Biography
Article abstract: Ariosto, although an accomplished Latin poet, made vernacular Italian the established language for serious poetry from lyrics and satires to drama and the epic.
Early Life
The life and works of Ludovico Ariosto, like those of his administrator-soldier father, are closely bound to the house of Este, the Dukes of Ferrara. In spite of the instability created by the almost-constant struggles between this city-kingdom and other rival city-states, the Estensi court in Ferrara was one of the finest in Renaissance Europe. It supported an army, a university, jousts and hunts, and many artists. Architects, painters, sculptors, musicians, and poets were an everyday presence in the life of this court, which was located on the main pilgrimage and trade routes of Spain, France, and Italian city-states such as Venice and Bologna. The young Ariosto was introduced to this center of gracious living in 1485, when his father, Niccolò, after commanding citadels surrounding Ferrara for twelve years, was recalled. Ariosto had been born in Reggio, one such vast citadel, in 1474, the first of ten children.
Ariosto’s love of literature only became a problem when Count Niccolò, his father, enrolled him in the five-year law curriculum at the university about 1489. He completed slightly more than two uncongenial years toward his doctorate of law, while working with the court theater in his spare time, before his father relented and allowed him to study classical poetry in about 1494. Gregorio da Spoleto, who also taught the sons of the Strozzi and Este families, was a gifted and devoted teacher. Within one and a half years, Ludovico was the prize student, giving recitations at court and composing humorous poems about student life as well as lyrics and eclogues in Latin. It was not until 1503-1505, under Pietro Bembo, that Ariosto started composing serious poetry in the vernacular.
Ariosto’s devotion to such work, however, was interrupted by family financial problems in 1498. That year, to lessen problems occasioned by his father’s fall from ducal grace, Ariosto entered the service of Ercole I d’Este. Two years later, Niccolò died, leaving Ariosto head of the family, with four younger brothers to educate and five sisters to support until their marriages, with only meager income from properties surrounding Ferrara. Duke Ercole appointed him to a more lucrative position as captain of a garrison in 1502. The next year, however, the last of his uncles died and Ariosto was forced to return to Ferrara to look after his family. He was then given a position in the household of Ercole’s son, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, which he kept until 1517. Ippolito’s household, rather than being churchly, rivaled his father’s and his brother Alfonso’s in all aspects—art, women, hunting, feasting, and battling. Services demanded by a courtier might range from overseeing feasts to accompanying Ippolito on diplomatic or military missions. Ariosto’s health declined, and stomach disorders, which would plague him all of his life, began.
Life’s Work
The first written evidence of an inner conflict between Ariosto’s art and his courtier occupation is found in two poems written at about the same time. One was in praise of Ippolito’s purity and chastity, and the second was an epithalamium for Lucrezia Borgia, already twice married. These poems helped establish his position as the court poet and are, perhaps, the first evidence of what was to become his dominant tone as a poet—irony. His burdens were not lightened by the birth of his first illegitimate son, Giambattista, after a brief liaison, probably with a servant. It is also possible that during this time, in order to increase his income, he took...
(This entire section contains 2212 words.)
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minor Holy Orders, but he steadfastly refused the hypocrisy of the lucrative benefices of full priesthood. By 1507, his growing reputation as a poet relieved him from some of the least congenial aspects of his service. That year, he was sent to Ippolito’s sister’s court in Mantua to convey a poem celebrating the birth of Princess Isabella’s first son. Isabella and her court welcomed him and especially admired a work in progress he read to them, a work all scholars agree must have been the first draft of theOrlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591).
