Sannazzaro

Jacopo Sannazaro (Italian pronunciation: [ˈjaːkopo sannadˈdzaːro]; 28 July 1458 – 6 August 1530) was an Italian poet, humanist and epigrammist from Naples.

He wrote easily in Latin, in Italian and in Neapolitan, but is best remembered for his humanist classic Arcadia, a masterwork that illustrated the possibilities of poetical prose in Italian, and instituted the theme of Arcadia, representing an idyllic land, in European literature. Sannazaro's elegant style was the inspiration for much courtly literature of the 16th century, including Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.

He was born in 1458 at Naples of a noble family of the Lomellina, that claimed to derive its name from a seat in Lombard territory, at San Nazaro near Pavia. His father died ca 1462, during the boyhood of Jacopo, who was brought up at Nocera Inferiore and at San Cipriano Piacentino (hosted at the home of Family Sabato, located in Via Santilli) whose rural atmosphere colored his poetry. In 1483–85 he campaigned twice with Alfonso against papal forces near Rome.

In the Accademia Pontaniana that collected around Giovanni Pontano (Jovianus Pontanus), he took the classicizing nom de plume of Actius Syncerus. His withdrawal from Naples as a young man, sometimes treated as biographical, is apparently a purely literary trope. He speedily achieved fame as a poet and a place as a courtier. Following the death of his major patron, Alfonso (1495), in 1499 he received his villa "Mergellina" near Naples from Frederick IV, but when Frederick capitulated to France and Aragon, he followed him into exile in France in 1501, whence he returned to Mergellina after Frederick's death at Tours (1504). The later years of the poet seem to have been spent at Naples. In 1525 he succeeded the humanist Pietro Summonte as head of the Pontanian academy.

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