Note 59 — Chapter I
Reading edition
These remarks have to be qualified by reference to an unfinished set of five sonnets (Navone's edition, pp. 45-49), which are composed in a somewhat different key. They describe the arming of a young knight, and his reception by Valor, Humility, Discretion, and Gladness. Yet the knight, so armed and accepted, is no Galahad, far less the grim horseman of Dürer's allegory. Like the members of the brigata godereccia, he is rather a Gawain or Astolfo, all love, fine clothes, and courtship. Each of these five sonnets is a precious little miniature of Italian carpet-chivalry. The quaintest is the second, which begins:
Ecco prodezza che tosto lo spoglia, E dice: amico e' convien che tu mudi, Per ciò ch'i' vo' veder li uomini nudi, E vo' che sappi non abbo altra voglia.
This exordium makes one regret that the painter of the young knight in our National Gallery (Giorgione?) had not essayed a companion picture. Valor disrobing him and taking him into her arms and crying Queste carni m'ai offerte would have made a fine pictorial allegory.