Bartolomeo Dotti

• Name — Bartolomeo Dotti • Born — 1651 • Birthplace — Brescia, Republic of Venice • Died — 7 November 1713 • Place of death — Venice, Republic of Venice • Occupation — * Poet • Intellectual • Soldier

Born in Brescia in 1651, Dotti led a turbulent life. He showed a literary inclination from an early age and devoted himself to the study of the Greek and Latin classics, especially Horace, Persius and Juvenal. Accused by the Venetian authorities of complicity in an assassination attempt, he fled to Milan, but he was imprisoned in 1685 in the fortress of Tortona. There he penned his self-defence, much praised at the time. In 1692 he managed to escape from prison and fled to Venice. Soon after, he enrolled in the Venetian army and he distinguished himself in the Morean War, earning a reprieve from his exile. But his troubles pursued him, and he was mysteriously assassinated in Venice on 7 November 1713.

His literary work includes Rime ("Rhymes") and Sonetti ("Sonnets"), published in 1689, and were subdivided like Giambattista Marino’s lyrics into the encomiastic, descriptive, and erotic. Dotti does not develop Marino’s insistence on nature and the senses; instead he strikes a more moralistic tone that has its roots in a Lombard poetic tradition later to flourish in the poetry of Giuseppe Parini and Vittorio Alfieri. He is most famous for his Satire, published posthumously in Paris n 1757, in which he rails against Venetian hypocrisy in a popular and semi-dialectal Italian. His satire is personal and Dotti frequently alludes to real persons, using their real names. Many of his lyrics are included in Benedetto Croce's influential anthology of Baroque poetry (Lirici marinisti, Bari, 1910).