Pietro Bembo - Works and Influence

Works and Influence

As a writer, Bembo attempted to restore some of the legendary "affect" that ancient Greek had on its hearers, but in Tuscan Italian instead. He held as his model, and as the highest example of poetic expression ever achieved in Italian, the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, two 14th century writers he assisted in bringing back into fashion.

In the Prose della volgar lingua, Bembo set Petrarch up as the perfect model, and discussed verse composition in detail, including rhyme, stress, the sounds of words, balance and variety. In Bembo's theory, the specific placement of words in a poem, with strict attention to their consonants and vowels, their rhythm, their position within lines long and short, could produce emotions ranging from sweetness and grace to gravity and grief in a listener. This work was of decisive importance in the development of the Italian madrigal, the most famous secular musical form of the 16th century, as it was these poems, carefully constructed (or, in the case of Petrarch, analyzed) according to Bembo's ideas, that were to be the primary texts for the music.

Other works by Bembo include a History of Venice from 1487 to 1513 (published in 1551), as well as dialogues, poems and essays. His early Gli Asolani explains and recommends Platonic affection, somewhat ironically considering his affair with Lucrezia Borgia, married at the time to his employer. His edition of Petrarch's Italian Poems, published by Aldus in 1501, and the Terzerime, which Aldus published in 1502, were also influential. Printer and composer Andrea Antico, active in Rome, was also influenced by Bembo; the early composers of the Venetian School, such as Adrian Willaert, helped to spread his theories among composers during that period of quick change. Willaert's collection of madrigals, Musica nova, show a close connection with Bembo's ideas.

In his clerical vocation as cardinal Bembo is credited with reaffirming and promoting the Christian perfection of classical humanism. Deriving all from love (or the lack thereof) hisschemas were added as supplements in the newly-invented technology of printing by Aldus Manutius in his editions of Dante's Divine Comedy dating from early in the 16th century. His refutation of a culturally predominate puritanical temptation to a profane dualistic gnosticism is elaborated in the redemptive third book of his prose text Gli Asolani reconciling fallen human nature in a Platonic cosmic transcendence, mediated by reconciling Trinitarian love, and dedicated to Lucretia Borgia. A similar framing structure was used by Karol Wojtyla in his 3-act play The Jeweller's Shop illustrating his phenomenological personalism derived from humanism's insights found in the natural law.

The typeface Bembo is named after him. The list of his most important works is: Rime (1530); Gli Asolani (1505); Historia Veneta (1551); Prose della volgar lingua (1525); Carmina (1533); Epistolae.