[Cookery - Italian Renaissance Cuisine]
[Ortensio Landi]
Commentario
delle piv notabili,
& mostruose cose d'Italia, & altri
luoghi:
di lingua aramea in
italiana tradotto.
Con vn breve catalogo
de gli inuentori delle cose che si mangiano
& beueno,
nouamente ritrouato.
Venice: Bartholomeo Cesano, 1553.
SOLD
Edited with preface to the reader by Nicolo Morra.
VERY RARE! WorldCat locates only 3 copies of this edition in the US.
The 3rd edition of this curious and sought after work by the eccentric Italian humanist Ortensio Landi (ca. 1510-ca. 1558), known for his Italian translation of Thomas More's Utopia. the work was "based on a journey taken by Ortensio Landi through Italy in 1543 and 1544, [...] [and] contains among many follies not a few valuable hints on the unhappy ruined condition of Italy in the middle of the [16th] century" (Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, p.341-2). The book is especially interesting and valuable as the ultimate 16th-century "GASTRONOMIC VOYAGE IN ITALY" (M. Montanari, Italian Identity in the Kitchen, p.27)
The Commentario delle piu notabili et mostruose cose d'Italia et altri luoghi ("Commentary on the Most Notable and Monstrous Things in Italy and Elsewhere"), first printed in Venice in 1548, facetiously claims that it was "written by an anonymous from Utopia, and translated into Italian from the Aramaic". The author's name is, however, revealed in an anagrammatic statement at the end of the book (leaf I6r): "SVISNETROH SVDNAL, ROTUA TSE," i.e. (with each word read backwards) Hortensius Landus autor est; also, in this edition an "Apology for the author" signed by Ortensio Landi is appended at the end of the work.
The reference to Utopia in the title of Landi's Commentario is considered an important contemporary allusion to Landi's authorship of the Italian translation of Thomas More's Utopia, published in Venice the same year (1548) as the first edition of the Commentario. The publication was strictly anonymous: even the editor A. F. Doni in his dedicatory epistle admitted that the translator's name had not been revealed to him. (Landi's authorship of the translation was first revealed by Sansovino in a 1561 edition of his Governo dei Regni).
Landi's Commentario delle piu notabili et mostruose cose "reverses the idea of a European visiting Utopia. Here a Utopian is guided on an eye-opening journey through Italy, reputedly the most civilised part of the world - but, as he soon finds out, it is rife with poverty, cruelty and vice, especially in the states controlled by the Spanish." (Peter Brand, Lino Pertile, eds.: The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, p.213)
"... From the mouth of a mysterious grey-haired sage, a journey is described from Sicily through Italy to the East. All the cities of Italy are more or less fully discussed: that Lucca should receive special praise is intelligible from the writer's way of thinking. Venice, where he claims to have been much with Pietro Aretino, and Milan are described in detail, and in connexion with the latter the maddest stories are told (fol. 25 sqq.). There is no want of such elsewhere—of roses which flower all the year round, stars which shine at midday, birds which are changed into men, and men with bulls' heads on their shoulders, mermen, and men who spit fire from their mouths. Among all these there are often authentic bits of information [...]; short mention is made of the Lutherans (fol. 32r, 38r), and frequent complaints are heard of the wretched times and unhappy state of Italy." (Burckhardt, Op. cit., p.342f)
Above all else, however, the interest of Landi's Commentario lies in its delightfully colorful description Italy's various regional cuisines in the second part of the work titled Catalogo de gl'inventori delle cose, che si mangiano, et delle bevande c'heggedi s'usano (ff.46-70). Capatti & Montanari in their Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History note that the first appearance in 1548 of Landi's gastronomic survey of Italy in his Commentario preceded the other major 16th-century italian culinary treatises by Scappi, Messisbugoa and Rossetti, and proceed to describe Landi's work in detail.
