Existing comment:
LUDOVICO MATTIOLI, AFTER GIUSEPPE MARIA CRESPI
Italian, 1662 – 1747
Bertoldino Whipping Himself to Drive Away Flies, in Giulio Cesare Croce, Bertoldo con Bertoldino e Cacasenno in ottava rima
(Bologna, 1736)
volume in original binding with twenty full-page etchings and fifteen etched tailpieces
William B. O'Neal Fund, 2017
In Giulio Cesare Croce's retelling of the story of Marcolfus and King Solomon - compare Hopfer's etching on the adjacent wall - the coarse but cunning peasant is named Bertoldo, while his antagonist and eventual admirer is Alboino; king of Verona. This handsomely illustrated edition of the novel-in-verse is partly devoted to the comical misadventures of Bertoldo's son, Bertoldino, who possesses none of his father's common sense. In this episode, he beats himself with canes to drive away flies. Hearing this, the text continues, the king sends medicine to ease his pain, but Bertoldino swallows rather than applies it and becomes very sick. The moral ("allegoria") of the story? A remedy must be taken properly, lest the cure become worse than the disease. |