M. Valery [Antoine Claude Pasquin], Historical, Literary, and Artistical Travels in Italy, A Complete and Methodical Guide for Travellers and Artists

Performer Name:

Sgricci; Fra Filippo; Fantastici

Performance Venue:

Paris; Florence

Performance Date:

 

Author:

“M. Valery” [Antoine Claude Pasquin]

Date Written:

 

Language:

English

Publication Title:

Historical, Literary, and Artistical Travels in Italy, A Complete and Methodical Guide for Travellers and Artists

Article Title:

Book 10: Florence

Page Numbers:

315, 370

Additional Info:

Trans. C. E. Clifton

Publisher:

Baudry’s European Library

Place of Publication:

Paris

Date Published:

1839

Text:

[315] The Florentine improvisatori did not shine much on this occasion; they seem to have relinquished the barrel of former days, the tripod which they used to mount, and they only declaim now to amateurs in drawing-rooms: some poor devils only, a kind of mountebanks or strolling singers, delivered responsively, and accompanied by a guitar, certain moral common-places, such as to know whether it was better to have an ugly or pretty wife, etc., or some trivial stories not easily understood by a foreigner. The prince of contemporary improvisatori, Sgricci, was living at Florence, a pensioner of the grand duke. I had admired him at Paris, like every body else, as much at least as the breathless rapidity of his utterance permitted me; I was surprised to find some heavy charges brought against him at Florence; injustice was pushed to the extent of contesting the reality of his extemporary poems. It seems that it is with improvisatori as with the prophets, the ancient sacred improvisatori, who were more successful abroad than in their own country.* Notwithstanding Sgricci’s talents, extemporaneous composition must have declined at Florence from its palmy state in the sixteenth century, when there existed in that city a literary society charged by Leo X. to confer the title of poet on the ablest improvisatori and to crown them. Under Sixtus V., Fra Filippo, an Augustine monk, was as the Homer of the improvisatori; though almost blind from his infancy, he became an illustrious theologian, philosopher, orator, and poet. An ear-witness, the erudite Matteo Bosso, the correspondent of Bessarion and the prudent, scrupulous master of the great Isotta,** states that he heard him extemporise in a marvellous manner at Verona, where he was preaching the Lent sermons at the time. One of the subjects that he treated in singing, and accompanying himself on the guitar, was the panegyric of the three illustrious Lombards, as they were then called, Catullus, Cornelius Nepos, and Pliny the younger. On another occasion, he analysed, in a similar way, all the natural history of Pliny the elder; and it is asserted that he omitted nothing of importance contained in the thirty-six books extant. The decay of this art appeared to me a matter of indifference; such feats, a kind of magnetism of the brain, which seems rather a shock of the senses and convulsion of the nerves than an inspiration of the mind, have little to do with the poetic honours of Italy.

* Sgricci died at Florence in August, 1836.

** See ante, book v. ch. xix.

 

[…]

[370] Signora Fantastici Sulgheri Marchesini, improvisatrice of Florence, justly celebrated, has successfully translated parts of Bion and Anacreon.

Notes:

Collected by:

AE