Pietro Montorfani

The Venetian “poligrafo” and playwriter Lodovico Dolce (1508-1568), author of many tragedies and comedies inspired both from Greek and Latin sources, proposed in 1549 along with his Giocasta a new version of Euripides’ Phoenician Women. Looking at the Latin translation by Doroteo Camillo - Collinus (because Dolce didn’t know Greek), changing the title, adding some characters and, above all, writing a text as comprehensible as possible for the Renaissance readers, he was able to produce a tragedy typical of the Mid-Sixteenth Century in Italy, where the Classical heritage is ingrained in the memory of the first tragic attempts of the Italian Renaissance, following a “canon” already set by Trissino, Rucellai, Giraldi and Aretino.