Niccolò di Aristotile de’ Rossi from Ferrara, known as lo Zoppino, was one of the most prolific and prominent vernacular publishers of the first decades of the sixteenth century. Although he based his business in Venice, he was highly mobile throughout the Italian peninsula and worked in Bologna, Ferrara, Milan, Pesaro, Ravenna, Ancona, Perugia, and Rome. Recently discovered archival evidence has proved that Zoppino was also a street singer; hence in his itinerant activity he acted as an essential mediator between the worlds of performance and printing. This article focuses on the case of the arrest of Zoppino by the Venetian authorities in March 1510, under the accusation of having performed and sold in the piazza of Ferrara a barzelletta against the Venetian State. On the one hand, Zoppino’s arrest adds a new chapter to the biography of this fascinating figure and provides new evidence that he was also a piazza performer. On the other hand, the microhistory involving Zoppino reflects the attempts made by Venetian authorities to control print and the verbal economy of the city in the early Cinquecento. This episode exemplifies the dynamic nature of political communication and of a media system that combined printed (written) and spoken words. Zoppino’s close associations with the world of street performance are paradigmatic of the fluid boundaries between print and orality in early modern Italy.
“In vituperium status veneti”: The case of Niccolò Zoppino
Rospocher, Massimo
2014-01-01
Abstract
Niccolò di Aristotile de’ Rossi from Ferrara, known as lo Zoppino, was one of the most prolific and prominent vernacular publishers of the first decades of the sixteenth century. Although he based his business in Venice, he was highly mobile throughout the Italian peninsula and worked in Bologna, Ferrara, Milan, Pesaro, Ravenna, Ancona, Perugia, and Rome. Recently discovered archival evidence has proved that Zoppino was also a street singer; hence in his itinerant activity he acted as an essential mediator between the worlds of performance and printing. This article focuses on the case of the arrest of Zoppino by the Venetian authorities in March 1510, under the accusation of having performed and sold in the piazza of Ferrara a barzelletta against the Venetian State. On the one hand, Zoppino’s arrest adds a new chapter to the biography of this fascinating figure and provides new evidence that he was also a piazza performer. On the other hand, the microhistory involving Zoppino reflects the attempts made by Venetian authorities to control print and the verbal economy of the city in the early Cinquecento. This episode exemplifies the dynamic nature of political communication and of a media system that combined printed (written) and spoken words. Zoppino’s close associations with the world of street performance are paradigmatic of the fluid boundaries between print and orality in early modern Italy.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
