Background
The son of a Venetian-Cretan aristocrat and a scion of the noble Venetian family of Cornaro, he was born near Sitia, Crete in 1553.
The son of a Venetian-Cretan aristocrat and a scion of the noble Venetian family of Cornaro, he was born near Sitia, Crete in 1553.
He wrote in vernacular Greek, and was a leading figure of the Cretan Renaissance. Vitsentzos Kornaros is considered to be the greatest of all the Cretan poets and one of the most significant and influential figures in the entire course of Greek poetry. Kornaros died in 1613 (or 1614), just before his contemporaries, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes.
Not many biographic sources exist about Kornaros apart from the last verses of Erotokritos.
lieutenant is believed that he was born to a wealthy family in Trapezonda (Τραπεζόντα), a village near Sitia, Crete, in 1553, and lived there roughly up to 1590. Together they had two daughters named Helen and Katerina.
In 1591 Kornaros became an administrator, and during the outbreak of plague from 1591 to 1593 he worked as a sanitary supervisor. He died in Candia, in 1613 (or 1614), and was buried at the church of San Francesco.
The cause of his death remains unknown.
Alternate spellings of his first name include Vicenzo and Vitzentzos. Kornaros" "Erotokritos" was a source of inspiration for Dionysios Solomos and influenced Greek poets such as Kostis Palamas, Krystallis and Seferis. After him named:
A square in Heraklion and
A ferryboat, connecting the Greek islands Kythera and Antikythera with Crete, the Peloponnese and Piraeus.