Unfolded, Not Opened: On Bernhard Siegert's Cultural Techniques

摘要

Il secretario, a sixteenth-century guide for princely secretaries, was, it seems, not written but plagiarized by Francesco Sansovino, son of Jacopo Sansovino, the Venetian architect. Francesco, "a printer, a rewrite man, a writer, and a popular-izer," had selectively excerpted and printed under his own name those portions of Il principe, a 1561 treatise on the training of princes by Giovan Battista Nicolucci (Il Pigna), esteemed secretary to Duke Alfonso Il d'Este, pertaining specifically to the secretarial arts. Sansovino printed Il secretario, the first of many such manuals that appeared during the Baroque period, in four volumes in 1564 and then seven in 1579, subsequent to which the work was issued in thirteen more editions through 1608. Perhaps the work's popularity was due to its promise to those aspiring to serve as secretaries to princes and nobles, sequestered in rooms off to the side but with access to private apartments above, and exerting a quiet, mighty power, to "show and teach the way to write letters in proper fashion and with art on any subject whatsoever."