Fra i “cigni del Tevere” accanto al Tasso: Antonio Decio da Orte, Fabio e Virginio II Orsini (con documenti inediti)

The essay is a historical–literary investigation of the Roman literary milieu at the time of Luca Marenzio. It starts from its presiding spirit, Tasso, who formed a series of relations during his various stays in Rome that left a deep and lasting mark on it.
Of the prominent figures that made up Tasso’s main contacts in Rome towards the end, the first, chronologically, was Fabio Orsini, to whom Antonio Decio da Orte dedicated his only tragedy, «Acripanda» (first printed in 1592), and who was himself the author of a tragedy, which Angelo Ingegneri classified as a pastoral drama. As a young man he had absorbed the influence of the «second “Ciceronian” Renaissance» (Marc Fumaroli), in which Marc-Antoine Muret played a fundamental part, and was the dedicatee of «verse and prose» by Tasso (the «Rogo amoroso», two sonnets and the «Risposta di Roma a Plutarco»). Like Tasso, and other significant figures in the panorama described here, such as Decio, Giovan Battista Strozzi, Antonio Ongaro, Giovanni de’ Medici and Antonio Piccioli, he was also a member of the Academy of the «Pastori della Valle Tiberina», which recognized «as its Prince» another Orsini, Virginio II Duke of Bracciano — to whom Marenzio dedicated the «Quinto Libro de’ Madrigali a Sei Voci» (1591). Piccioli was the author of «Prose Tiberine» (published in 1597), a “palimpsest” of Sannazaro’s «Arcadia», which revolves around the poles of the two Orsini.
We have only indirect accounts, but the poetry of the exponents of the Tiber Academy grew naturally from this esteem, as emerges from some letters, transcribed complete with commentary, that are part of the correspondence of Virginio II: a vast legacy of documents held in the Orsini Archives in Rome, at the «Archivio Storico Capitolino».
Two of the main elements in Tasso’s Roman poetry were eulogies and spiritual verses. He showed particular interest in Virginio II, dedicating to him three sonnets, and to his wife, Flavia Peretti, the «Tempio» (printed in 1591), a collection of poems by various authors, originally conceived for their marriage.
Overall, this literary output seems wholly in keeping with the new poetics at the turn of the century, which aimed at a “marvellous” grandeur and was marked by a musical taste similar to that of the madrigalists, among whom, of course, Marenzio had a fundamental role.