‘Con la propria mia voce parli’. Literary genres, portraits and voices in Giuseppe Betussi’s 'Le imagini del tempio' (1556)

Giuseppe Betussi’s Imagini del tempio della signora donna Giovanna Aragona (1556) offers a privileged insight into the inner workings of encomium as a crucial self-authorizing experience in Renaissance culture. In this perspective, the paper focuses on: a) the strategic blending of literary genres as a response to the tensions of a challenging editorial market; b) the pivotal role of figurative metaphors in the self-depiction of celebrative texts and their connection with the memorial and allegorical dimensions; and c) the multiplication of textual voices and layers as a means of staging celebration itself as an ongoing performance, combining monumental accomplishment and verbal dynamism. It considers the question of why Betussi seemingly connects a small corpus of lyric texts (the sonnets quoted in the Imagini) to a major collection (Ruscelli’s 1554 Tempio alla divina signora Giovanna d’Aragona) by means of a dialogue between Truth and Fame and proposes that the figure of Truth enables Betussi to modulate one single voice from the apparent interaction of many, ultimately building on well-established collective models to create a solo encomiastic anthology.