"This is the fictional narrative of an improbable journey undertaken by an "Aramaic" traveler to Italy, which offers the pretext for a description of many strange, bizarre things. At a certain point in the protagonist's journey, Lando imagines that the owner of an inn where his traveller finds lodging serves him food and wine that are characteristic of the locality. The innkeeper becomes a sort of guide, offering to reveal Italy to the visitor though its different cuisines ... from South to North, beginning with the "rich Island of Sicily." In Sicily, he tells us, one may eat macaroni that is "usually cooked with fat capons and fresh cheeses, dripping all over with butter and milk" and flavored with sugar and cinnamon. Taranto, the second stop in the journey, has an abundance of wonderful fish " cooked with vinegar and wine, with fragrant herbs and flavorings of walnut, garlic, and almonds" ... And then off to Naples to taste excellent breads and to Sorrento for veal, fresh caciocavallo cheese, and "susameli, mostacciouli, ravioli, fish, mushrooms, chestnuts, sugar, crushed almonds, almond paste, rosewater preserves, biancomangiare, thighs of capon and chicken, shoulder of mutton", and peaches "delicious enough to raise the dead." His itinerary continues with some uncertainty between Tuscany and Umbria, stopping off in Siena for its "wonderful marzipan, marvelous bericoccoli, and most flavorful ravigioli cheese," Foligno for its candied melon seeds and "other priceless confections," and Florence for its Marzolino cheese, peppery bread, and berlingozzo cakes, as well as its Trebian wine, which is not inferior to the "Greco from Somma" [...]
"The journey proceeds to Pisa for biscotti (similarly recommended by Scappi) and to Val Calci, at some distance from Pisa, for the best ricotta in the world. In Lucca one can find good fresh sausage (also noted by Scappi) and "wonderful marzipan." The innkeeper continues: "I must not forget to mention that in Bologna they make the best sausages that man has ever tasted. They are eaten either cured or cooked and are always appetizing. Bless the one who invented this sausage; I kiss and worship his virtuous hands." Then comes the "magnificent city of Ferrara, which reigns supreme in the manufacture of cured sausages and in the preparation of greens, fruits, and root vegetables," where delicious light wines are consumed, "excellent shad, sturgeon, and buratelli," and where they make "the best torte in the world". Modena is next, noteworthy for its "good sausages and fine Trebiano." We then learn of the "perfect quince preserves" in Reggio, Mirandola, and Correggio, " though perfect only when accompanied by Piacenza cheese," which was praised by the poets and revered on the dining table. [...]
"Moving beyond the Po, excellent meats are found in Lodi, and "tiny pescagioni" in Binasco. At the great emporium of Milan, one finds brain sausage from Brianza, "the royal dish among foods," which is accompanied by offelle pastries, sprinkled with a light vernaccia wine from the region, and special little game birds called verdorini grilled on a skewer. Monza follows, with its "luganica sottile" (thin sausage) and its "tomacelle" (pork liver sausages). Nor should the traveler neglect Como trout, shad from Lugano, or ortolans and mountain pheasants brought down to Chiavenna from the Grigioni hills. [...]
"Turning back toward the southeast, one will find excellent bread in Padua, along with Marzemino wine, small pike, and "perfect frogs." Next comes Chioggia, for melons, and then Venice for its fish: "golden bream, oysters, scallops, and mullet," an excellent fish in aspic, as well as "little game birds from Cipri," panna cotta, and sharp, sweet malvasia wine. [etc., etc.]" (Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, pp.18-9)
Small Octavo, textblock measures 144 mm x 93 mm. Rebound in full vellum, using a leaf from a large 15th-century italian antiphonal manuscript with decorated initials in red and blue and music in square neumes on 4-line red staves. With new endpapers, but retaining an early fly-leaf at rear.
Foliated: 71 leaves (forming 144 pages).
Signatures: A-I8 [-I8 blank].
Collated and complete (without the rear blank, as usual).
Text printed in Italic, with marginalia in small Roman type.
Title-page with a large woodcut medallion portrait (according to Brunet, the portrait is of the printer, Bartholomeo Cesano, not of the author); a few historiated initials, and a decorative woodcut headpiece vignette on F7r.
Preface Alli Lettori by Nicolo Morra on leaf F6r,v, preceding the Catalogo de gl'inventori delle cose, che si mangiano, et delle bevande c'heggedì s'usano. The "Apology for the author" (Brieve Apologia di M. Ortensio Lando per l'autore del presente Chatalogo on leaves I6v-I7r (I7v blank).
A late 16th- or 17th-century manuscript possession note of Gabriel Hulzel (?), Jr. to bottom margin of title.
Two faint rubber-stamps of Brookline Public Library (Massachussetts).
Very Good antiquarian condition. Occasional light spotting and minor soiling, mostly marginal. Margins cropped somewhat closely, occasionally touching the marginalia, but without any loss of text. Title-page with author's name hand-written faintly under title, two faded old library stamps, and an early manuscript possession note to bottom margin. Otherwise, a clean, solid and nice example of this fascinating and very rare work.
Adams L-115; Brunet III, 812; Bongi, xlii; Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori Italiani, Vol. I, p.62; this edition not in Haym's Biblioteca Italiana.
