BERNARDO ACCOLTI. — Poet, better known by the nickname Unico Aretino, was born in Arezzo on 11 September 1458 and died in Rome in March 1535. He maintained close ties with the courts of Mantua and Urbino and enjoyed the favour of Leo X and Clement VII. His lyric poetry, oscillating between pure Petrarchism and the preciosities of the pre-sixteenth century, was excellently studied by D’Ancona.
A fresher work is his comedy Virginia, based on a Boccaccian plot and resolved in the tone of a sacred representation.
His writings: Opera nova del preclarissimo messer B. aretino, were published in Florence, perhaps in 1513, and reprinted in Venice in 1519.
BIBL.: E. Guarnera, B.A., Palermo 1901; F. Cavagni, L’Unico Aretino (B. A.) e la corte dei duchi di Urbino, Arezzo 1906; I. Corsi, Un fenomeno della rinascenza, in Rivista di Roma, 3 (1913), fasc. 3-5.