The Renaissance of Parnassus

The wedding ceremony of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla d’Aragona in 1475, at Pesaro, in the Marches, was accompanied by a festive procession celebrating the Santa Poesia. This celebration, which lasted several days, brought together a set of mythological elements with triumphal chariots that displayed, among others, the seven planets, an Orpheus, and an allegory of Poetry. One of the main elements of the procession was a Sugar Parnassus, carried by three allegorical figures—Grammar, Rhetoric, and Astrology—and ceremoniously entrusted to the spouses. An illustration of the period 1 shows in addition to these three female figures, the mountain, the nine muses, Apollo, and his lyre, a laurel tree and a fountain. The miniature Parnassus was followed by ten Greek and ten Latin poets, dressed in precious clothing, walking next to each other, and holding a book also made of sugar. “Poetry” presented the miniature Parnassus to the couple, reciting a poem in Latin and Italian. At the same time she explained the meaning of the symbol:

Since the fame of your triumph

Sprinkled with trophies came to the sacred mount

Where the one who covets virtue is sitting, immortal

The Muses and Phebus were ready with me

To visit your excellence

With this mixture of disorder and care

Here is the Parnassus and the beautiful spring on which

Of all doctrines the spirit is fed

And the breasts of those ascending it.2

This ephemeral parade is both a point of arrival and departure. On one hand, it represents the consecration of an ancient place which, from rough, wild and distant mountains, has been able to metamorphose into its opposite, namely a sacred nature with an idyllic aspect and synonymous with Apollonian inspiration. On the other hand, it also marks the beginning of the fortunes of the artificial mountains such as Mount Parnassus in the great gardens of the Renaissance.3 Among the Greeks, Parnassus was, in principle, only a minor mountain—one among others. It was only gradually, and especially during the transition from Greek to Roman culture, that it enjoyed a remarkable success and increase importance as time passed, with the Renaissance marking the peak of its evolution. The proximity of Delphi, the most venerated religious place of ancient Greece, had already contributed to its “apollonization” as