John Addington Symonds

“ They abound in vivid sketches, telling anecdotes, fugitive comments, which unite a certain charm of autobiographical romance with the worldly wisdom of an experienced courtier. A flavour of personality makes them not unpleasant reading. While we learn to despise and mistrust the man in Giovio, we appreciate the author. It would not be too far-fetched to describe him as a sort of 16th-century Horace Walpole.
Bibliography.—The sources of Giovio’s biography are: his own works; Tiraboschi’s History of Italian Literature; Litta’s Genealogy of Illustrious Italian Families ”

“ Thus encouraged, Giovio took up his residence in Rome, and attached himself to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the pope’s nephew. The next pope, Adrian VI., gave him a canonry in Como, on the condition, it is said, that Giovio should mention him with honour in his history. This patronage from a pontiff who was averse from the current tone of Italian humanism proves that Giovio at this period passed for a man of sound learning and sober manners. ”

“ He professed himself a flatterer and a lampooner, writing fulsome eulogies on the princes who paid him well, while he ignored or criticized those who proved less generous. The old story that he said he kept a golden and an iron pen, to use according as people paid him, condenses the truth in epigram. His private morals were of a dubious character, and as a writer he had the faults of the elder humanists, in combination with that literary cynicism which reached its height in Aretino ”