Antonio Lupis (31 March 1620 – 11 December 1700) was a prolific Italian writer of the Baroque period.

Biography

Antonio Lupis was born in Molfetta on March 31, 1620, son of Flaminio Lupis and his wife Maria de Ceglia, both members of the local nobility. After completing his classical studies at the Episcopal Seminary of his native city, he moved to Venice, where he spent most of his life. He struck up a close friendship with Lorenzo Tiepolo, a powerful Venetian senator, and Giovanni Francesco Loredan, the founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti, of which Lupis became a member. After the death of Loredano, he moved to Bergamo, where he died on 11 December 1700. Lupis was well known in his day for his erudition. His works, dealing chiefly with moral, historical and artistic issues, show a vast amount of classical learning, which he shows off in a sumptuous baroque prose.

Works

Lupis was the author of several successful historical novels. In 1660 he published La Faustina, devoted to the life of the daughter of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. In 1677 he published La Marchesa d'Hunsleij, overo l'Amazone scozzese ("The Marchioness of Huntly, or the Scottish Amazon"), a romanticised hagiographic biography of Lady Margaret Gordon, mother of the Scottish-born Capuchin friar John Forbes (1570/71–1606), that passed through eighteen editions before his death, and was reprinted as late as 1723. Turned into a drama by the poet Francesco Petrobelli, it continued to hold the stage for more than a century. Some of his works turn upon moral reflections. He wrote a moralizing vita of his friend and patron Giovanni Francesco Loredano and the moral treatises Il Chiaro-scuro di Pittura Morale (1679) and I mostri dell’huomo (1689). Lupis is the author of L'eroina veneta (1689), one of the earliest and most important biographies of Elena Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman to be awarded a higher university degree. Several of his books, like Il Plico (1675), Il dispaccio di Mercurio (1681), La segretaria morale (1687) and Pallade su le poste (1691), deal with artistic themes and give us interesting information about the painters and sculptors of his time. Of particular interest are a eulogy of his friend, the painter Evaristo Baschenis, written during the artist's lifetime, and the letters sent to the sculptor Andrea Fantoni (1659-1734). A long letter sent to Luca Giordano documents the direct relationship between Lupis and the Neapolitan painter, whose "Passage of the Red Sea" in Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, he describes in a letter dating from 1687. He was a great admirer and friend of the Swiss painter Ludovico David, who designed the frontispiece for Lupis' Corriere (1680).

Partial anthology

Sources