Nicola Villani

Nicola (or Niccolò) Villani (1590 – 2 October 1636) was an Italian literary critic and Baroque poet.

Biography
Nicola Villani was born in Pistoia in 1590, of a noble family. The famous Medieval chronicler Giovanni Villani was among his ancestors. He studied in Florence, Siena and Pisa, then entered the service of Cardinal Tiberio Muti in Rome. He became a member of the Accademia degli Umoristi under the pseudonym Aldeano. After a journey to Greece, he took up residence in Venice. Around 1630, he returned to Rome, where he died in 1636.

Works
Nicola Villani is best known for his critical writings, in which he defended Giambattista Marino against the attacks of Tommaso Stigliani. Villani took up a moderate position in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns that developed in Italy in the second and third decades of the 17th century. While he ranked Marino above Dante and Petrarch, he considered Homer and Virgil superior to all modern poets. Villani's Fiorenza difesa (Florence Defended), a regular, neoclassic epic inspired by Trissino and Chiabrera, was left incomplete at his death and published posthumously in 1641. In 1634 Villani published the Ragionamento sopra la poesia giocosa de' Greci, de' Latini e de' Toscani, a detailed study on the comic poetry of the ancients. Villani was one of the foremost Dante scholars of his generation. He was a successful writer of Latin satires and Italian facetious compositions, highly appreciated during the 17th and 18th centuries.