While there he met Ariosto and commenced writing his first work, Gli Asolani, a dialogue on the subject of courtly love.

The poems in this book are reminiscent of Boccaccio and Petrarch, and will be widely set to music in the sixteenth century.

Bembo himself prefers his poetry to be performed by a female singer accompanied by a lute, a wish which is to be granted to him when he meets Isabella d'Este in 1505 and sends her a copy of his book.

In 1502 and 1503 he was again in Ferrara, and had a love affair with the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, who was newly the wife of Alfonso d'Este.

Pietro Bembo leaves Ferrara around the time of Josquin des Prez's hire by Ercole I d'Este as composer to the chapel, and in time to avoid the plague that decimates the city in 1505, claiming the life of renowned composer Jacob Obrecht.

Of Giovanni Bellini, now seventy-six, Dürer comments in a letter written during his visit to Florence in 1506, "he is very old, and still he is the best painter of them all."

The Portrait of Pietro Bembo, also called Portrait of the Young Pietro Bembo, an oil painting by Raphael, is ostensibly a portrait of Venetian Cardinal Pietro Bembo, Raphael's longtime friend.

Raphael did make a black chalk drawing of Bembo during Bembo's visit to Urbino in 1506.

The picture is to hang in Bembo's home for years before it disappears.

The lack of resemblance of this picture to its namesake, particularly in the nose, has led to other subjects being proposed, including Agnolo Doni, whom Raphael paints around the same time.

Carol Kidwell states in a 2004 biography of Bembo, that the subject "appears a happy courtier, not a man set on making his mark in the world, and he wears a red beret while Venetian noblemen wore black." (Completed around 1506, the painting hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.)

Raphael during his years in Florence paints “Saint George and the Dragon,” executed in 1506 as a gift from Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino to King Henry VII of England

Pope Julius II dies on February 21, 1513.

His successor, the second son of Lorenzo de'Medici, called Giovanni, had been made a cardinal in his boyhood and become head of his family before he was thirty.

A pious man, he assumes the papacy at thirty-eight as Leo X.

He continues his predecessor’s great artistic projects and patronage of Raphael, but initiates little new work.

Leonardo accompanies Pope Leo X's brother, Giuliano de'Medici, to Rome, where he stays on, increasingly absorbed in theoretical research.

Pietro Bembo had resided between 1506 and 1512 in Urbino, and it was here that Bembo had begun to write his most influential work, a prose treatise on writing poetry in Italian, Prose della volgar lingua, although it will not be published until much later.

Bembo also accompanies Giulio de' Medici to Rome, where he is soon after appointed Latin secretary to the Pope.

Raphael is employed, while in Rome, not only by Popes Julius and Leo but also by a number of private patrons, particularly the Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi.

In Chigi's suburban residence (now known as the Villa Farnesina), Raphael executes, in 1513, a wall fresco of the sea nymph Galatea, classical in theme as well as style.

Titian, however, refuses an invitation to become painter to the papal court.

Pietro Bembo, the foremost figure of the Italian literary world, had in 1514 he became a member of the Knights Hospitaller (known today as the Knights of Malta).

As a writer, Bembo has attempted to restore some of the legendary "affect" that ancient Greek had on its hearers, but in Tuscan Italian instead.

He holds as his model, and as the highest example of poetic expression ever achieved in Italian, the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio, two fourteenth century writers he assists in bringing back into fashion.

Earlier works by Bembo include a History of Venice from 1487 to 1513 (published in 1551), as well as dialogues, poems and essays.

His early Gli Asolani explains and recommends Platonic affection, somewhat ironically considering his affair with Lucrezia Borgia, married at the time to his employer.

His edition of Petrarch's Italian Poems, published by Aldus in 1501, and the Terzerime, which Aldus published in 1502, are also influential.

Printer and composer Andrea Antico, active in Rome, was also influenced by Bembo; the early composers of the Venetian School, such as Adrian Willaert, had helped to spread his theories among composers during that period of quick change.

Willaert's collection of madrigals, Musica nova, show a close connection with Bembo's ideas.

On Pope Leo's death in 1521 he had retired, with impaired health, to Padua, and here will live for a number of years, during which he will continued to write, and in 1525 finally publishes his famous work: the Prose della volgar lingua (Discussions of the Italian Language), which will help to establish the Florentine dialect as the literary language of Italy, and constitutes the first Italian grammar.

Bembo sets Petrarch up as the perfect model, and discusses verse composition in detail, including rhyme, stress, the sounds of words, balance and variety.

In Bembo's theory, the specific placement of words in a poem, with strict attention to their consonants and vowels, their rhythm, their position within lines long and short, can produce emotions ranging from sweetness and grace to gravity and grief in a listener.

This work is of decisive importance in the development of the Italian madrigal, the most famous secular musical form of the sixteenth century, as it is these poems, carefully constructed (or, in the case of Petrarch, analyzed) according to Bembo's ideas, that are to be the primary texts for the music.

Francisco de Sá de Miranda: The Poet Who Introduced Renaissance Classicism to Portugal

Francisco de Sá de Miranda (1481–1558) was a Portuguese poet and playwright who played a pivotal role in introducing Italian Renaissance literary forms into Portugal. Born in Coimbra, he was part of an influential noble family, with his younger brother, Mem de Sá, later serving as the third governor of Brazil.

