Albertino Mussato
Albertino Mussato (1261 – 31 May 1329) was an Early Renaissance Italian statesman, poet, historian and dramatist credited with providing an impetus to the revival of literary Latin. He was a pupil of Italian poet and humanist Lovato Lovati.
A native of Padua, a major city in the northern Veneto region, Mussato was a chronicler of his times, whose 1315 Latin verse play Ecerinis[1], based on the tyrannical career of Ezzelino III da Romano, was the first secular tragedy written since Roman times, and so is considered the first Italian tragedy identifiable as a Renaissance work.[2] Its literary and political qualities earned Albertino a crown as Poet Laureate, a revival of an antique custom, partly at the prompting of Rolando della Piazzola.[3]
In addition to his prolific writings, he is also remembered in contemporary accounts as a champion of poetry which he defended in a 1317 polemical exchange of letters with a Dominican friar, Giovannino of Mantua.[4]
Albertino Mussato died in Chioggia in the year of his 68th birthday.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Also rendered Eccerinus
- ^ Neoclassic Critics
- ^ Robert Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity 1973:20.
- ^ Patricia Zupan, "Dante's Ulysses: Toward Recovering A Primordial Language"
