Guido Casoni (1561 — 30 May 1642) was an Italian
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
poet, jurist, and writer. He was a forerunner of
Marinism, anticipating the tastes and values of the Baroque years before Seicentismo became the leading fashion in
Italian literature.
Biography
Guido Casoni was born in
Serravalle (Treviso) in 1561. He worked as a notary in Serravalle and practised as a lawyer first in Treviso and then in Venice. In 1582 he married in Serravalle Benedetta Minucci, sister of
Minuccio Minucci
Minuccio Minucci (1551–1604) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest who was the archbishop of Zadar.
Born in Serravalle on 17 January 1551, Minuccio studied canon law in Padua. He served as secretary to the papal nuncio to Innsbruck, Salzburg an ...
, the future bishop of Zara. One of the founding members of the
Accademia degli Incogniti, Casoni was a close friend of
Giovanni Francesco Loredan and
Tommaso Garzoni
Tommaso Garzoni, (born ''Ottaviano'', Bagnacavallo, 1549 – 1589), was an Italian Renaissance writer.
Life
Tommaso Garzoni was born in March 1549 in Bagnacavallo (a village in the Papal States near Ravenna) to a humble family, who however s ...
. Garzoni's ''Piazza Universale'' influenced Casoni's ''De la magia d'amore'' (1591).
Casoni is generally held to be one of the earliest exponents of Italian ''
conceptismo''. According to Loredan's ''Vita del Cavalier Marino'', Casoni was the single individual Marino longed to meet once he set foot in the
Serenissima in 1602. Casoni soon became close to Marino with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Casoni became famous above all for his ''Ode'' (1602) and for the poetry collection ''Teatro poetico'' (1615).
After declining an invitation to reside at the court of the Duke of Savoia, Casoni was named dogal ambassador to Serravalle, and elected Knight of the
Order of Saint Mark
The Order of Saint Mark ( it, Ordine di San Marco) was the sole order of chivalry of the Republic of Venice. It was named in honour of Venice's patron saint, Mark the Evangelist.
History
The Order of Saint Mark was the only chivalric order of ...
by Doge
Antonio Priuli on 7 March 1619, in recognition of his consistent contribution to the Republic through his literary publications. This last honour probably occasioned the two editions of ''Opere del signor caualier Guido Casoni'' (1623 and 1626), as well as his new richly illustrated edition of
Tasso's ''
Jerusalem Delivered'', for which Casoni composed a new biography of the author, ''Vita di Torquato Tasso'' (1625).
Finally in 1632, in addition to the Incogniti ''Ode'', Casoni published his last poetic work, a twenty-two canto illustrated poem on the ideal state (praised by
Angelo Grillo as «vera filosofia di stato»), ''Gli emblemi politici''. Casoni died in Serravalle in 1642. He was buried in the church of Santa Giustina of Ceneda (now Vittorio Veneto).
Works
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* ''La Passione di Christo'', 1626.
* ''Vita di Torquato Tasso'' (1625).
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Notes
Bibliography
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* «Guido Casoni Serravallese». 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. 293–295
on-line.
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* Cannizzaro, Nina, “Studies on Guido Casoni (1561–1642) and Venetian Academies”, PhD thesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2001).
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Casoni, Guido
1561 births
1642 deaths
People from Vittorio Veneto
Italian poets
Italian jurists
Italian essayists
Italian Baroque people
Baroque writers