Alessandro Adimari (; 1579 – 1649) was an Italian

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

and

classical scholar Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and ...

. In his verse he practised both concettismo and the Pindaric mode, as he theorized in his ''Lettera sopra la poesia ditirambica'' (1629).

Biography

Alessandro Adimari was born of a noble Florentine family in 1579. He held minor government offices and was a member of the Accademia degli Alterati, the

Accademia degli Incogniti The Accademia degli Incogniti (Academy of the Unknowns), also called the Loredanian Academy, was a learned society of freethinking intellectuals, mainly Venetian nobility, noblemen, that significantly influenced the cultural and political life of ...

and the

Accademia dei Lincei The (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed"), anglicised as the Lincean Academy, is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy. Founded in ...

. In 1633 he was appointed secretary of the

Accademia Fiorentina The Accademia Fiorentina was a philosophical and literary learned academy established in Florence in the Republic of Florence during the Italian Renaissance. It was active from 1540 to 1783. History The Accademia Fiorentina was founded ...

. In 1631 he published a free

translation Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...

Pindar Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar i ...

in Italian verse, with notes and illustrations, ''Le Odi di Pindaro tradotte in parafrasi e in rima Toscana e dichiarate con osservazione e confronti di alcuni luoghi imitati e tocchi da Orazio''. Adimari, who dedicated his work to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, says that he spent sixteen years about it. He inserted synoptical sketches for the purpose of explaining the plan and order of the Greek poet in his odes. Pierre-Louis Ginguené, in the ''Biographie Universelle'', art. ''Adimari'', falsely charges him with having borrowed them from Erasmus Schmidt's Latin version of Pindar, published 1616. Adimari wrote also a kind of

bibliography Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliograph ...

of poets ''La Mono-Grecia ove sono raccolti i nomi di tutti i Poeti dal principio della Poesia del Mondo sino al principio della Poesia Toscana''; ''Esequie di don Francesco de Medici'' (1614); and other minor works. He also wrote a religious drama, ''L'adorazione de' Magi'' (1642). Between 1637 and 1640 he published six collections of fifty sonnets each, under the names of six of the

muses In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...

: “Terpsichore”, “Clio”, “Melpomene”, “Calliope”, “Urania”, and “Polyhymnia”. Particularly notable is the

poetry collection A poetry collection is often a compilation of several poems by one poet to be published in a single volume or chapbook. A collection can include any number of poems, ranging from a few (e.g. the four long poems in T. S. Eliot's ''Four Quartets' ...

“Terpsichore” (1637), composed of fifty-three highly manneristic

sonnet A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...

s. The sonnets are parodies of

Petrarch Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's redis ...

an flattery, purporting to celebrate beauty in women who are too young or too old to be loved or who are ill or deformed. Following

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People, fictional characters and language * Seneca (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname : :* Seneca the Elder (c. 54 BC – c. AD 39), a Roman rhetorician, writer and father ...

, Adimari claims that his verses might help husbands to accept the imperfections of their wives; he reminds his reader that just as there is no beauty without a flaw, so there is no flaw that does not also encompass beauty. The sonnets are masterfully witty rhetorical celebrations of such fancied paramours, sometimes savagely ridiculed by Adimari, who shows himself a master of the sonnet and highly attuned to the principal poetic tendencies of late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

culture. Aßmann's translation of Adimari's “Terpsichore” appeared in the 1704 collection as “Schertz-Sonnette oder Kling-Gedichte über die auch bey ihren Mängeln vollkommene und Lieb-würdige Schönheit des Frauenzimmers” (Playful Sonnets or Songs on the Perfect and Amiable Beauty of Women Even If Flawed). Adimari died in 1649.

Works

References

Bibliography

* «Alessandro Adimari Fiorentino». In : ''Le glorie de gli Incogniti: o vero, Gli huomini illustri dell'Accademia de' signori Incogniti di Venetia'', In Venetia : appresso Francesco Valuasense stampator dell'Accademia, 1647, pp. 14–17
on-line
. * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Adimari, Alessandro Italian classical scholars 1579 births 1649 deaths Italian Baroque writers 16th-century Italian poets 16th-century Italian male writers 17th-century Italian poets 17th-century Italian male writers Members of the Lincean Academy Writers from Florence Writers from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany