“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked.
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left, in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said.
* * *
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.”
—The Gospel According to St. Mark, Chapter 10
Doesn’t Like Crap Games With Barons And Earls
Following Leonardo da Vinci's return to Milan at the end of May 1506, there is no further mention of a portrait or a commission by the Master in Isabella D' Este's correspondence— either to negotiate, to implore or even to comment. It’s over as a conversation topic—no regrets, no second thoughts. no looking back. Isabella’s letters fall silent, like an aristocrat's stiff upper lip.
And it’s not like enough wasn't happening to fill a marquessa’s calendar.
Because shortly after Isabella returned to Mantua, The Plague broke out, forcing the city into lockdown, grinding the economy to a halt, draining the public treasury, and sending the Este family to the countryside to rule from quarantine until things re-opened in September.
Doesn’t Like Dealing With Popes She Hates
This would have been challenging enough, but then Isabella's husband the Marquis got the call from Pope Julius II to help crush upstart republics in Bologna and Perugia that had declared independence from the Holy See. Isabella was left to run the store while Francesco was off on the battlefield. And then prepare the city for his triumphal return, pontiff in tow, who abruptly canceled upon discovering the Estes were related to a Bologna rebel leader.
The lost papal visit would ultimately precipitate in a windfall for Western literature. In December, Marquis Francesco returned to Mantua with great pomp and pageantry. At the end of the following month, Isabella gave birth to her third son, then fell dangerously ill--to the point of administering last rites— but then miraculously recovered.
Of Arms, The Man And Her Invisible Hand
The enlightened world heaved a collective sigh of relief. Among those sending warm regards was Isabella’s brother Ippolito, now a cardinal in Rome. Ippolito dispatched his aide-de-camp Ludovico Ariosto to congratulate Fernando and Isabella on the birth of Ferrante, who would grow up to become ambassador to the court of England's King Henry VIII. And to wish Isabella speedy and complete recovery.
During the few days he spent at Mantua, Ariosto read to the bedridden Isabella the greater part of his epic-in-progress Orlando Furioso. This, you may recall, was the sequel to Orlando Innamorato, commissioned by Isabella’s father Duke Ercole. Isabella found Ariosto's manuscript fascinating but disorganized, and began coaching him-- she had memorized Virgil's Aeneid -- on the structure and expectations of an epic poem.
This mentoring would continue over the next decade, right through to supplying the paper for Orlando Furioso’s first printing in 1516. It's pretty clear that without Isabella's vast knowledge of the processes, logistics and costs of turning ideas into physical works of art, Ariosto's masterpiece would have never taken on the tangible--much less sensible-- form that made it an overnight bestseller.
And Ariosto understood that.
Tributes to the Marquessa and the House of Este abound in Orlando Furioso. But Isabella's artistic hand is most evident in Canto V, "The Tale of Guinevere," which, by its placement and adaptation, sets Orlando Furioso squarely in the Tuscan epic tradition (Virgil, Dante), and would make "Guinevere" perhaps the most popular of the Furioso spinoffs over the next five hundred years.
Matter of Britain, Matter of France
"The Tale of Guinevere" derives from the legends of King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere and The Round Table, also known at the time as Matter of Britain.
Orlando Furioso fuses this English national scripture with Matter of France-- tales of King Charlemagne and his knights Roland, Renaud, Oliver. etc. (Ital. Orlando, Rinaldo, Uliviero, etc) that constitute France's heroic tradition.
For source material, Ariosto would have had more Matter of France than he knew what to do with-- Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland) and plenty of derivative tales from the troubadours.
Soul-Sourced, So Widely Available
But there was only one Italian-language source at the time for Matter of Britain— La Tavola Ritonda— an Arthurian romance more akin to fan fiction, written in the medieval Tuscan language nearly a century earlier.
A 1446 edition of Tavola survives in the national library in Florence. Isabella d' Este had a copy in her own collection.
Keep in mind the printing press had just been invented in 1440, and books would not be in production for another fifteen years, so these are handwritten copies, which says a lot.
Like there was enough demand for this content in the local patois (not just in the universal Latin) to make copying it by hand worthwhile.
And if Isabella d’ Este in Mantua had her own personal copy, it's not a stretch to believe that Ginevra de' Benci in Florence had read La Tavola Ritonda-- or at least heard it read-- in the learned halls of Monastero delle Murate, where she was schooled, sheltered, and spent her final days.
