This evening The Grolier Club will host a public lecture by Vanessa Pintado, Assistant Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, on Comedia de Calisto y Melibea [Burgos, 1499?] as part of the Treasures from the Hispanic Society Library exhibition, on view at The Grolier from September 29 – December 18, 2021. Better known as La Celestina, this celebrated work by the lawyer Fernando de Rojas, son of a Jewish converso, holds a prime spot in the history of literature. It is thus particularly exciting that Pintado will be focusing on none other than the Society's unique copy of the first edition of this work, published in Burgos in 1499 by Fadrique de Basilea.

In light of this event, we are highlighting today an early Venetian illustrated edition of this masterpiece of Spanish literature, presented in its translation into the Italian vernacular by the rather mysterious Spaniard Alfonso Ordoñez (or Alphonso Hordognez), possibly a member of Pope Julius II’s entourage. The translation — the first translation of La Celestina into another language — was first published in Rome by Eucharius Silber in 1506, and was subsequently reprinted several times in Venice. The 1543 edition opens with Ordoñez’s original dedication to the “illustrissima madonna Gentile Feltria de Campo Fregoso”, ‘Madonna Feltria de Campofregoso’, i.e. the illegitimate daughter of Duke Federico Montefeltro of Urbino, Gentile Feltria (d. 1529), wife of the Genoese nobleman Agostino Fregoso.

The Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, whose better-known name of La Celestina comes from the character of the procuress go-between, narrates a love affair between Calisto and Melibea in parodic style. Melibea, a young noblewoman kept in seclusion by her parents, rebuffs the young Calisto’s overtures, and in response the latter turns to the notoriously industrious Celestina to help him seduce his “love”. A tragicomedy indeed, Celestina exploits Calisto and casts a love spell on Melibea, before the pair ultimately arrive at a tragic end, with Calisto dying in an accident and Malibea subsequently committing suicide.

Fadrique de Basilea and anonymous engraver, “Engraving of act IX of the Burgos edition (1499),” *CelestinaVisual.org*, http://celestinavisual.org/items/show/132.

When La Celestina was first printed in Burgos in 1499 it was met with enormous success, becoming the all-time bestseller of sixteenth-century Spain. Despite being replete with references to sexual transgressions and love magic, a sort of popular sorcery, it remained untouched by censorship for about 140 years, although it was finally included among the forbidden books listed in the Index issued by the General Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition Antonio de Sotomayor in 1640.

Engraving for act VIII of Bindoni’s 1543 Venice edition.

La Celestina is one of the most richly illustrated books of the Renaissance. Its first edition of 1499 was already supplemented with woodcuts, the iconography of which had great influence on many editions to come.

In this Bindoni edition of 1543, the large woodcut on the title-page shows the encounter of the lovers Calisto and Melibea in Melibea’s garden, along with the other main characters of the dialogues – Celestina, Lucrecia, and a horseman identified as Sempronio, as well as Sempronio’s horse, a dog, and a falcon.

The block had previously been used in the edition issued in Seville in 1523 by Juan Batista Pedrazano, which in turn was an innovative reworking of the title-page for Jacobo Cromberger’s Seville edition of 1511.

Notably, the reworked scene portrays Celestina carrying a rosary in her hands, “thus highlighting her feigned devotion instead of emphasizing” – as in other editions – “the episode in which she carries the witched skein to Melibea’s house” (M. Albalá Pelegrín, “Gestures as a Transnational Language through Woodcuts”, p. 89). The variation first introduced in the Seville edition of 1523 suggests the iconography may have been (quite prudently) adapted to suit different audiences.

Re-use and repetition forms a major part of the Celestina iconography. When the first illustrated edition of Ordoñez’s Italian translation appeared in Venice in 1519, published by Cesare Arrivabene, it was rife with repeating imagery. Although the edition contains a total of 17 engravings, only three are actually different, and that includes the title-page. The other two images are used alternately throughout the text, without much bearing on the unfolding action. Notably, however, the headings are changed above the figures to accord with the characters who are speaking. The next illustrated edition appeared in Venice in 1531 printed by Marchiò Sessa with the same woodblocks used by Cesare Arrivabene for his 1519 edition, again remaining limited to the three woodcuts included in the latter.

