Marco Publio Fontana (18 January 1548 – 10 November 1609) was an Italian Renaissance humanist and poet, fellow townsman and friend of Torquato Tasso.
[1] He was carefully educated by his father, Gianfrancesco, and by Pietro Rossi, receiving a most thorough training in Greek and Latin literature, especially in the poets (above all, Virgil).
For mathematics, philosophy, and eventually medicine, he was sent to Brescia, but continued to study the poets, as he did after transferring his interest to theology and the Church Fathers.
The sixth eclogue (Caprea, "The She-Goat"; 103 hexameters) was a pastoral elegy composed on the death of a friend's pet goat.
[3] “Fontana is one of the modern poets," says Gian Vittorio Rossi, "who have approached nearest to Virgil in beauty of imagery and harmony of diction.