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An Unknown Portrait of Tiberio Fiorilli

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Maria Ines Aliverti
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Extract

Tiberio Fiorilli (1608–1694), son of the great Neapolitan actor and playwright Silvio Fiorillo, became famous in the role of ‘Scaramouche’ as the leading actor of the Théâtre Italien in Paris. In spite of his importance as a theatrical manager in France and in Italy, his life and personality have long remained a mystery. Dressed in his black suit, is how Molière depicted Scaramouche in the first verse of Le Sicilien ou l'amour peintre. Only recently has Fiorilli's theatrical career become the subject of serious investigation, and new documents are helping to clarify his image.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 127 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1998

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References

Notes

1. See Checchi, Giovanna, ‘Debiti e ricchezze di un attore’, Biblioteca Teatrale, XII, 1989, pp. 85–97Google Scholar, with a ‘Repertorio dei documenti conservati a Parigi e a Firenze riguardanti Scaramouche e i suoi familiari’; Guardenti, Renzo, Gli Italiani a Parigi. La Comédie Italienne (1660–1697): Storia, pratica scenica, iconografia (Roma: Bulzoni, 1990), I, pp. 46–82.Google Scholar

2. Scaramuzza.So.Memeo.Squaquera: cf. Préaud, Maxime, Jean Lepautre in Inventaire du Fonds Français. Graveurs du xviie siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1993), Vol. XI, 1, pp. 165–6 (No. 294)Google Scholar. The terminus ante quem may be 1657 as a second version of the print (p. 166) is probably related to the Thèses de Scaramouche, a divertissement of the ballet L'Amour malade, staged at Court on 16 January 1657, in which Jean-Baptiste Lully played the role of Scaramouche (see Moland, Louis's ‘Introduction’ to La Vie de Scaramouche par le Sieur Angelo Costantini (Paris: J. Bonnassies, 1876), pp. xiii–xiv).Google Scholar

3. The print has been investigated for its carnevalesque meaning by Holm, Bent, ‘King Carnival and Commedia: Images in the Copenhagen Fossard Collection’, Nordic Theatre Studies, IV, 1991, pp. 110–31Google Scholar; it is attributed to Jean Lepautre (1618–82) by Préaud, Maxime, Graveurs du xviie siècleGoogle Scholar; the attribution of the drawing to Henri Gissey (1615–74), whose name has been inscribed on a copy of the print (Département des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale de France), is not convincing. The elaborate surround of the portrait was probably drawn by a Caravaggesque artist: vegetables (cabbages, lettuces, cucumbers), grapes, musical instruments (putipù and chitarra battente), food (cheese, macaroni, eggs), and so on, are combined with an emblematic intention as in still-life paintings by followers of Caravaggio. I thank Mary Remnant for the identification of the chitarra battente.

4. The name of Paolini was suggested to me by Pierre Rosenberg, whom I thank. On Paolini see Maccari, Patrizia Giusti, Pietro Paolini pittore lucchese 1603–1681, with an introduction by Gregori, Mina (Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1987).Google Scholar

5. Maccari, Giusti 1987, p. 93Google Scholar, and plate 14; see also Ottani, Anna, ‘Per un caravaggesco toscano: Pietro Paolini (1603–81)’, Arte Antica e Moderna, XI, 1963, pp. 19–35Google Scholar; ‘Integrazioni al catalogo del Paolini’, Arte Antica e Moderna, XXX, 1965 pp. 181–87. Ottani dates the portrait to the beginning of Paolini's career as a portraitist.

6. Salerno, Luigi, ‘Il dissenso nella pittura. Intorno a Filippo Napoletano, Caroselli, Salvator Rosa e altri’, Storia dell'Arte, V, 1970, pp. 34–65Google Scholar; Giffi, Elisabetta, ‘Per il tempo romano di Pietro Paolini e gli inizi di Angelo Caroselli’, Prospettiva, XLVI, 1986, pp. 22–30Google Scholar; Salerno, Carlo Stefano, ‘Precisazioni su Angelo Caroselli’, Storia dell'Alte, LXXVI, 1992, pp. 346–61.Google Scholar

7. The collection was formed by Natale Rondanini between 1620 and 1630; for the works of Caroselli in this collection see Salerno, C. S., ‘Precisazioni su Angelo Caroselli’, p. 350Google Scholar, and note 44 (p. 356).

