Raffaello Borghini

Raffaello Borghini (1537 – 26 December 1588) was a Florentine poet, playwright and art critic. His art treatise Il Riposo (1584) is an important work of the Counter-Reformation and Counter-Maniera.

Life
Borghini was probably born in 1537 in Florence. He was named after his grandfather. His mother was Alessandra Buontempi. Although noble, the Borghini had fallen on hard times at the time of his birth. He was the great nephew of Vincenzo Borghini and the two have sometimes been conflated as authors.

In his early years, Borghini was an opponent of the Medici. In 1572–1575, he worked in Provence under the patronage of the governor, Jean V de Pontevès, and Cardinal Georges d'Armagnac. In Provence, he may have earned a living by teaching dance. He returned to Florence and to his friends, including Baccio Valori and Bernardo Vecchietti, in 1575. He returned to France in 1579–1580. He lived the rest of his life in Florence. His later years were more economically secure. He may have joined the Benedictine Order in 1584. He died on 26 December 1588 and was buried in Santa Croce. His portrait bust by Ridolfo Sirigatti is now lost.

Works
Borghini was known in his own time as a playwright first and a poet second. He is best known today for his work Il Riposo, a prose treatise on art for the Counter-Reformation and Counter-Maniera, first published in 1584. It is "the first art treatise specifically directed towards a lay audience." It contains instructions on what to look for in art, a discussion of the writings of Pliny the Elder and Giorgio Vasari, and a discussion of Italian art history in the sixteen years since the second edition of Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects appeared in 1568. It is written in a variety of the Tuscan language approaching modern Italian and was admired in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Accademia della Crusca for its linguistic characteristics.

Borghini's play's include:
 * La Donna costante (1578), a version of the story of Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending
 * Trattato di Giovanni di Marco Villa sopra l'Origine de' Tempii de' Giudei, de' Cristiani, e dei Gentili, e la infelice morte di quelli, che gli hanno saccheggiati, spogliati, e ruinati; e insieme il doloroso fine di coloro, che a' tempi nostri hanno distrutto i Tempj spirituali, e l'Immagini di Dio (1577), a translation of a French play by Jean de Marconville from 1563
 * Amante furioso (1583), dedicated to Piero di Gherardo Capponi
 * Diana pietosa (1586), dedicated to Baldassarre Suares

Borghini's poems include:
 * La Veglia amorosa, his first published work, "a long discussion of Platonic and carnal love, which includes a perhaps overly detailed description of the nude heroine"
 * Sonetto ai Lettori, published in a Spanish translation in 1572
 * Canzone in morte della Serenissima Reina Giovanna d'Austria Granduchessa di Toscana (1578), a tribute poem on the death of Joanna of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany
 * a collection poems, including 68 sonnets, published for the first time in 1822, among them:
 * a canzone he sent to Archbishop Antonio Altoviti between 1567 and 1573
 * a canzone on the death of Cosimo I de' Medici (1574)

In addition there are collections of poems attributed to "Filareto" and "Philareto" that might be by Borghini. Giovambattista di Lorenzo Ubaldini attributed to him the lost work Dialogo in lode dell'ignoranza (Dialogue in Praise of Ignorance).