Celebration, Commemoration and Compensation. Rare and Learned Ladies in the Italian Academies

Numerous volumes of lyric poetry were printed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy on a range of themes. Anthologies of poetry were frequently produced for a particular occasion, in response to social and cultural expectations among the elite. These anthologies provide interesting insights into both literary culture and society, as my study of occasional poetry in the Italian Academies has shown. A particular type of such anthologies comprised poems written for a recently deceased person. My discussion here will focus on the elaborate and enthusiastic commemorative volumes of two Italian Academies compiled in order to celebrate recently deceased women members: Il Pennello lacrimato (Bologna 1665) commemorating Elisabetta Sirani; and Le Pompe funebri (Padua 1686) commemorating Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia. These celebratory volumes, produced after the death of the individuals, thus function as a means of recognising and exalting the merits of these women as producers of culture and as members of the academies, without threatening the male preserve of the Academies. They also, and perhaps more pertinently, function as a means of promoting the Academies themselves among the elite and the political establishment. Paradoxically therefore in spite of what may seem a gloomy topic, these volumes act as celebrations of literature, learning and culture in Italy in the mid- to later seventeenth century.