Tommaso Inghirami

Tommaso Inghirami (1470 – 5/6 September 1516), also known as Phaedra, Phaedrus, or Fedra, was a Renaissance humanist and orator. He was prefect of the Vatican Library for several years and secretary of the Fifth Lateran Council.

Biography

Tommaso Inghirami was born in Volterra in 1470, the son of Paolo Inghirami and of his wife Lucrezia Barlettani. His father, a prominent man in Volterra, was killed in a political uprising in 1472.

In 1496, Inghirami was sent as part of a delegation from Pope Alexander VI to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, whom he met in Innsbruck on 14 March 1497. The emperor was so impressed by an oration Inghirami gave that he named him poet laureate and count palatine. On 16 January of the following year, he gave a much-noted eulogy in the presence of the entire papal court at a Memorial Mass for the young John, Prince of Asturias, son of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel of Spain, held at the Church of San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli.

In 1508, Inghirami suffered injuries when the mule he was riding collided with an oxcart loaded with grain. The event was recorded in an ex voto, a devotional offering he commissioned to express his gratitude for surviving the accident. Attributed to Raphael, it is a small oil painting on a panel; it depicts the accident, with Inghirami trapped under the cart's wheels. It originally hung in the Lateran Cathedral. And art historians credit Inghirami with authorship of the program for Raphael’s frescoes that decorate the Stanza della Segnatura, which establishes a relationship between ancient Roman and Renaissance culture, between the rule of the Roman Emperor Augustus and his modern counterpart, Pope Julius II.

Inghirami met Desiderius Erasmus in 1509 and they became lifelong friends and correspondents. Erasmus noted Inghirami was more famous as an orator than writer.

As a humanist scholar engaged in celebrating the ancient world he became head of a new theater company in 1510. Two years later he organized the festivities surrounding the alliance between Pope Julius and the Holy Roman Emperor. The next year he directed a performance of Plautus' Poenulus in Latin.

In 1510, Inghirami was appointed Prefect of the Palatine Library. As secretary to the College of Cardinals he served as secretary for the papal conclave of 1513 which elected Pope Leo X.

He served as secretary of the Fifth Lateran Council under Pope Julius II and, after his death, under Pope Leo X. Contemporary letters hint he was homosexual or state it as fact, an interpretation supported by Raphael's "School of Athens" where Inghirami is embraced from behind by a half-hidden male figure, and his unusual feminine nickname of Phaedra.

Inghirami died on either 5 or 6 September 1516.