Talk:Zuccone

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Is this a joke?

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Seriously? Is someone having a laugh?

Zuccone doesn't literally (misuse of word) mean "pumpkin", or "bald", it specifically means "idiot".

Zucca means pumpkin in modern Italian, only it didn't in Donatello's time -it would mean a Lagenaria gourd, and the association with a person's head is unlikely to have existed at this time. The quotes are extremely dubious.

I note the name is not cited. It would be best to use Italian sources for these supposed quotes and assertions instead of some questionable book from 1880. Leo Breman (talk) 18:12, 8 March 2020 (UTC)Reply

Nobody is having a laugh - though I can't understand what upset you, even looking at edit history. The etymology of zucca is complicated, but it has been used to indicate the human head for a very long time. Dante uses 'zucca' to mean 'head' in the early 14th century; Boccaccio uses the expression "zucca al vento" sometime in the mid-14th century to denote a stupid or silly person, not zuccone. Both comfortably before Donatello's birth, never mind the sculpting of 'Lo Zuccone'. I find Boccaccio's use of a metaphoric "lack of salt" for expressing lack of 'flavour' in a person's zucca quite interesting, as it works on multiple levels with the two meanings of the word "zucca" (as do the adjectives 'sciocco' e 'scipito', both meaning "without salt" and "stupid").

'Zuccone' is therefore very legitimately a large head, and by extension with the smooth surface of a gourd, a bald one. Not necessarily "stupid" - though it has become the predominant meaning in Italian nowadays. There is nothing in the Biblical character/writing of Habakkuk (if it is him, and not Jeremiah, in the statue, but that's a different story) to denote stupidity, nor is there anything suggesting stupidity in the sculpture - it is anguished and tense, not moronic. The statue's head, though, is clearly large and very striking in its features.

Where does your idea that 'zucca' didn't mean pumpkin (or gourd) in Donatello's time come from? The 'vegetable' meaning seems, if anything, to have come first, as it is attested in classical Greek as 'σικύα' meaning bottle-gourd, likely Lagenaria vulgaris (Aristoteles, 4th century BCE). https://lsj.gr/wiki/σικύα

For citations of 'zucca' as head, see e.g. here: https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/zucca/

For the etymology of zucca, and its use as phytonym, here is an interesting article: http://www.accademiadeglizucconi.com/?page_id=2019 -

Apologies for the sources being in Italian, but since that's what we are discussing...

DL67 (talk) 09:49, 4 June 2022 (UTC)Reply

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