Abstract: Sannazaro’s imitation of Virgil is here examined in four autocritical letters he sent in 1521 to some friends in Rome to help him revise his De partu Virginis (Naples, 1526). Through observations on lexicology, on his ratio imitandi and uarietas, on the art of hexameter in keeping with Pontano’s lesson in the dialogue Actius and on his eclectic conception of imitation, the reader of both his opus maximum and of these letters distinguishes a neapolitan and a roman mode of virgilian imitation.
