Leonardo Salviati

Born in Florence in 1540 and participating from a young age in the city’s most prestigious cultural circles (he was a pupil of Benedetto Varchi), Leonardo Salviati participated actively in the early meetings of the Florentine Academy and was later among the founders of the Accademia della Crusca (1582). In the mid-1570s, when he met Tasso, he had already published his Primo libro dell’orazioni (1567) and had also published a number of academy lectures he had delivered publicly. Busy with his revision, Tasso turned to Salvati in connection with the topical issue of the stylistic register suited to vernacular epic (T. Tasso, Lettere poetiche, edited by C. Molinari, Parma, Guanda, Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1995, 474-76), precisely while Salviati was working on a vigorous commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics that was never published. Aside from this initial collaboration, however, their views clashed. When Camillo Pellegrino published the Carrafa praising Tasso’s epic over the Furioso, Salviati, using the name Infarinato, published De gli Accademici della Crusca difesa dell’Orlando Furioso dell’Ariosto, which appeared in February 1585. Salavto also responded in detail to the Apologia containing Tasso’s views on the controversy (Dello Infarinato ... risposta all’Apologia di Torquato Tasso, Florence, 1585). In this framework it is symbolic that Salviati should be called to the Este Court in March 1587, a few months after Tasso’s release.