Testi, Fulvio

TESTI, FULVIO. - Politician, poet, b. at Ferrara on 23 Aug. 1593, d. at Modena on 28 Aug. 1646.

He was in the service of the Este Court at Modena; he sought and obtained court offices and advantageous diplomatic activities in Vienna, in Rome at the court of Urban VIII (cf. the portrait of the Pontiff in the Relazione to the Duke of 23 Aug. 1634), in Turin, in Madrid. The fickleness of his character is documented by his indifferent attribution of praise and blame to persons and to States, according to circumstances (cf. Rime, Venice 1616; Modena 1617; ibid. 1653). His ambition - some hold that in the Conte zio of the Consiglio Segreto Manzoni portrayed the T. of the Epistolario - led him to experience the instability of fortune and, finally, after the attempt to pass into French service, to imprisonment in the fortress of Modena, where he died. For the theater he composed L'Isola d'Alcina, L'Arsinda. To his epic attempts, all of which remained unfinished, belong the Costantino, the India conquistata, the Gli Amori di Pantea; more celebrated are the octaves: the Pianto d'Italia, an aspiration to freedom from Spanish servitude. A follower of Chiabrera, in lyric poetry he advocated Horatian and Pindaric imitation. Leopardi asserted that if he had lived in a less barbarous age he would have been our Horace, but, having acknowledged his merits of grandeur and eloquence, he concluded that it is difficult to find a Canzone that is not badly smeared with the pitch of his century (Pensieri, 1, Florence 1930, p. 110).

Giovanni Fallani