13 Facts About Tommaso Inghirami

Tommaso Inghirami was a Renaissance humanist and orator.

Tommaso Inghirami was prefect of the Vatican Library for several years and secretary of the Fifth Lateran Council.

Tommaso Inghirami was born in Volterra in 1470, the son of Paolo Inghirami and of his wife Lucrezia Barlettani.

In 1486, Inghirami played Phaedra in the first performance of Seneca's Phaedra since ancient times, staged by Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli and Raffaele Riario, with support from the Roman Academy of Julius Pomponius Laetus.

The emperor was so impressed by an oration Tommaso Inghirami gave that he named him poet laureate and count palatine.

In 1508, Tommaso Inghirami suffered injuries when the mule he was riding collided with an oxcart loaded with grain.

Tommaso Inghirami met Desiderius Erasmus in 1509 and they became lifelong friends and correspondents.

Erasmus noted Tommaso Inghirami was more famous as an orator than writer.

In 1510, Tommaso Inghirami was appointed Prefect of the Palatine Library.

Tommaso Inghirami appears in the robes of a canon of St Peter's Basilica.

Tommaso Inghirami was overweight at least in his final decades, as shown in Raphael's works.

Tommaso Inghirami suffered from strabismus, the failure of the eyes to align, a condition that Raphael disguised in his portrait by focusing his gaze away from the viewer at some unseen superior or inspiration.

Contemporary letters hint he was homosexual or state it as fact, an interpretation supported by Raphael's "School of Athens" where Tommaso Inghirami is embraced from behind by a half-hidden male figure, and his unusual feminine nickname of Phaedra.