The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello

Jacopo Antonio Marcello was a Venetian, a man of power and pelf at the apogee of Venice's grandeur. A diplomat and the friend of humanist scholars, he was himself a soldier with a record of bravery in the field at a time when most men of his wealth would have hired mercenaries to do their fighting. He was also a man who tenderly loved his eight-year-old son, and in the year 1460, that son died. Jacopo sank into what we moderns would call deep depression, a mighty funk, which seems to have shocked his contemporaries, who expected more stoic fortitude of such a man. Letters of consolation arrived from friends and relatives, full of the usual exhortations of the times, principally to consider God's Will. But Jacopo refused to accept such easy consolation. Instead he gathered fifteen of the most substantial works addressed to him in his bereavement, many by humanists of wide fame, and had them bound in a gilt volume, complete with illustrations. By a series of odd chances, the volume found its way to the library of the University of Glasgow, where it remains. Margaret King's study of Jacopo Marcello challenges common historical assumptions about the meaning of childhood in pre-modern Europe, about the emotional psychology of the Renaissance mind, and about the coping mechanisms of an age of unchallenged religious faith, for Jacopo found no consolation in religion or philosophy, or in the "indifference" to childhood mortality asserted by historians following the ideas of Philippe Aries. King's text divides evenly into 200 pages of an eloquent essay on the culture of Venice in Marcello's era and the insights we can gather from the poor father's uniquely recorded grief, and 200 pages of notes and documentation, much of it in Latin. In other words, this is a book of the most serious scholarship, yet I think it will fascinate and eventually touch the heart of anyone who reads it. It certainly touched me, when I first encountered it as the father of a boy I loved as immeasurably as Jacopo loved his Valerio. No other book of Renaissance history has ever brought any personage of that era so much to life for me. And then, Jacopo's struggle to come to terms with the meaning of death is surely timeless, a struggle we all have to face on our own terms despite any wisdom or consolation offered by others.