Navagero, Andrea

NAVAGERO, ANDREA. - Poet, historiographer, orator, politician, b. in Venice to a patrician family, in 1483, d. at Blois on 8 May 1529. At the University of Padua he had as teachers M. Musurus in Greek and P. Pomponazzi in philosophy, and he refined his taste through the study of the classics. Bembo admired the sweetness of his verse, Ramusio the pleasantness of his conversation, and Aldus Manutius held him as a friend and collaborator in the criticism of classical texts.

The Republic of Venice entrusted him with the funeral orations for Caterina Cornaro, queen of Cyprus (1510), for the general Bartolomeo d'Alviano (1515), and for the doge Loredan (1521), and, upon the death of Sabellico, appointed him to the direction of the Library of St. Mark, with the task of continuing the History of Venice, which the latter had left unfinished. But his many commitments, his various diplomatic missions in Italy and abroad (Spain, France), and his premature death in the household of Francis I prevented him from completing what he had envisioned.

Dedicatory epistles, in lucid Ciceronian style, to Leo X, to Bembo, and to Sadoleto precede the Aldine texts of Quintilian, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid, Terence, Horace, Cicero and others. His annotations on the Journey in Spain and France, and the five Epistles to Ramusio, a valuable record of historical and private information, have classical turns and a flavor of Caesarian plainness, even though in the vernacular. He won fame as a poet with his Latin lyrics (Lusus), composed according to the purest classicism, «antiquae simplicitatis semulator». Fracastoro celebrated him as a man, humanist and man of letters in the well-known dialogue Naugerius.

Benedetto Riposati