The word corso first appears in
written records in the early sixteenth century, and was, from the beginning,
closely linked the functions of hunting and guarding. Teofilo Folegno
(1491-1544) uses the word, depicting the Cane Corso in mortal combat with
a bear or lion wounded by a hunter; in the second case, the Corso is
presented as a quite interesting alternative to the molosser ("canes inter
seu corsos sive molossus"). Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) uses the Cane
Corso in an enigmatic and unfinished short poem, entitled L’Asino
(The Ass): "I saw a sly fox, and to my dismay I could find no net to catch
him; and a can corso howling at the moon."
The Swiss writer Konrad von Gesner
(1516-1565), in the Historia animalium, which was, one could say, the
first modern zoological text, deals rather extensively with the Cane Corso.
Even as he equivocates on the dog’s origin (he would make it Corsican), he
offers a meticulous description of the large head and the drooping upper lip
("cervice et capite maximum, labro superiori super inferius dependente");
of the strong teeth, the muscled neck, and the broad chest, ("acutis
dentibus, collo tumente, pectore amplo"); and of the arched digits and the
strong, curved claws ("duris ac curvis unguibus").
This morphological form is entirely
oriented towards big game hunting, and hence has a propensity for certain marked
characteristic and functional factors: the Cane Corso is very audacious
in chasing down and in confronting wild animals in deadly close in fighting
("sunt feroces inprimis et ad quaecumque animalia invadenda capiendaquae
audacissimi"). Thanks to its powerful articulation, the Cane Corso
holds the ground with great stability, and tenaciously seizes and brings down
prey ("ut solo inhaerere magis possint, quo validius feram prosternant
conculcentque").
Tito Giovanni Scandiano, in the Poem of
the Hunt (1556), depicts the Cane Corso powerfully assaulting and
formidably taking hold of prey ("to assail, bite, and hold boars, bears,
and wolves"). In the short poem Leporea (1628), written in honor of
Cardinale Scipione Borghese, for the villa recently completed in Rome, we find
our dog, beside the hound, in a fierce hunt:
Here the blind hounds and corsi
dogs, armed with rabid ferocity
attack wolves, asps, lions, and bears
you will see the hunters come back home
with his.
Minŕ Palumbo, in the Mammals of Sicily
(1868), separates the molosser ("Canis Molossus": common name
"English Cane Corsu") from the mastiff and interprets the name corso
as a vulgarization of the latter ("Canis mastivus": common name
"Cani Corsu"), and, furthermore, offers a succinct and partial
morphological description, ("obtuse, short head, very large muzzle, ears
hanging from the apexes, gray skin with black oblique stripes, little
intelligence"). The Cane Corso’s bite and stare reach even into
the proverbial. Giovanni Verga, in Malavoglia (Bad Will) (1881),
says, "He bites worse than a cane corso;" Tommaseo, in his
dictionary, offers the metaphor, "can corso, a man of proud aspect
and attitude."
In this brief summary, we save the last
place for two poetic allusions. The first is by Erasmo di Valvason (1523-1593),
a writer who moved from his fief in Friuli to the Gonzagas’ Mantovan court. In
his didactic poem La Caccia (The Hunt) (1591), he understands the term corso
to be either a heavy type of mastiff or a lighter variety, adapted to the
pursuit, in addition to the seizing, of bear, wolf, and boar. Here is a very
effective description of the latter:
Like a greyhound it should be dexterous
and quick
but of person more robust and large
it should be big, but not so heavy or
weighed-down
by great mass that it loses its breath;
it should abound in large bones and nerves
and it should be easily angered, harsh and
proud.
It should be noted that Valvason, in
describing the Cane Corso, finds nothing better than to establish the
differences between it and its extreme opposites: on one side, the greyhound
(more or less the actual hound), of which it possesses the agility but not the
delicate physique, and on the other, massive dogs (like the Neapolitan and
English mastiffs), from whose heaviness it is distinguished, freeing itself for
the hardy and nervy chase.
The second allusion comes from Giovan
Battista Marino (1569-1625). The myth of Actaeon, a formidable hunter changed
into a stag by the vengeful Artemis and then run down and torn to pieces by his
own dogs, lights the poet’s fervid imagination and his pyrotechnic formal
ability. In the homonymous idyll included in the collection La sampogna (The
Italian bagpipe), Marino organizes the description of the hunt for Actaeon,
writing, among other things:
The free and frank greyhounds
are the first on the trail
Further back and slower
come the Alan dogs and the corsi
The Turkish and Persians follow
fearless and zealous…
What follows is a list of breeds so
overabundant that it covers the entire canine population. What needs to be
underlined, in any case, is the presence of the Cane Corso, caught in the
tumultuous action of the pursuit, hardly slower than the greyhounds, and yet
powerful, tenacious, and unflinching.
In both of the descriptions of our dog we
could skip over some important aspects (the descriptive efficacy and the
anatomical particularities that are a function of the big game hunting in which
the Corso is employed) and immediately reach the essential; the complete
brilliance of the figure of the Cane Corso and the overall
impression that even today impresses and fascinates the "corsista"(aficionado
of the cane corso) are the absence of any morphological excess, that is,
the admirable comprehensive and balanced assembly of opposed elements: speed,
strength, agility, and resilience in a powerful and massive body.