FIRENZUOLA, AGNOLO. – Man of letters, born in Florence in 1493, died in Prato on 27 June 1543. A friend of Aretino, he subsequently became a Vallombrosan monk and procurator of his Order at the papal court; in 1526 he was dispensed from his religious vows while retaining his ecclesiastical benefices. From 1543 he resided in Florence and Prato, afflicted by syphilis and, in his final years, by poverty. He founded the Accademia dell’Addiaccio, a precursor of the Arcadia.
He wrote lyric poems, two comedies, the unfinished Ragionamenti d’amore, Delle bellezze delle donne, Della perfetta bellezza d’una donna, and La prima veste degli animali (a reworking of the Panciatantra through the Directorium humanae vitae of Giovanni da Capua and the Spanish vernacular version Esemplario contra los engaños y peligros del mundo). With subjective transfiguration, he translated Apuleius’ Asino d’oro and opposed Trissino’s graphic innovations with the Discacciamento delle nuove lettere inutilmente aggiunte nella lingua toscana, a discourse appreciated by Clement VII.
In his free life and in his writings he was unable to rise above an elementary sensuality, which led him to seek and portray in woman only an eclectic exterior perfection, and which his imaginative elaboration directed preferably toward the instinctive animal world. Moral problems, at times pursued, vanish into his graceful and often licentious tale-telling, even though beneath F.’s sensuality there was perceived that weary sadness which, for the better endowed spirits, is a beginning of transcendence through suffering.