ABSTRACT
The Venetian nobleman Jacopo Antonio Marcello is known primarily because of the death of his eight-year old son. Passionately attached to the child, Marcello grieved: too much, according to his contemporaries. Between 1461 and 1463, nineteen humanist consolers directed to the bereaved father twenty-five letters and treatises, dialogues and poems, in consolation. These provide, in addition to largely traditional consolatory arguments, narratives of the lives of both child and father. The facts of Marcello's military career as recorded in the contemporary works of members of his coteries have been rightly questioned by scholars. By confronting the panegyrists’ claims and disinterested chroniclers’ accounts, they have shown that many of the deeds credited to him, Marcello did not perform.
