Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (Ferrara, 1424 – ca. 1505) was an Italian Renaissance poet at the Este court of Ferrara, who figures as an interlocutor in Angelo Decembrio's De politia litteraria ("On literary polish").
A member of the Strozzi family exiled from Florence,[1] son of Giovanni, who served in Ferrara as Niccolò III d'Este's commander, Tito was a patrician of Ferrara, where he was educated in humanistic culture. He was a courtier of successive dukes of Ferrara, Leonello, Borso, and Ercole d'Este, and was entrusted with several important posts in the civil magistrature. He was the official champion of the Duke of Ferrara (1473), served as Governor of Rovigo and the Polesine (1473–84) then Giudice dei Savi (1497-1505), in which post he was succeeded by his son Ercole Strozzi. Strozzi was included in the entourage that accompanied Borso to Rome, March 1471, to be elevated from marchese to duca di Ferrara by Pope Sixtus IV Della Rovere.
His portrait in profile, bearing the signature of Baldassare d'Este (natural son of Niccolò III d'Este) and the date 1499, was in the collection of Vittorio Cini at Palazzo Loredan Cini.[2]
- ^ His sister Lucia was the mother of the humanist courtier-poet Matteo Maria Boiardo. His cousin Tito di Leonardo Strozzi's wife Alessandra Benucci was Ariosto's mistress or secret wife.
- ^ Noted in a review by Carl Brandon Strehlke, "The Cini and Chigi-Saracini Collections. Venice and Siena" The Burlington Magazine 132 No. 1042 (January 1990:60-61).