Publisher's Synopsis
This work of Pico, though written in the form of a commentary on a poem by Benivieni, is actually a treatise on love. Pico intended the work to be read as a corrective to Marsilio Ficino's treatise on the same subject, Commentary on Plato's Symposium, and the two treatises were often read together, as in a French translation of the pair published in 1588. Pico's treatise was a major source for Castiglione's Courtier and Leo Hebreo's Dialogues of Love, and through them, as well as directly, influenced many artists and poets of the period, including Botticelli, Michelangelo, Spenser, and Jonson. Pico's treatise was admired not only for its views on love, but also for its allegorizations of classical myths.
