This provides an interesting context for another phoenix reference in Aretino's 𝘓𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪. In Section II, the Cards have passed into France and describe the French court as a paradise of gambling. The court is compared to the great commercial fairs and markets of Italy, Rome, Venice, and Lyon, because the amount of money being won, lost, lent, and wagered there surpasses ordinary commerce. Even the promises of merchants are said to be less valuable than those of courtiers who gamble on credit. Gambling, in other words, is presented as one of the defining activities of aristocratic French society.SteveM wrote: 08 Sep 2026, 19:49 I also find the reference to the Phoenix in connection with the Papessa of interest - like the Phoenix which rises too high, the poem is suggesting the elevation of the Papessa is "unbecoming"?
Vidj dapo costej una phenice
che per haver tropo belle le piume
tant’alta ne va ch’a ognun disdice,
Marieta Bibiena che presume
per la papessa sua esser tra l’altre
qual il mare a paragon d’un fiume.
Following her, I saw a phoenix, whose feathers are so beautiful that it rises too high, to the point of becoming unbecoming to all: Marieta Bibiena, who, through her Popess, presumes to rank herself among the others as the sea compared with a river.
Bibiena's phoenix appears to exploit a Petrarchan association between the phoenix and the exceptional lover or beloved. In Petrarchan poetry, the phoenix's singularity, beauty, solar ascent, death, and renewal could serve as flattering images of extraordinary and enduring love. In Petrarch's poem 135, the solitary phoenix provides an explicit analogue for the speaker's desire: its ascent toward the sun corresponds to the elevation of desire toward “noble thought,” while its death and rebirth mirror the lover's repeated destruction and renewal.
Bibiena's 𝘗𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢 turns this vocabulary inside out. Her phoenix has “too beautiful” feathers (𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘶𝘮𝘦), and precisely because of this excess it rises “so high” (𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵'𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘢 𝘯𝘦 𝘷𝘢) that its elevation is unbecoming to everyone (𝘢 𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘶𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘦). The phoenix's exceptional beauty and elevation, qualities that can function as praise within the Petrarchan tradition, thus become signs of excess and impropriety. The inversion is made explicit when Marieta Bibiena is said to 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘦 to rank herself among the others “as the sea in comparison with a river.”
Where the Petrarchan phoenix can embody the lover's or beloved's singularity, elevated desire, and capacity for renewal, Bibiena's phoenix embodies excessive self-elevation. Its uniqueness has become presumption; its beauty has become excess; and its ascent, rather than signifying noble spiritual elevation, is rendered socially unbecoming.
Curiously, Pomeran's Triomphi de Troilo Pomeran also includes 21 stanza's dedicated to the author's Fenice (Phoenix) - presumably meaning to the lover or beloved - but I cannot be sure as I have not read the poem.
The Cards then single out Madame d'Étampes, Anne de Pisseleu, the celebrated favourite of Francis I. Their description becomes extravagantly laudatory. She is called “the exalted, the singular, and the immortal” d'Étampes, and her beauty is presented almost as a supernatural spectacle. The light around her eyes overwhelms the lights of the torches, while her face combines the whiteness of milk with the redness of roses. So powerful is her beauty that not only the spectators watching her play, but even the Cards themselves, “lose themselves” in contemplating her.
At this point the Paduan remarks:
“𝐒𝐢 𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐚 𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐮𝐧𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐞.”
“She is praised like a phoenix.”*
Coming immediately after the description of Madame d'Étampes as exalted, singular, and immortal, the phoenix naturally evokes those qualities of exceptional distinction and elevation. Read alongside the 𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘤𝘩𝘪 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪 poem concerning Marieta Bibiena and the Papessa, however, the image acquires a more ambiguous resonance.
Aretino's passage then develops the erotic dimension of the scene. The Cards take pleasure in being shuffled, touched, and spread by the beautiful and delicate hands of the ladies at court. Perfumes cling even to empty bottles and boxes, while musk, ambergris, violets, carnations, and Cyprus powder create an atmosphere of sensual luxury. Madame d'Étampes's playing is itself transformed into a spectacle: the spectators desire nothing more than to contemplate her while she plays, and the Cards jokingly describe her as teaching those around her how an “elect creature” and a “holy soul” ought to play.
The description then turns from beauty to technique. When she takes up the cards, she does so with an elegant gesture appropriate to her decorum. If she receives good cards but chooses to pretend that they are bad, she does so with such skill that the observer cannot determine whether she is telling the truth or lying. Her grace therefore extends into the art of deception. Her smile is so generous that it seems to promise to give away the stake she has placed rather than wait to win it. Her intelligence is equally difficult to distinguish from instinct: she possesses such 𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘵à, such shrewdness, and knows so well where and when to employ it, that it is impossible to tell whether her conduct is 𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘴𝘰 or 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘦, artful or natural. The Paduan's final verdict is that anyone who does not wish to be mistaken should take her for both.
The section thus presents Madame d'Étampes as the supreme embodiment of courtly card playing. Her beauty, grace, sensuality, decorum, deception, competitive spirit, and intelligence all become aspects of the same aristocratic performance. Yet the Cards' extravagant praise is repeatedly punctured by the Paduan's ironic responses. The result is a tension between genuine admiration and comic excess, culminating in the idea that her extraordinary accomplishments are so complete that art and nature can no longer be distinguished.
This tension is particularly suggestive when the phoenix is considered alongside Bibiena's poem. There, the phoenix has feathers 𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦, “too beautiful,” and rises 𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵'𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘢, “so high,” that its elevation becomes 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘦, unbecoming or inappropriate. Its exceptional beauty thus becomes the cause of its excessive elevation, and the image is transferred to Marieta Bibiena, who presumes through her Papessa to rank herself above the other women, “as the sea in comparison with a river.” The same qualities that can signify exceptional distinction therefore carry the potential for satire: 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐲, 𝐢𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞.
So the phoenix provides a somewhat flexible emblem. In Aretino it serves an apparently flattering comparison for an exceptional woman described as “singular” and “immortal,” while in Bibiena its extraordinary elevation becomes precisely what makes it ridiculous. The Paduan's ironic voice means that even Aretino's celebration does not entirely close off this possibility of excess. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐯𝐮𝐥𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞.
This makes the Papessa association especially intriguing. Bibiena explicitly connects Marieta's presumptuous elevation with her 𝘗𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢. If the Papessa carried associations of an improper or presumptuous female elevation, as some early Christian and tarot contexts may suggest, the phoenix could reinforce the joke by providing an image of something remarkable precisely because it has risen beyond the proper limit. Aretino's passage does not establish such a reading by itself, nor does it require an allusion to Bibiena, but the parallel suggests that the phoenix was capable of articulating a broader Renaissance tension between exceptional elevation as a mark of distinction and exceptional elevation as presumption.
*Edited to amend as per Nathaniel's suggestion.