During the time between this visit and the poem’s publication, Ariosto’s time was doubly occupied. At court, he was in charge of many theatrical productions. In 1508, his own comedy, La cassaria (The Coffer, 1975), was elaborately produced and popularly received for Carnivale. He followed with another success, I suppositi (The Pretenders, 1566), in 1509, and prepared Il negromante (The Necromancer, 1975) for Carnivale in 1510, although its production was stopped because of the precarious political and military concerns of the city. Violence plagued Ferrara. In 1508, Ariosto’s best friend, Ercole Strozzi, was assassinated, supposedly by Alfonso’s men. Ariosto himself was mediating between Ferrara and the Papacy in Rome and France, with whom Ferrara had allied itself between 1507 and 1509, attempting to reassure each faction. He was on such a mission when Pope Julius’ troops attacked Ferrara, and Alfonso was excommunicated. He rejoined Ippolito the next year, in time to witness the sacking of Ravenna in 1512. Later that year, when an attempted reconciliation between Alfonso and the pope suddenly failed, he accompanied Alfonso in a dangerous escape from Rome to Florence. In between, he worked on Orlando furioso. Probably in Florence, in 1513, he fell in love with a married woman, Alessandra Strozzi-Benucci.
Ariosto continued to travel on diplomatic missions for Ippolito and Alfonso, finding time to write between the assignments. Somehow, the first forty cantos of Orlando furioso were completed in 1515, the same year that Alessandra’s husband died. Still, the couple did not marry. Orlando furioso was published in 1516, and all two thousand copies of the first edition sold within five years, making it the first best-seller of the Renaissance. Ariosto became famous throughout Europe.
His means of support still came primarily from his service at court. When Ippolito, who was also Primate of Hungary and Bishop of Buda, decided to move his court to Hungary in 1517, Ariosto chose to stay in Ferrara. Ippolito agreed but dismissed Ariosto from his services. Yet Alfonso almost immediately took Ariosto into service at his court in Ferrara at a better salary.
For the next three years, Ariosto’s life was quite pleasant. He had time to finish and rewrite one of his earlier dramas, The Necromancer. He wrote his first three satires and started revising Orlando furioso. Its second edition was published in 1521, to be followed by multiple editions in the next seven years. By 1519, however, Ferrara was again rumored to be the target of a papal invasion.
Renewal of warfare drained Ferrara’s resources and forced Alfonso to suspend pay to the professors and to many artists, including Ariosto. By 1522, Ariosto was forced to accept a post as commissioner of the Garfagnana district, which was controlled by Alfonso. He found himself temperamentally unsuited to deliver the severe punishment perhaps needed to establish peace and law in the area. Ariosto found the post beyond his powers and felt exiled rather than rewarded. When offered an ambassadorship to the court of Clement VII, he refused it and returned to his beloved Ferrara and Alessandra in June, 1525.
Finally, Ariosto had the leisure and enough money to live as he wished. Between 1526 and 1528, he composed Cinque canti, which was published posthumously in 1545. In 1528, the people of Ferrara elected him to be Judge of the Twelve Sages. Also in 1528, he was appointed to be director of the court theater, which Alfonso wanted restored to its former glory after the disruptions of the wars. Not only did Ariosto supervise construction of sets and productions but also he had a chance to revise his own dramatic works to fit his newer ideas of dramatic style. La Lena (1529; Lena, 1975) and a new version of The Coffer were both performed. His prestige as a diplomat was the highest, and he was asked to make a few visits to Florence, Venice, and Mantua for Alfonso. Meanwhile, he worked on his final version of Orlando furioso, which was published in October, 1532. Weeks later, he was in Mantua with Alfonso to welcome Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, and give him a presentation copy. Most biographers also believe that Ariosto and Alessandra were secretly married between 1526 and 1530, but that they continued to live separately, perhaps to keep income from minor benefices conferred by Ippolito. By December, 1532, his lifelong stomach problems and later chest pains had taken their toll. Ariosto fell severely ill and died on July 6, 1533. Alessandra and his second son, Virginio, were by his bedside. He was buried by the monks of San Benedetto at their church, quietly, as he desired. His body was later entombed in the Biblioteca Ariostea of Ferrara beneath a marble tomb supplied by Napoleon.
