«Non tanto per el guadagno quanto per l’onore». Marco Zoppo, the italian courts and the humanists

Abstract

Through a comprehensive speech so far never carried out, this article intends to reconstract the close web of human and professional relations maintain by Marco Ruggeri, known as Lo Zoppo (1432/33 - 1478) with humanists, his contemporary literates and major courts in northen Italy. Zoppo was close to prominent humanists from northen Italy, in the same way of Andrea Mantegna, his main colleague: Felice Feliciano, the antiquarius from Verona, the humanist doctor Giovanni Marcanova, Marcantonio Morosini, the patrician from Venezia, Raffaele Zovenzoni, the poet from Trieste and Giovanni Testa Cillenio, the Petrarcan rhymer, for instance. Those erudites frequentations are attest to letters and appreciative mentions in poems and they influence the matter and the creative modalities of Zoppo's art.

The painter from Emilia was often engaged, as illustrator, in eminent tall orders about books and others ornamental works. Marco Zoppo was hightly regarded for his dowers of inventio, that are clearly visible into his ample and various drawings corpus. He was also a worthy exponent of the renovate fascinating for the antique, that captivates an entire generation of padani artists and clients from the second half of XV century.