WOBO: Search for words and phrases in the texts here...

, was born December 25, 1563, at Urbino, of one of the most ancient and noble families in the city of Ancona, and was sent into France at the age of fifteen, to be educated suitably to his birth and the customs of that time. Bonarelli was but nineteen when he was offered a philosophical professorship of the Sorbonne, in the college of Calvi; but, his father having sent for him home, he was satisfied with having merited that honour, and declined accepting it. He attached himself, for some time, to cardinal Frederick Borromeo (nephew of St. Charles Borromeo) who had a regard for men of letters, and who founded the famous Ambrosian library at Milan. He went afterwards to Modena, to which place his father had removed. After his death, the duke Alphonso, knowing the merit of Bonarelli, employed him in several important embassies, and the success of these negociations proved how well they had been carried on. Bonarelli went to Rome with the hope of recovering the marquisate of Orciano, of which his father had been deprived; but an attack of the gout obliged him to stop at Fano, where he died January 8, 1608, aged forty-five, with the character of an able politician, a distinguished bel esprit, and a good philosopher for the age he lived in. The pastoral poem for which he is best known is entitled “Filli di Sciro,” and was printed first at Ferrara, 1607, 4to, with plates; there have been many editions since, the best of which are that of the Elzevirs, 1678, 4to, those of London, 1725, or 1728, and of Glasgow, 1763, 8vo; but with all its merit it is full of unnatural characters and distorted conceits. His shepherds are courtiers, and his shepherdesses are frequently prudes, whose conversation savours of the toilette. The author was censured for having made Celia, who has so great a share in the piece, nothing more than an episodical personage, but still more for giving her an equally ardent love for two shepherds at once. He attempted to excuse this defect in a tract written on purpose; “Discorsi in difesa del doppio amore della sua Celia,” but this was rather ingenious than conclusive. We have likewise some academical discourses of his.

His son Jacob was born December 25, 1698. By what master he was instructed in the art of engraving, we are not informed, but he was probably initiated in the art by his father; and Mr. Strutt supposes that he studied the neatest portraits of Edelink very attentively, especially that of Le Brun, which is usually prefixed to the engravings of Girard Audran, from his battles of Alexander. He worked, however, for some time with little profit, and with less celebrity; and he had arrived at the meridian of life before he engaged in that work by which he is best known; a work, which, notwithstanding some well-founded objections, will reflect honour on the several persons engaged in it. It seems to have been a plan of the accurate and industrious George Vertue, who proposed to give sets or classes of eminent men; but his design was adopted by others, and at length taken out of his hands, who, as lord Or ford observes, was best furnished with materials for such a work.