Marcantonio Flaminio

Marcantonio Flaminio
Marcantonio Flaminio.
Born	winter 1497/1498
Died	February 1550 Rome, Italy
Pen name	Marcus Antonius Flaminius
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	Italian
Period	1515–1549
Literary movement	Renaissance humanism
Relatives	Giovanni Flaminio (father)

Marcantonio Flaminio (winter 1497/98 – February 1550), also known as Marcus Antonius Flaminius, was an Italian humanist poet, known for his Neo-Latin works. During his life, he toured the courts and literary centers of Italy. His editing of the popular devotional work, the "Beneficio di Cristo" illustrated a hope that the Catholic church would move closer to some of the thinking of the protestant reformers.

Flaminio grew up in Serravalle, a small village in the Veneto (in the north of Italy). When he was 11, Austria invaded the Veneto, and Marcantonio and his family were forced to flee to his father's native village, Imola, a village south of Bologna. A friendly cardinal gave the family financial support.

In 1514 Flaminio was given the chance to go to Rome to get a broader education. By that time the boy was already "an accomplished scholar, and something of a poet". He was introduced to Pope Leo X, and placed by him under the care of the humanist and poet Raffaele Brandolini. Falconi has suggested that Leo became infatuated with the seventeen-year-old; arranging the best education that could be offered for the time. However, suspicions of Leo's less than honest motives seem to have led to Flaminio's father intervening, and taking the unusual step of declining a certain career in the church as mapped by Leo, in favour of demanding his son return to university at Bologna. That same year, Flaminio also went to Naples, where he met Jacopo Sannazaro. They became close friends, and the latter greatly influenced Flaminio's poetry.

In 1515, Flaminio moved to Bologna, where he dedicated himself to the study of philosophy. His first poems were published that year in a collection consisting of odes, eclogues, epitaphs and Catullan love lyrics. All the poems follow the tradition of Neo-Latin secular verse, taking up the subjects of the famous classical poets (such as Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus). In university, he met new lifelong friends, but after a few years Bologna begins to bore him.