Ugo Foscolo

Ugo Foscolo, born in 1778 on Zakynthos, a Greek island then under Venetian rule, was a key figure in early 19th-century Italian literature. Raised amid classical culture and the political tensions of his time, he moved at a very young age to Venice, where he began his poetic career. After the disappointment of the Treaty of Campoformio, which sanctioned the end of the Venetian Republic, he expressed his patriotic disillusionment in the famous sonnet A Zacinto.

Among his most important works is The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, an epistolary novel that reflects the author's existential torment and the drama of a subjugated Italy. His most famous poem, Dei Sepolcri, is a hymn to memory and the civic function of sepulchres, a profound expression of his neoclassical and pre-Romantic thought.

Foscolo lived in various Italian and European cities, from Milan to Pavia, until his exile in Switzerland and then London, where he died in 1827. His life, marked by restlessness and a passion for freedom, is reflected in an intense, vibrant oeuvre, capable of blending idealism, classicism and civic engagement.