La Tavola Ritonda is a rambling saga which starts out in King Arthur's court with the chivalrous love of Lancelot and Guinevere. But then it veers off into the life story of knight-prodigy Tristan and his undying affair with the fairest of them all, Irish princess Isolde, whose father marries her off to impressionable and treacherous King Mark of Cornwall.
Action in Tavola is pretty much confined to the British Isles. Orlando Furioso, on the other hand, spans the known world of its time-- India to the North Pole--but locates major battles in Spain and France, with Guinevere the sole standalone Matter of Britain piece in the epic, making its adaptation all the more telling. So let's take a closer look at source, destination, and integration of this episode.
Source—Drinking Horns Weaponized Against Women!
The "Guinevere" episode originates in the forty-third chapter of Tavola, after Tristan has declined to fight further with Amorotto, a knight errant he has just unhorsed, who rides off in a dudgeon, plotting revenge.
On his way, Amorotto meets and defeats another knight carrying an enchanted drinking horn from the sorceress Morgan le Fay to King Arthur. This horn can reveal whether or not a wife has been disloyal to her husband, as an unfaithful woman's hand will begin to shake so violently that she spills her drink upon herself.
Amorotto has the horn re-routed to King Mark, who delightedly calls his nobles, barons and their ladies together, and forces Isolde to drink from it in front of them all. She fails the test, prompting the king to have the horn passed around to the other ladies present. Out of 686 only thirteen make the cut.
And so the king commands that Isolde and all the unfaithful women be seized, stripped and sentenced to burn at the stake. At which point an elder duke clears his throat and says, "Sire, roast your own queen if it please you, but we nobles distrust any enchantment coming from this false English sorceress."
The king caves to his court, blustering that his queen is more loyal and honest than all their ladies combined. Crisis is averted. Tristan figures out who was behind it, and vows to get even.
Destination—Ancient Morality Laws Weaponized Against Women!
At the end of Canto IV in Orlando, a ship bearing the great paladin Rinaldo is blown off course, and comes ashore in Scotland, where he hears that the king's daughter Guinevere is about to be burned at the stake for sexual impurity unless a champion defends her cause within thirty days.
Her accuser is Lurcanio who, with his brother Ariodante--the man Guinevere promised to marry-- has witnessed her banging a rival on her balcony by moonlight. Ariodante, in despair, leaps off a cliff into the sea. Lurcanio, deadliest swordsman in all of Europe, swears to avenge his brother's death by having Guinevere punished to the full extent of a long unenforced law forbidding fornication. The king, powerless to revoke the ancient decree, promises his daughter's hand to the man who vindicates her, but from among Guinevere's countrymen, none dares challenge Lurcanio, save for an unknown knight errant from a far country, no doubt looking for a deed to burnish his newbie resume.
Upon hearing of Guinevere's plight, Rinaldo declares he also will champion her cause. On his way to St. Andrews, he rescues a lady who has been waylaid by thugs. She turns out to be Guinevere's maid Dalinda, who has been sleeping with Polinex, Duke of Albany whose advances Guinevere rebuffed, because she is in love with Ariodante.
Polinex decides to mindfuck his rival Ariodante by having Dalinda dress up as Guinevere and sneak him into her room through the balcony one night… as Ariodante watches from a distance. Ariodante, not knowing what is about to take place, thinks Polinex is setting him up for an ambush. So he brings his brother Lurcanio along, and they both witness the action on the balcony, after which Ariodante heads for the coast, seeking a cliff with a view.
His rival out of the picture, Polinex tells Dalinda to leave St. Andrews-- where she will surely be interrogated and expose his plot-- for his summer home on shore. On her way, she is ambushed by two of Polinex's henchmen, whose orders are to kill the last material witness to his conspiracy, but Rinaldo happens upon the scene and rescues her. In gratitude, Dalinda confesses all, and urges Rinaldo to ride to Guinevere’s rescue and prevent the monstrous injustice about to take place in St. Andrews.
Rinaldo races to the capital, halts the fight between Lurcanio and the unknown knight, exposes Polinex’s plot and challenges him to a duel. Polinex is mortally wounded, confesses to everything in his dying breath, exonerating Guinevere of all charges. The king is so happy he doesn’t know which foot to stand on, and offers to reward his daughter to Rinaldo, who insists she be given instead to the unknown knight who first championed her cause. This knight, after much persuasion and entreaty, finally removes his helmet to reveal himself as Ariodante.
