Galasso Ariosto

A younger brother of Ludovico Ariosto, eighth son of Niccolò and Daria Malaguzzi Valeri, he was born in Ferrara in 1489. He was made to take up an ecclesiastical career by Ludovico, who dedicated him the II Satire. He moved to Rome and first entered the service of Raffaello Riario, cardinal of San Giorgio, and then of cardinal Innocenzo Cybo, with whom he had been very familiar for quite some time. Galasso’s aim was to obtain a prelature; his brother Ludovico comments on this in Satire, I, verses 202-203: "Galasso vuol ne la città di Evandro / por la camicia sopra la guarnaccia". After a short period spent in Ferrara, he passed into the service of Ercole Gonzaga whom he accompanied on diplomatic missions to Germany and France. In 1532 he became owner, with his brothers Gabriele and Alessandro, of the paternal magna domus in Ferrara. On 6 July 1533, at Ludovico’s death, Galasso was not in Ferrara and may not have attended his brother’s funeral, despite having lovingly assisted him during the preceding six month long illness. In 1534 he was conferred a canonry in the cathedral of Reggio and in1540 he was appointed canon custodian of the cathedral of Ferrara, a post instituted in 1514 by cardinal Ippolito d’Este and from then passed down as part of their inheritance to the Ariostos. In those years he lived also thanks to the income from the benefits of Tamara and Curlo, in the countryside of Ferrara. He later entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara Ercole II, who sent him to Venice as ambassador and then to Germany to the court of Charles V. His life came to end in1546 in the city of Ingolstadt on the Danube, where he was buried. He was a cultivated and elegant man of letters, author of a play (which Francesco Torre mentions in a letter addressed to Galasso 26 September 1537), and knew well the XVI century writer Matteo Bandello and Pietro Bembo. He acted as intermediary between Pope Leo X and Ludovico Ariosto for the staging of the Suppositi and the Negromante in the Vatican.