Veronica Gambara

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Veronica Gambara (1485–1550). Painting by Antonio da Correggio about 1517–1520, The Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Veronica Gambara (29 or 30 November 1485[1][2] – 13 June 1550) was an Italian poet and politician. She was the ruler of the County of Correggio from 1518 until 1550.

Biography

Born in

Il Cortegiano.[4]
: 160–61 

Gambara received a

Petrarchan, Pietro Bembo, who became her poetic mentor two years later when she began sending him her compositions.[4]: 161 [3]
: 170 

In 1509, at the age of 24, she married her cousin, the 50-year-old widower Giberto X, Count of

condottieri), as well as the education of her two sons and step-daughter Costanza.[5]: 23 [3]: 171  Her niece, Camilla Valenti, daughter of Violante the sister of Veronica, was also putatively a poet.[6]

Under Gambara's rule, the small court of Correggio became something of a salon, visited by such important figures as Pietro Bembo, Gian Giorgio Trissino, Marcantonio Flaminio, Ludovico Ariosto, and Titian.[3]: 170 [5]: 25  Previously aligned with French king, Francis I, Gambara allied Correggio with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.[1] She personally received Charles V at her estate in 1530, when he signed a treaty guaranteeing Correggio would not again be besieged, and a second time in 1533.[1] The treaty was broken, however, in 1538 when Galeotto Pico II, Count of Mirandola and Concordia, launched an attack on Correggio.[5]: 24  Gambara organized a successful defense of the city, and between 1546 and 1550, saw that Charles V paid for improved fortifications.[5]: 24 [1]

She died on 13 June 1550 in Correggio, Italy.[1]

Poetry and correspondence

Approximately 80 of her poems and 150 of her letters are extant, and a complete English translation of her poems was published in 2014.

unification.[5]: 24  Most of her poems are sonnets, although she also wrote madrigals, ballads, and stanze in ottava rima. She also composed a number of poems in Latin, including an ode for Charles V with which she greeted the fellow sovereign on his visit to Correggio in 1530.[3]
: 170–71 

Gambara was in correspondence with a number of important scholars and poets of the day. Beyond the above-mentioned Pietro Bembo, she corresponded with the poet Bernardo Tasso, the writer Matteo Bandello, and author and playwright Pietro Aretino (who would come to slander her as a "laureated harlot," an attack Gambara simply ignored).[5]: 24 [3]: 171  She also exchanged letters with Charles V.[1] Gambara's letters, never intended for publication, shed light on her personal life. In a 1549 letter to Ludovico Rosso she admits to exhaustion with her responsibilities, and expresses a desire to retire to a solitary country life.[1][5]: 25 

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Moody, Ellen (April 19, 2004). "Under the Sign of Dido: Veronica Gambara (1485–1550), Life, Letters, and Poetry". Retrieved June 11, 2018.
  2. ISBN 978-1-135-61670-0
    .
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Stevenson, Jane (2005). Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ a b c Robin, Larsen and Levin (2007). Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Stortoni, Laura (1997). Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans. New York: Italica Press.
  6. ^ Nuovo Dizionario Istorico, Va = Uz, Tomo XXI, translated from French, Remondini of Venice (1796); page 17.
  7. ^ Martin, Molly; Ugolini, Paola (June 2014). Veronica Gambara, Complete Poems. A Bilingual Edition. The University of Toronto.

References

External links
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