Yes, that Ariodante who was seen leaping from a cliff, but repented of his death-wish as soon as he hit the water.
Miraculously he survives, and makes it back to shore where he finds shelter, and eventually learns of Guinevere's despair and resolve to die for a lie by burning at the stake, rather than live for one by marrying another man.
Hearing this, Ariodante armors up under an unknown banner, and sends his challenge to fight his own brother to the death for Guinevere's honor. But before a blow can fall, Rinaldo rides in to save the day, and serve justice on the real culprit. Ariodante and Guinevere are married, becoming the new Duke and Duchess of Albany. Dalinda goes to Denmark to become a nun. And they all live happily ever after.
Integration: Position, Problem, Agency
Both episodes share the same motif (damsel in distress) and the same device (sentenced to burn at the stake) for a crime literally in the eye of the beholder:
Ariodante refuses to believe Guinevere has been unfaithful to him until he sees a disguised Dalinda from afar;
The Cornwall nobles see Queen Isolde--and their own women-- cheating on their husbands, and refuse to believe… by faulting a proof from afar.
All of which only underscores the salient and-- I believe-- intended differences in Ariosto's adaptation.
1)—Position.
Ariosto takes the first four cantos to port over plot and major characters from Orlando Innamorato, and introduce the love story will be the founding union of the House of Este.
Finally he arrives at the first real episode of the epic, and what does he do? He sends Rinaldo, who enters the story in hot pursuit of the hot Angelica, off to England on a business trip. Only to leave him stranded in a provincial backwater, where the men still haven't figured out how to wear pants.
Ariosto may be once again bedeviled by his creative ADD. But Canto V is far too early in the epic for things to go off the rails. Rather, I believe Isabella is directing this detour to deliver a tribute of her own—in the form of an unspeakable gift— to someone familiar with Tavola.
2—Problem.
In Tavola, the solution to the crisis is all about finding a way around the Cornish king's whims by appealing to his insecurities.
In Orlando, the crisis is escalated from a matter of whim—which the king can change— to a matter of law which for reasons unexplained he cannot.
And so the Scottish king joins in with the rest of the country in rooting against his own justice system.
Because—as Ariosto states through Rinaldo—something is clearly wrong with this picture:
[W]hy is the woman to be punished and blamed for doing with one or several men the very thing a man does with as many women as he will, and receives not punishment but praise for it? ... They all agreed with Rinaldo that the ancients were unjust and careless when they consented to so bad a law, and the king was at fault that he could set it to rights but did not.
— Orlando Furioso IV: 63-67
3)—Agency
While the placement of the Guinevere episode is jarring, it’s also the first time a character named Ariodante appears in world literature. The name is a coinage of Ariosto and Dante Alighieri of Divine Comedy and Inferno fame.
Which is significant for at least a couple of reasons.
First, Ariosto sees himself not just as sequel writer to the Innamorato, but as the successor in the Tuscan epic tradition: he is writing the epic for his era as Dante of Florence wrote the epic for his, and Virgil of Mantua for his.
Second, Ariosto, like his hero Dante, inserts himself into the story.
But then goes a step further.
While Dante gives a fairly passive account of what he sees on his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, interacting only minimally with characters and events, Ariosto takes an active role in events themselves.
He literally writes himself into the story, but goes beyond Dante and gives himself agency to participate in events, and gain a stake in the outcome.
Analysis: Natural Intelligence & Man-Art Merger
So what does all this have to do with illuminating the critical path between Isabella d' Este, Ludovico Ariosto and Ginevra de' Benci by which we are positing this Natural Intelligence (NI)-driven man-art merger that has invested Ginevra (maybe others?) with a time-space fluidity allowing her to move in and out of history, and take a hand in events of her choosing?
A couple of things.
First, Back To Narrative Agency
We've seen how Ariosto through the character of Ariodante writes himself into the Guinevere story, then goes beyond his own epic predecessor Dante by granting himself agency in events, even at risk of his own life.
I'd like to push a little harder on that.
The access of grief by which Ariodante appears to commit suicide is not merely a dramatic device for throwing the heroine into crisis and setting in motion the chain of events that will save her.
It is also the device by which the poet writes himself OUT of the story.
