Isabella Cervoni

Isabella Cervoni (Colle Val d'Elsa, 1575–1600) was an Italian poet of the Counter-Reformation period, active between 1590 and 1600. She wrote encomiastic and polemical poems addressed to numerous secular and religious dignitaries of the Italian Renaissance, including Pope Clement VIII, Maria de' Medici, Christina of Lorraine and Henry IV of France. She was praised for her talent and ambition by Cristoforo Bronzini in his 1625 dialogue Della dignità delle donne, dialogo…settimana prima e giornata quarta as having "given the world many beautiful and spiritual compositions" despite her "most tender age."

Biography Cervoni was the daughter of the poet Giovanni Cervoni (1508-after 1582), who wrote frequently for the Medici court and published with Giorgio Marescotti in Florence. Like her father, in her early work Cervoni concentrated on praise of the Medici family. Her first poem on record is the 1590 "" which can be found in manuscript form in the National Central Library (Florence). The poem, written when she could not have been older than fifteen, is addressed to Christina of Lorraine on the birth of her son, Cosimo II de' Medici. She first published in 1592, with a second canzone to Lorraine on the occasion of Cosimo II's baptism. Her subject matter shifted in the middle of the 1590s, when she began to focus less on the familial milestones of the Medici family, and more on the political and religious upheavals of the period. This is evident in her canzoni dedicated to Henry IV of France and Pope Clement VIII in 1597, both of which celebrated the French king's conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. It is not known when Cervoni died; there is no information available on her after 1600.

List of works

Manuscripts " Magl. VII.138. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, 1590.

Printed works . Florence: Sermartelli, 1592. . Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1597a. . Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1597b. . Bologna: Giovanni Battista Bellagamba, 1598. . Florence: Giorgio Marescotti. 1600.

Poetry in other volumes “Di sostenere homai, qual nuovo Atlante” in Oratione, e poemi de gli Affidati nella morte del catolico Filippo II, re di Spagna. Pavia: Eredi di Girolamo Bartoli, 1599. “Mentr’à la Gloria i pensier vostri alzate” in Cervoni, Giovanni. Discorso in laude de la christianissima madama Maria de’Medici. Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1600.

Several pieces of correspondence verse between Cervoni and Massini, including poems pertaining to her acceptance into the Affidati, in Massini, Filippo. Rime. Pavia: Andrea Viani, 1609.