Agostino Lampugnani

Agostino Lampugnani ( – 29 January 1657) was an Italian Benedictine monk and Baroque writer.

Biography Giovan Battista Lampugnani was born in Milan around 1586 into a prominent noble family. He joined the Benedictine Order in 1599, taking the name of Agostino and entering the Milanese monastery of San Simpliciano. An accomplished Latinist and scholar, in the early 1630s he became a member of the Accademia degli Incogniti of Venice. He befriended Angelico Aprosio, with whom he conducted a regular correspondence which would last until the end of his life. Lampugnani was prior of Santo Spirito in Pavia until 1640. He subsequently became prior of San Procolo in Bologna, where he lived for some years. He became a member of the Accademia degli Indomiti and befriended several Bolognese writers and artists, including Andrea Barbazza and Giovan Francesco Neri. Lampugnani distinguished himself by his academic lectures, which were later published in Milan under the title Diporti academici. In 1642 he published in Venice, under the pseudonym of Giovan Battista Mognalpina, the chivalric romance Il Celidoro, one of the most successful Italian novels of the 17th century. In the late 1640s Lampugnani moved definitively to Milan. In his later years, he tried to have all his books published in a single edition, but died in 1657 before the project could be realized.

Works Lampugnani was an erudite and prolific author. He is best known for his part in the polemics over Giambattista Marino's Adone; his Antiocchiale (Anti-spyglass, 1629) argued against Tommaso Stigliani in favour of Marino. The work was never published probably due to the intervention of the Inquisition. Lampugnani sent the manuscript to Aprosio, who included it in his collection as part of the library that he established in his native Ventimiglia. Lampugnani wrote also a detailed account of the plague that struck Milan around 1630, a key source for Manzoni's description of the plague in his novel The Betrothed. Lampugnani's lively satire La Carrozza da nolo (The Rented Carriage, 1648) marks the entrance of the word moda (fashion) into the Italian lexicon.

List of works