Mario Equicola

Who was Mario Equicola?

Mario Equicola was an Italian Renaissance humanist: a neolatin author, a bibliophile, and a courtier of Isabella d'Este and Federico II Gonzaga. The National Gallery of Art describes him as "one of the Renaissance's most admired classical scholars".

Born at Alvito in or around 1470, Equicola was moved to Naples while still a boy. There he entered the Accademia Pontaniana as a young man. He later moved on to Florence, where he studied under Marsilio Ficino and adopted his teacher's neoplatonism, and then to Mantua, to the court of Isabella and Federico. In 1511 Equicola wrote Isabella that he was continuing a stay in Ferrara at the court of Duke Alfonso her brother in order to prepare in writing six fabule or istorie to be painted for the decoration of one of the duke's rooms, the camerino d'alabastro. These paintings, among them The Feast of the Gods and Bacchus and Ariadne, were executed by Giovanni Bellini and Titian. Equicola's sources were extensive, both classical and contemporary; he may have been commissioned to allegorise the marriage of Alfonso and Lucrezia Borgia in 1501.

Equicola expressed an interest in contemporary vernacular poetry. He was one of the first scholars to bring attention to the innovations of the troubadours and traced the origins of vernacular poetry to them. He also was one of the first scholars to praise women as exceeding men in their excellence in his little treatise De mulieribus. In 1517 he accompanied his patroness on a pilgrimage to Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, which took them through Provence, where he availed himself of the archives of Aix. Equicola's account of the trip survives. According to Equicola, what differentiated the troubadours from the Latin poets of antiquity was their respect for women: il modo de descrivere loro amore fu novo diverso de quel de antichi Latini, questi senza respecto, senza reverentia, senza timore de infamare sua donna apertamente scrivevano, "the mode of describing their [the troubadours'] love was new and different from that of the ancient Latins, who openly wrote without respect, without reverence, without fear of defaming their lady".