Berardino Rota

Berardino Rota (1509 – 26 December 1574) was an Italian Renaissance humanist and poet.

Biography Born to a wealthy and noble Neapolitan family, Rota was a disciple of Marcantonio Epicuro.

He was a leading figure in the literary life of the middle of the 16th century. He numbered among his friends Annibale Caro, Piero Vettori, and Paulus Manutius and was a member of Vittoria Colonna's literary circle. In 1543 he married Porzia Capece, the daughter of the head of the Accademia Pontaniana Scipione Capece. In 1546, Rota became a member of the Accademia dei Sereni in Naples. He was a knight of the Order of Santiago, and held the position of Secretary to the city of Naples. He died in Naples on 26 December 1574.

Works Together with Luigi Tansillo, Angelo di Costanzo, and Galeazzo di Tarsia, Rota was one of the most celebrated Neapolitan poets of his generation. He was a pivotal figure in the revival of Petrarchism in Naples.

Rota wrote both Italian and Latin poetry. He owes his fame mainly to a form of poetry that belongs peculiarly to Naples, the piscatorial eclogue. This form, which his countryman Sannazaro had invented and practised in Latin, Rota transferred to the vernacular. He composed his piscatorial eclogues about 1533; they were printed in 1560, 1566, 1567, and 1572. Rota was of the same generation as Della Casa, and one sees in his Eclogues a Latinisation of the style parallel to Della Casa's infusion of Horatian and Virgilian gravity into the sonnet.

Besides his eclogues, Rota composed a much praised collection of sonnets written on the death of his wife in 1559.