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Updated: June 25, 2025
"You are of the same mind as Michele Marullo, ay, and as Angelo Poliziano himself, in spite of his canonicate, when he relaxes himself a little in my shop after his lectures, and talks of the gods awaking from their long sleep and making the woods and streams vital once more.
Less pastoral in motive and less connected in narrative, but of even greater importance in the formation of pastoral taste, is the famous Giostra written in honour of the young Giuliano de' Medici. I have already more than once had occasion to mention its author, Angelo Ambrogini, better known from the place of his birth as Poliziano or Politian , the contemporary, dependent, and fellow-littérateur of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and the greatest scholar and learned writer of the Italian renaissance. As the author of the Orfeo he will occupy our attention when we come to trace the evolution of the pastoral drama. Though he left no poems belonging to the recognized forms of pastoral composition, his work constantly borders upon the kind, and evinces a genuine sympathy with rustic life which makes the ascription to him of the already quoted modernization of Sacchetti not inappropriate. He left several other pieces of a similar nature, some of which at least are known to be adaptations of popular songs . Such, for instance, is the irregular canzone beginning: The Giostra is composed, like its predecessors, in the octave stanza, and presents a series of pictures drawn from classical mythology or from the poet's own imagination, adorned with all the physical beauty the study of antiquity could supply and a rich and refined taste crystallize into chastest jewellery of verse . This blending of luxuriance and delicacy is the characteristic quality of Poliziano's and Lorenzo's poetry. It is admirably expressed in the phrase of a recent critic, 'the decorum of things exquisite. After the lapse of another half-century, during which the renaissance advanced from its graceful youth to the full bloom of its maturity, appeared the Ninfa tiberina of Francesco Maria Molza. 'The volutt
At the suggestion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, a great patron of letters, Poliziano had written the poem in the short space of two days. Carlo Canale was the cardinal's chamberlain. The Orfeo saw the light in 1472. When Gonzaga died, in 1483, Canale went to Rome, where he entered the service of Cardinal Sclafetano, of Parma.
Intellectual and artistic revival in Lombardy Lodovico and his secretaries Building of the new University of Pavia Reforms and extension of the University The library of the Castello remodelled Poliziano and Merula Lodovico founds new schools at Milan Equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza Leonardo's paintings at Milan Lodovico as a patron of art and learning.
The first secular drama, the "Orfeo" of Poliziano, was equipped with the elements from which might have been evolved quickly all the materials of the first experimental operas; but the rapid spread of the polyphonic music through Italy and the sudden and overwhelming popularity of part singing soon, as we have seen, relegated the first suggestions of a manner of setting vocal solos for the stage into a position of comparative obscurity and in the end this possibility was conquered by the cumbrous method of Vecchi.
The drama in Rome never attained any noteworthy height although the French tragic poets took Seneca for their model. In the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent there was a great revival in Italy of the ancient classic drama, of which Poliziano was the most successful exponent.
He sat at the same table with Ficino, Pico, and Poliziano, listening to dialogues on Plato and drinking in the golden poetry of Greece.
Angelo Poliziano, known as Politian, was also a Renaissance scholar and also a friend of Lorenzo, and his companion, with Pico, at his death-bed; but although in precocity, brilliancy of gifts, and literary charm he may be classed with Pico, the comparison there ends, for he was a gross sensualist of mean exterior and capable of much pettiness.
For this change the brilliant complex inquiring mind of Leonardo da Vinci was largely responsible, together with the encouragement and example of Lorenzo de' Medici and such of his cultured sceptical friends as Alberti, Pico della Mirandola, and Poliziano. But that is a subject too large for this book.
But we may not dismiss the subject without noting that Poliziano powerfully forwarded the impulse toward the employment of Italian as a literary vehicle. Too many of the Italian humanists had preferred Latin, and had looked down upon the native language as uncouth and fit only for the masses.
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