ROBORTELLO, FRANCESCO. - Humanist, b. in Udine on 9 September 1516, d. in Padova on 18 March 1567. After studying in Bologna, he held the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence at Lucca, Pisa, Venezia, Padova, Bologna, and finally again at Padova from 1561 until his death.
He belongs to that group of masters who placed the study of the Latin language above the vernacular and who combined the cult of eloquence with a passion for the critical edition of texts. To him is owed the first complete commentary on Aristotle’s Poetica (Firenze 1548), which he regarded as a scientific work intended to identify the laws of poetry and to reduce the arts—previously treated “confusedly and indeterminately”—to a rigorously rational criterion. Particularly noteworthy are the pages on the function of poetry—which he considers from an essentially hedonistic standpoint—on catharsis, and on the relations between history and poetry. In addition to his numerous editions of Greek and Latin classics, he left critical dissertations (De facultate historica, 1548; De vita et victu populi Romani sub imperatoribus Caes. Augustis, 1559).