Antonio Abati (c. 1600 – October 1667) was an Italian baroquepoet. He was a member of several Italian literary academies, including the Umoristi (the Humorists), where he read his satire Ragguaglio di Parnaso (“Report from Parnassus”), dedicated to the bad poets of the times. Between 1634 and 1638, Abati was in Viterbo, where he made the acquaintance of Salvator Rosa.[1] Rosa was in large part inspired to become a satirist by his example.[2] His satires were first published in Venice in 1651 and went through a number of editions.[1]
Antonio Abati was born in Gubbio, an Umbrian town in the Papal States, about 1600. Though he was to spend most of his life in Rome and its provinces, Abati's earliest publications indicate a period spent in the Spanish territories of southern Italy.
He moved to Rome in 1631. By early 1636 he was already well-regarded enough to address the Roman Accademia degli Umoristi. It was here on 20 January of that year that he delivered the speech that was shortly to be published as Ragguaglio di Parnaso.[3] A year later he contributed a poem to an anthology celebrating the election of Emperor Ferdinand III as King of the Romans.[4] In 1638 he was in nearby Viterbo, where he began his friendship with Salvator Rosa.
From Rome and its surroundings Abati turned his attention further north. His friendship with Rosa led to several visits to Florence and Tuscany between 1638 and 1649. From 1641 to 1644 he was at the Habsburg court in Austria, where he enjoyed the favor of Ferdinand III and his brother, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who crowned him poet laureate. This Austrian sojourn was in turn followed by a trip to France and the Low Countries, which he had opportunity to describe in one of his comedies: Il Viaggio (“The Voyage”).
Abati returned to Italy in 1645, and resided mainly in Rome and its provinces. In his final years he enjoyed the patronage of the new papal nephew, Cardinal Flavio Chigi. Cardinal Chigi secured for Abati a series of provincial governorships in the Papal States (Grotte, Recanati and Frascati).
Towards the end of his life, Abati's Tuscan connections eased his final days. Vittoria della Rovere, wife of Ferdinando II de' Medici, gave the poet the use of a villa and farm in Senigallia, near her own ancestral home in Urbino. It was there that Abati died in October 1667. He led a merry life, his activity was well rewarded and he had the protection of powerful men (among whom was Emperor Ferdinand III). For his wit he was surnamed “l'Abbate delle Vivezze e delle Argutezze.” The Emperor Ferdinand III composed an acrostic in Italian in his praise.[5][6] However, his writings fell out of favor during the Age of Enlightenment, and were strongly criticized by Baretti in his “Dissertation upon the Italian Poetry”.[7]
His major work are the Frascherie, a collection of satires in the form of dialogues, published in Venice in 1651. The most well-known is Pegasino, which attacks the vices of poets pf his time. He The bulk of Abati's poetry was first published posthumously by Giovanni Recaldini in 1671.
^Robert Rau Holzer (1990). Music and Poetry in Seventeenth-Century Rome: Settings of the Canzonetta and Cantata Texts of Francesco Balducci, Domenico Benigni, Francesco Melosi, and Antonio Abati. University of Pennsylvania. p. 416.
^The title pages of both editions of Ragguaglio di Parnaso note that it was given “nell'Accademica de' Signori Humoristi di Roma à di 20. di Gennaio 1636.” The dedication of the Venetian edition, to the “Nobile venetiano” Luigi Molino, is signed Rome 11 April 1636. The Milanese edition was dedicated to Antonio Diani.
^See Applausi festivi fatti in Roma per l'elezione di Ferdinando III al Regno de' Romani (Rome: Pietro Antonio Facciotti, 1637), pt. 2, pp. 20-25.
^Antonio Abati sei stupor del Mondo Base ferma dell’Arti Al tuo sì gran valor cede giocondo Teban poeta, e ancor per coronarti In ciel suo loco dà Phebo facondo.
^Giuseppe Baretti (1753). A Dissertation upon the Italian poetry: in which are interspersed some remarks on Mr. Voltaire's Essay on the epic poets. London: R. Dodsley. p. 9. It is to be hoped that the works of fra Ciro di Pers, Claudio Achillini, Luca Assarino, Giovanni Ciampoli, Girolamo Preti, Antonio Abati and the other imitators and improvers of the marinian corruption, will be totally lost and forgotten in a short time.
Massimo Colella, Seicento satirico: Il Viaggio di Antonio Abati (con edizione critica in appendice), in «La parola del testo», XXVI, 1-2, 2022, pp. 77-100.
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