born Oct. 18, 1569, Naples
died March 25, 1625, Naples
Italian poet, founder of the school of Marinism (later secentismo ), which dominated 17th-century Italian poetry.
Trained as a lawyer, Marino chose not to practice and instead found immense success with poetry that he managed to get published despite censorship. His most important work, a labour of 20 years, is Adonis (1623), an enormous poem (45,000 lines) that relates, with many digressions, the love story of Venus and Adonis. His work, praised throughout Europe, far surpassed that of his imitators, who carried his complicated wordplay and elaborate conceits and metaphors to such extremes that Marinism became a pejorative term.