Education and Early Literary Career

• Sá de Miranda studied Greek, Latin, and philosophy at the College of Santa Cruz Monastery in Coimbra.
• In 1505, he enrolled in the University of Lisbon (formerly Coimbra’s relocated university) to study law.
• During this period, he became active in the Portuguese court, writing poetry in the medieval tradition, which was still dominant in Portugal.

Travel to Italy and Spain (1521–1526): The Turning Point

• In 1521, Sá de Miranda traveled to Italy, where he was exposed to Renaissance humanism and classical forms of poetry.
• He formed friendships with prominent Italian writers and intellectuals, including:
  • Vittoria Colonna (his relative).
  • Pietro Bembo.
  • Sannazaro.
  • Ludovico Ariosto (author of Orlando Furioso).
• While returning to Portugal in 1526, he visited Spain, where he met Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega, two key figures in the Spanish literary Renaissance.

Introduction of Renaissance Literary Forms in Portugal

• Upon returning to Portugal in 1526 or 1527, Sá de Miranda introduced Italianate verse forms, such as:
  • Sonnets.
  • Eclogues.
  • Odes.
• His influence transformed Portuguese poetry, shifting it from medieval lyrical traditions to structured Renaissance classicism.

Portugal’s First Classical Comedy: Os Estrangeiros (c. 1527)

• Sá de Miranda also pioneered Portuguese Renaissance drama by writing Portugal’s first comedy based on classical principles, Os Estrangeiros ("The Strangers").
• The play reflected Italian and Spanish influences, incorporating realistic characters, dialogue, and social satire.

Legacy: The Father of Portuguese Renaissance Literature

• Sá de Miranda’s innovations helped modernize Portuguese poetry and theater, influencing later writers like Luís de Camões.
• His work bridged medieval and Renaissance literature, securing him a place as one of Portugal’s most important literary figures.

His intellectual travels, court connections, and literary innovations ensured that Portugal fully embraced the humanist spirit of the Renaissance, making Sá de Miranda a defining figure in Iberian literary history.

Baldassare Castiglione was back in Mantua in 1516, where he married a very young Ippolita Torelli, descendant of another noble Mantuan family.

That Castiglione's love for Ippolita was of a very different nature from his former platonic attachment to Elisabetta Gonzaga is evidenced by the two deeply passionate letters he wrote to her that have survived.

Sadly, Ippolita died a mere four years after their marriage, while Castiglione was away in Rome as ambassador for the Duke of Mantua.

Pope Leo X had conceded to him the tonsura (first sacerdotal ceremony) in 1521 and thereupon began Castiglione's second, ecclesiastical career.

He maintains copious correspondence with personalities of his time.

Castiglione's principal work, The Book of the Courtier, published by Aldine Press is an ideal (and in certain respects also a factual) picture of the life of Renaissance court society, in which famous contemporaries such as Pietro Bembo, Bernardo Bibiena, and Giuliano de'Medici discuss the manners and virtues of the perfect courtier.

Considered the definitive account of Renaissance court life, it is cited frequently along with Stefano Guazzo's The civil conversation (1574) and Giovanni Della Casa's Galateo (1558) as among the most important Renaissance works of the Italian Renaissance.

Pope Clement VII had sent the forty-seven-year-old Castiglione as apostolic nuncio to the court of Charles V in Spain in 1524, and in this role he followed court of Emperor Charles V to Toledo, Seville and Granada.

At the time of the Sack of Rome (1527) Pope Clement VII suspected Castiglione of having harbored a "special friendship" for the Spanish emperor: Castiglione, the Pope believed, should have informed the Holy See of Charles V's intentions, for it was his duty to investigate what Spain was planning against the Eternal City.

On the other hand, Alonso de Valdés, twin brother of the humanist Juan de Valdés and secretary of the emperor, publicly declared the sack to have been a divine punishment for the sinfulness of the clergy.

Castiglione answered both the Pope and Valdés in two famous letters from Burgos.

He took Valdés to task, severely and at length, in his response to the latter's comments about the Sack of Rome.

While in his letter to the Pope (dated December 10, 1527), he had the audacity to criticize Vatican policies, asserting that its own inconsistencies and vacillations had undermined its stated aim of pursuing a fair agreement with the emperor and had provoked Charles V to attack.

Against all expectations, Castiglione received the Pope's apologies and the emperor honored him with the offer of the position of Bishop of Avila.

Historians today believe that Castiglione had carried out his ambassadorial duties to Spain in an honorable manner and bore no responsibility for the sack of Rome.

He dies of the plague in Toledo in 1529.

Pietro Bembo's Italian poetry, much of it written in direct imitation of Petrarch, is published in 1530 in the collection “Rime.” In this year he accepted the office of official historian of the Republic of Venice, his homeland, and shortly afterwards was also appointed librarian of St Mark's Basilica.

Pope Paul III had on December 20, 1538, named him a cardinal in pectore and Bembo returned to Rome.

The following year he receives Holy Orders as a priest of the Order.

After this step his nomination as cardinal is published and he receives the red hat in a Consistory held on March 10, 1539, with title as Cardinal Deacon of the Church of San Ciriaco alle Terme Diocleziane (a title soon transferred to the Church of Santi Quirico e Giulitta).