Considerazioni sulla voce nel Ragionamento chiamato l’Academico, overo della bellezza (1591) di Iacopo di Gaeta

In the Ragionamento chiamato l’Academico. Overo della bellezza (1591) by Iacopo di Gaeta, a little-known text rediscovered only in the last quarter of the past century, the author elaborates a refined examination of beauty that leads him to reflect, among other things, on the specific beauties of the human voice. In order to fully understand the meaning of the concepts used by Iacopo di Gaeta and the cultural background that supports his work, it is necessary to consider some passages of the third and last edition of De rerum natura juxta propria principia by Bernardino Telesio, inspirer of the Cosentian (or Telesian) Academy, whose influence is reverberated in Iacopo’s essay. As a matter of fact, Telesio’s reflections on perception, on the functioning of the spiritus and on the sense of hearing are of help to clarify the thought of Iacopo’s Ragionamento.