Marini, GIAMBATTISTA

Marini, GIAMBATTISTA, an Italian poet, born at Naples in 1569. Abandoning jurisprudence for poetry against his father's will, he was befriended by various noble patrons, and was carried by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini to Turin, where a poem, Il Ritratto, procured him the office of ducal secretary. At Paris he enjoyed the patronage of Catharine of Valois, and after her death of Marie de' Medici. Here he wrote his best work, the Adone (1622), and after its publication revisited Italy, and died at Naples in 1625. The licentiousness that mars his verse was but an echo of his life. His imitators form the so-called Marinist school, of which the essential features are florid hyperbole and false overstrained imagery. See GONGORA, and LYLK.