“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639Extend my most respectful greetings to his Eminence the Cardinal, whose great vir-
tues and zeal for what is right, so ready to further all the Liberal Arts, are always before
my eyes – also that gentle and, may I say, humble loftiness of spirit, which alone has
taught him to distinguish himself by effacing himself.... Such humility can prove to
most other Princes how alien to and how far different from true magnanimity are
their surly arrogance and courtly haughtiness. Nor do I think that while he lives
anyone will any longer miss the Estensi, Farnesi, or Medici, formerly the patrons of
learned men. (CPW I, 335)Milton heard at least one concert of solo song by Leonora Baroni, and paid
hyperbolic tribute to her in three Latin epigrams. Since the second poem refers to
Tasso’s madness as a result of his love for another Leonora, it is likely Milton wrote
these tributes on this second visit to Rome, after his visit to Manso, who had dealt
with this incident in his Vita di Tasso. Baroni was the only female member of the
Umoristi (Humorists) Academy, was showered with gifts by nobles, cardinals, and
popes, and was rumored to be the mistress of Cardinal Rospigliosi and Cardinal
Mazarin.^66 She was the rage of Rome, and ecstatically praised: a few months after
Milton’s visit, a volume of tributes to her in several languages, Applausi poetici, was
published, containing poems by several of Milton’s acquaintances (among them
Holste).^67 Milton was no doubt shown some of these and was prompted to offer his
own praises; his epigrams, Ad Leonoram Romae Canentem (To Leonora Singing in
Rome), contain hyperbolic compliments not unlike those in other poems praising
her. But his response to her art of solo song was quite genuine: he seems to have
found a certain sublimity in the female singing voice, a quality emphasized in his
descriptions of the Lady and Sabrina in A Maske and Emilia in his Italian sonnets.
Still, Leonora’s remarkable musical talent and professionalism would be a new ex-
perience for him. She was sometimes accompanied on the lyre by her mother
Adriana (also a famous singer and musician), or by her sister on the harp; at other
times she accompanied herself on theorbo, harp, or viol. She was also the composer
of over thirty arias.^68 The French musician, André Maugars, praised her musician-
ship and especially the powerful effect her expressive style had on audiences:
She understands [music] perfectly well, and even composes. All of this means that she
has absolute control over what she sings, and that she pronounces and expresses the
sense of the words perfectly.... She sings with... gentle seriousness. Her voice is of
high range, accurate, sonorous, harmonious.... [Her song] threw me into such rap-
tures that I forgot my mortality and believed myself to be already among the angels,
enjoying the delights of the blessed.^69Milton’s epigrams for Leonora rework a familiar motif in Prolusion II, the Na-
tivity Ode, and At a Solemn Music: the mystic harmony between heaven and earth
that music alone can re-create. He gives that mystic power an earthly embodiment
in Leonora, representing her, under various figures, as its conduit. The first Leonora