8. La Vie de Scaramouche par le Sieui Angelo Costantini (Paris: C. Barbin, 1695); for a nineteenth-century French edition see note 2.

9. La Vie de Scaramouche; Rasi, Luigi, Fiorilli Tiberio in I Comici Italiani (Firenze, Torino, & Roma: Fratelli Bocca, 1897), 2 vols., Vol. I, pp. 888–903Google Scholar; Borsellino, Nino, Fiorilli Tiberio in Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, Vol. V, 1954, pp. 365–8.Google Scholar

10. Chapters IX, X, XXVII. For the Lazzo del piangere e del ridere, see Petraccone, Enzo, La Commedia dell'Arte. Storia, tecnica e scenari (Napoli: R. Ricciardi, 1927), p. 263.Google Scholar

11. La Vie de Scaramouche, chapter XVIII

12. This type of damask (called dei capperi from the shape of the leaves) has been produced since at least as early as 1545. I thank my colleagues Donata Devoti and Antonino Caleca for their helpful suggestions concerning the woman's dress.

13. Le Recueil Fossard, edited by Beijer, A. (Paris: Librairie Théâtrale, 1981)Google Scholar, plates XXVI (J. Honervogt), XXVIII (P. Brebiette), XXIX.

14. Guardenti, , Gli Italiani a Parigi, Vol. I, pp. 49–50Google Scholar and Vol. II, Plate No. 227a, p. 153.

15. Under the name of Scaramouche, however, he played a variety of roles in Paris, before and after the creation of the Théâtre Italien (1660). As for the artistic career of Fiorilli after the foundation of the Théâtre Italien, Guardenti points out the striking contrast between Fiorilli's legendary reputation and the infrequence of his performances after 1660 (Gli Italiani a Parigi, Vol. I, p. 79).

16. Riccoboni affirms that the costume of the Neapolitan Scaramouche was ‘une imitation de l'habit Espagnol, qui depuis si long-tems dans la Ville de Naples étoit l'habit du Palais, des Magistrats, et de gens de guerre’, in Riccoboni, Luigi, Histoire du Théâtre Italien, Vol. II (Paris: André Cailleau, 1731), p. 315.Google Scholar

17. La Vie de Scaramouche, chap. XXVII.

18. Salerno, Luigi, ‘Il dissenso nella pittura’, pp. 55–7.Google Scholar

19. For example, the silence of Scaramouche and the taciturnity of Fiorilli (silence is known to be a stoic practice), his libertinism and the curious way of dying related in the Vie de Scaramouche (which appears to be a comic inversion of a stoic suicide). For a different approach to the theme of silence with regard to Scaramouche, see Macchia, Giovanni, Il silenzio di Molière (Milan: Mondadori, 1975), pp. 11–19.Google Scholar

20. Menagiana (1693) in Mongrédien, Georges, Recueil des Textes et des documents du XVIIe siècle relatifs à Molière (Paris: CNRS, 1973), Vol. II, p. 665.Google Scholar

21. Ferrari, Oreste, ‘L'iconografia dei filosofi antichi nella pittura del sec. XVII in Italia’, Storia dell'Arte, LVII, 1986, pp. 120–2.Google Scholar

22. Montaigne, , Essais I, xxxviiiGoogle Scholar (‘Comme nous pleurons et rions d'une même chose’); I, L (‘De Democritus and Heraclitus’). A philosophical meaning could also be attributed to a famous anecdote concerning Fiorilli and the infant Louis XIV, according to which the comic actor changed royal tears into a smile.

23. Quoted in Rasi, , Fiorilli Tiberio, I, p. 896.Google Scholar

24. He is commenting on a pantomime of Scaramouche in Colombine avocat pour et contre, Act II sc.vii, in Gherardi, Evaristo, Le Théâtre Italien (Paris: Cusson et Witte, 1700), 6 vols, Vol. I, pp. 377–8Google Scholar. For an extensive analysis of Fiorilli's performance in this comedy, see Guardenti, , Gli Italiani a Parigi, Vol. I, pp. 70–8.Google Scholar

25. The treatise De humana physiognomonia (1586) was first issued in Latin and then translated into Italian and published in Naples (1610) and Padua (1623).

26. The connection between Della Porta's studies on physiognomy and the ars memorativa is pointed out by Bolzoni, Lina in La stanza della memoria. Modelli letterari e iconografici nell'età della stampa (Torino: Einaudi, 1995), pp. 135–86Google Scholar, (forthcoming edition in English by Toronto University Press).