**NAVAGERO ANDREA** – Poet, historian, orator, politician, born in Venice to a patrician family in 1483, died in Blois on 8 May 1529. At the University of Padua, his teachers included M. Musuro in Greek and P. Pomponazzi in philosophy, and he refined his taste through the study of the classics. Bembo admired the suavity of his verse, Ramusio the pleasantness of his conversation, and Aldo Manuzio counted him as a friend and collaborator in the criticism of classical texts.
The Republic of Venice entrusted him with funeral orations for Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (1520), for the general Bartolomeo d'Alviano (1515), and for Doge Loredan (1521). After the death of Sabellico, he was appointed to direct the Library of San Marco, with the task of continuing the *History of Venice*, which he left unfinished. However, his manifold commitments, various diplomatic missions in Italy and abroad (Spain, France), and his premature death in the service of Francis I prevented him from completing what he had envisioned.
Prefatory epistles in polished Ciceronian style, addressed to Leo X, Bembo, and Sadoleto, precede the Aldine editions of Quintilian, Virgil, Lucretius, Ovid, Terence, Horace, Cicero, and others. His annotations on the *Journey to Spain and France* and the five *Epistles to Ramusio* exhibit classical cadences and a taste for Caesarean simplicity, even in the vernacular, and serve as a valuable documentary source for historical and private matters. He gained fame as a poet through his Latin lyrics (*Lusus*), composed in the purest classical style, “an emulator of ancient simplicity.” Fracastoro celebrated him as a man, humanist, and man of letters in the well-known dialogue *Naugerius*.