Albertino Mussato

Who was Albertino Mussato?

Albertino Mussato was an Early Renaissance Italian statesman, poet, historian and dramatist credited with providing an impetus to the revival of literary Latin. He was a pupil of Italian poet and humanist Lovato Lovati.

A native of Padua, a major city in the northern Veneto region, Mussato was a chronicler of his times, whose 1315 Latin verse play Ecerinis, based on the tyrannical career of Ezzelino III da Romano, was the first secular tragedy written since Roman times and so is considered the first Italian tragedy identifiable as a Renaissance work. Its literary and political qualities earned Albertino a crown as Poet Laureate, a revival of an antique custom, partly at the prompting of Rolando della Piazzola.

In addition to his prolific writings, he is also remembered in contemporary accounts as a champion of poetry which he defended in a 1317 polemical exchange of letters with a Dominican friar, Giovannino of Mantua.

Albertino Mussato died in Chioggia in the year of his 68th birthday.