Giovanni Michele Alberto da Carrara

Who was Giovanni Michele Alberto da Carrara?

Giovanni Michele Alberto da Carrara was a Bergamasque Renaissance humanist and medical doctor. He wrote about philosophy, history, science, and medicine. He was also a Latin poet and orator. Despite his name, he was not a member of the Carraresi family.

Son of Guido, also a humanist and physician, Michele studied Aristotle at the University of Padua, where he earned the title of doctor physicus. As a physician, Michele ministered to the needs of citizens of Bergamo at a time when it was ravaged by plague. He was a friend of Ermolao Barbaro, who criticised insufficient knowledge of Greek.

Of Michele's known forty-two works, the Commentaria in Ciceronis Rhetoricam and seventeen others have been lost. In 1457, aged only nineteen, he produced Armiranda, a Latin comedy divided into acts and scenes, classical in form but contemporary political in content. From his university years there are also a series of eighteen epigrams. From two of these it is apparent that Michele saw fellow humanists Giovanni Antonio Pandoni and Antonio Beccadelli as rivals.