Notes accompanying the sonnet of Marin Zizerić from Dubrovnik to Antonio Altloviti

Abstract

The encomiastic sonnet of Marin Zizerić from Dubrovnik (? – d. 1567), dedicated to Antonio Altoviti, the distinguished Florentine archbishop (1567-1573), son of Bindo Altoviti, is the only known literary work of this little-known author. It was published in Lodovico Domenichiʼs translation of Paolo Diaconoʼs Della origine et fatti dei re Longobardi (Venezia: Gabriel Giolito deʼ Ferrari 1548). This article analyzes Zizerićʼs sonnet and its reference context. The sonnet, as a conventional gesture and gallant support to the translatorʼs dedication to the book, uncovers several written traces of its authorʼs literary and cultural touches. The dedicatory letters and a humorous anecdote of Lodovico Domenichi and Anton Francesco Doni, two important polygraphers who worked in Florence and Venice in the middle of the 16th century, show that Zizerić was favorably evaluated as an interlocutor of humanistic culture and Renaissance virtue. He also collaborated with Guido Machiavelli, son of Niccolò Machiavelli, on the posthumous printing of his fatherʼs book Lʼasino dʼoro in 1549. The edition was dedicated to Zizerić by the Florentine publisher Giunti as a sign of gratitude for the effort put into publishing the book. In the circle of the distinguished literati and polygraphers with whom Zizerić communicated, several other dedications, letters, and memorials with interesting facts about famous natives and their cultural contacts were recorded, such as those to  the writer Dinko Ranjina and Luka Sorkočević.