title: Giovan Battista Pigna
text: # Giovan Battista Pigna
  
  Giovan Battista Pigna (April 8, 1529 – November 4, 1575) was an Italian humanist, poet and historian from Ferrara. A reformer of the University of Ferrara, Pigna was secretary to Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and court historian at Ferrara.
  
  Pigna's I romanzi (1554) argued that chivalric romances like those of Ariosto were a modern form of poetry equal to those considered by Aristotle's Poetics. Torquato Tasso, who succeeded Pigna as court historian, attacked Pigna's defence of Ariostan poetry in his Discorsi dell'arte poetica.
  
  ## Works
  
  * I romanzi di M. Giouan Battita Pigna ... divisi in tre libri. Ne quali della poesia, & della vita dell'Ariosto con nuouo modo si tratta , 1554
  * (ed.) Poetica Horatiana, 1561
  * Statuta urbis Ferrariae nuper reformata (in Latin). Ferrara: Francesco Rossi. 1567.
  * Statuta urbis Ferrariae nuper reformata (in Latin). Ferrara: Francesco Rossi. 1567.
  * Historia de principi di Este, 1570
  