TORTI, GIOVANNI. - Poet, b. in Milano on 24 June 1774, d. in Genova on 15 Feb. 1852.
He was a pupil of Parini and held several posts in the administration of Milano. After 1848—he was the author of the Hymn to the Five Days—when the Austrians returned to Milano, he took refuge in Genova, where he was president of the University’s Administrative Council.
In 1808 he wrote the Epistola sui Sepolcri: a comparison between Foscolo’s poem and Pindemonte’s. With the terza rima poem Sulla Passione di Cristo (1816) and the four Sermoni sulla poesia (1818), his adherence to Romanticism became apparent. He also wrote a short poem, La Torre di Capua (1829), and in 1836 Scetticismo e religione.
Manzoni, in a letter to D’Azeglio and in the Promessi Sposi, praises his verses. The three epistles, Un'abiura in Roma in the second year of the pontificate of Pio IX, which tacitly contrast the reforming Pio IX with the more cautious and conservative Pope of his later years, were placed on the Index (decree of 20 Apr. 1852), also because of the anticlerical spirit animating them, whereby “a sensible and honest heterodox believer” regrets the purity of heaven in the face of the corruption of the Church.
BBL.: Poesie complete by G. T., edited by G. B. Ceresato, Genova 1853; E. Bellorini, G. T., Napoli 1907; G. Mazzoni, L'Ottocento, Milano n.d., V. indice. Maria L. Armao