BARBARO, FRANCESCO. — A most distinguished humanist and statesman, born in Venice around 1398 to the senator Candiano, and died there in the second half of January 1454. He was educated in the love of letters by Giovanni da Ravenna, known as the Grammarian, by Gasparino Barzizza, and later by Guarino Veronese, who also taught him Greek. At about nineteen years of age (1415), he published the Latin treatise De re uxoria, in which, beginning with the choice of a wife, he leads the reader as far as the education of children. This work won him tremendous renown, since he compensated for his youthful inexperience with the learning acquired from the Greek and Latin classics, arousing the admiration of men such as Pier Paolo Vergerio, Poggio Bracciolini, and Ambrogio Traversari. He married Maria Loredan at the age of twenty-one, entered the Senate in 1419, and soon began to be employed in the service of the Republic, in offices and legations that followed one another almost without interruption.
He was twice legate to Martino V during the war against Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, and war was the constant program of his political life. Under Eugenio IV he was one of the most tenacious advocates of religious union with the Greeks and of aid to the Eastern Empire. In 1438, while podestà of Brescia, he sustained a memorable siege against Niccolò Piccinino, commander of the duke of Milan. In 1452 he obtained the coveted office of procurator of S. Marco.
Several orations pronounced at the most solemn moments of his career are remembered among the works of B.; his letters on highly diverse political, religious, and literary subjects are very numerous, extending from 1409 to December 1453. Among his correspondents were the most illustrious figures of the age: Niccolò V, Lodovico Trevisan, cardinal chamberlain, Cardinal Francesco Condulmer, and later Ambrogio Traversari, Ermolao Barbaro seniore, Flavio Biondo, and Giorgio di Trebisonda. Moreover, Poggio, Valla, Niccolò, and Leonardo Bruni chose him as intermediary and peacemaker in their disputes, an office which he endeavored to carry out without offending either party.