PONA, Francesco

A popular work, scarce in all editions, comprising 12 short stories about as many famous women, four lascivious (Leda, Helena, Derceto, Semiramide), four chaste (Lucretia, Penelope, Artemisia, Ipsicratea), and four holy (La Maddalena, St Barbara, St Monica, St Elisabeth Queen of Hungary). The first four editions, all issued in 1633, survive in a handful of copies or less; this fifth also survives in a handful. Francesco Pona (1595-1655) was a physician from Verona, a poet inspired by Marinist theories, and a member of the controversial, anti-clerical Accademia degli Incogniti, in Venice. In 1892, his Galeria was described as a forgotten jewel of Italian literature (Kubas, pp.189-90). It follows the genre of female hagiography, inspired, among others, by Boccaccio, which was popular in the C17. Pona [...] constructed his Galeria by absorbing the post-Tridentine culture of sanctity. His Galeria distinguishes very clearly among types of women, dividing them into three sequences. Each sequence is composed of four pitture ( pictures or portraits ), namely depictions of lascivious women, chaste women, and saints, with the first two sequences including only pre-Christian women. The Council of Trent [...] affirmed the idea of people being instructed in an understanding of God through analogies and similitudes thanks to the model of the saints, and Pona s examples are chosen to be unequivocally either condemnable or redeemable (Kubas, p.193). Among the saints are Mary Magdalene, connecting pre-Christian antiquity with Christian times, Monica of Hippo, St Augustine s mother, and Elizabeth of Hungary, whose life was imbued with mysticism and reflects the genre of Counter-Reformation hagiographic accounts. A very interesting work, which reveals something about the religious and scientific culture of the period and how this culture influenced the literary representation of women at that time (Kubas, p.190).