Ugolino Verino

Ugolino Verino was born in Florence in January 1438 and died there 10 May, 1510.  Verino was both a humanist and a poet, authoring an abundance of poetry ranging from elegies on love, Flametta (1463) to an epic poem on Charlemagne, Carliade (1480, 1493). The poet was a student and follower of Cristoforo Landino, and like Landino, combined an interest in the classics with a powerful Christian faith.  For example Verino's Paradisus draws on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis as well as Dante's Divinia Commedia.  Later in life he became a religious poet, and even his chivalric epic Carliade depicts Charlemagne as  defender of the faith. His best known work is probably his poetic history of Florence -- De illustratione urbis Florentinae.

Verino wrote poetry for Charles VIII of France, dedicated other works to Mattia Corvino,  and was the tutor of Giovanni de’Medici, who became Pope Leo X.  Verino's religious conviction attracted him to the religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola(1452-1498), dedicating a poem to him in 1491, Carmen de christianae religionis ac viate monasticae felicitate. Although correspondence attesting to the friendship between the two men has survived, when Savonarola was convicted of heresy in 1498, Verino turned against him.