Dictionary of Italian-Turkish Language (1641) by Giovanni Molino

ture, and architecture, but also the fields of poetry and philosophy, a view enshrined in the Varchi-influenced San Lorenzo exequies for Michelangelo, where exquisite, though temporary, exhibits and staging celebrated a many-sided intellectual. All of this was to be safely dismantled after the event, leaving only the simple Santa Croce monument celebrating an artist tout court. The facing texts, Italian original and French translation, feature “Lesson One,” with Varchi delivering an account of Michelangelo’s sonnet 151 (numeration from Corsaro and Masi) in the light of Aristotelian notions about beauty and Platonic themes concerning art, love, and creativity. More recent figures such as Dante, Petrarch, Marc’Antonio Zimara, and Pietro Bembo come into play, as well as references to numerous other poems by Michelangelo, with complete versions of poems 89, 98, 116, and 147, to confirm a portrait of the consummate artist-writer. “Lesson Two” considers the aesthetic paragone—in other words, the question of superiority between painting and sculpture, with epistolary interventions by Vasari, Niccolò Tribolo, Benvenuto Cellini, Agnolo Bronzino, Jacopo Carucci, Giovanbattista del Tasso, Francesco da Sangallo, and Michelangelo. Varchi’s conclusion, not exactly in harmony with all of his interlocutors—especially Vasari and Cellini—proposes a compromise, prizing both pursuits in a common endeavor of harmonizing life by the imitation of nature. Over the years, critical appreciation of the lessons has been mixed. Carlo Dionisotti dismissed them as superficial; Julius Schlosser Magnino regarded them as excessively abstract; Paola Barocchi seemed to follow the official contemporary line articulated by Vincenzo Borghini, in playing down the significance. This first integral edition in over four centuries promises to move the critical appreciation in some of the new directions already suggested by Annalisa Andreoni and Salvatore Lo Re. Dubard invites a rereading in the light of a reevaluation of the whole period that is now under way; and the quality of this contribution bodes well for these aspirations.