Le prime testimonianze poetiche di Antonio Decio da Orte in un codice Vaticano (Barb. lat. 1849)

Antonio Decio da Orte was most certainly a well–known man of letters, but as an «auctor unius operis»: the “Caravaggesque”, blood–and–thunder tragedy «Acripanda», printed for the first time in Florence in 1592 jointly by Fabio Orsini and Don Giovanni de’ Medici. Reconstructing and investigating what has survived of his poetry means throwing more than one light on the Roman literary milieu — and not only Roman — in the period running from the papacy of Gregory XIII Boncompagni to that of Clement VIII Aldobrandini, dominated from the late 1580s by the unavoidable shaping presence of Tasso. So far research has found ten sonnets, five of them published, and, of these, only three in his lifetime; three madrigals, also printed during his life; and a short poem in eleven octets. The present essay is dedicated to three unpublished sonnets, which are the first samples of the author’s poetry, found in the Vatican manuscript Barb. lat. 1849 (cc. 309r-310r), with the edition of them.