JACOPO

SANNAZARO (1458-1530)  , Italian poet of the Renaissance, was born in 1458 at Naples of a noble family, said to have been of Spanish origin, which had its seat at San Nazaro near Pavia . His father died during the boyhood of Jacopo, who was brought up at Nocera Inferiore . He afterwards studied at Naples under Giovanni Pontanus, when, according to the fashion of the time, he assumed the name Actius Syncerus, by which he is occasionally referred to . After the death of his mother he went abroad—driven, we are told, by the pangs of despised love for a certain Carmosina, whom he has celebrated in his verse under various names; but of the details of his travels nothing is recorded . On his return he speedily achieved fame as a poet and place as a courtier, receiving from Frederick III. as a country residence the Villa Mergillina near Naples . When his patron was compelled to take refuge in France in 1501 he was accompanied by Sannazaro, who did not return to Italy till after his death (1504) . The later years of the poet seem to have been spent at Naples . He died on the 27th of April 1530 . The Arcadia of Sannazaro, begun in early life and published in 1504, is a somewhat affected and insipid Italian pastoral, in which in alternate prose and verse the scenes and occupations of pastoral life are described . See Scherillo's edition (Turin, 1888) . His now seldom read Latin poem De partu Virginis, which gained for him the name of the " Christian Virgil," appeared in 1526, and his collected Sonetti e canzoni in 1530 .