Giovanni Pontano

Giovanni Pontano
Bust of Pontano byAdriano Fiorentino,in theMuseo di Sant'Agostino di Genova
Born	1426 or 1429 Cerreto di Spoleto,Papal States(now inUmbria)
Died	1503 Naples,Kingdom of Naples
Nationality	Spoleto
Other names	Giovanni Gioviano Pontano Latin:Ioannes Iovianus Pontanus
Occupation(s)	poet, humanist
Known for	Accademia Pontaniana,poetry

Giovanni Pontano(1426–1503), later known asGiovanni Gioviano(Latin:Ioannes Iovianus Pontanus), was ahumanistandpoetfromCerreto di Spoleto,in central Italy. He was the leading figure of theAccademia Pontanianaafter the death ofAntonio Beccadelliin 1471, and the academy took his name.

Biography

Pontano was born atCerretoin theDuchy of Spoleto,where his father was murdered in one of the frequent civic brawls which then disturbed the peace of Italian towns.His date of birth is given in various sources between 1421 and 1429;it is often given as 1426, but may have been 1429.

His mother escaped with the boy toPerugia,and it was here that Pontano received his first instruction in languages and literature. Failing to recover his patrimony, he abandonedUmbria,and at the age of twenty-two established himself atNaples,which continued to be his chief place of residence during a long and prosperous career. He here began a close friendship with the distinguished scholar,Antonio Beccadelli,through whose influence he gained admission to the royal chancery ofAlphonso the Magnanimous.Alphonso discerned the singular gifts of the young scholar, and made him tutor to his sons,notablyAlfonso,who would reign for a single year but whose energies in the decade 1485–1495 brought the Renaissance to Naples in many fields, from poetry to villas, from portrait sculpture to fortifications.Pontano waslaureatedbyPope Innocent VIIIon 8 January 1486.His connection with theAragonese dynastyas political adviser, military secretary and chancellor was henceforth a close one; he passed from tutor to cultural advisor to Alfonso. The most doubtful passage in his diplomatic career is when he welcomedCharles VIII of Franceupon the entry of that king into Naples in 1495, thus showing that he was too ready to abandon the princes upon whose generosity his fortunes had been raised.

Relief of Pontano byAdriano Fiorentino

Pontano illustrates in a marked manner the position of power to which men of letters and learning had arrived in Italy. He entered Naples as a penniless scholar. He was almost immediately made the companion and trusted friend of its sovereign, loaded with honours, lodged in a fine house, enrolled among the nobles of the realm, enriched, and placed at the very height of social importance. Following the example ofPomponio LetoinRomeand ofCosimo de' MediciatFlorence,Pontano led and lent his name to theAccademia Pontaniana,for the meetings of learned and distinguished men. This became the centre of fashion as well as of erudition in the southern capital, and subsists today.

In 1461 he married his first wife, Adriana Sassone, who bore him son Lucio and three daughters before her death in 1491. Nothing distinguished Pontano more than the strength of his domestic feeling. He was passionately attached to his wife and children; and, while his friend Beccadelli signed the licentious verses ofHermaphroditus,his ownMusecelebrated in liberal but loyal strains the pleasures of conjugal affection, the charm of infancy and the sorrows of a husband and a father in the loss of those he loved. Not long after the death of his first wife Pontano took in second marriage a beautiful girl ofFerrara,who is only known to us under the name of Stella.

Although he was at least sixty-five years of age at this period, his poetic faculty displayed itself with more than usual warmth and lustre in the glowing series of elegies, styledEridanus,which he poured forth to commemorate the rapture of this union. Stella's one child, Lucilio, survived his birth but fifty days; nor did his mother long remain to comfort the scholar's old age. Pontano had already lost his only son by the first marriage; therefore his declining years were solitary. He died in 1503 at Naples, where a remarkable group of terracotta figures, life-sized and painted, still adorns his tomb in the church of Monte Oliveto. He is there represented together with his patron Alfonso and his friendJacopo Sannazaroin adoration before the deadChrist.

As a diplomat and state official Pontano played a part of some importance in the affairs of southern Italy and in the Barons' War, the wars with the Papacy, and the expulsion and restoration of the Aragonese dynasty. But his chief claim is as a scholar. His writings divide themselves into dissertations upon such topics as the "Liberality of Princes", "Ferocity" or "Magnificence", in which he argued that architecture and great monuments were the mark of a great ruler, composed in therhetoricalstyle of the day, and his poems.

De oboedientiain ailluminated manuscriptbyCristoforo Majorana

He was distinguished for energy of Latin style, for vigorous intellectual powers, and for the faculty, rare among his contemporaries, of expressing the facts of modern life, the actualities of personal emotion, in language sufficiently classical yet always characteristic of the man. His prose treatises are more useful to students of manners than the similar lucubrations ofPoggio Bracciolini.Yet it was principally as a Latin poet that he exhibited his full strength. An ambitious didactic composition inhexameters,entitledUrania,embodying the astronomical science of the age, and adorning this high theme with brilliant mythological episodes, won the admiration of Italy. It still remains a monument of fertile invention, exuberant facility and energetic handling of material. Not less excellent is the didactic poem on orange trees,De hortis Hesperidum.His most original compositions in verse, however, areelegiacandhendecasyllabicpieces on personal topics — theDe conjugali amore,Eridanus,Tumuli,Naeniae,Baiae,in which he uttered his vehemently passionate emotions with a warmth of colouring, an evident sincerity, and a truth of painting from reality which excuse their erotic freedom.

Pontano's prose and poems were printed byAldus Manutiusat Venice. Pontano's Latin translation ofClaudius Ptolemy's astrological work, theTetrabiblos(orQuadripartitum) was first printed in 1535 as part ofJoachim Camerariusfirst portfolio edition that also included the Greek text.

Works

Commentariorum in centum Claudii Ptolemaei sententias,1531

• Opere(in Latin). Vol. 1. Firenze: eredi Filippo Giunta (1.). 1520.
• Opere(in Latin). Vol. 3. Firenze: eredi Filippo Giunta (1.). 1520.
• De prudentia(in Latin). Firenze: eredi Filippo Giunta (1.). 1520.
• De sermone(in Latin). Firenze: eredi Filippo Giunta (1.). 1520.
• Commentariorum in centum Claudii Ptolemaei sententias(in Latin). Basel: Andreas Cratander. 1531.
• De rebus coelestibus(in Latin). Firenze: eredi Filippo Giunta (1.). 1520.
• Commentariorum in centum Claudii Ptolemaei sententias(in Latin). Basel: Andreas Cratander. 1531.

External links

• Index to the works of Pontanus(at Forum Romanum)
• (in Italian)Short biography
• A number of texts by Pontanus(at Bibliotheca Augustana)
• Works of Giovanni PontanoatSomni
  • Ioviani Pontani De obedientia De principe,digitized Italian codex (1475)
  • De principe,digitized codex. Italy (1468)
  • Ioviani Pontani De principe De obedientia,digitized codex. Italy (1480–1494)
• Symonds, John Addington(1909)."Pontano's Neapolitan Lyrics".Renaissance in Italy.Vol. 4, part 2 (2nd ed.). London: Smith, Elder, & Company. pp. 185–191.