Gian Carlo Passeroni

Gian Carlo Passeroni (8 March 1713 – 26 December 1803) was an Italian satirical poet, the most important of the 18th-century Nice poets. He was an ordained priest and for much of his career lived an ascetic life in Milan. He is best known for his lengthy satirical poem II Cicerone.

Early years and education Passeroni was born in 1713 in Condamine di Lantosca, a small settlement in the County of Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Passeroni and the Lucini family formed a warm friendship and they sponsored his education and his writing of poetry. In 1743, with Count Giuseppe Maria Imbonati, he revived the Accademia dei Trasformati, an intellectual society, and the following year accompanied his pupil to continue his studies in Rome. Eight months later, he returned to Milan.

In 1759, Passeroni followed his former pupil Lucini, who had been elevated to titular archbishop of Nicaea, to Cologne, where he had been appointed papal nuncio. However, while still young, he resigned his position as his chaplain and returned once more in Milan, where he lived in intentionally frugal and humble circumstances. He lived in a cellar with only a rooster as a companion, thread-bare clothing and minimal furniture. He refused help from friends, After 1770, he suffered various economic hardships, which both the Austrian government of Maria Theresa and the Napoleonic government of the Cisalpine Republic in Italy attempted to alleviate with financial assistance. In thanks for the pension he received from the Italian Republic, he had his unpublished poetry bound in a volume which he dedicated to Vice President Melzi d'Eril. A few years before his death in 1803, Napoleon appointed him a member of the Istituto Nazionale. However, he continued to live simply in the cellar until his death in 1803.

Works Il Cicerone, the work for which he is best known, was published in six volumes in Milan between 1755 and 1774. He began composing it before 1743, and had already recited parts of it to literary audiences during his time in Rome. Consisting of 101 octave cantos and divided into three parts, it purports to be a biography of Cicero, a Roman orator, but contains lengthy satirical and ironic digressions in which he rails at fortune and the society of his own century. The language is unaffected and the tone bantering. Giuseppe Parini, the Italian Enlightenment satirist and poet, stated that he owed the formation of his own style to Passeroni. Rue Passeroni in Nice is named in his honour.

Works