Trissino, Giangiorgio

Abstract

Giangiorgio Trissino (1478–1550), a patrician scholar, poet, dramaturge, translator, and theorist of Vicenza, is credited with having been the first to write in blank verse in Italian, the first to write a complete Poetica (Parts I–IV, 1529; Parts V–VI, 1562) in Italian, the first to write a formal Renaissance tragedy (Sofonisba, 1524), and the first to write an epic in blank verse in Italian (Italia liberata da Gothi, 1547–48). His treatise, Epistola del Trissino de le lettere nuovamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana (1524) initiated the linguistic debates known as the questione della lingua. He also introduced Renaissance scholars to Dante’s De volgare eloquentia, unknown at the time of Trissino’s translation. A patron of Palladio (1508–1580), he is said to have given Andrea Di Pietro della Gondola his name in honor of Pallas Athena and introduced the young stone mason to Vetruvius and other classical treatises. Trissino completed many of the designs for his villa at Cricoli, on which Palladio worked. The fragment of Trissino’s architectural treatise and his musical reforms are among his least studied contributions but no less erudite and innovative. His Petrarchan lyric poetry found in the Rime (1524) was enriched by his extensive knowledge and study of poets pertaining to the dolce stil nuovo, the Sicilian school, as well as Provençal and Spanish poets. He was a Pythagorean and well-versed in Neoplatonic philosophy.