Giovanni Gioviano Pontano

Adriano Fiorentino, a Florentine artist active in Naples, made an impressive bronze bust of Pontano, as well as an all’antica portrait relief in marble and a medal. Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1429-1503) was a poet, humanist, and statesman. He was the presiding spirit of the Accademia Pontaniana, and chief minister and tutor to the Aragonese Kings of Naples. He was also the most innovative and versatile Latin poet of Quattrocento Italy. His Two Books of Hendecasyllables, given the subtitle Baiae by their first editor Pietro Summonte, experiment brilliantly with the metrical form associated principally with the ancient Latin poet Catullus. The poems are the elegant offspring of Pontano’s leisure, written to celebrate love, good wine, friendship, nature, and all the pleasures of life to be found at the seaside resort of Baiae on the Bay of Naples.

In all three forms, Adriano depicts Pontano as an older man, his sparse remaining hair is wavy, and his rather severe demeanour is expressed through a furrowed brow, pronounced veins and perhaps a scar at the temples, deeply creased cheeks, and a slightly downturned mouth. In the bust and relief he wears classical garb, with his cloak held at the shoulder by a fibula.

The medal depicts Pontano in a similar manner to the sculpted bust as it would appear in profile. On the reverse Urania, muse of astronomy is shown holding a sphere aloft in one hand and a lyre in another; a plant grows before her. Urania is the subject of one of Pontano’s poems.