[Julie Steiner]

Only one line of poetry written by Ginevra de'Benci has survived, the opening of a sestina, which reads: “I ask your forgiveness and I am a mountain tiger.”
     — Mary D. Garrard, “Leonardo da Vinci: Female Portraits, Female Nature” from The Expanding Discourse: Feminism And Art History (edited by Norma Broude)

Wow. I don't know what to make of that. Maybe you will.

Your challenge: Write a poem in any form, somehow inspired by that line, and post it to this thread. Enter as many times as you like. You may edit your entries until the entry deadline (noon Eastern Daylight Time, 7/15/2025).

Judging: After the entries close, I'll post a Google form that will allow currently-active Eratosphere members to vote for their favorites. Depending on the quality of the entries, I might also send a group of my own favorites (anonymized) to a celebrity judge.

Prizes: Undying glory, of course. Also, your choice from among five poetry books that I've accumulated, mailed to you at my expense.

[Additional research:]

[...] there is a letter to Ginevra written by an unidentified lute player, signed ‘G+H’, who lived in Rome at the papal court. This letter informs us that Ginevra was engaged in writing poetry. The lute player wrote that he had told the Roman ladies about the virtues of Florentine women, and especially those of Ginevra herself. In the same letter he begged her to send him a sestina she had written, of which he was only able to remember the first line: ‘I ask your forgiveness and I am a mountain tiger’. (12) Apart from this single line from a second hand, no poetry by Ginevra is known to have survived.

(Footnote 12): ‘Chieggio merzede e sono alpestro tygre’, ‘G+H’ to Ginevra de’ Benci, Rome, 12-17 August 1490. The letter was first published by: Carnesecchi 1909, p. 293-296; re-published with an English translation in: Walker 1967, app. II, p. 24-27.

(Quoted from a 2015 doctoral thesis at https://scholarlypublications.univer...dle/1887/33552.)


Modern Italian dictionary entries:

chieggio = archaic first person singular of chiedere, to ask, request, beg
mercede = wage, salary (archaic usages: recompense, recognition, prize, pity, mercy, grace)
chiedo scusa, chiedo perdone = (modern Italian) I ask forgiveness, I beg (your) pardon
e = and
sono = I am
alpestro = Alpine (masculine adjective)
tigre = tiger (masculine noun)

Maybe "I ask forgiveness" is an inaccurate translation, and she actually wrote "I request recognition that I am a mountain tiger." However, "that" would have been che rather than e, and e elides nicely with the final syllable of merzede to form a standard hendecasyllabic (eleven-syllable) line, while che does not. Hmmm. Anyway, it's your call, poets.


Possibly relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat