Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti: a Bolognese Intellectual Between Courtly Humanism and “Querelle des Femmes”

Abstract

Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti (Bologna, 1445 ca. – May, 29^th 1510) was one of the leading exponents of Bolognese letters in the last third of the Quattrocento. One of his most prolific periods as a writer took place between the second half of the 1480s and the early years of the following decade. In this lapse of time, the author’s work began to echo the so-called “Querelle des femmes” and Sabadino began to concern himself with different aspects of women’s lives, which became the focus of three of his works: the Trattato della pudicizia (1487), the Gynevera de le clare donne (1489-1490) and the Elogio di Isabella (1493 ca.). In this paper we analyse these three works in order to trace the way in which the author’s philogynist concerns are conceived and shaped.