Laura Battiferri

Agnolo Bronzino , Laura Battiferri , ca.1550

Laura Battiferri (* 1523 in Urbino , † November 1589 in Florence ) was an Italian poet of the Cinquecento and wife of sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Ammannati .

Laura Battiferri, who came from a noble Urbino family, married the artist Bartolomeo Ammanati after the death of her first husband Vittorio Sereni, and in this way came into the circle of Florentine scholars and artists. Among many others, she maintained close contacts with Agnolo Bronzino and Benvenuto Cellini , for example . Her social and artistic role in Florence in the second half of the Cinquecento corresponds roughly to the role that Vittoria Colonna had assumed in Rome a few decades earlier.

She collected her sonnets , typical examples of mannerist poetry , for the first time in 1560 in the Primo libro delle opere toscane (a second volume that had been announced was never published). At an advanced age, however, she increasingly advocated the goals of the Counter-Reformation and religious and moral themes outweigh her poetry. From 1581 she also promoted the construction of a Jesuit church in Florence. San Giovannino degli Scolopi was built just 100 meters from her Florentine home and was designed and furnished by her husband Bartolomeo. Both spouses are buried here together.

Laura was a member of the Accademia degli Intronati in Siena .

Florence , San Giovannino degli Scolopi.

Works

• Il primo libro delle opere toscane , Giunti, Florence 1560.
• I sette salmi penitenziali tradotti in lingua toscana con gli argomenti ed alcuni sonetti spirituali , Giunti, Florence 1564.
• Lettere a Benedetto Varchi , ed. by C. Gargiolli, Gaetano Romagnoli, Bologna 1879.

literature

• Enzo Noè Girardi:  BATTIFERRI (Battiferra), Laura. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 7:  Bartolucci – Bellotto. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1965, pp. 242-244.

• Victoria Kirkham: Creative partners: the marriage of Laura Battiferra and Bartolomeo Ammanati . In: Renaissance quarterly , Volume 55, 2002, pp. 498-558.
• Victoria Kirkham: Laura Battiferra and her literary circle. An anthology , University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2006.