List 4-2013 - Libreria Antiquaria Alberto Govi

inserito nuovi episodi e ne ha spostati o eliminati altri” (I. Rocchi, Lo stile del “Fido Amante”, in: “Cavalieri ed eroi…”, op. cit., pp. 153-154).
Curzio Gonzaga belonged to a minor branch of the Gonzaga family, that of the marquises of Palazzolo. In 1549 he undertook a military
career. In 1556 he was imprisoned for one year for having insulted a certain Raffaele Ghivizzano during a dinner at the table of the duke of
Mantua. A protégé of cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, from 1557 on, he was charged with many diplomatic missions. He was sent to the Farnese court
during the war between the Spanish and the French army. In April 1559 he represented the duchy of Mantua at Cateau-Cambrésis and soon
after he met emperor Charles V. In September of the same year, he followed cardinal Ercole Gonzaga to Rome to attend the conclave after the
death of pope Paul IV.
He then decided to settle in Rome, where he had made the acquaintance of many litterati and where he had been admitted to the Accademia
delle Notte Vaticane, which asembled in cardinal Carlo Borromeo’s palace. He was obliged to return to Mantua at the end of 1575. From
then on he lived mainly between Mantua and Borgoforte, where he had a villa full of statues and paintings, devoting himself to the writing of
his long poem Il Fidamante. In those years he hosted a literary circle in his villa and remained in epistolary exchange with his friends in Rome
and elsewhere. In 1585 he published a collection of Rime.
He spent the years 1591 and 1592 in Venice. In 1595, duke Vincenzo I granted him the castle of Palazzolo in Monferrato and the title
of marquis. Gonzaga, who suffered of gout, continued however to reside in Borgoforte, devoting himself to the study of theology. He died
in Borgoforte in 1599 (cf. O. Grandi, Di Curzio Gonzaga e delle sue opere, in: “Per Cesare Bozzetti. Studi di letteratura e filologia italiana”, S.
Albonico et al., eds., Milano 1996, pp. 535-546; and P. Peretti, Curzio Gonzaga Marchese di Palazzolo, in: “Curzio Gonzaga fedele d’amore,
letterato e politico”, Atti del Convegno di Studi, Torino, 1999, A. Villata, ed., Rome, 2000, pp. 147-148).
Maddalena Campiglia, born into a wealthy family of Vicenza, studied literature and music in her youth. In 1576 she married Dionisio
Colzé, from whom he separated in 1583. She then joined the Third Order of St. Dominic. Her religious feelings are expressed in her first larger
work, the Discorso intorno all’Annunciatione della Vergine (1585). Becoming known as a writer, she made the acquaintance of Torquato
Tasso, who expressed himself positively on her pastoral play Flori (1588), which, like the eclogue Calisa (1589), is dedicated to Curzio Gonzaga
(cf. G. De Marco, Maddalena Campiglia. La figura e l’opera, Vicenza, 1988, passim).
Edit 16, CNCE 21439; A. Erdmann, My gracious silence, Luzern, 1999, p. 210. € 2.200,00
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