Mario Equicola

Mario Equicola (c. 1470 – 26 July 1525) was an Italian Renaissance humanist: a Neo-Latin author, a bibliophile, and a courtier of Isabella d'Este and Federico II Gonzaga.

He later moved on to Florence, where he studied under Marsilio Ficino and adopted his teacher's neoplatonism, and then to Mantua, to the court of Isabella and Federico.

Equicola's sources were extensive, both classical and contemporary; he may have been commissioned to allegorise the marriage of Alfonso and Lucrezia Borgia in 1501.

[5] The poets which Equicola studied for this work, and the different names by which he knew them depending on their language, are indicated by the section he entitled "Como Latini et Greci Poeti, Ioculari Provenzali, Rimanti Francesi, Dicitori Thoscani, & trovatori Spagnoli habiano loro Amante lodato & le passioni di loro stessi descritto".

According to Nesca A. Robb in Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance (London: Allen and Unwin, 1956), "it was poor Equicola's fate to be shamelessly pillaged by his fellow authors, and in the century after his death to be hounded from Parnassus by the irrepressible Boccalini.