Giovanni Maria Nanino’s Early Patrons in Rome

Abstract

The first edition of the First Book for five voices of Giovanni Maria Nanino has been lost, and with it its dedication. A close reading of several of the texts in the book offers clues to the date of that first edition and the circle or circles of patronage that may have nourished the book’s origin. This study is concerned principally with the final group of four “occasional” texts in the book—texts apparently referring to particular persons or occasions—and the much-set amorous lyric in the center of the book. I propose that these five madrigals are connected to a circle of patronage in the late 1560s in Florence and Rome, and that the patrons are Isabella de’ Medici, her husband, Paolo Giordano Orsini, and his distant relative Cardinal Flavio Orsini. In addition to Nanino I discuss the composers Stefano Rossetti, Filippo di Monte, and Maddalena Casulana.