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Cardinal Scipione Gonzaga (1542–93): ‘Quel padrone confidentissimo’

1988; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 113; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jrma/113.2.223

1471-6933

Iain Fenlon,

Renaissance Literature and Culture

If Scipione Gonzaga is remembered at all today, it is most likely to be for his friendship and patronage of Torquato Tasso; as the dedicatee of the poet's youthful Discorsi dell'arte poetica and one of his dialogues, the transcriber (in the crucial year 1575) of all the stanzas of the Liberata then available to him, and the editor of the celebrated edition of the full text of the poem brought out by the Mantuan printer Osanna in 1584. Of his own literary efforts little remains. A handful of poems in a respectable if conventional Petrarchesque idiom appeared during his lifetime; on the other hand the Commentam , evidently inspired by classical precedent and a rare example from the period of a prelate's autobiography, was not published until the end of the eighteenth century when it appeared in an elaborate edition with annotations by Giuseppe Marotti.