Giuseppe Montanelli

Giuseppe Montanelli was a Tuscan jurist, writer and patriot, professor of law at Pisa. In the First Italian War of Independence in 1848 he led a column of Pisan volunteers against Austria and was wounded and captured at Curtatone, and that autumn he headed the Tuscan government, becoming one of its triumvirs in 1849. In exile in Paris, where he wrote the tragedy Camma for Adelaide Ristori, he was asked by Verdi, without Piave's knowledge, to versify passages of the libretto of the first Simon Boccanegra (1857). He returned to Tuscany in 1859 and was elected a deputy in 1861.