Pietro Bembo

Pietro Bembo
Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo c. 1540
Born	20 May 1470 (1470-05-20) Venice, Republic of Venice
Died	18 January 1547(1547-01-18) (aged 76) Rome, Papal States
Occupation	priest, scholar, poet, and literary theorist
Language	Italian, Tuscan dialect
Genre	poetry, non-fiction
Literary movement	Renaissance literature, Petrarchism

Pietro Bembo, O.S.I.H. (Latin: Petrus Bembus; 20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547) was a Venetian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.^[1] As an intellectual of the Italian Renaissance (15th–16th c.), Pietro Bembo greatly influenced the development of the Tuscan dialect as a literary language for poetry and prose, which, by later codification into a standard language, became the modern Italian language. In the 16th century, Bembo's poetry, essays and books proved basic to reviving interest in the literary works of Petrarch. In the field of music, Bembo's literary writing techniques helped composers develop the techniques of musical composition that made the madrigal the most important secular music of 16th-century Italy.^[2]