Background
Angelo Poliziano was born Angelo Ambrogini on July 14, 1454, at Montepulciano, Tuscany, the son of a lawyer.
(Praelectio in Priora Aristotelis Analytica, cui titulus L...)
Praelectio in Priora Aristotelis Analytica, cui titulus Lamia di Angelo Poliziano
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(Stanze de meser Angelo Politiano cominciate per la giostr...)
Stanze de meser Angelo Politiano cominciate per la giostra del magnifico Giuliano di Pietro de Medici di Angelo Poliziano
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Angelo Poliziano was born Angelo Ambrogini on July 14, 1454, at Montepulciano, Tuscany, the son of a lawyer.
At the age of ten, after the premature death of his father, Politian began his studies at Florence, as the guest of a cousin. There he learned the classical languages of Latin and Greek. From Marsilio Ficino he learned the rudiments of philosophy. At 13 he began to circulate Latin letters; at 17 he wrote essays in Greek versification; and at 18 he published an edition of Catullus. In 1470 he won the title of homericus adulescens by translating books II-V of the Iliad into Latin hexameters.
Poliziano's dedication to Lorenzo de' Medici of a partial translation of the Iliad marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the Medici ruler, and for some time he headed Lorenzo's chancellery and was tutor to his two sons. When he lost the latter position in 1479, Poliziano abruptly left the Medici villa at Cafaggiolo in May, and after a short stay at the Medici villa in Fiesole he moved to Mantua and the patronage of Cardinal Gonzaga. The following year, however, having made his peace with Lorenzo, he returned to Florence and at the Studium obtained the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence. In 1477 Poliziano became prior of S. Paolo, and in 1486 he was named canon of the Cathedral, S. Maria del Fiore. He carried out several political missions for Lorenzo and, with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, scouted north Italian cities for books and manuscripts for the Medici Library in 1491.
Poliziano was a prolific writer of epigrams, both in Greek and Latin, and his partial translation of the Iliad (books 2-5) gained him the patronage of the Medici. His Latin odes and elegies revealed a true lyrical talent. His most important Latin writings, however, include the Praelectiones (or Silvae), which are introductions to classical authors treated in his courses at the Studium. The most important of them, Nutricia (1491), is an attempt at a history of poetry from the days of Orpheus to Poliziano's own time. In 1489 Poliziano published the Centuria prima miscellaneorum, consisting of textual criticism and new interpretations of doubtful passages in the classics.
Of greater interest and importance for the history of Italian literature are Poliziano's writings in the vernacular. His Stanze per la giostra were begun in 1475 in honor of Lorenzo's brother Giuliano. Written in ottava rima, the Stanze demonstrate Poliziano's eclectic approach to poetry, combining reminiscences of classical as well as vernacular poetry with a refined sense of style. Poliziano chose the Orpheus myth as the theme for his only drama in the vernacular and the first in Italian literature, La favola di Orfeo. According to its author, the play was written in 2 days in June 1480 for a celebration at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. Though the play's technique is still close to the sacra rappresentazione, the myth had lost its medieval Christian connotations and is transposed into the world of the pastoral.
Poliziano's poetry preferentially employed such popular poetic forms as the one-stanza rispetto and the ballata and avoided the more complex features of sonnet, sestina, and canzone. The subject of his poetry was the uncomplicated love of this world, and he often directly varied Petrarchan themes in an imitazione al contrario. Poliziano's activities as a translator of Greek and Roman literature were remarkable (Callimachus, Epictetus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Moschus), and his editorial attempts—such as the Pandects—remain respectable examples of early textual criticism.
The later years of Poliziano's life were spent between Fiesole, where Lorenzo had given him a villa, and Florence, where he died onSeptember 24, 1494.
(Stanze de meser Angelo Politiano cominciate per la giostr...)
(Praelectio in Priora Aristotelis Analytica, cui titulus L...)
(Format Hardcover Subject Literary Collections Publisher G...)
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It is likely that Politian was homosexual, or at least had male lovers.
Quotes from others about the person
Anthony Grafton writes that Poliziano's "conscious adoption of a new standard of accuracy and precision" enabled him "to prove that his scholarship was something new, something distinctly better than that of the previous generation":
"By treating the study of antiquity as completely irrelevant to civic life and by suggesting that in any case only a tiny elite could study the ancient world with adequate rigor, Poliziano departed from the tradition of classical studies in Florence. Earlier Florentine humanists had studied the ancient world in order to become better men and citizens. Poliziano by contrast insisted above all on the need to understand the past in the light of every possibly relevant bit of evidence — and to scrap any belief about the past that did not rest on firm documentary foundations . .. [But] when he set ancient works back into their historical context Poliziano eliminated whatever contemporary relevance they might have had. "
He never married.