Andrada (Andrade), Francesco de

ANDRADA (ANDRADE), FRANCESCO de. - Portuguese man of letters and historian, b. in Lisbon in 1535 and d. in 1614, brother of Tommaso A. known under the name of "Tommaso di Gesù". Philip II appointed him, in 1559, chronicler of the kingdom.

His principal works are: a poem of 20 cantos in ottava rima (O primeiro círco de Dia) on the first siege of the Turks against the fortress of the little island of Dio, of which the Portuguese, on arriving in India, had made an important naval and strategic base; a chronicle of Prince George Castriota and one of King John III. Among his most notable writings of a religious character are cited a small lyric poem entitled Philomena de S. Boaventura, a translation from the Latin; a version in terza rima of the psalm Benedic anima mea Domino, an Elegia dell'anima devota al suo Sposo, and others. He often took delight in translations from the Latin: the chronicle of Castriota is likewise a translation; but even in his original works, however much he strives to be precise, he does not succeed in being complete, and when he writes in verse he lacks, for the most part, if not technical ability, inspired and moving inspiration. Therefore he is generally credited with the merit of employing a chaste and polished language, which compensates, in part, for the fault of having wished to make poetry, by choosing as the subject of his major poetic work the siege of Dio, a subject of an essentially historical character, and developing it with criteria that would be more suited to simple chronicle narration.