Giannozzo Manetti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) was a Florentine politician and diplomat, and also a significant humanist scholar of the early Italian Renaissance.
Manetti was the son of a wealthy merchant. His public career began in 1429. He participated in municipal government as a member of the advisory council, as an ambassador, and in various gubernatorial positions in the city. Manetti was an eyewitness of the dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore on 25 March 1436, of which he has left us a record, the Oratio de Secularibus et Pontificalibus Pompis in Consecratione Basilicae Florentinae.
He was a Latinist and a translator of Greek; he also studied Hebrew so that he could read the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinic commentaries. These readings convinced him that the Bible needed translation anew from the early manuscripts. After his death, Manetti's sizable library found its way into the Biblioteca Vaticana.
As an author, Manetti's style was an imitation of Cicero. He is now remembered principally as the author of De dignitate et excellentia hominis libri IV ("On the Dignity and Excellence of Man in Four Books"), completed in manuscript in 1452 or 1453. It was a response to Pope Innocent III's De miseria humane conditionis. He also wrote a commentary on Aristotle and biographies of Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, Pope Nicholas V, Francesco Petrarca, Seneca, and Socrates.
Manetti's circle of humanist intellectuals included Carlo d'Arrezzo, Poggio Bracciolini, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco Filelfo, Niccolo Niccoli, Palla Strozzi, and Lorenzo Valla.
[edit] References
- Eck, Caroline (1998). "Giannozzo Manetti on Architecture: The Oratio de Secularibus et Pontificalibus Pompis in Consecratione Basilicae Florentinae of 1436". Renaissance Studies, 12:4, pp. 449–475.
- Grout, Donald Jay, and Palisca, Claude V. (2001). A History of Western Music, 6th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0 393 97527 4.
[edit] External links
- Manetti at Humanistic Texts
- Selected works at Biblioteca Italiana
