Natale Conti

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Natale Conti , Latin: Natalis Comes , French: Noël le Comte (* 1520 in Milan ; † 1582 ibid) was a Venetian scholar and historian, best known for his mythographic handbook, the Mythologiae, sive explicationis fabularum libri decem , published in 1551 has become.

Life

Little is known about his life. He studied in Venice and was the teacher of Francesco Panigarola . His main work, the Mythologia , was printed in 1551 by Aldus Manutius , again in 1568 with a dedication to Charles IX , King of France, and finally a third time during his lifetime in 1581 with glosses by Geoffroi Linoicer . The frequent dedications of his works to Charles IX could point to a stay in France, where his main work was very successful (the first translation appeared there in 1604), possibly he even had contact with the Pléiade .

The Mythologiae sive explicationis fabularum libri decem

The mythologia , written in Latin, takes up more than a thousand pages in the original and saw well over 20 editions in the 16th and 17th centuries; the French translation itself went through six editions. This made the Mythologia Contis the authoritative work on ancient mythology far beyond its time. In contrast to the handbooks by Giraldi and Cartari, Conti draws more epigrams , eidyllia and ecphrases from Greek literature. He prefers a literary rather than philological style for depicting myths. According to a scheme adopted from the Middle Ages, the myths are interpreted historically, "scientifically" and morally; Neoplatonic influence can be seen more clearly in this allegorical interpretation of myth than in its predecessors. Concerning the concept of myth , Conti says in the introduction to Mythologia that the early philosophers derived their knowledge from myths "and that their philosophy was nothing other than the meaning of these legends, which emerges when you strip off their cover and their clothing". Conti's theses continued through Francis Bacon ( Wisdom of the Ancients , 1609) to Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms (1923–1929).

The Mythologiae were cited as an authoritative source for Greek mythology until the 18th century . Philological studies have shown, however, that Conti quoted imprecisely and often supplemented his presentation with details he had thought up himself. Thus, the Mythologiae cannot be considered the primary bearer of ancient myths, but they represent an important testimony to the early modern reception of antiquity.

Other works

As a humanistic poet, he published elegies in Greek and Latin, a parodistic short epic entitled Myrmicomyamachiae libri quattuor (“The battle of ants and flies”) and elegiac or hexametric poems on the theme of the time : De quattuor anni temporibus (“About the four seasons”) and the poem De horis liber unus (“About the hours of the day, in a book”) dedicated to Cosimo de 'Medici . In the four books of the poem De venatione (“About the Hunt”) Conti takes up the Virgilian Georgica .

His second major work is learned Universae historiae sui temporis , a chronicle of the years 1545 to 1581. In addition, Conti wrote a series of translations of ancient treatises on rhetoric such as the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius further the Deipnosophistae of Athenaios and the pseudo- Plutarch Font De fluviis .

Works

The mythologia

  • The Latin original
    • Natalis Comitis Mythologiae, sive explicationis fabularum libri decem (Venice: Aldus Manutius 1551, 1568; also: Frankfurt 1581; Geneva 1651; Paris: Fr. Gueffier 1605) Digitized Padua 1616
  • The French translation
    • Noël le Comte: Mythologie ou Explication des fables . First: 1604. Paris: Chevalier 1627; Ndr. V. Stephen Orgel, New York, London: Garland 1976 (The Renaissance and the Gods, 26)
  • Modern translations into English

Other works

  • De venatione libri IIII (1551)
  • Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini (1551)
  • Myrmicomyamachiae libri quattuor
  • De quattuor anni temporibus
  • De horis liber unus
  • Universae historiae sui temporis

literature

  • Rosemary E. Bancroft-Marcus : A dainty dish to set before a king: Natale Conti and his translation of Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae. In: David Braund, John Wilkins (Eds.): Athenaeus And His World. Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire. University of Exeter Press, Exeter 2000, ISBN 0-85989-661-7 , pp. 53-76 ( table of contents ).
  • Virgilio Costa: I frammenti di Filocoro tràditi da Boccaccio e Natale Conti. In: Eugenio Lanzillotta (ed.): Ricerche di antichità e tradizione classica. Tored, Tivoli 2004, ISBN 88-88617-05-1 , pp. 117-147.
  • Virgilio Costa: Natale Conti e la divulgazione della mitologia classica in Europe tra Cinquecento e Seicento. In: E. Lanzillotta (Ed.): Ricerche di Antichità e Tradizione Classica. Tored, Tivoli 2004, ISBN 88-88617-05-1 , pp. 257-311.
  • Virgilio Costa: "Quum mendaciis fallere soleat". Ancora sui frammenti della storiografia greca tràditi da Natale Conti. In: Cecilia Braidotti, Emanuele Dettori, Eugenio Lanzillotta (eds.): Οὐ πᾶν ἐφήμερον. Scritti in memoria di Roberto Pretagostini. 2 volumes. Quasar, Rome 2009, ISBN 978-88-7140-429-5 , Vol. 2, pp. 915-925.
  • Yasmin Haskell: Work or play? Latin "recreational" Georgic poetry of the Italian Renaissance. In: Humanistica Lovaniensia. Vol. 48, 1999, pp. 132–159 ( online in the Google book search)
  • Jean Seznec : La survivance des dieux antiques. Essai sur le rôle de la tradition mythologique dans l'humanisme et dans l'art de la Renaissance (= Studies of the Warburg Institute. Vol. 11). The Warburg Institute, London 1940; 2nd edition: Flammarion, Paris 1980, reprint 1993.
    • English: The survival of the pagan gods. The mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and art. Translated by Barbara F. Sessions. Pantheon, New York 1953; Reprints: Princeton University Press, Princeton 1972, 1995.
    • German: The survival of the ancient gods. The mythological tradition in humanism and in Renaissance art. Translated by Heinz Jatho. W. Fink, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7705-2632-5 .
  • Reinhard Steiner: Prometheus. Iconological and anthropological aspects of the fine arts from the 14th to the 17th century (= research. Vol. 2). Boer, Grafrath 1991, ISBN 3-924963-42-8 (on the Prometheus interpretation by Conti; short version ).
  • Michael Thimann: Natale Conti and the status of the fabula in the "Mythologiae". In: Ders .: Lying pictures: Ovids favole and the history picture in the Italian Renaissance (= reconstruction of the arts. Vol. 6). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-52547-905-0 , pp. 40-42 ( online in the Google book search).

Web links

Commons : Natale Conti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The title Mythologiae is widely understood as nominative plural in the sense of "representations and interpretations of myths"; however, the correct interpretation is the genitive singular, parallel to explicationis fabularum, dependent on libri decem , in the sense of “representation and interpretation of myths”; the punctuation does not conflict with this at this time. The same confusion of case-number is also used in reference to the Genealogia deorum gentilium of Giovanni Boccaccio ago.
  2. ↑ The history of these types of interpretation is discussed by Jean Seznec (see above on literature).
  3. ^ Robert Louis Fowler : Early Greek Mythography. Volume 2: Commentary , Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-198-14741-1 , pp. 735-737.
personal data
SURNAME Conti, Natale
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Comes, Natalis (Latin)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Venetian scholar and historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1520
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan
DATE OF DEATH 1582
Place of death Milan