CHAPTER NINE THE ACCADEMIA DEGLI ALTERATI AND CIVIC VIRTUE Henk Th. van Veen The Accademia degli Alterati was founded in Florence on 17 February 1569 by seven young Florentines of patrician stock.1 The founders’ 1 A variety of sources inform us about the Academia degli Alterati. Most important of these is the Diario dell’Accademia degl’Alterati, Biblioteca Mediceo Laurenziana, Ash- burnham 558, the accounts kept by the provedditore of the sessions held by the Academy between 1571 and 1606. Then there are the Lezioni degli Alterati: Ashburnham 562. Important too are the preliminary notes the Alterato Giovambattista Strozzi put together between 1616 and 1621: BNCF MS Magliabecchiano, IX, 124; these were to serve for a history of the Academy that his fellow member Giovanni de’ Medici was to write, a project that failed to come to fruition because of the latter’s death. In addition to these sources, many of the literary products of individual Alterati survive in Florentine libraries, as well as letters to and from them. Cf. Michael Plaisance, “L’Académie des Alterati au travail,” in Michael Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo Principe: cultura e politica a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I e di Francesco de’ Medici (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2004), 393–404, esp. 404. Cf. also Giorgio Bartoli, Lettere a Lorenzo Giacomini, ed. A. Siekiera (Florence: L’Accademia della Crusca, 1997). Information on the Alterati is included in S. Salvini, Fasti consolari dell’Accademia fi orentina (Florence: Gio. Gaetano Tartini e Santi Franchi, 1717), and in 1748 the Academy’s fi rst printed history, D. M. Manni, Memorie dell’Accademia degli Alterati, was published in the same city. Of the modern studies on the Accademia degli Alterati the following should be mentioned: M. Maylender, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, vol. I (Bologna: L. Cappelli Edit., 1926), 154–160; B. Weinberg, “Argomenti di discussione letteraria nell’Accademia degli Alterati (1570–1600),” Giornale storico della Letteratura Italiana 131 (1954), 175–194; B. Weinberg, “The Accademia degli Alterati and Literary Taste from 1570 to 1600,” Italica 31(1954), 207–214; Claude V. Palisca, “The Alterati of Florence, Pioneers in the Theory of Dramatic Music,” in New Looks at Italian Opera: Essays in Honor of Donald J. Grout (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), 9–38 (Reprint: Claude V. Palisca, Studies in the History of Italian Music and Music Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 408–431); Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973), Book II; M. Plaisance, “I dibattiti intorno ai poemi dell’Ariosto e del Tasso nelle accademie fi orentine: 1582–1586,” in L’arme e gli amori. Ariosto, Tasso and Guarini in Late Renaissance Florence. Acts of an International Conference, Florence, Villa I Tatti, June 27–29, 2001 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2004), I, 119–134; M. Plaisance, “Le accademie fi orentine negli anni ottanta del Cinquecento,” in Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo Principe, 363–374; Gaspare De Caro, “L’Accademia degli Alterati, l’accademico Pier Vettori e ‘la materia dell’historia’(I),” Hortus Musicus 12 (2002), 36–39; G. De Caro, “L’Accademia degli Alterati, l’accademico Pier Vettori e ‘la materia dell’historia’(II),” Hortus Musicus 13 (2003), 54–60; G. De Caro, “L’Accademia degli Alterati, l’accademico Pier Vettori e ‘la materia dell’historia’ (III),” Hortus Musicus 14 (2003), 35–39; G. De Caro, “Jacopo 286 henk th. van veen names were: Vincenzo Acciaiuoli, Antonio degli Albizzi, Giulio Del Bene, Alessandro Canigiani, Lorenzo Corbinelli, Tommaso del Nero and Renato de’ Pazzi. Except for Corbinelli, they were all members of the ‘offi cial’ Florentine academy, the Accademia Fiorentina which had been founded by Duke Cosimo I in 1540. In his Fasti consolari, Salvino Salvini pointed to Tommaso Del Nero as the foremost instigator of the Alterati’s founding.2 What would argue for this claim is that from the very beginning until Tommaso’s death, in 1572, the academicians gath- ered in his Florentine palazzo. However, it is one of the other founders, Giulio Del Bene, Del Nero’s brother-in-law, who, in hindsight, reveals something of the considerations that led to the founding act. Indeed, Del Bene is very frank when he writes: When I was in the best and most blooming phase of my life and when I thought by myself how regretful it was to live in idleness and how laudable to exercise virtue, I regretted for myself having consumed the whole of my youth, without having occupied myself with either public or private affairs, or for that matter without having devoted myself alle scientie et alle buone lettere (to Learning and the bonae litterae), which would have made it possible for me to make my appearance with the men of letters and to speak with some judgement about those things which virtuosi tend to occupy themselves with [. .].3 In other words, Del Bene wished to participate in the cultural discourse of those men who, different from what he himself had done so far, had given proof of their valour in either public government or in governing their own private affairs. Del Bene found an even more precise motive to establish the Academy degli Alterati in his wish to overcome his bashfulness to speak in public, an anxiety which for that matter, he shared with Tommaso Del Nero.4 Corsi e l’orgoglio fi orentino (I),” Hortus Musicus 7 (2001), 35–39; G. De Caro, “Jacopo Corsi e l’orgoglio fi orentino (II),” Hortus Musicus 8 (2001), 38–43. 2 Plaisance, “Le accademie fi orentine,” 363, n. 4. Giorgio Bartoli as well spoke of “la accademia particolare del Nero,” Bartoli, Lettere, 143. 3 “Essendo io nella migliore et più fi orita età della vita mia et pensando meco medesimo quanto disdicevole cosa fosse il vivere otiosamente et quanto fosse lodevole l’esercitio virtuoso, mi dolevo fra me stesso di havere consumato tutta la mia gioventù, senza havere atteso né al governo delle cose pubbliche e mono alle private, né haver tanto dato opera alle scientie et alle buone lettere ch’io potessi comparire con i letterati e di quelle cose con qualche ragione favellare che quelli che virtuosi si domandano sogliono ne i loro ragionamenti discorrere,” Rome, Biblioteca Vaticana, Fondo Rossiano, 901, fol. 2v, quoted by Plaisance, “Le accademie fi orentine,” 363–364. 4 “Et conoscendo che anchora che io havesse qualche tempo atteso alle buone let- tere. Fussi egli nondimeno per haver dismesso gli studi o per haver male apparato o .