Pietro Contarini (died April 1495) was a

Venetian patrician The Venetian patriciate (, ) was one of the three social bodies into which the society of the Republic of Venice was divided, together with citizens and foreigners. was the Imperial, royal and noble ranks, noble title of the members of the Aris ...

, administrator and

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

Life

Contarini was born around 1446 to Adorno Contarini and his second wife, Orsa Trevisan. He belonged to the Santi Apostoli branch of the

Contarini family The Contarini is one of the founding families of Venicehttps://archive.org/details/teatroaraldicose02tett, Leone Tettoni. ''Teatro araldico ovvero raccolta generale delle armi ed insegne gentilizie delle piu illustri e nobili casate che esis ...

. His father having died, he was presented by his mother to the '' Avogadori di Comun'' on 27 November 1464 when he was eighteen. In 1468, he was an ''advocatus per omnes curias'', one of the staff lawyers in the

Doge's Palace The Doge's Palace (''Doge'' pronounced ; ; ) is a palace built in Venetian Gothic architecture, Venetian Gothic style, and one of the main landmarks of the city of Venice in northern Italy. The palace included government offices, a jail, and th ...

. Contarini's political career is difficult to reconstruct because of the existence of contemporaries of the same name. He may have been the ''

podestà (), also potestate or podesta in English, was the name given to the holder of the highest civil office in the government of the cities of central and northern Italy during the Late Middle Ages. Sometimes, it meant the chief magistrate of a c ...

'' of

Oderzo Oderzo (; ) is a ''comune'', with a population of 20,003, in the province of Treviso, in the Italian region of Veneto. It lies in the heart of the Venetian plain, about to the northeast of Venice. Oderzo is crossed by the Monticano river, a tri ...

in 1470 and the ''

provveditore The Italian title ''prov ditore'' (plural ''provveditori''; also known in ; ), "he who sees to things" ( overseer), was the style of various (but not all) local district governors in the extensive, mainly maritime empire of the Republic of Venice. ...

'' of

Peschiera del Garda Peschiera del Garda (; ; , ''Arilica'') is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Verona, in Veneto, Italy. When Lombardy-Venetia was under Austrian rule, Peschiera was the northwest anchor of the four fortified towns constituting the Quadrila ...

in 1480. In 1483, he married Isabetta, daughter of Pietro Gradenigo. In 1487, he was one of the five ''

savi Savi is a town and arrondissement in the Atlantique Department of southern Benin. It is an administrative division under the jurisdiction of the commune of Ouidah. According to the population census conducted by the Institut National de la Sta ...

'' of the

Rialto The Rialto is a central area of Venice, Italy, in the ''sestiere'' of San Polo. It is, and has been for many centuries, the financial and commercial heart of the city. Rialto is known for its prominent markets as well as for the monumental Ria ...

. In 1489–1490, he was the

castellan A castellan, or constable, was the governor of a castle in medieval Europe. Its surrounding territory was referred to as the castellany. The word stems from . A castellan was almost always male, but could occasionally be female, as when, in 1 ...

and ''provveditore'' of the castle of

Koroni Koroni or Corone () is a town and a former municipality in Messenia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylos-Nestor, of which it is a municipal unit. Known as ''Corone'' by the Venetians a ...

. On 30 October 1494, he was commissioned as the first Venetian governor of the

Duchy of the Archipelago The Duchy of the Archipelago (, , ), also known as Duchy of Naxos or Duchy of the Aegean, was a maritime state created by Venetian interests in the Cyclades archipelago in the Aegean Sea, in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, centered on the i ...

, based on

Naxos Naxos (; , ) is a Greek island belonging to the Cyclades island group. It is the largest island in the group. It was an important centre during the Bronze Age Cycladic Culture and in the Ancient Greek Archaic Period. The island is famous as ...

. He was given 500

ducat The ducat ( ) coin was used as a trade coin in Europe from the later Middle Ages to the 19th century. Its most familiar version, the gold ducat or sequin containing around of 98.6% fine gold, originated in Venice in 1284 and gained wide inter ...

s a year for all his expenses, including his own salary. His commission was for two years. He died in office in April 1495.

Works

On 27 August 1479 in Santi Apostoli, Contarini delivered the eulogy at the funeral of

Marco Cornaro Marco Cornaro (c. 1286 – 13 January 1368), also known as Marco Corner, was the 59th doge of Venice, ruling from late July/early August 1365 until his death on 13 January1368. His brief reign saw the loss of Venetian territory to Republic of Ge ...

, ''In funere Marci Cornelii oratio''. It was printed that same year by Filippo Veneto. Contarini wrote a collection of

elegies An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

elegiac couplet The elegiac couplet or elegiac distich is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, adopted the same form in L ...

s, ''Ad Gelliam elegiarum libri tres''. In form, they are letters in praise of a girl named Gellia addressed to other patricians, including

Benedetto Sanudo Benedetto is a common Italian name, the equivalent of the English name Benedict. Notable people named Benedetto include: People with the given name * Benedetto Accolti (disambiguation), several people * Benedetto Aloi (1935–2011), American m ...

and

Marcantonio Morosini Marcantonio Raimondi, often called simply Marcantonio ( – ), was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists largely of prints copying paintings. He is therefore a key figure in the rise of ...

. In one case, Contarini addresses

Gentile Bellini Gentile Bellini (c. 1429 – 23 February 1507) was an Italian painter of the Venetian painting, school of Venice. He came from Venice's leading family of painters, and, at least in the early part of his career, was more highly regarded than his y ...

, praising him for a portrait of Gellia. In practice, the elegies are probably a life's work based on his classical learning, especially of

Tibullus Albius Tibullus ( BC BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to him are of questionable origins. Little is known about the life of Tibullus. There are only a few r ...

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; ), known as Catullus (), was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexual themes. Life ...

and

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

. They are preserved in a single manuscript. The same manuscript contains a note from

Paolo Ramusio Paolo is a masculine given name, the Italian form of the name Paul. It may refer to: People Art * Paolo Abbate (1884–1973), Italian-American sculptor * Paolo Alboni (1671–1734), Italian painter * Paolo Antonio Barbieri (1603–1649), Ital ...

praising Contarini's poetry. ''Ad Gelliam'' is the only Venetian example of the elegy form from the fifteenth century. It is still unpublished. When Filippo Buonaccorsi visited Venice in 1486, he met Contarini. He recorded in ''De his quae a Venetis tentata sunt'' how, when Doeg Marco Barbarigo died (14 August 1486), some Ottoman ambassadors requested permission to attend the funeral. Contarini was assigned as one of their escorts in order to explain the ceremonies. Buonaccorsi notes that Contarini was "an accurate and prudent writer of the history of Venice.": ''venetae historiae scriptor accuratus et prudens''. If he did write such a history, presumably in Latin, it does not survive. Possibly Buonaccorsi was referring only to Contarini's private notes. Marco Dandolo informed Buonaccorsi of Contarini's death in a letter.

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{refend 1440s births 1495 deaths Duchy of the Archipelago Venetian Renaissance humanists Venetian governors

Pietro Pietro is an Italian language, Italian masculine given name. Notable people with the name include: People * Pietro I Candiano (c. 842–887), briefly the 16th Doge of Venice * Pietro Tribuno (died 912), 17th Doge of Venice, from 887 to his dea ...

15th-century Venetian writers 15th-century Venetian people