Summary
Ludovico Ariosto is a prime example of the Renaissance man. An outstanding poet in all forms—lyrical, satirical, dramatic, and epic—he also was always involved in the active life of the courts of Ferrara as administrator and diplomat. He was always conscientious and loyal to family, friends, and patrons. He never sought great riches or titles but only enough to support himself and his family comfortably while he pursued his writing. Ariosto became the poet for whom Dante had called, one who would embody the greatest of Italian culture in a new form fit for the greatest of Italian vernacular poetry. Orlando furioso was a best-seller not only in Italy but also in France and in England, where Elizabeth I ordered an English translation. The almost picaresque structure of simultaneous multiple plots, the mixture of comic and tragic material, and the persona of a semidetached narrator were inventive strokes that allowed Ariosto to examine the form and values of the dying chivalric romance tradition while deeply investigating the problems of society in general and those of human nature. The Orlando furioso is great poetry, great fun for the reader, and full of great wisdom about man and his world. Because of a lack of readable translations, its American readership almost disappeared. Two translations, Barbara Reynolds’ (Penguin, 1977) and Guido Waldman’s (Oxford University Press, 1983) have again made the text widely accessible.
Bibliography
Brand, C. P. Ludovico Ariosto: A Preface to the Orlando Furioso. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 1974. An excellent overview of Ariosto’s life and works. Contains full chapters on life, lyrics, satires, and dramas while concentrating on a thematic study of the Orlando furioso. Emphasizes the opposition of love and war. Contains brief bibliographies for each chapter and two indexes.
Croce, Benedetto. Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1920. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966. An extremely influential early modern essay on Orlando furioso. Rebutting the traditional criticism, Croce argues that the work achieves unity through the artist’s control of point of view and style, a unity which ultimately reflects the rhythm and harmony of God’s creation.
Gardner, Edmund G. The King of Court Poets: Ariosto. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1906. Reprint. New York: Haskell House, 1968. Gardner’s full-length biography contains a wealth of material and is easy to read. He includes a social, cultural, and political background of Ariosto’s life and work. Contains a dated bibliography, a useful index, and three foldout genealogies of the houses of Ariosto, Este, and Pio.
Griffin, Robert. Ludovico Ariosto. Boston: Twayne, 1974. Good introductory work on Ariosto, beginning with a chapter on his life and ending with a survey of criticism. Also contains chapters on lyrics, satires, dramas, and a thematic analysis of Orlando furioso. Argues that the unity of the poem rests on man’s inability to accept the will of fortune in a world beyond his limited comprehension. Contains chronology, notes, selected bibliography with brief annotations, and two indexes.
Rodini, Robert J., and Salvatore Di Maria. Ludovico Ariosto: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1956-1980. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984. Contains 930 entries from journals, monographs, essays in books, North American dissertations, and books. Although meant primarily for scholars, the entry synopses are excellent and can easily be skimmed. Arranged by author but also contains detailed subject index and an index by works treated.
Wiggins, Peter De Sa. Figures in Ariosto’s Tapestry: Character and Design in the “Orlando Furioso.” Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Agreeing with Galileo’s early comments on the psychological consistency of Ariosto’s characters and his exact knowledge of human nature, Wiggins suggests that their complex inner lives are universal human types. This invisible interior world, at odds with an exterior world of folly and depravity, is a major theme of the work. Excellent index and notes for each chapter.
Wiggins, Peter De Sa. The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto: A Renaissance Autobiography. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976. A bilingual text, using the Italian original edited by Cesare Segre with Wiggins’ clear prose translations on the facing page. Each satire is placed in biographical and historical context with its own separate preface and notes. Argues that the narrator of the satires is an idealized poet courtier in typical situations rather than a factual mirror of Ariosto himself. Suggests that the satires share similarities with Orlando furioso: the theme of illusion and reality, the ironic humor, and the use of a dramatic persona as narrator.
