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Updated: June 28, 2025
For the name of his romance Sidney was no doubt indebted to Sannazzaro, whom he twice mentions as an authority in his Defence of Poesy, but there in all probability his direct obligation ends, since even the rime sdrucciole, which he occasionally affected, may with equal probability be referred to the influence of the Diana.
Both afforded the occasion for displaying technical skill in fluent forms, devoid of any but voluptuous feeling; while both might be subordinated to rich effects of decoration. To this point the intellectual culture of the fifteenth century had brought the plastic arts of Italy, by a process similar to that which ended in the "Partus Virginis" of Sannazzaro.
There follows a song by the old shepherd Opico, on the superiority of the 'former age'; after which Carino asks the narrator, Sincero the pseudonym under which Sannazzaro travelled in the realm of shepherds to recount his history, which he does at length, ending with a lament in sestina form. By way of consoling him in his exile Carino, in return, tells the tale of his own amorous adventures.
Of course the claim sometimes put forward for Sannazzaro, as the inventor of the piscatory eclogue, ignores various passages in Theocritus, notably the twenty-first Idyl, whence he presumably borrowed the idea.
At any rate the poem contains the whole apparatus of nymphs and satyrs transplanted to Italian landscape and living a life of commingled Hellenism and Italianism. The eloquence of Sannazzaro is that of the Arcadian the world over. He sighs and weeps and calls upon dryads, hamadryads and oreads to pity his consuming passion.
The fashion of the piscatory eclogue, set by Sannazzaro in Latin, was followed in Italian by his fellow-citizen Bernardino Rota, and later by Bernardino Baldi of Urbino, Abbot of Guastalla, in whose poems we are able at times to detect a ring of simple and refreshing sincerity.
Wherefore that master, in addition to the inscription in his praise that may still be seen on those works, won the honour of being celebrated by Sannazzaro, a rare poet, in this most beautiful distich: Jocundus geminum imposuit tibi, Sequana, pontem; Hunc tu jure potes dicere pontificem.
In his pastoral romance, 'Ameto, ovvero Commedia delie ninfe fiorentine, Boccaccio set a fashion in literature, namely the intermingling for purposes of narration of prose and verse , in which he was followed a century and a half later by Pietro Bembo, the Socrates of Castiglione's renaissance Symposium, in his dialogue on love entitled Gli Asolani, and by Jacopo Sannazzaro in his still more famous Arcadia.
Having then finished the work at Arezzo, and hearing that Girolamo Genga had a work to execute in marble at Urbino, the Frate went to seek him out; but, not having come to any agreement, he took the road to Rome, and, after staying there but a short time, went on to Naples, in the hope that he might have to make the tomb of Jacopo Sannazzaro, a gentleman of Naples, and a truly distinguished and most rare poet.
Not only are knightly adventures freely introduced, and the devices of disguise and recognition employed, but the hint of magic in Sannazzaro is developed and made to play a prominent part in the tales, while the nymphs and shepherds display throughout an alarming knowledge of literature, metaphysics, and theology.
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