Tommaso Inghirami

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Tommaso Inghirami
Papal Chapel, Prefect of the Palatine Library
,

Tommaso Inghirami (1470 – 5/6 September 1516) (also known as Phaedra, Phaedrus, or Fedra) was a

Fifth Lateran Council
.

Biography

Tommaso Inghirami was born in Volterra in 1470, the son of Paolo Inghirami and of his wife Lucrezia Barlettani.[1] His father, a prominent man in Volterra, was killed in a political uprising in 1472.[1] After the murder, Paolo's children were taken to Florence and raised under the protection of Lorenzo de' Medici, who soon recognized his scholarly potential and in 1483 sent him to Rome under the protection of two of his uncles, both well-placed clerics.[1]

In 1486, Inghirami played Phaedra in the first performance of Seneca's Phaedra since ancient times, staged by Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli and Raffaele Riario, with support from the Roman Academy of Julius Pomponius Laetus.[1] After this performance, he was known by the nickname "Phaedra" for the rest of his life,[1] though he preferred the masculine form "Phaedrus".[a]

A member of the Roman intellectual elite, Inghirami was praised for his Latin oratory by Ludovico Ariosto, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Paolo Giovio, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Angelo Colocci.[1]

Inghirami was

Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) at the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.[3]

In 1496, Inghirami was sent as part of a delegation from

San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli.[3] In 1505, he eulogized his teacher, Pietro Menzi da Vicenza, with an oration that denounced the corruption of the papal court, praising by contrast both the deceased and the newly elected Pope Julius II. This and other eulogies he delivered were published shortly after he delivered them.[4][b]

In 1508, Inghirami suffered injuries when the mule he was riding collided with an oxcart loaded with grain. The event was recorded in an

Stanza della Segnatura, which establishes a relationship between ancient Roman and Renaissance culture, between the rule of the Roman Emperor Augustus and his modern counterpart, Pope Julius II.[6]

Inghirami met

Desiderius Erasmus in 1509 and they became lifelong friends and correspondents. Erasmus noted Inghirami was more famous as an orator than writer.[1] In 1528, long after Inghirami's death, Erasmus used Inghirami as an example of the danger of restricting one's use of Latin to that of Cicero, citing Inghirami's 1509 Good Friday sermon in which he eschewed Church Latin and treated Christ as a self-sacrificing hero rather than the Redeemer.[7]

As a humanist scholar engaged in celebrating the ancient world he became head of a new theater company in 1510. Two years later he organized the festivities surrounding the alliance between Pope Julius and the Holy Roman Emperor. The next year he directed a performance of Plautus' Poenulus in Latin.[8]

Inghirami as Epicurus in Raphael's School of Athens

In 1510, Inghirami was appointed

papal conclave of 1513 which elected Pope Leo X.[1] About this time he commissioned Raphael to paint his portrait. He appears in the robes of a canon of St. Peter's Basilica. Raphael had already, in 1509, used Inghirami as the model for the Greek philosopher Epicurus in his fresco The School of Athens for the papal apartments.[2][c]

He served as secretary of the

Fifth Lateran Council under Pope Julius II and, after his death, under Pope Leo X.[2]

Inghirami was overweight at least in his final decades, as shown in Raphael's works. He suffered from strabismus, the failure of the eyes to align, a condition that Raphael disguised in his portrait by focusing his gaze away from the viewer at some unseen superior or inspiration.[10] Contemporary letters hint he was homosexual[1] or state it as fact,[8] an interpretation supported by Raphael's "School of Athens" where Inghirami is embraced from behind by a half-hidden male figure, and his unusual feminine nickname of Phaedra.[2]

Inghirami died on either 5 or 6 September 1516.[3]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The ex voto he commissioned carries an inscription identifying him as "T. Phaedrus".[2]
  2. ^ McManamon lists four published between 1504 and 1513.[5]
  3. ^ Raphael may also have included him as the chubby figure in a red hat in his tapestry of St. Paul preaching in Athens.[9]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 9780802085771
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e Rowland, Ingrid (2019). "Tommaso 'Fedra' Inghirami". In Silver, Nathaniel (ed.). Raphael and the Pope's Librarian. Boston: Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. pp. 30, 43–46, 51.
  3. ^ a b c Benedetti, Stefano (2004). "Inghirami, Tommaso, detto Fedra". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 62. Retrieved 18 April 2013 – via Treccani.
  4. ISBN 9781469639673
    . Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  5. ISBN 9781469639673
    . Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  6. JSTOR 24334082
    .
  7. ISBN 9004080945
    .
  8. ^
    JSTOR 20477488
    .
  9. ISBN 9789058679895
    . Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  10. ISBN 0300063415
    . Retrieved 6 November 2019.
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