Raccontare gli Antichi: le "Imagini" di Vincenzo Cartari

With his work "Imagini degli dei degli antichi" published in Venice in 1556 and, later, in multiple extended and illustrated editions, the committed Vincenzo Cartari, protà©gà© of the Este dukes, created the first Italian mythographic volume in vulgar language, circulated and translated in all modern Europe. Cartari revised the traditional Latin sources with educational intents and accuracy towards the sources: like the detailed "Genealogie deorum gentilium" by Giovanni Boccaccio, the previous "De deis gentium varia et multiplex historia" by Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, the remarkable "Fasti" by Ovid, which he also commented and translated. Above all, he introduced the fantastic heritage of fables and commentaries of the Classics, with Egyptian, Middle-Eastern, Saxon influences to a bright and lively original interpretation: the Ekphrasis. The Gods and the procession of inferior creatures, the legendary tales and their attributes follow one another with an iconic and selective approach. In a triumph of refined Neoplatonic Petrarchism and classic Renaissance picta poesis, he represented only the conceivable and distinctive attributes of these mythical figures: so that all matters relevant to the ancient figures are «thoroughly explained», «with images of almost all the gods and the reasons they were thus depicted». Hence, "Imagini" was favoured by elegant educated courtiers as well as artists and writers, ceramists and artisans. It staged a sort of «user manual» ready for the ink of the poet or the brush of the painter, an evocative collection of «figurative booklets» evoked by Paolo Veronese and Giorgio Vasari, the Carracci and Nicolas Poussin. Finally, it proved to be an erudite summa that attracts criticism and revisions: the antiquarian Lorenzo Pignoria from Padua, in 1615 and again in 1626, added archeological and comparative appendices with regard to the Ancient Reign of the Pharaohs and the exotic idols of the Orient and the New World.