Gregorio Correr

Gregorio Correr (Corraro) (1409 – 1464) was an Italian humanist and ecclesiastic from Venice. In the last year of his life he was elected Patriarch of Venice.

Life

Coat of arms of Gregorio Correr

He was born into a patrician family of Venice; Antonio Correr was his uncle.^[1] As a youth he studied in the school of Vittorino da Feltre in Mantua.^[2]

San Zeno altarpiece by Mantegna, a commission from Correr

Correr was created protonotary apostolic by Pope Eugenius IV, a relation. He went with the Curia to Florence, where he encountered the humanist circle of Biondo Flavio.^[3] He corresponded with Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger.^[4]

He then served as secretary to his uncle Antonio at the Council of Basle. From 1448 he was an abbot at the Basilica of San Zeno, Verona.^[1] There he received the visit of another pupil of Vittorino, Iacopo da San Cassiano.^[5] He commissioned the celebrated San Zeno Altarpiece from Andrea Mantegna.^[6] He was nominated as bishop of Padua in 1459, but lost out to Pietro Barbo when Pope Pius II refused to accept the Venetian Senate's choice.^[7]

Works

There is a codex of Correr's works.^[8] Around 1428 he wrote a Latin tragedy, Progne, based on the story of Procne in Ovid, and the play Thyestes by Seneca the Younger.^[9] He wrote also seven satires as a pupil in Mantua, and poetry, as he mentioned in correspondence with Cecilia Gonzaga.^[2] He wrote about 60 fables,^[10] and also a biography of Antonio^[11]

Notes

1. Gary R. Grund; Albertino Mussato; Antonio Loschi; Gregorio Corraro; Leonardo Dati; Marcellinus Verardus (15 February 2011). Humanist Tragedies. Harvard University Press. pp. xxvii–xxviii. ISBN 978-0-674-05725-8. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
2. Prudence Allen (26 January 2006). The Concept of Woman: The Early Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500, Part 2. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 681–2. ISBN 978-0-8028-3347-1. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
3. Biondo Flavio; Catherine J. Castner (1 January 2005). Biondo Flavio's Italia Illustrata: Text, Translation and Commentary, Volume 1: Northern Italy. Global Academic Publishing. p. 129. ISBN 978-1-58684-255-0. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
4. Alison Brown (5 May 2010). The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Harvard University Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-674-05032-7. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
5. Paolo d'Alessandro e Pier Daniele Napolitani, Archimede Latino. Iacopo da San Cassiano e il corpus archimedeo alla metà del Quattrocento, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2012.
6. Gloria Fossi; Mattia Reiche, Gloria Fossi, Marco Bussagli (April 2009). Italian Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture from the Origins to the Present Day. Giunti Editore. p. 160. ISBN 978-88-09-03726-7. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
7. David Chambers (2 August 2003). War, Culture and Society in Renaissance Venice: Essays in Honour of John Hale. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 153–4. ISBN 978-1-85285-090-6. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
8. Joseph R. Berrigan, Portrait of a Venetian as a Young Poet, p. 114, in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani : proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, St. Andrews, 24 August to 1 September 1982 (1986); archive.org.
9. Henry Ansgar Kelly (13 May 1993). Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press. pp. 188–9. ISBN 978-0-521-43184-2. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
10. Gerald N. Sandy (2002). The Classical Heritage in France. BRILL. p. 573. ISBN 978-90-04-11916-1. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
11. Professor Alison Knowles Frazier (31 January 2005). Possible Lives: Authors And Saints In Renaissance Italy. Columbia University Press. pp. 40–1 note 126. ISBN 978-0-231-12976-3. Retrieved 11 November 2012.