Note on the Fortune of the Epistles of Marcantonio Sabellico. The Case of Matteo Bandello

This essay brings attention to a peculiar phenomenon: borrowings among contemporaries. An example of this is Marcantonio Sabellico, whose magnificent descriptions were displayed elsewhere as veritable literary landscapes. I take a close look at the case of a 1493 letter to Barbavarus (Ep. III 18), part of which was reused by Sabellico in a different context (Enneades, X, lib. VIII). After having found that epistle, Matteo Bandello revived it and inserted it his Parentalis oratio, written for the death of Francesco II Gonzaga. An edition of the letter, which ends up becoming Bucintoro’s descriptive model par excellence, is presented in the Appendix.