Carteggi del tardo Rinascimento. Lettere di Giovan Battista Strozzi il Giovane e Girolamo Preti

In the decades between the Fifteenth and Seventeenth centuries two poets, Giovan Battista Strozzi the Younger and Girolamo Preti, addressed their letters to Federico Borromeo. With the first, Florentine, known above all as a madrigalist, the cardinal made a long epistolary friendship, appreciating his moderate poetic style and linguistic competence. The second, the Bolognese supporter of Marino, destined to become a leading poet of Barberini's Rome, took the first steps as a lyric in Pavia, guest of the Collegio Borromeo, and later maintained that link working for the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. The letters published here, restricted in the three years 1611-1613, capture him, as in a snapshot, while in Rome, secretary of the Humorists. At this point the two biographies meet, because Strozzi was engaged by those academics as a lyrical auditor. The meeting is not marked by correspondence, yet it is not surprising, not only considering the circuit of their respective relationships, but also, in this situation, given the common interlocutor of the two poets. The cultural project of Federico Borromeo, built at the crossroads between humanistic, scientific and artistic culture, has recently been valued: the letters published in this volume, accompanied here with punctual comments and extensive introductions, document his presence in the field of Italian literature. On the other side, in its double feature, the book illustrates new aspects of the life and work of two of the main protagonists of the late Renaissance literary scene.