Lorenzo de’ Medici’s »Trionfo di Bacco e Arianna« and the Bible

Abstract

In their poetry the Italian humanists exalted the mythology of antiquity. Biblical motifs Were either repressed of used selectively by the new anthropocentric spirit. The author looks at Lorenzo de'Medici’s poem »Trionfo di Bacco e Arianna« which is an emblem for the carneval poetry of Humanism. Its spirit is »anti-Biblical«. Nevertheless, it evinces an interesting point of similitude with the Biblical »Book of Wisdom«, particularly the fragment »Life in the eyes of the godless«. The article makes the conclusion that Lorenzo de’Medici could have had the Bible as an example before him. particularly those parts of tile Bible that were, if not censured, by Medieval ascetism than certainly evaded, producing in his work a strange symbiosis of antiquity, the Bible and Humanism.