Bartolomeo Sestini


Bartolomeo Sestini was an Italian poet.

Life

Born in the Santomato district of Pistoia, he was the son of Maddalena Biagini and Francesco Sestini. His father tried to make his son study geometry, but from his youth he was more interested in poetry. Whilst he was with his fiancee in the countryside she was struck by lightning and killed - this inspired his poem Amori campestri, which was published. He later met Ugo Foscolo in villa Belvedere in Florence. After travelling around the cities of Italy, attracted by the story of Pia de' Tolomei in Dante's Divine Comedy, he published a verse novella on the topic entitled Pia de' Tolomei in Ravenna. In its preface he wrote "I publish la Pia, a subject dear to anyone who has read the four mysterious lines in the Divine Comedy".
He was suspected of joining the Carbonari and so fled to Paris, where he later died. The first edition of Pia was published in Ravenna under the pseudonym Giorgio Serighi three years after his death.