Alessandro Manzoni

Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873) was an Italian poet, novelist, and patriot who played a foundational role in the cultural unification of Italy during the Risorgimento. The grandson of the Enlightenment legal philosopher Cesare Beccaria, Manzoni underwent a profound Catholic spiritual renewal in Paris before settling in Milan to champion Italian literary renewal.

His magnum opus, I Promessi Sposi ('The Betrothed', 1827/1840), set in 17th-century Lombardy under Spanish rule and against the backdrop of the 1630 Milan plague, tells the story of two humble silk weavers, Renzo and Lucia. To establish a unified national literary language, Manzoni famously 'rinsed his clothes in the Arno', revising the novel into pure literary Florentine Italian. Upon his death, Giuseppe Verdi composed his immortal Requiem in Manzoni's honor.