Alamanni, Luigi (1495–1556)

Italian poet and humanist. He spent much of his life as an exile at the French court and so played an important role in introducing the literature and thought of the Italian Renaissance to 16th-century France. His works, strongly influenced by Greek and Roman classics, include La coltivazione/Agriculture (1546), a lengthy imitation of Virgil's Georgics.

Alamanni was born in Florence and took part in the unsuccessful conspiracy of 1522 against Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) and was forced to flee to France. He returned and briefly served in the Florentine republican government of 1527–30 (an attempt to rule without the Medici), but then spent the rest of his life in exile in France, enjoying the patronage of Francis I, Henry II, and Catherine de' Medici.

As a protégé of the French court, he made many return journeys to Italy and maintained contacts with Bembo, Varchi and other leading figures. In Florence he had been associated with the society Orti Oricellari, and from that time had been a close friend of Machiavelli, who made Alamanni one of the speakers in his The Art of War (1520).

Alamani's works include Flora (1549), a comedy based on Roman models; Antigone (1556), a tragedy based on a play by Sophocles; Avarchide (1570), a minor epic inspired by Homer's Iliad; and Girone il cortese (1548), which draws on medieval French material. His most influential work is La coltivazione, written in blank verse.