MOLZA, FRANCESCO MARIA. - Man of letters, b. at Modena on 18 June 1489, d. there on 28 Feb. 1544. Besides Latin and Greek he also knew Hebrew to a certain extent. Despite a past of unbridled sensuality, he loved, with a humanist's passion, the Rome of Julius II and his successors. He was a member of almost all the academies and, perhaps with more relish than any other, of that of the Vignaiuoli, along with Firenzuola, Berni and Della Casa himself. In the reputation of Roman humanistic corruption he plays a leading part. He was one of the most characteristic figures of Rome, and therefore of Italy; letters and memoirs bear witness to this.
His Latin and vernacular poetry was also overvalued by his contemporaries; yet it was published only two centuries later, in 1747, by the abbot Serassi, apart from the good intentions of Cardinal Farnese, who had kept him at his court. Four of his novellas had been published in 1459. His pastoral poem La ninfa tiberina is praised. In art too Molza can be compared to his friend Firenzuola. In verse or in prose both needed subjects that engaged nothing of them but the imagination. When feeling had nevertheless to be asked for something, as in the Stanze per Giulia Gonzaga (not all of which belong to him) or in those on the death of Alvigi Gonzaga, even the fancy slackens. The epigrams and the capitoli are without effectiveness. Molza is a failed humorist also in the poem in praise of figs, which remained famous among men of letters for Caro's note. A genuine humanist, it may be that he set greater store by his own Latin poems, in which, however, he was little more than an imitator, especially of Tibullus. When Erasmus in the Ciceronianus seemed to welcome some Lutheran argument against the piety of the humanists, Molza reacted with an indignation in which everything may be contested (perhaps even the right to express it), except its sincerity.
Bibliography2 works
Giuseppe Toffanin