Ariodante, presumed dead, is in fact no less alive, and now inserts himself into events of his choice and timing, regardless of precedent, protocol or permission. He is in truest sense of the term a free agent writing his own script. He has unfucked from his Regret Space.
Whether that is done by tearing up documents or by tearing down monuments, by leaping off cliffs or by leaping out of planes, it is a freedom purchased at great price— an unspeakable gift that few are willing to relinquish.
Witness the reluctance with which the unknown knight removes his helmet and reveals his true identity, even in exchange for power, riches, and a life of ease with the girl of his dreams.
Why is he so reluctant?
Because he is surrendering unlimited agency for temporal, perishable things. And when you exchange your freedom for trinkets, you return to your Regret Space. You go back to being a movable piece on a chessboard. Or a battlefield.
Which is exactly how we next encounter Ariodante in Cantos XVI and XVIII
Q: Who else do we believe was in the process of writing herself out of her own story by tearing her monuments down?
A: Ginevra de' Benci
And How About That Ancient Law?
You know, the one that condemns Guinevere but not Polinex to death for supposedly sleeping together?
As far as we can tell, the king does nothing about it, although it nearly costs him kingdom. Either another loose end of Ariosto, or a law that cannot be changed, repealed or nullified. Only voided— under certain, specific conditions.
Take this law, which would have been well known to audiences of the time:
Until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
—The Gospel According to St. Matthew 5:18
Heaven and earth—in other words, time and space boundaries— are voided when everything is accomplished, freeing us from from whatever antiquated edicts, rulings, sentences, etc. bind us to burn at our own meaningless stakes in a futureless present.
And how will we know that everything is accomplished?
We may never know, but you certainly will. Like those ancient, unequal, unjust Scottish morality codes, these laws cannot be publicly abrogated. But their sentences can be individually vacated... when conditions are met.
You will know it.
Guinevere does, when she resolves it better to die for a lie and be turned to ashes, than to live for one with a man she does not love.
In so doing, she erases herself and tears down her monuments, leaving nothing behind. By allowing herself to be burned at her own stake, Guinevere renounces any stake in the outcome, and thus unfucks from her Regret Space.
You have the right to remain silent. And you have the right to remain silenced. You have the right to be a footsoldier in someone else's fight. And you have the right to be a footnote in someone else's history.
And you have the right to unfuck from all of that.
A Furioso Race Against Mortality
And in the spring of 1506 that is how Isabella D’Este would have found Ginevra de’ Benci—
former supermodel, original DaVinci Girl
trapped in her own Tavola Ritonda
sentenced like Isolde for rejecting a man she didn’t love but married
crumbling silently into the ashes of a poetry that could no longer sustain her.
If that wasn’t Isabella’s Road to Damascus (or Florence) experience, what else could have caused her to drop her Leonardo thing cold turkey, and pivot to the sequel to the unfinished epic of the Este Dynasty commissioned her late father Duke Ercole d’Este?
Because the whole Furioso enterprise suddenly becomes a race against time. Epic poems are like fine wines, taking at least a decade to produce. That process was not helped by Ariosto’s lack of experience with long-form content, and his reputation as a constipated genius who, like his predecessors Virgil and Dante, was forever revising and polishing his language to perfection.
Nevertheless, you get the sense that everyone—author, characters, and patroness—is putting shoulder to the wheel to get Furioso finished.
Because they knew they had history’s first international bestseller on their hands? Maybe.
But equally maybe because Isabella knew— she had sources everywhere— that Ginevra was in declining health.
And knew it was her special calling to come to the aid of blue check DaVinci Girls. As she’d done for her sister Beatrice’s rival Cecilia Gallerani seven years earlier when France invaded Milan.
It would explain why
They move heaven and earth
Seating the Tavola episode in the front of the plane in Furioso, right behind the first class passengers;
Personally leaping into the story as champion against all odds;
Dispatching mighty warrior Rinaldo to fix a fucked up justice system;
Pre-printing the first forty cantos in Isabella’s hometown of Ferrara, under Ariosto’s supervision;
On paper from Venice passed duty-free through Mantua using her husband’s exemption;
With Ariosto personally delivering first edition copies to Isabella in Mantua…
And to Ginevra in Florence?
Because that would help explain why
They say her name
In La Tavola Ritonda manuscripts, Guinevere is transliterated as Ginévara.