More repetition comes in the form of factotums, individual woodblocks of characters or landscape features that can be variously assembled to produce different “illustrations”. Of the numerous illustrated editions that appeared in Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century, the vast majority make use of such composite images for most if not all of their illustrations. A similar use of combining two blocks to form a single figure, one for the head and one for the body, is seen in the 1506 Tacuino edition of Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus.

Presumably, these rare and elaborate experiments in woodcut production were dictated by reasons of economy, providing a cost-effective way to visualize personages and situate the reader as they progress through each act. At the same time, given the emphasis on generic features, it probably comes as no surprise that these illustrations often had little bearing on the accompanying scenes.

The 1523 Seville edition uses factotums prominently, again not always with much relevance to the plot development.

The pervasiveness of such unspecific, sometimes incorrect use is behind the titling of the 1541 Venice edition published by the Nicolini da Sabio brothers: Celestina. Tragicomedia de Calisto et Melibea nuovamente tradotta de lingua castigliana in italiano idioma. Dapoi ogni altra impressione nuovissimamente corretta, distinta, ordinata, et in più commoda forma ridotta. Adornata di tutte le sue figure aogni atto corrispondenti lequal cose nelle altre impressione non si trovava. Pietro de Nicolini da Sabio had in fact published an edition in 1535 illustrated with the blocks used for Arrivabene’s 1519 edition. A year earlier, in 1534, Stefano da Sabio had turned to the 1523 Seville publication for his own edition, copying not just the combinations of factotums for a given act but also their arrangements. It was likewise to the Seville edition of 1523 that Giovanni Antonio and Pietro de Nicolini da Sabio then turned as they sought to address just confusion in their newly corrected and emphatically orderly publication of 1541.

Curiously, however, neither of the two latter editions are actually a re-use of the 1523 edition, but instead are very close copies. As the title images from Stefano da Sabio’s Venice edition of 1534 and Juan Batista Pedrazano’s Seville edition of just over a decade earlier make clear, the original engravings have a fineness of detail and sense of airiness that is lost in the coarser copies.

Of course, the differences might suggest damage to the blocks, were it not for the fact that the 1543 edition returns the engravings to the original level of quality displayed in the 1523 edition. Indeed, it would seem that at some point Bindoni came into possession of the original blocks which had eluded the de Sabios.

Interestingly, it would also seem that re-using the actual blocks granted more freedom to Bindoni’s publication, which moves around characters and combinations with great ease, often reducing the number of figures represented to include more setting-related factoctums such as those with trees or houses.

With its elegance and comprehensiveness, Bindoni’s 1543 edition serves as a testament to not only Rojas’s composition and the lasting legacy of La Celestina, but to the significance of Ordoñez’s work as well, for it also represents the last edition of the Spaniard’s translation to be printed for centuries to come. It was taken up again recently, however, by Kathleen V. Kish, who published An Edition of the First Italian Translation of the Celestina in 1973. The introduction to this text makes clear the important place Ordoñez’s work occupies in the textual history of La Celestina, a history that is itself full of intriguing curiosities and mysteries, which we are sure will be illuminated by Pintado’s lecture this evening!

Engraving of act XVIII from Bindoni’s 1543 edition of Ordoñez’s translation of La Celestina. — Engraving of act XVIII from Bindoni’s 1543 edition of Ordoñez’s translation of *La Celestina*.

References

Palau 51194; F. J. Norton, Printing in Spain 1501-1520. With a Note on the Early Editions of the ‘Celestina’, Cambridge 1966, pp. 141- 156; K. V. Kish, “‘Celestina’ as Chameleon: The Early Translations”, Celestinesca, 33 (2009), pp. 87-100; Paolini, Devid. “Madonna Gentile Feltria de Campofregoso, Alphonso Hordognez y la traduccion Italiana de La Celestina”, EHumanista, 19 (2011), pp. 260-295; M. Albalá Pelegrín, “Gestures as a Transnational Language through Woodcuts: Celestina’s Title Pages”, Celestinesca, 39 (2015), pp. 79-112; Sanders 1910 (1534 edition); Essling 2055; Celestina Visual, celestinavisual.org.

Playing with figures between Spain and Venice: on an early translation of La Celestina