Una silloge d'autore nelle "Rime" di Benvenuto Cellini?

ABSTRACT This contribution aims to examine the structure and the main features of a brief anthology of twenty-four poems (twenty-three sonnets and one madrigal) which was prepared by Benvenuto Cellini in the early sixties of the sixteenth century and is now conserved, as an autograph fair copy, in the codex 2353 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana of Florence. Most poems of the anthology deal with the autobiographical topic of imprisonment and were composed by the artist and writer while he was convicted in the Florentine jail of the Stinche: the first time on the charges of assault and battery against the goldsmith Giovanni di Lorenzo di Papi (August-October 1556), and the second time for sodomy on the shop-boy Fernando di Giovanni from Montepulciano (March 1557). In the context of Benvenuto Cellini’s poetic production, the anthology represents the sole attempt of the author to create an organic macrotext for his compositions. This significant attempt (maybe influenced by the publication of contemporary lyrical anthologies) was soon interrupted, most probably because of the occasional nature of Cellini’s verses, barely compatible with a coherent narrative framework. After the formal analysis of the macrotext and the recognition of its most significant thematic patterns, the twenty-four poems are critically edited - according to a conservative criterion - and commented.