19 Facts About Giambattista Marino

Giambattista Marino was an Italian poet who was born in Naples.

Giambattista Marino is considered the founder of the school of Marinism, later known as Secentismo or Marinismo, characterised by its use of extravagant and excessive conceits.

Giambattista Marino was widely imitated in Italy, France, Spain and other Catholic countries, including Portugal and Poland, as well as Germany, where his closest follower was Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau and Holland where Constantijn Huygens was a great admirer.

Giambattista Marino remained the reference point for Baroque poetry as long as it was in vogue.

Giambattista Marino remained in his birthplace Naples until 1600, leading a life of pleasure after breaking off relations with his father who wanted his son to follow a career in law.

Giambattista Marino himself is the protagonist of another of the prelate's dialogues, Del concetto poetico.

Giambattista Marino gave himself up to literary studies, love affairs and a life of pleasure so unbridled that he was arrested at least twice.

Giambattista Marino then fled Naples and moved to Rome, first joining the service of Melchiore Crescenzio then that of Cardinal Aldobrandini.

Giambattista Marino was later sentenced to a year in prison, probably for malicious gossip he had written about the duke.

Giambattista Marino returned to Italy in triumph and died in Naples in 1625.

Giambattista Marino wrote a large amount, both in prose and verse.

Giambattista Marino's poetry remains the most admired and imitated part of his work.

Giambattista Marino originated a new, "soft, graceful and attractive" style for a new public, distancing himself from Torquato Tasso and Renaissance Petrarchism as well as any kind of Aristotelian rule.

In 1620 Giambattista Marino published La Sampogna, a collection of poems divided into two parts: one consisting of pastoral idylls and another of "rustic" verse.

Giambattista Marino dies in the arms of Venus and his heart is transformed into a red flower, the anemone.

Many works were announced but never written, including the long poem Le trasformazioni, inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, which was abandoned after Giambattista Marino turned his attention to Adone.

Giambattista Marino was famous in his time and acclaimed by his contemporaries as the successor and moderniser of Tasso.

Giambattista Marino's verse was very popular with contemporary Italian composers, including Claudio Monteverdi who set several of Giambattista Marino's poems in his collections of madrigals, beginning with the Sixth Book published in 1614.

Giambattista Marino is the subject of the short prose fiction "Una rosa amarilla" by Jorge Luis Borges.