CRESCIMBENI, GIAN MARIO. - Man of letters and scholar, b. at Macerata on 9 Oct. 1663, d. at Rome on 8 March 1728. A canon and archpriest of S. Maria in Cosmedin, he lived devoted to his church and to the Arcadia (v.), of which he was among the principal founders in 1690 and which for 38 years he governed as custode generale under the name of Alfesibeo Cario.
His Istoria della volgar poesia (Rome 1698), the first attempt at a profile of Italian literature, betrays the author's critical and synthetic incapacity, reducing itself to a congeries of names and data insufficiently discriminated with simplistic and partisan judgments. Evident, in fact, is the apologetic intent of the work, in which the Arcadian activity is understood as a regeneration of poetry in the vernacular, which, derived from the Provençal and perfected with Petrarch, after the splendors of the Cinquecento had been obscured in the delirium of the seventeenth century. Incontestable are, nevertheless, in the Istoria the character of a repertory of information, which otherwise would have been lost, and a certain inspiration that at times enlivens it in the effort to vindicate Italian values. In the Venetian edition of 1730-31 there were added the Commentari and the 9 dialogues on La bellezza della volgar poesia. With the Arcadia (Rome 1711), a pastoral novel in verse and prose in imitation of Sannazzaro, C. narrated the vicissitudes of the Academy up to 1706, and with the Rime (1695 and 1723) he fused Petrarchism and Chiabrerism. He also wrote: Istoria delle chiese di S. Maria in Cosmedin, di S. Giovanni e di S. Anastasia; Compendio della vita della Vergine; Notizie intorno ad A. Poliziano; Ragionamenti pastorali and Orazioni. He translated into the vernacular the Omelie and Orazioni of Clement XI.
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Enzo Navarra