Early Italian Humanists

Abstract

Early Italian humanists already were pursuing many of the innovations and themes characteristic of their better-known counterparts of the 15th and 16th centuries. Decades before the traditional “father of humanism” Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), writers such as Lovato dei Lovati and Albertino Mussato were fascinated by the study, emulation, and critical assessment of the classical world. Sparked by the needs of the urban societies of the 13th-century Italian Peninsula, Lovato dei Lovati turned toward Antiquity for stylistic models to follow. From his more localized influence, the numbers of early humanists expanded, especially in Padua and Verona. By the early trecento at the latest their writings were generating acclaim across the Veneto, as evidenced by the coronation with the poet’s laurel of Albertino Mussato in Padua in 1315. Works of poetry, history, drama, and others flowed from their pens, even as many of their writings are no longer extant. These late duecento and early trecento figures differed from later writers in several important ways, even as they established a foundation and context for later, better known humanists like Petrarch, Coluccio Salutati, and Leonardo Bruni. Early Italian humanists, for example, made some important manuscript discoveries. They read and critically assessed new and familiar classical works. They tried to emulate the style of classical works in their original writings. However, key differences remained between these early humanists and their later counterparts. Unlike 15th-century humanists, early Italian humanists lacked knowledge of Greek and, thus, were limited to classical writings available in Latin. Philological developments by early Italian humanists were rudimentary, and most manuscript discoveries were to come only later. Humanists in the 15th century mostly rejected these earlier writers as part of their movement’s history. Much of the 20th-century scholarship argues for the inclusion of these writers within the humanist canon and assesses the innovations of early Italian humanists in relation to the work of Petrarch or later writers. More recent work has turned to analyzing their lives and writings on their own terms and publishing new editions of texts.