By natural inclination he belonged to the line of artists which began with Boccaccio and culminated in Ariosto.

But his training and the bias of the times in which he lived, made him break with Boccaccio's tradition.

He tried to be the poet of the Council of Trent, without having assimilated hypocrisy or acquired false taste, without comprehending the essentially prosaic and worldly nature of that religious revolution.

He therefore lived and worked in a continual discord.

This may not suffice to account for the unhingement of his reason.