[Born at Asti, in Piedmont, 1749. Died at Florence, 1803. Aged 54.]
He was of noble origin, and acceded, at the age of 14, to large
hereditary estates. His passions were strong, ardent, and irregular: his
education was neglected. He travelled much,--rapidly and impatiently,
like a man fleeing from himself, or seeking, without finding, objects to
satisfy the capacity of a mind, large but unstored. He was first drawn
with passion to literature by Plutarch’s Lives; and his first tragedy,
“Cleopatra,” was acted at Turin in 1775, when he was 26 years old.
Thenceforward he was devoted to the study of his art. The subjects of
his tragedies, which follow the simplicity of the Greek model, are
chiefly from ancient mythology, or history. They are distinguished by
intense absorption of the poet in his dramatic action and persons, by
the austere exclusion from the plot of everything accidental or
inoperative to the main purpose and catastrophe, and by the rejection of
all accessory ornament from his sedulously laboured style. In his hands
the flowing and languishing Italian speech becomes abrupt, concentrated,
darted, fiery; harsh, often, until it is dilated into harmony by the
swelling and emphatic intonations of the actual theatre. He raised at
once the prostrate Italian tragedy to the rank of an art, and to a
competition with the nations. He was a passionate lover of horses,
licentious in his attachments, and an ardent partisan of liberty.
[Alfieri was buried in Santa Croce. Canova, commissioned by the
Countess of Albany, sculptured his tomb and the medallion of him which
is upon it. This bust is by Domenica Manera, and no doubt is a good
likeness, having been executed under Canova’s eye.]