A Manual of Italian Literature

by Francis Henry Cliffe

Pier Francesco Giambullari wrote a History of Europe from the accession of Charlemagne to the year 913. The history is unfinished, the author dying in 1555. He was one of the founders of the Florentine Accademia della Crusca. He has been highly praised for the dignity and finish of his style.

Vasari and Cellini are names renowned in the annals of Art, the former for his invaluable biographies of painters, and the latter as a sculptor and a worker in gold and bronze. His biography is a striking memorial of the man and the age.

Benedetto Varchi had many qualities of an able historian, but as he was in the pay of the Grand Duke Cosimo I, his independence may be more than suspected.

In contrast to him, Jacopo Nardi was a bitter opponent of the Medici family, and in his History of Florence from 1494 to 1531 he paints them in the blackest colours. So determined an adversary of the ruling dynasty could not be suffered to remain in Florence. He was driven into banishment, and took refuge in Venice, where he died after the middle of the Century. As a biographer he distinguished himself by his life of Antonio Giacomini.

The Sixteenth Century was fertile in historians, for we have to chronicle the name of another in Bernardo Segni. He wrote the History of Italy from 1527 to 1555, or three years before his death. Dealing with contemporary events, he could not treat his subject with the requisite independence, and living a quiet and studious life, it is difficult to see how he could gather reliable information, or have access to important documents.

Vincenzo Borghini was a laborious antiquarian, who wrote a book on the Origin of the City of Florence.

Giambattista Adriani professed to continue Guicciardini's work in his History of his Own Times, but it is complete in itself, and has many merits, both of style and subject. Adriani was celebrated in his day as a public speaker, and his Latin Orations were so much admired that they were translated into Italian as soon as they were held. He died in 1579.

Camillo Porzio who survived until 1603, wrote several historical monographs concerning the Kingdom of Naples.

Skilful as they were in all the arts of composition, the writers of the Sixteenth Century too frequently indulged in redundant prolixity. Conscious of this defect, Bernardo Davanzati determined to cultivate the opposite quality of laconic conciseness. He was brilliantly successful. He translated Tacitus, that great model of brevity, and boasted that his rendering contained fewer words than the original without sacrificing a particle of the sense. He wrote a book on the Reformation in England, a Funeral Oration on Cosimo I, and several treatises on finance and agriculture.