In Memoriam: Lorenzo Polizzotto (1939–2022)

of Lorenzo Polizzotto, Australia lost one of its preeminent scholars of Renaissance Italy.Lorenzo's Italian origins are marked by the diversity and mobility typical of that mid-twentieth-century generation.His parents came from opposite ends of Italy: his father Antonino was Sicilian and his mother, Argilde, was from the north, near Parma.Lorenzo was born in Sicily on 11 November 1939, a few months after the outbreak of the Second World War but before Italy joined the conflict.His father left the family to serve with the Italian army in northern Africa, so Argilde took Lorenzo and his sister Anna to her family in the north.Meanwhile Antonino was captured and spent years as a prisoner of war in Africa.One day in 1947, the young Lorenzo was playing in the street near the family home when a soldier in uniform stopped and spoke to him.The young boy replied courteously and carried on playing.It was only when he returned home for the evening meal that he discovered that the soldier was his own father, whom he now met for the first time at the age of eight.Lorenzo and his father were two peas in a pod and the father had recognised his son immediately, but discreetly waited until the meeting in the family home to reveal his identity to his son.Antonino soon left the chaos of post-war Sicily and took the family back to East Africa.At first Lorenzo was sent to a boarding school near Parma and then to a British school in the Konawa district of Tanzania.All this moving left two linguistic traces.Lorenzo's English had an elegant, slightly British veneer to it, while that soft lisped way he had of pronouncing 'r' is typical of the Italian of a small area in the north, including Salsomaggiore, his mother's hometown.His Italian and British education also left him with total command of English, Italian and Latin: a perfect foundation for a career in Renaissance history; he left Swahili behind him when he came to Australia.In 1954, the family migrated again, this time to Melbourne.Lorenzo eventually enrolled at the University of Melbourne where he studied Renaissance History with Ian Robertson, graduating in April 1970.There he met Carolyn Hopping who would become his wife and together moved to