian as Platonic or Neoplatonic. I will also show that he approaches ancient thinkers through their later inter- preters, so that in many ways it is on a medieval, scholastic framework that his allegories are constructed, a framework into which he incorporates Platonic and Neoplatonic concepts as he learns of them. In this way I will also seek to revise the common description of Landino as a Neoplatonist. As he says, he is not a professional philosopher but first and foremost a teacher; and for forty years in his teaching and writing his primary concern was to produce citizens useful to Florentine society by making moral and religious truths and rhetori- cal skills found in famous literature, both Latin and Italian, interesting. Regardless of what definition of “Renaissance humanist” one follows, Landino fits.1 He was a professional teacher of rhetoric, grammar, and poetry,

1 Ronald Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 1–30, gives the various definitions of the term humanism. See also Chris

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004389526_002 2 Chapter 1 and was very interested in moral philosophy. Before he was a professor at the Florentine Studio he worked as a notary. He imitated ancient styles in his own poetry; taught students Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Petrarch, and Dante; wrote a manual on letter writing; translated works into the vernacular; and wrote pop- ular commentaries on classical Latin and vernacular authors. Landino was born in 1424 in either Florence or the nearby town of Pratovecchio.2 His family had been associated with Florence for generations, including his ancestor Francesco who was an organist in the city, and a brother who died fighting for Florence in the . He studied law at Volterra in the late before moving to Florence and taking up the studia humanitatis.3 In 1441 he participated in the Certame coronario, a vernacular poetry contest set up by Leon Battista Alberti in which Landino presented the composition of Francesco di Altobianco Alberti entitled Sacrosanta, immortal, celeste e degna.4 He was a pupil of Carolus Marsuppini in the 1440s and early 1450s, perhaps a notary in the Florentine Chancery as well. When Marsuppini died in 1452 Landino unsuccessfully sought his Studio chair in philosophy and poetry

Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), especially 16–57. 2 The best modern biographical accounts are Craig Kallendorf, “Landino (Cristoforo) 1424– 1498,” in Centuriae Latinae: Cent une figures humanistes de la Renaissance aux Lumières offertes à Jacques Chomarat, ed. Colette Nativel (Geneva: Droz, 1997), 477–83; and Simona Foà, “Landino, Cristoforo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani 63 (2004): 428–33. The only specifically biographical work on Landino is Angelo Maria Bandini, Specimen literaturae Florentinae saeculi XV, in quo … Christophori Landini gesta enarrantur…., 2 vols. (Florence: Rigaccius, 1747–51). See also Alexander Perosa, “Una fonte secentesca dello Specimen del Bandini in un codice della Biblioteca Marucelliana,” La Bibliofilia 42 (1940): 229–56. A general summation of Landino’s life as well as a history of the Landino family in Tuscany is Francesco Pasetto, I Landino, una famiglia di artisti vissuti fra Pratovecchio e Firenze nei secoli d’oro della storia toscana, Arezzo e i Suoi Grandi 1 (Cortona: Calosci, 1998). This also shows portraits of Landino. Several excellent studies have been done by Roberto Cardini, see his La Critica del Landino (Firenze: Sansoni, 1973). See also Craig Kallendorf’s entry “Landino, Cristoforo” in the Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. P. Grendler (NY: Scribners, 1999), 378–80; and Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy in Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 231–39. 3 In an early redaction of his Xandra I.21 he says the poverty of his parents and an unmarried sister required his financial support as a notary. In a later poem, Xandra III.4, written in the later 1450s as a eulogy for his unnamed brother killed in the 1452–54 war with Aragon, he says his father and sister are alive, presumably still in need of financial support, but his mother has died. 4 Lucia Bertolini, ed., De vera amicitia: i testi del primo Certame coronario (Modena: Istituto di studi rinascimentali, 1993), 192.