A major contributor to villa discourse, Taegio’s voice needs to be heard today. At a time when the balance of nature is being challenged by humanity’s interventions on a scale hitherto unimaginable, the city/country debate needs to be revisited, in order to be imagined anew. Four hundred and fifty years after it was published, La Villa continues to speak about the consequences of the choices human beings make among possible ways of dwelling in the world. Yet, the ability of modern readers to find meaning in the text will depend to a considerable extent on their understanding of the context in which the initial discursive exchange between the author and his sixteenth-century readers took place.
The goal of this Introduction, by unfolding the biographical, political, economic, social, agricultural, horticultural, and philosophical facets of that context, is to situate La Villa within the history of the idea of the villa, thereby orienting the reader to the text and providing a framework for interpreting it. In the field of landscape architecture, which lacks a body of theoretical writing comparable to that of architecture, and in which a comprehensive survey of history, theory, and practice was not even attempted until the eighteenth century, La Villa is an invaluable source of theory from the Renaissance.
The Life and Literary Activity of Bartolomeo Taegio
Bartolomeo Taegio, jurist and man of letters, was born in Milan around 1520 to an old patrician family.3 His father’s name was Girolamo, and the family name (variously spelled Taegio, Taeggio, or Taeggi) is a contraction of Taveggio or Tavecchio, which in turn is derived from Montevecchio, Girolamo’s ancestral home.4 It is likely that young Bartolomeo studied law at the University of Pavia, a center of jurisprudence in northern Italy since the fourteenth century.5 He was educated not only in law, both civil and canon, but also in humanistic studies. He was admired in the seventeenth century as an orator and as a writer of both prose (in Italian and Latin) and poetry.6 When he was in his early twenties he found himself on the wrong side of the law, and his mistake, however faint may be the record of it now, left an indelible mark on his carreer. Whether it ultimately cost him his life is uncertain, but its immediate effect was to compel him to leave the city of his birth.
FIGURE 1. Woodcut portrait of Bartolomeo Taegio, from the verso of the title page of La Villa (Moscheni, 1559).
Sometime between 1540 and 1544, Taegio took up residence in the smaller city of Novara, forty-five kilometers from Milan. A twentieth-century specialist in the history of Novara reports that Taegio was “confinatovi per aver commesso un omocidio” (banished there for having commited a murder).7 Taegio adjusted quickly to his new surroundings. He bought land and started his own law practice in Novara.8 Between 1544 and 1546 he founded a semisecret literary society called the Academy of the Shepherds of the Agogna, in which, according to local historians, “si iscrissero i giovani novaresi più ingegnosi, dando vita così in una piccola città ad un centro di insolita attività letterale culturalmente libera” (the most talented Novarese youth were enrolled, thus giving life in a small city to a center of isolated, culturally free, literary activity).9 The emblem of the academy was a palm with hanging fruit and the motto “adversus pondera surgo.” According to Taegio’s nineteeth-century biographer, G. B. Finazzi, “Taegio, speaking about this emblem in a speech, implied that the Academy was intended for something better than the reciting of sonnets or strambotti.”10 The inference is that the Academy of the Shepherds of the Agogna was conceived for the purpose, at least in part, of preparing its members for political action. Including Taegio, who styled himself Vitauro, there were a total of twenty members of the academy. Six besides the founder are known by their real names. Two of them, Giovanni Pietra Testa and Giovanni Iacopo Torniello, were villa owners named in La Villa.11 The other thirteen “shepherds” are known only by their pseudonyms.
FIGURE 2. Frontispiece of L’Essilio. Courtesy of Biblioteca civica, Novara.
It was Taegio’s intention to remain in Novara and make it a “studious Athens, where all the liberal arts would display their splendor by competing with one another.”12 His vision would never be realized. In 1554 he was, according to Finazzi, “constrained to leave and to be tied again to his city of origin.”13 In none of his published writings did Taegio explain the reasons for this forced return to Milan. Finazzi speculated that Taegio’s inclination toward novità (novelty), his involvement with the Academy of the Shepherds of the Agogna, and his relationship with Cardinal Giovanni Morone, who had been held in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome for “suspicions in religious matters,” attracted the attention of the Spanish authorities, who might have preferred to keep Taegio in Milan, where “his actions would have been felt less than in Novara, a smaller city.”14 Taegio remained visible, even holding public office. Cardinal Morone appointed him governor of Lago d’Orta.15 Taegio also served as one of the vicars general of the state of Milan.16
Bartolomeo Taegio began his career as a writer at about the time of his return to Milan.17 By most accounts his first and best published work was Le Risposte (The Replies), which he dedicated to Cardinal Morone. He wrote it in 1554, while he was governor of Lago d’Orta, and probably while he was staying at Isola San Giulio.18 As the inscription on the frontispiece of Le Risposte indicates, Taegio was already by that time a member of the Collegio di Giureconsulti (College of Jurists) of Milan, a prestigious association of legal specialists. Le Risposte was translated into French in the sixteenth century, and until now it is the only piece of Taegio’s writing that has been published in translation.19 As many as sixteen more books followed, over a period of eighteen years. Two seventeenth-century encyclopedias of literature that include entries on Bartolomeo Taegio list the same twelve titles, while the earliest of these sources adds that there were other books.20 Later biographical dictionaries of Italian authors provide dates of publication and names of publishers for some of these twelve works, as well as the titles of five additional ones not identified in the earlier sources.21 The public library in Novara holds copies of six books by Bartolomeo Taegio.22
FIGURE 3. Frontispiece of Le Risposte. Courtesy of Biblioteca Civica, Novara.
Le Risposte is a collection of fifty-three essays in the form of replies to inquiries from Taegio’s friends, most of them residents of Novara. All of the Shepherds of the Agogna who are known by name are represented; one suspects that the anonymous ones are as well. The essays contain valuable historical information. The one entitled “Della Bellezza del Isola et Lago d’Orta” (On the Beauty of the Island and Lake of Orta) describes mid-sixteenth-century Isola San Giulio, and helps to locate its author there in 1554. Another, “Della Pittura” (On Painting), is dedicated to Bernardino Lanino, one of the promising young painters of the Vercellese school.23 The titles of the essays reflect the range of themes, both practical—“Delle Richezza” (On Riches), “Del Studio delle Leggi” (On the Study of Law), and “Delle Qualità che deve haver la Buona Moglie” (On the Qualities That a Good Wife Ought to Have)—and theoretical—“Della Musica” (On Music), “Del Chaos Poetico” (On Poetic Chaos), and “Dell’Amicità c’ha la Pittura con la Poesia” (On the Friendship That Painting Has with Poetry). The titles of other essays are suggestive of Taegio’s interest in country life: they include “Della Caccia” (On Hunting) and “Della Solitudine” (On Solitude). An essay entitled “Di Dialoghi” (On Dialogue) is addressed to Francesco Sesallo, the publisher of Le Risposte.
In the year following the publication