Doctor utriusque juris

Claudio Achillini
Engraving by L. Pecini Vene, in "Le glorie degli Incogniti"
Born(1574-09-18)18 September 1574
Bologna, Papal States
Died1 October 1640(1640-10-01) (aged 66)
Bologna, Papal States
Resting placeSan Martino, Bologna
NationalityItalian
Occupations
Parent(s)Clearco Achillini and Polissena Achillini (née de' Buoi)
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Bologna
Influences
Academic work
Institutions
Notable studentsCarlo Cesare Malvasia
Writing career
Language
Period
Genres
Literary movement

Claudio Achillini (Latin Claudius Achillinus; 18 September 1574 – 1 October 1640[2]) was an Italian philosopher, theologian, mathematician, poet, and jurist. He is a major figure in the history of Italian Baroque poetry.[3]

Biography

Born in Bologna, he was a grandson to Giovanni Filoteo Achillini and grand-nephew of Alessandro Achillini. He was professor of jurisprudence for several years at his native Bologna, Parma, and Ferrara, with the highest reputation. So much admiration did his learning excite, that inscriptions to his honour were placed in the schools in his lifetime.[4] He was a member of a number of learned and literary societies, including the Accademia dei Lincei.[1]

On 9 February 1621, Achillini went to Rome, where he obtained great promises of preferment from popes and cardinals, but they proved only promises. Odoardo Farnese, duke of Parma, engaged him however on very liberal terms, to occupy the chair of law in his university. He wrote the text for a play with music by Monteverdi presented during wedding celebrations at the Farnese court in Parma in 1628. As Jaynie Anderson has suggested,[5] Achillini may have devised the program for Agostino Carracci's frescoes in the Palazzo del Giardino.

Achillini ended his career in Bologna, returning to a chair at the university, where he was one of Carlo Cesare Malvasia's teachers. Achillini was a particular friend of Giambattista Marino, whose style in poetry he imitated, occasionally lapsing into the excesses of extravagant metaphors.[6] He championed Marino's primacy, particularly in two letters, included respectively in the preface to the latter's Sampogna (1620) and in the postface to his first biography (1625).[3] In the controversies that broke out after the publication of Marino's Adone (Paris, 1623), Achillini apparently encouraged Girolamo Aleandro to write his Difesa (1629) in response to Stigliani's attack on the poem in the Occhiale (1627). Though a strong partisan of Marino, even Achillini tempered some of the more extravagant elements in his own writing in the later years.[7] Twentieth-century critics have in part overturned the terms of the relationship between Achillini and Marino, making evident instead Marino's debt to the former.[8]

His first collection of poems and prose was published in 1632, although he had published many poems in the preceding decades. A canzone, which he addressed to Louis XIII on the birth of the dauphin, is said to have been rewarded by Cardinal Richelieu with a gold chain or collar worth 1000 crowns;[4] this reward was not given, as some have asserted, for the famous sonnet Sudate o fuochi, a preparar metalli (Sweat, fires, in order to forge metal),[9] which was severely criticized by Manzoni.[6][10]

Achillini's poems were first published at Bologna and were reprinted several times (1633, 1650, 1651,1656, 1662, 1673, 1677 and 1680). He also printed a volume of Latin letters and an exchange of letters with his friend Agostino Mascardi on the plague of 1630, published in Bologna in 1630 and in Rome in 1631.[11]

Works

  • Achillini, Claudio (1628). Teti e Flora. Parma. appresso Seth, & Erasmo Viotti.
  • Achillini, Claudio (1628). Mercurio e Marte. Parma. appresso Seth, & Erasmo Viotti.
  • Achillini, Claudio (1632). Poesie (1 ed.). Bologna. presso Clemente Ferroni.
  • Achillini, Claudio (1633). Poesie (2 ed.). Venezia. presso Clemente Ferroni.
  • Achillini, Claudio (1673). Rime e prose. Venezia. per Nicolo Pezzana.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Asor Rosa 1960.
  2. ↑ Rose, Hugh James (1857). "Achillini, Claudio". A New General Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1 AA–ANS. London: B. Fellowes et al. pp. 75–76.
  3. 1 2 Slawinski 2002.
  4. 1 2 Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Aikin, John (1815). General Biography. Ten volumes.
  5. ↑ Anderson, Jaynie (1970). "The Sala di Agostino Carracci in the Palazzo del Giardino". Art Bulletin. 52 (1): 46. doi:10.2307/3048678. JSTOR 3048678.
  6. 1 2 Charles Peter Brand; Lino Pertile, eds. (1999). The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Cambridge University Press. p. 308. ISBN 9780521666220.
  7. ↑ Raimondi 1988, p. 124.
  8. ↑ Gaetana Marrone, ed. (2007). "Marinisti". Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies. Vol. 1. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781579583903.
  9. ↑ Sudate, o fochi, a preparar metalli,/e voi, ferri vitali, itene pronti,/ite di Paro a sviscerare i monti/per inalzar colossi al re de’ Galli./Vinse l’invitta ròcca e de’ vassalli/spezzò gli orgogli a le rubelle fronti,/e machinando inusitati ponti/diè fuga ai mari e gli converse in valli./Volò quindi su l’Alpi e il ferro strinse,/e con mano d’Astrea gli alti litigi,/temuto solo e non veduto, estinse./Ceda le palme pur Roma a Parigi:/ché se Cesare venne e vide e vinse,/venne, vinse e non vide il gran Luigi.
  10. ↑ Over the centuries, Achillini's sonnet has been quoted by all the critics of Marinist poetry, for both aesthetic (pompous style, abuse of metaphors) and moral reasons (servilism towards a foreign monarch). Only recently it has been judged more fairly by Italian literary critics (cfr. Samarini 2019, pp. 151–152, 165).
  11. ↑ Agostino Mascardi; Claudio Achillini (1631). Due lettere l'una del Mascardi all'Achillini, l'altra dell'Achillini al Mascardi sopra le presenti calamità. Rome. Lodovico Grignani.

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Claudio Achillini.
  • «Claudio Achillini Bolognese». 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. 108–111 (on-line).
  • Asor Rosa, Alberto (1960). "ACHILLINI, Claudio". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 1: Aaron–Albertucci (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
  • Colombo, Angelo (1985). "Tra "Incogniti" e "Lincei": per la biografia di Claudio Achillini". Studi Secenteschi (in Italian). 26: 141–176.
  • Bellini, Eraldo (2013). "Due lettere sulla peste del 1630 Mascardi Achillini Manzoni". Aevum. 87 (3): 875–917. JSTOR 43824619.
  • Raimondi, Ezio (1988). "Literature in Bologna in the Age of Guido Reni". Guido Reni, 1575-1642. Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles and Bologna.
  • Slawinski, M. (2002). "Achillini, Claudio". The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  • Samarini, Francesco (2019). "Storia dell'endecasillabo infame. "Sudate, o fochi, a preparar metalli"". Parole Rubate (19): 147–165.
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