PIER GIACOMO MARTELLI. — Scholar, born in Bologna on 28 April 1665, died there on 10 May 1727. He taught rhetoric in his native city. In 1713 he accompanied to France Monsignor Aldovrandi, the papal nuncio, and spent nine months in Paris, publishing a Dialogo sopra la tragedia antica e moderna (1714). His Teatro, printed in Rome in 1715, led to his appointment in Bologna as senior secretary of the Senate, a post he held until his death.
M., unjustly remembered by posterity almost solely for the “martellian” verse (double heptameter), was one of the most prolific and ingenious writers of the early eighteenth century. Opposed by Gravina and Maffei, he retaliated with the Femia sentenziato (1724), a satire in blank verse that pleased Parini. He wrote operas, comedies, tragedies; he also cultivated lyric and satire: notable are his Canzoniere (1710) and Il Secretario Cliterinale (1717), seven satires in terza rima in which he pretends to teach a noble simpleton, the Baron of Cervara, how to become a man of letters: a pre-Parinian example of sustained ironic instruction. He also essayed epic poetry: in his later years he worked on the Carlo Magno, which, if completed, would have surpassed the epic poems of the eighteenth century. Among his witty and lively prose works, Il vero parigino italiano, three Lucianic dialogues written in defence of national honour, should not be forgotten.