Jacopo Sannazaro - Biography

Biography

He was born in 1458 at Naples of a noble family of the Lomellina, that claimed to derive its name from a seat in Lombard territory, at San Nazaro near Pavia. His father died ca 1462, during the boyhood of Jacopo, who was brought up at Nocera Inferiore and at San Cipriano Piacentino, whose rural atmosphere colored his poetry. In 1483-85 he campaigned twice with Alfonso against papal forces near Rome.

In the Academia which some call Acadia pontaniana that collected about the figure of Giovanni Pontano (Jovianus Pontanus), he took the classicizing nom de plume of Actius Syncerus. His withdrawal from Naples as a young man, sometimes treated as biographical, is apparently a purely literary trope. He speedily achieved fame as a poet and a place as a courtier. Following the death of his major patron, Alfonso (1495), in 1499 he received his villa "Mergellina" near Naples from Frederick IV, but when Frederick capitulated to France and Aragon, he followed him into exile in France in 1501, whence he returned to Mergellina after Frederick's death at Tours (1504). The later years of the poet seem to have been spent at Naples. In 1525 he succeeded the humanist Pietro Summonte as head of the Pontanian academy.