II., he devoted himself to architecture at Florence and Mantua, and died at Rome in 1472.
The excellent Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421–98), almost alone among his literary contemporaries, followed a trade, being a bookseller at Florence. He formed the great library of the first Duke of Urbino, and has left particulars of his zeal in the preparation of illuminated manuscripts, and a vigorous expression of his disesteem for printed books in comparison with them. We are indebted to him for no fewer than 105 biographies of contemporaries, most of wbom were personally known to him, A few, of considerable length and elaboration, record the lives of popes, kings, and cardinals; the great majority are brief and simple notices of scholars and literary men, some of whom, but for Bisticci, would be almost unknown. All are charming from their unaffected simplicity and geniality, and the curious traits of the age which they preserve.
Had Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503) written in the vernacular, he would have won a place equal to any contemporary's as a poet, and a place prose-writers entirely his own. Though a statesman and diplomatist, the confidant oi the King of Naples, a philologist beside, and the life and soul of the Neaapolitan Academy, he is none the less the Lucian and the Martial of his age; the lively satirist and delineator of popular manners in his dialogues; in his verse a genuine lyrist, careful of form as a Greek, animated and eager as if he had been a born Neapolitan. His prose and verse palpitate with feeling and he gains life at the expense of Latinity. His historical writings, though respectable, are of less mark; but as a popular poet and satirist, Italian speech had an infinite loss in him. Even as it is, he
