Pasquinade

Pasquinade refers to an anonymous lampoon, whether in verse [In verse, the pasquinade finds a classical source in the epigrams of Martial: John W. Spaeth, Jr., "Martial and the Pasquinade" "Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association" 70 (1939:242-255).] or in prose. Pasquin (Italian "Pasquino", Latin "Pasquillus") was the name ordinary Romans gave to a battered ancient statue dug up in the course of paving the Parione district and erected at the corner of Piazza di Pasquino and Palazzo Braschi, on the west side of Piazza Navona in 1501, [According to reports of an old inscription.] by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who inadvertently gave the statue its first voice, by originating an annual ceremony, the first in 1501, for Saint Mark's Day, April 25. The marble torso was draped in a toga, and epigrams in Latin were attached to it.

The decorous event quickly got out of hand when it became the custom for those who wanted to criticize the pope or individuals in his government—for a pasquinade is first and foremost a "personal" attack— to write satirical poems in broad Roman dialect (called "pasquinades" from the Italian "pasquinate") and attach them to this statue.

Thus Pasquino became the first talking statue of Rome. [The actual identification of the sculptural subject was made in the eighteenth century by the antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti, who identified it as the torso of Menelaus supporting the dying Patroclus; the more famous of two Medici versions of this "Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus" is in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence. The "Pasquino" is more recently characterized as a Hellenistic sculpture of the third century BCE, or a Roman copy; early discussion was summarised in B. Schweitzer and F. Hackenbeil, "Das Original der sogennanten Pasquino-Gruppe" (Leipzig: Hirtzl) 1936; the modern opinion is from Helbig.] He spoke out about the people's dissatisfaction, he denounced injustice, and he assaulted misgovernment by members of the Church.

Who this "Pasquino" was remains obscure. By the mid-sixteenth century it was reported that the original Pasquino was a tailor in whose premises not far away speech tended to be quite free; after his death it became more circumspect to attribute critical witticisms to the statue. The report in 1509 of an original littérateur and master of festivities, "Pasquino Pasquillove" by name, ["contra illam literator seu magister ludi Pasquino Pasquillove erat nomen, habitabat, unde post statuae nomen inditum est": noted in E. Ponti, "Le Statue parlanti" (Albano: Strini) 1927:25.] may be a disarming "ludibrium" itself.

Before long, other statues appeared on the scene, forming a kind of public salon or academy, the "Congress of the Wits" ("Congresso degli Arguti"), with Pasquino always the leader, and the sculptures that Romans called Marforio, Abate Luigi, il Facchino, Madama Lucrezia, and Babuino (the "Baboon") as his outspoken colleagues. [Ponti 1927; "Enciclopedia Italiana", "s.v." "Pasquino e Pasquinate".] The "cartelli" on which the epigrams were written were quickly passed around, and copies were made, [Copies in private daybooks have preserved some that were too scurrilous to print.] too numerous to suppress. These poems were collected and published annually by the Roman printer Giacomo Mazzocchi as early as 1509, as "Carmina apposita Pasquino" and thus became well known all over Europe. As they became more savagely pointed, the place of publication of "Pasquillorum Tomi Duo" ["Two volumes of Pasquinades".] (1544) was shifted to Basel, less squarely under papal control, disguised on the titlepage as "Eleutheropolis", "freedom city". [Spaeth 1939:245, identifies the editor as the humanist-turned-Protestant Caelius Secundus Curio, an exile and professor of oratory at Basel, whose own "Pasquilli Ecstatici" had appeared about 1541 and was quickly translated into Italian, French and German.]

The lampooning tradition was ancient among Romans. For a first century versified lampoon, see Domus Aurea.

"Pasquinade" is sometimes misidentified, appearing among synonyms of "parody" at WordNet. Compare also the equally unrelated "pastiche".

"Pasquin" is the name of a play by Henry Fielding from 1736. It was a "pasquinade" in that it was an explicit and personalized attack on Robert Walpole and his supporters. It is one of the plays that triggered the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737.

"The Pasquinade" is a small, grassroots magazine of parody and satire started in the mid-90s. The brainchild of Dallas Shelby, a college journalism student with a bent for satire and a love of pop culture, the publication featured everything from Jocelyn Elders' first post-DC interview to a review of the misunderstood horror film "The John Wayne Bobbitt Story." In 1999, the Pasquinade cut its print production, focusing on its website http://www.thepasquinade.com. In 2003, the organization developed its own film production company, Pasquinade Films.

Notes

References

* [http://www.museodiroma.comune.roma.it/PalazzoBraschi/PASQUINO_MUSEO.SHOW?p_lingua=02&p_web=INTE "The Statue of Pasquino"]
* [http://www.romeartlover.it/Talking.html Roberto Piperno, "The talking statues of Rome"]

ee also

*Talking Statues of Rome