Aleardi, Aleardo (born Gaetano)

ALEARDI, Aleardo (born Gaetano). - Poet, born in Verona on 14 November 1812, died there on 17 July 1878. He suffered Austrian imprisonment at Mantua (1852) and at Josephstadt (1859). After 1860 he was for a short time deputy for Lonato. A professor of eloquence at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 1863, after 1864 he taught aesthetics and art history at the Florentine Institute of Fine Arts. The Lettere a Maria (1846) marked his first success. Among his patriotic and civic poems, mention should be made of Le città italiane marinare e commercianti (1856) and, from the same year, Il Monte Circello. The Canto politico dates from 1862, in which he reproaches Pius IX for having forgotten the liberal sentiments of '48. In his last years he vied with Zanella in singing humanitarian and scientific theories. A sincere patriot; but in the religious sphere he followed the fashion of the time, allowing himself to be carried away by the anticlerical spirit, contenting himself with a generic and superficial religiosity. The melody of his verses is spontaneous, though often too facile. But he embodied in a typical way the romantic poet, prone to sentimentality and tears.

Salvatore Rosati