UNICUS ARETINUS
Bernardo Accolti
JO. CHRISTOFANO ROMANO
VINCENTIO CALMETA
NICOLO PHRYSIO
SERAPHINO
AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES OF INTERLOCUTORS
From negatives, made by Signor Lanzoni, from originals preserved in the Royal State Archives at Mantua and selected by the Director, Signor Alessandro Luzio.
“Yet if this were to be the subject of dispute, women’s cause would be at serious disadvantage; because these gentlemen have described a Courtier so excellent and of such heavenly accomplishments, that whoso undertook to consider him as they have pictured him, would imagine that women’s merits could not attain that pitch. But if the contest were to be fair, we should first need to have someone as clever and eloquent as Count Ludovico and messer Federico are, to describe a Court Lady with all the perfections proper to woman, just as they have described the Courtier with the perfections proper to man. And then, if he who defended their cause were of only moderate cleverness and eloquence, I think that with truth for ally, he would clearly prove that women are as full of virtue as men are.”
“Nay,” replied my lady Emilia, “far more so; and in proof of this, you see that virtue (la virtù) is feminine, and vice (il vizio) is masculine.”[[330]]