Vincenzo da Filicaja

From an incidental notice in one of his letters, stating the amount of house rent paid during his childhood, his parents must have been in easy circumstances, and the supposition is confirmed by the fact that he enjoyed all the advantages of a liberal education, first under the Jesuits of Florence, and then in the University of Pisa.

But his poetical genius was fired by the deliverance of Vienna from the Turks in 1683, and helped by Redi, who not only laid Filicaja's verses before his own sovereign, but had them transmitted with the least possible delay to the foreign princes whose noble deeds were praised.

The first recompense came, however, not from those princes, but from Christina, the ex-queen of Sweden, who, from her circle of savants and courtiers at Rome, spontaneously and generously announced to Filicaja her wish to bear the expense of educating his two sons, enhancing her kindness by the delicate request that it should remain a secret.

He was buried in the family vault in the church of San Pietro in Florence, and a monument was erected to his memory by his sole surviving son Scipione Filicaja.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition: In the six celebrated odes inspired by the great victory of John III Sobieski in the Battle of Vienna, Filicaja took a lyrical flight which has placed him at moments on a level with the greatest Italian poets.