Who is Marino?

Born in Naples in 1569, Giambattista Marino was – and remains – one of the most enduring voices of the Italian Baroque. Following initial training in rhetoric and grammar with an important Neapolitan humanist, Marino was encouraged by his family to pursue law. The young “lawyer,” however, had other intentions: after several years, Giambattista would abandon his studies in jurisprudence to dedicate himself fully to poetry. Displeased with this decision, his father chased him out of the house. Audacious and undeterred, however, Marino embarked on his literary career and soon found employment among the most important patrons of the city.

1596, in particular, proved formative for the young poet. At twenty-seven, Marino became the personal secretary of Prince Matteo Di Capua, one of the wealthiest citizens of Naples. Di Capua granted Marino access to his library and gallery, which included works by celebrated painters such as Raphael, Titian, and Michelangelo, among many others. Almost surely inspired by these collections, Marino began composing poems in response to painting and sculpture. This mode of poetic response – or ekphrasis – would later become an identifying feature of his body of work. 

Indeed, Marino’s poetry is characterized by its intense and prolonged engagement with works of art. Artworks, and artists, proved intimate companions throughout his life. He was an admirer and friend to sculptors and painters, Rubens and Caravaggio among them. (The latter even captured Marino’s likeness in 1601: the poet, age thirty, gazes at viewers with almond eyes and an almost-hesitant smile.) During his extensive travels, Marino seized the opportunity to visit many of the most important art collections of early modern Europe. A number of his poems, most famously those of La Galeria, are the fruit of these encounters. 

Contemporary biographers remarked on the close relationship between Marino’s poetics and the so-called maniera moderna, or “modern style,” of artists such as Raphael, Titian, and Correggio. The poet’s imagination was often compared to that of painters, and his elaborate images – though crafted with words – likened to their works.

Marino died in the city of his birth. Upon his deathbed, he allegedly denounced many of his own writings, even apparently calling for some to be burned. His companions did not oblige, though some of Marino’s personal library and collected artworks did later burn (after the eruption of Vesuvius in 1794). He received funeral celebrations, as one attendant recalled, of extravagant pomp and circumstance.

Marino’s poems have survived and circulated widely, both in the original and in translations, abridgments, and other editions. His words have inspired writers within Italy and beyond, from John Donne in London, England to Juan de Espinosa Medrano in Cuzco, Peru. 

For more information, please consult the relevant entry in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani.

Frans Pourbus the Younger, Giambattista Marino, c. 1621, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Art.