Antonio Ranieri

Antonio Ranieri (8 September 1806 – 4 January 1888) was an Italian writer, patriot and politician, better known for his juvenile intimate friendship with Giacomo Leopardi (1798 – 1837), the most renowned 19th-century Italian poet.

First years

First-born of Francesco Ranieri, a State official, and of Maria Luisa Conzo, Antonio Ranieri was born in Naples (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) on 8 September 1806. A liberal since adolescence, and suspected of belonging to the Carbonari, Antonio Ranieri was forced to leave Naples in 1827 and settle in Florence (Grand Duchy of Tuscany), a city open to political refugees, the following year. In Florence he met important intellectuals and writers such as Pietro Giordani, Alessandro Poerio, Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, Pietro Colletta, Giuseppe Ricciardi and, above all, he met Giacomo Leopardi for the first time. In Bologna (Papal States), he was briefly a pupil of the famed hyperpolyglot Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, then moved to Paris, where he met Antoine Destutt de Tracy and Lafayette.

Friendship with Giacomo Leopardi

In 1830 he traveled throughout Europe, finally returning to Italy to begin a seven-years cohabitation with Leopardi, until the latter's death. This cohabitation, which was also the subject of rumors, was the central moment in Ranieri's life and made him famous as the "guardian" of the last years of the genius of Recanati. Leopardi's deep affection for Ranieri transpires from certain letters he wrote to him during a brief moment of separation (Ranieri being in Naples, Leopardi in Florence), for example: