[Giovanni Battista]. Italian poet, born in the Bagni di San Giuliano on the 31st of October 1782. In 1804, on the occasion of the plague at Leghorn, he wrote a beautiful poem entitled La Pietà; then followed his tragedies, Polissena; Medea; Edipo; Ino e Temisto; Matilda; and the translations of the Seven from Thebes and of the Agamemnon. For some time he was professor of history and mythology in Florence, and for a short while librarian of the palace. His most successful works are Nabucco, an allegorical tragedy; Antonio Foscarini, and his revolutionary drama, Giovanni da Procida (1830); Filippo Strozzi (1847), containing a representation of the fallen, yet not hopeless, state of Italy. He died at Florence on the 20th of September 1861.
