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Veronica Gambara

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Veronica Gambara
Born29 or 30 November 1485
Lombardy
Died13 June 1550 (aged 64)
Correggio
Spouse(s)
Giberto VII, Count of Correggio
(m. 1509; died 1518)
IssueIppolito [it]
Girolamo di Corregio

Veronica Gambara (29 or 30 November 1485[1][2] – 13 June 1550) was an Italian poet and politician. She was the ruler of the County of Correggio from 1518 until 1550.

Biography

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Born in Pralboino (now in the Province of Brescia), in Lombardy, Italy, Gambara came from a distinguished family, one of the seven children of Count Gianfrancesco da Gambara and Alda Pio da Carpi.[1] Her family contained a number of distinguished female intellectuals, including her great-aunts, the humanist poets Ginevre and Isotta Nogarola.[3]: 164  Veronica was also a niece of Emilia Pia, the principal female interlocutor of Baldessare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano.[4]: 160–61 

Gambara received a humanist education, studying Latin, Greek, philosophy, theology and scripture.[4]: 160 [3]: 170  In 1502, at the age of 17, she began corresponding with the leading neo-Petrarchan, Pietro Bembo, who became her poetic mentor two years later when she began sending him her compositions.[4]: 161 [3]: 170 

In 1509, at the age of 24, she married her cousin, the 50-year-old widower Giberto VII, Count of Correggio, in Amalfi.[1] They had two sons, Ippolito [it] was born in 1510 and Girolamo in 1511.[1] After Giberto's death in 1518, she took charge of the state (including management of Correggio's condottieri), as well as the education of her two sons and step-daughter Costanza.[5]: 23 [3]: 171  Her niece, Camilla Valenti, daughter of Violante the sister of Veronica, was also putatively a poet.[6]

Under Gambara's rule, the small court of Correggio became something of a salon, visited by such important figures as Pietro Bembo, Gian Giorgio Trissino, Marcantonio Flaminio, Ludovico Ariosto, and Titian.[3]: 170 [5]: 25  Previously aligned with French king, Francis I, Gambara allied Correggio with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.[1] She personally received Charles V at her estate in 1530, when he signed a treaty guaranteeing Correggio would not again be besieged, and a second time in 1533.[1] The treaty was broken, however, in 1538 when Galeotto Pico II, Count of Mirandola and Concordia, launched an attack on Correggio.[5]: 24  Gambara organized a successful defense of the city, and between 1546 and 1550, saw that Charles V paid for improved fortifications.[5]: 24 [1]

She died on 13 June 1550 in Correggio, Italy.[1]

Poetry and correspondence

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Approximately 80 of her poems and 150 of her letters are extant, and a complete English translation of her poems was published in 2014.[7] Little of her poetry was published during her lifetime, though it circulated in manuscript and was well-known throughout Italy by 1530.[3]: 169  Gambara primarily composed poetry in Italian falling into four categories: poems on political issues, devotional poems, Virgilian pastoral, and love poems to her husband.[3]: 170–71  Her political poems are particularly notable for expressing a concept of Italy as an entity centuries prior to unification.[5]: 24  Most of her poems are sonnets, although she also wrote madrigals, ballads, and stanze in ottava rima. She also composed a number of poems in Latin, including an ode for Charles V with which she greeted the fellow sovereign on his visit to Correggio in 1530.[3]: 170–71 

Gambara was in correspondence with a number of important scholars and poets of the day. Beyond the above-mentioned Pietro Bembo, she corresponded with the poet Bernardo Tasso, the writer Matteo Bandello, and author and playwright Pietro Aretino (who would come to slander her as a "laureated harlot," an attack Gambara simply ignored).[5]: 24 [3]: 171  She also exchanged letters with Charles V.[1] Gambara's letters, never intended for publication, shed light on her personal life. In a 1549 letter to Ludovico Rosso she admits to exhaustion with her responsibilities, and expresses a desire to retire to a solitary country life.[1][5]: 25 

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Moody, Ellen (April 19, 2004). "Under the Sign of Dido: Veronica Gambara (1485–1550), Life, Letters, and Poetry". Retrieved June 11, 2018.
  2. ^ Wilson, Katharina M.; Schlueter, Paul; Schlueter, June (2013-12-16). Women Writers of Great Britain and Europe: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-135-61670-0.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Stevenson, Jane (2005). Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority, from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press.
  4. ^ a b c Robin, Larsen and Levin (2007). Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Stortoni, Laura (1997). Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans. New York: Italica Press.
  6. ^ Nuovo Dizionario Istorico, Va = Uz, Tomo XXI, translated from French, Remondini of Venice (1796); page 17.
  7. ^ Martin, Molly; Ugolini, Paola (June 2014). Veronica Gambara, Complete Poems. A Bilingual Edition. The University of Toronto.

References

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  • Anne R. Larsen; Diana Robin; Carole Levin, eds. (2007). Encyclopedia of women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England. ABC-CLIO, Inc. pp. 160–161.
  • Under the Sign of Dido: Veronica Gambara (1485–1550), Life, Letters, and Poetry Ellen Moody April 2004. Accessed July 20012.
  • Stevenson, Jane (2005). Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 156–171. ISBN 0-19-818502-2.
  • Stortoni, Laura A (1997). Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans. New York: Italica Press. pp. 23–5. ISBN 0-934977-43-7.
  • Martin, Molly; Ugolini, Paola (June 2014). Veronica Gambara, Complete Poems. A Bilingual Edition. The University of Toronto.
  • Massimo Colella, «Cantin le ninfe co' soavi accenti». Per una definizione del petrarchismo di Veronica Gambara, in «Testo», 2022.
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