CONTIT, ANTONIO. - Scholar of mathematics and philosophy, man of letters and poet. Venetian patrician and abbot, b. in Padua on 22 Jan. 1677, d. there on 6 Apr. 1749. He possessed an encyclopedic mind and wide-ranging cultural interests across Europe.
He lived in Paris between 1713 and 1715 and again between 1718 and 1726, engaging in debate with Malebranche; in England he was in 1715 and 1717–18, a friend of Newton and the court; from there in 1716–17 he traveled to Holland and Germany. From 1726 until his death he lived in his homeland.
Of the philosophical treatises he planned, only rough drafts remain. His writings, published in two volumes as *Prose e poesie* (Venice 1739 and 1750), include translations from classical and modern authors (Racine’s *Athalie* and Pope’s *The Rape of the Lock*), the metaphysical poems *Lo scudo di Pallade* and *Il globo di Venere*, miscellaneous verse, and philosophical and aesthetic fragments. Notable are two French letters addressed to President Ferrant and Marquis Maffei, and the *Dissertazione sopra la Tebaide* of Statius, in which C. opposed the modern school and Cartesian critics, insisting on historical knowledge and attention to particular characters as essential to aesthetic judgment. This renewed emphasis on history also informs his four tragedies: *Giunio Bruto, Marco Bruto, Giulio Cesare* and *Druso* (Florence 1751), composed under the influence of Shakespearean historical tragedy and with anti-Riemannian aims.