La Villa. Bartolomeo Taegio
La Villa to be published by Moscheni. This slim volume contains a letter addressed to Giovanni Battista Piotto, one of the villa owners named in La Villa, in which Taegio expressed sorrow over the separation from his scholarly friends and his garden in Novara, as well as resignation at being confined in Milan, his “very sweet homeland.” L’Essilio contains other letters addressed to each of the members of the Shepherds of the Agogna, and it is because of this that their pseudonyms are known.
La Villa itself was published in 1559, the year of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, which gave Spain dominion over Milan.24 A twentieth-century Milanese historian calls La Villa “un gustoso libretto” (an enjoyable little book) devoted to the idea of villeggiatura. He provides a concise description of the book:
É un dialogo tra due gentilhuomini, l’uno innamorato della vita campestre, l’altro allora della cittadina. Il primo, per convalidare la propria tesi, enumera i cittadini che passano in villa gran parte dell’anno, una sfilata di circa dugencinquanta nomi di famiglie e di personaggi, preziosa anche perchè ci mette sott’occhio le persone allora più distinte a Milano.
(It is a dialogue between two gentlemen, one enamored of country life, the other of the city. The first, in order to support his thesis, enumerates the citizens who spend a large part of the year in villa, a list of about two hundred and fifty names of families and personnages, especially valuable because it sets before the eyes the most distinguished persons in Milan at that time.)25
The first of the “two gentlemen” is Taegio, using the name Vitauro, his pseudonym in the Academy of the Shepherds of the Agogna. The other interlocutor is Partenio, one of the “shepherds” whose real-life identity is unknown. Testimony to the importance of La Villa for a historian is given by a nineteenth-century author who said,
Dalla pag. 55, alla 106, si accennano in parte, ed in parte si descrivono più ville e giardini del milanese rinomate in que’ tempi. L’opera torna molto preziosa anche per la storia dei costumi lombardi di quel secolo.
(From pages 55 to 106, most of the villas and gardens of the prominent Milanese of that time [the middle 1500s] are either alluded to or described. The work is also very valuable for the history of Lombard customs of that century.)26
The first of Taegio’s publications that followed La Villa is L’Humore (The Humors), a dialogue between the author and Giovanni Paolo Barzi, whose name appears in La Villa. It contains numerous poems, many of them translations of works by Virgil. Dedicated to Giuliano Golesino, L’Humore was published in 1564, the same year as Taegio’s treatise on criminal law, Tractatus Criminales, the only work Taegio wrote in Latin.27
Il Liceo (The Lyceum) consists of two volumes, in which “there are riches of historical and biographical facts regarding Milanese literature.”28 The first book of Il Liceo is written in the form of a dialogue between Count Galeazzo Visconti and Ennio Ritio, in which, according to the inscription on its frontispiece, “the order of the Academies and the Nobility is discussed.” It is dedicated to Cardinal Francesco Alziati. The second book, “where the art of making enterprises conform to the concepts of the mind is discussed, and the poetical imaginings of the muses talked about,” is dedicated to Giulio Claro, one of the villa owners named in La Villa.29 Two poetic compositions by Bartolomeo Taegio entitled Paradossi (Paradoxes) were published only in a second edition of Il Liceo book 1 in 1572.30
FIGURE 4. Frontispiece of Il Liceo. Courtesy of Biblioteca Negroni, Novara.
The last of Taegio’s works to be published, in 1572, was L’Officioso (The Dutiful One), a dialogue dedicated to Saint Carlo Borromeo. It shows the author near the end of his life, “intent on works of piety and religion.”31 The portrait in the front of this book depicts Taegio in his old age, and carries the legend “Bartholomaeus Taegius Comes Doctor et Eques” (Bartolomeo Taegio, Companion, Teacher, and Knight).
The date, place, and circumstances of Bartolomeo Taegio’s death remain a mystery. A local historian described a marble sepulchral monument, with an inscription dedicated to the Taegio family, in the church of S. Francesco in Vercelli, and he gave 1573 as the year of Bartolomeo’s death.32 It is likely that the stone was installed, as was customary, in the floor of the church, but no trace of it exists today. When the interior of S. Francesco was renovated in the 1980’s the floor was repaved, and a great number of old lapide were removed.
The Political, Economic, and Social Context
When La Villa was published, the state of Milan, a territory that encompassed the western half of present-day Lombardy as well as a large part of Piedmont, was a Spanish possession. Philip II (1527–1598), son of the Habsburg emperor Charles V (1500–1558), had reigned as king of Spain since 1556, the year Charles abdicated and left the empire to his brother Ferdinand I, to whom Taegio dedicated his dialogue in 1559, and whose claim to the imperial throne had just been recognized the previous year.33 The roots of Spanish control of Milan, and the origins of its sixteenth-century aristocracy, lie in the history of the duchy of Milan from the end of the fourteenth century.
The names of the most active political Milanese families for three hundred years—Visconti, Sforza, Simonetta, Trivulzio, Crivelli, and others—appear repeatedly in the pages of La Villa. Members of the Visconti family had ruled the territory since the title “duke of Milan” was first bestowed by the Holy Roman Emperor Wenceslas on Gian Galeazzo Visconti in 1395.34 Under their leadership the region flourished economically and artistically in the fourteenth century. By Taegio’s day, many Visconti castles had been transformed into hunting lodges and villas that can still be seen today, such as the Visconti-Sforza castle at Cusago, which Taegio identified as the villa of Countess Maximiliana Sforza.
The fall of the Visconti dynasty came with the death of Filippo Maria Visconti, without heirs, in 1447. After a violent struggle for succession, a condottiere by the name of Francesco Sforza took control of the duchy in 1450, and the people of Milan proclaimed him duke. He removed from positions of power several Milanese aristocrats close to the Visconti whose family names (such as Borrromeo, Trivulzio, and Cotta) appear in La Villa, and he replaced them with members of his own entourage of commoners.35 He restored the economic health of the duchy, which had been debilitated by years of warfare.36
Francesco Sforza died in 1466, and his oldest legitimate son, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, succeeded him. During Galeazzo’s reign the Milanese court became the richest in Italy. His profligacy contributed to the eventual financial bankrupcy of the Sforza dynasty.37 He was assassinated by some of his own courtiers in 1476.38 Galeazzo’s son, Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was only seven years old when his father was killed. The duchy was effectively ruled by the late duke’s secretary and minister, Cecco Simonetta, until he was arrested and subsequently executed in 1480 by followers of Lodovico Maria Sforza (“il Moro”), the fourth legitimate son of Francesco. Thus Lodovico Sforza became in effect the sole regent of Milan, while his young nephew reigned as duke in title only. Upon Gian Galeazzo’s death in 1494, Lodovico became duke.
The period in the history of Italy from 1494 to 1559 was “the age of the Italian Wars.”39 The balance of power the duchy of Milan had been able to maintain as the wealthiest and strongest militarily of the Italian city-states was permanently upset in 1494. In that year French troops under their king, Charles VIII, crossed the Alps into Italy to conquer Naples. Lodovico Sforza had endorsed the invasion, but in an about-face he allied himself with the pope, the emperor, Venice, and Spain against the French king, who was expelled from Naples in 1495.40 Four years later Charles VIII died, and the duke of Orleans, an old enemy of Lodovico’s, became Louis XII. The new French king claimed the title of duke of Milan on the grounds of his descent from a Visconti princess. In 1499 the Treaty of Blois between France and Venice partitioned Milanese territory, and the army of Louis XII invaded Lombardy under the command of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, a former captain of the Milanese army who