Gabriele Rossetti spent his childhood and youth in Vasto until the age of 21, when, thanks to a recommendation from Count Wenceslaus Mayo—the father of a school friend and administrator of the d’Avalos estate in Vasto—he was welcomed in Naples by Marquis Tommaso d’Avalos, who financed his studies.
With the arrival of the French in 1806, the d’Avalos family relocated to Sicily along with the Bourbon court, while Rossetti sought the patronage of Joseph Bonaparte, to whom he dedicated a book of odes. In return, he was rewarded with the position of Conservator of Ancient Marbles and Bronzes at the Royal Museum of Naples.
Following the French occupation of the Papal States in 1808, Rossetti moved to Rome, where he was inducted into both the Accademia Tiberina and the Arcadian Academy, adopting the pseudonym Filodauro Labediense. When Gioacchino Murat ascended the throne of Naples, Rossetti continued his career, becoming a librettist for the San Carlo Opera House in Naples.
His support for the Napoleonic regime is unsurprising, as Rossetti came from a family that had embraced revolutionary ideals as early as 1799. His family also suffered the consequences of the first restoration—his cousin Floriano Pietrocola was brutally killed by the Sanfedists for supporting the self-proclaimed Vastese Republic.
With the return of the Bourbons, Rossetti managed to retain the positions he had held under the previous regime while simultaneously emerging as a leading figure in the anti-Bourbon opposition.
He joined the Carbonari and participated in the 1820 uprisings that led to the granting of a constitution. The civic odes he composed that year became true anthems of the Risorgimento, recited by Neapolitans during rallies and battles in the following months.
“Sei pur bella con gli astri sul crine” and “Al campo, al campo”, written in the style of the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus, became famous across Italy during the Risorgimento, earning Rossetti the nickname “Tyrtaeus of Italy”, coined by his great admirer Giosuè Carducci.
The defeat of the liberals on March 21, 1823, at the Battle of Antrodoco—where Rossetti may have even fought—paved the way for the Austrian invasion, which reinstated the Bourbon regime and established the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Around a thousand Carbonari and Muratists were sentenced to death. While King Ferdinand granted amnesty to most of them, Rossetti was forced into hiding in Malta until 1824.
That year, with the death sentence still looming over him, he fled to London, where he lived in poverty, teaching Italian literature until his death in 1853.
