Born in
Bassano del Grappa to an aristocratic family, and he studied at the Jesuit college in
Brescia. He moved to Venice where he was appointed a magistrate. Under Napoleonic rule, he was appointed to the ministry of education in Milan. With the onset of Austrian rule to the Veneto, he retired to his native Bassano to a bureaucratic position, but continued his lifelong interest in poetry. His work was somewhat formal but reveled in the formal poetry set to
anacreontic structure and dealing notions of love and its pursuits, popular in the
Rococo era. His major opus was
Anacreontic Poems to Irene (circa 1784). He also translated the classic Greek poem
Batrachomyomachia into Italian. His poems were set to music by composers such as
Franz Schubert,
Vincenzo Bellini, and
Giuseppe Verdi. He died in his hometown. ==References==