page_title: Gian Carlo Passeroni
section_title: Literary career
hierarchical_section_title: Gian Carlo Passeroni / Literary career
context_page_description: Gian Carlo Passeroni was an Italian satirical poet, the most important of the 18th-century Nice poets. He was an ordained priest and for much of his career lived an ascetic life in Milan. He is best known for his lengthy satirical poem II Cicerone.
context_section_description: Returning to Milan, he concentrated on literary studies, becoming sufficiently famous for his learning that the Lucini family appointed him tutor to the young Marquess Cesare Alberico Lucini. Passeroni and the Lucini family formed a warm friendship and they sponsored his education and his writing of poetry. In 1743, with Count Giuseppe Maria Imbonati, he revived the Accademia dei Trasformati, an intellectual society, and the following year accompanied his pupil to continue his studies in Rome. Eight months later, he returned to Milan.
  In 1759, Passeroni followed his former pupil Lucini, who had been elevated to titular archbishop of Nicaea, to Cologne, where he had been appointed papal nuncio. However, while still young, he resigned his position as his chaplain and returned once more in Milan, where he lived in intentionally frugal and humble circumstances. He lived in a cellar with only a rooster as a companion, thread-bare clothing and minimal furniture. He refused help from friends, and around 1758, he had refused a chair at the University of Padua. After 1770, he suffered various economic hardships, which both the Austrian government of Maria Theresa and the Napoleonic government of the Cisalpine Republic in Italy attempted to alleviate with financial assistance. In thanks for the pension he received from the Italian Republic, he had his unpublished poetry bound in a volume which he dedicated to Vice President Melzi d'Eril. A few years before his death in 1803, Napoleon appointed him a member of the Istituto Nazionale. However, he continued to live simply in the cellar until his death in 1803.
caption: Rue Passeroni in Nice
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