Abstract

Starting from a reflection on the main literary models that inspire the Dianea (1635), the first and most important novel by the “princeµ of the Accademia degli Incogniti Giovan Francesco Loredan (1607-1661), this essay places the narrative writing of the Venetian nobleman within a literary tradition influenced by Marino’s work, which revives a new sensitivity to the iconographic code in the genre of the novel, at the time at the height of its fortunes. This article analyses, in particular, the structural centrality of the portrait in the plot and paratexts of the Dianea, with reference to the contemporary academic discussions on the subject; the fragments of the plot taken from the literature of the imprese; and finally the treatises through which Loredan completed his education, since these books include – sometimes unexpectedly – elements taken from the contemporary “literature of imagesµ.