In Orlando Furioso, Ginévara becomes Ginevra.
And behold:
The smallest letter and the least stroke of a pen have disappeared from the national scripture.
Because— for Ginevra de’ Benci— heaven and earth have passed away.
And she is about to.
She Goes To Florence in Ermine and Pearls
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked.
They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left, in your glory.”
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said.
* * *
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”
“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.”
—The Gospel According to St. Mark, Chapter 10
I'm trying to imagine how a conversation between Isabella d' Este and Ginevra de' Benci would have gone down, April of 1506 in Florence.
Ginevra is forty-nine years old, has just lost her husband, and is in the process of selling off his house and business to compensate for the dowry his family can never return. Ginevra has no means of support and no children to care for her, leaving her no choice but to throw herself upon the mercy of the abbess of Monastero delle Murate-- to whom her grandfather had been so generous-- and pray that her husband’s estate will cover expenses for her final years.
I'm thinking Isabella would have personally gone to meet the original Da Vinci Girl-- painted in the year she was born— either at Luigi's home, at Le Murate Monastery, or at the former family palazzo on Via de' Benci.
Wherever it happened, for some reason I see Ginevra alone, in widow's weeds or sister’s habit, rising as Isabella and her entourage, splendidly attired, enter.
Ginevra thanks them simply, graciously, in a voice like gossamer but which fills the room, almost like a perfume. After a few formalities about the weather and the Marquessa's visit to Florence, they sit.
Isabella begins her story, starting with the visit from Lorenzo de' Medici when she was just nine years old, her betrothal to Mantua, her sister Beatrice's to Milan, the wedding designed by Leonardo, Beatrice’s untimely death at twenty-one, her friendship with Da Vinci Girl Cecilia Gallerani, Leonardo's annual visits to Mantua, the portrait he had sketched, the oil he had promised, how the war had messed up everything, but now it looked like we were finally getting back to normal... when Ginevra interrupts:
What does Your Excellency want me to do for you?
The Marquessa stammers, "I want you to tell him... I want you to ask him... Can you kindly ask him... to keep his promise!... to PAINT me!"
I'm trying to imagine what Ginevra would have thought behind that face as still as a lake from which a fog has suddenly lifted… beholding this woman-- First Lady of the World they called her-- sitting before her dressed like the sun, and desperate to the point of tears.
Isabella would have been thirty-three years old now, and no amount of finery could hide the toll of childbearing. Artists who painted her whispered she was a nightmare to work with, questioning any real or imagined suggestion of her weight, calling in rival artists to critique each others’ works in progress.
No wonder Leo only painted PYT’s
But here she was, with everything Ginevra could have wanted at her age-- yet all she wants is the one thing Ginevra has left.
Does Your Excellency know what you are asking?
Isabella's retainers gasp at the temerity, but she silences them with a brief but trembling hand.
Ginevra continues, smiling fondly now, as upon the daughter she never had.
Life has been strange…so very strange for both of us, wouldn’t you agree? You want to live forever as you’ve always wished to be seen. I wanted to live forever as I always wished to be read. But such things, as Our Lord has taught us, belong to those for whom they have been prepared.
I really don’t know what more could have been said after that. Other than…
Did Isabella ask for her sight?
Because what happens over the next five hundred years indicates that her eyes were opened, and she saw that the real reason she had come to Florence.
Not to seek a blessing from the Master.
But, like a magi, to deliver an unspeakable gift to an Immortal.
And that’s why we love our Marquessa Isabella, our Izzy D.
Her faith healed her, and has blessed us all, with grace upon grace.
Because, in her heart of hearts, the First Lady of the World really was a tramp.
You’re reading Five Stages of Unf*ck, Red Pill Journey to January 2.0, by Harvey Oxenhorn. Subscribe here to join the journey, and get subsequent posts mailed to your inbox and on your mobile app. And feel free to comment below with any feedback, questions, or requests.
Harvey Oxenhorn, is a cybersecurity consultant, author of The Five Stages of Unf*ck, Red Pill Journey to January 2.0. for the millions of men mangled by years of unchecked and unquestioned feminism, globalism, and Woke. He is also founder of Malwords Weekly, and author of the upcoming book, The Atrocity Algorithm, How The Media Became The Enemy of The People. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Gab, and MeWe @HarveyOxenhorn