NICCOLINI, nik'10-16.'ne., GIOVANNI BATTISTA (17q2-1861). An Italian poet. born at San Ciuliano, near Pisa, October, 1782. Ile studied at Florence and took his degree in law at the Uni versity of Pisa. In 1802 he took a Government clerkship; from 1804 to 1807 he was in the otliee of the Archivio Belle Riformagioni, and from 1807 until his death he was professor of history and mythology, secretary and librarian in the Aceademia di Belle Arti at Florence, and for a, while also librarian of the Palatine Library. His c•ritieal and historical treatises, many of them produced in connection with his academic labors, constitute the less important part of his work. As a poet he attained to greatest excellence in tragedy, but he also revealed no little force in his lyrics (rneRie na:ionali. 1859; Pensicri pocti ci, 1860; eun:mlierc nazionalc c porsic 1Q.r13; ISSI: l•crsi If-NS). and in his translations from :Esehylus, Euripides, and Ovid. In his original dramas of the earlier period he adhered to the Greek model. wherein we find the norm of his Pr:Ijssel:a. Ino r Temisio. Edipo, and .1101ra. The Nabucco (1816; published at London 1819) was his first political drama, and it assailed absolute power of all kinds. Another manifesto against absolute power is the Antonio Foscarini (performed in 1827), the most popular of 11i,', tragedies. The
plays of his second period show his tendencies to romanticism. His Beatrice Ccnei is based on that of Shelley. The Giovanni do Procido performed in 1830) was a protest against the anti-ltalian sentiments of the French dramatist Casimir Delavigne, and, like the Ludorico Sforza (1834), advocated the unity and independence of Italy. There is no political intention discernible in the Rosmunda d'hzgltilterra (performed in 1838), but his masterpiece, the Arnaldo do Brescia (1843), again proclaims the sovereignty of the people over imperial and ecclesiastical power, and attacks especially the temporal power of the Pope. The fundamental ideas of the Arnaldo reappear in Filippo Stro=4 (1847). llis plays, with all their merits, are rather lyric than genu inely dramatic in spirit. Consult the edition of his Opere prepared by himself and first published at Florence, 1844; also the Opere editc e inedite, an ed. by Gargiolli (Milan, 10 vols., 1863.1880) ; Vannucci, Ricordi della vita e dclle opere di Gio vanni Battista Niccolini (Florence, 1S66).