POERIO, ALESSANDRO (1802-1848), Italian poet and patriot, was descended from an old Calabrian family, his father, Baron Giuseppe Poerio, being a distinguished Neapolitan lawyer. In 1815 he and his brother Carlo accompanied their father, who had been identified with Murat's cause, into exile, and settled at Florence. In 1818 they were allowed to return to Naples. Ales sandro fought as a volunteer, under Guglielmo Pepe (q.v.), against the Austrians in 1821, but when the latter reoccupied Naples and the king abolished the constitution, the family was again exiled and settled at Gratz. Alessandro studied in Ger many, and at Weimar he became the friend of Goethe. In 1835 the Poerios returned to Naples. In 1848 Alessandro accompanied Pepe as a volunteer to fight the Austrians in northern Italy, and on the recall of the Neapolitan contingent he followed Pepe to Venice. He was severely wounded in the fighting round Mestre, and died on Nov. 3, 1848. His poetry "reveals the idealism of a tender and delicate mind"; but he could also sound the clarion note of patriotism, as in his stirring poem 11 Risorgimento.
His brother Carlo (1803-67), after returning to Naples, prac tised as an advocate, and from 1837 to 1848 was frequently arrested and imprisoned. Under the short lived constitution of 1848 he was minister of education. He resigned office in April and took his seat in parliament, where he led the constitutional opposition. After the Austrian victory Poerio was arrested (July
19, 1849) tried, and condemned to 19 years in irons. Chained in pairs, he and other political prisoners were confined in one small room in the bagno of Nisida, near the lazaretto. The ex posure (1851) of the horrors of the Neapolitan dungeons by Gladstone, who emphasized especially the case of Poerio, awak ened the indignation of Europe, but he was not released till 1858. He and other exiles were then placed on board a ship bound for the United States, but the son of Settembrini, another of the exiles, who was on board in disguise, compelled the crew to land them at Cork, whence Poerio made his way to London. In the following year he returned to Italy, and in 186o he was elected deputy to the parliament of Turin, of which he was chosen vice president in 1861. He died at Florence on April 28, 1867.
See Baldachini, Della Vita e de' tempi di Carlo Poerio (1867) ; W. E. Gladstone, Two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen (i851) ; Carlo Poerio and the Neapolitan Police (1858); Vannucci, I Martini della liberty italiana, vol. iii. (Milan, 188o) ; Imbriani, Alessandro Poerio a Venezia (Naples, 1884) ; Del Giudice, I Fratelli Poerio (Turin, 1899) ; Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, Italian Characters (19m).