VETTORI, Piero

(1499-1585)

Piero Vettori stands as one of the foremost representatives of the practice of sixteenth-century classical humanism in Italy. Born in Florence, Italy, Vettori first studied physics and mathematics under the direction of the Carmelite Giuliano Ristorio before turning to the study of Greek and Latin under the tutelage of Andrea Dazzi and Virgilio Adriani. Before finally settling into a career as a classical philologist, he spent some time in 1514 at Pisa engaged briefly in the study of law. Upon his return to his villa at San Casciano in the outskirts of Florence, he took up the humanist activity of commenting on ancient texts that he collected.

Vettori, like Niccolo Machiavelli,* had supported the cause of republicanism in Florence and in that cause had delivered a speech rallying the local militia. As a result, from 1530 to 1532 he came under suspicion by the newly restored Medici regime and cautiously retired from the city to his villa, where he resumed the contemplative life. His scholarly efforts in the fields of dialectics, theology, and natural philosophy in close collaboration with the Neoplatonic philosopher Francesco de Vieri (il Verino) brought him by 1538 to the attention of Duke Cosimo I,* who offered him the post of lecturer of Greek and Latin at the Studio di Firenze, a position Vettori held until two years before his death. During these productive years he became active in the Accademia Fiorentina and traveled occasionally to other Italian cities such as Venice, where he was in contact with scholars of similar mind. His prodigious scholarship in many ways helped fulfill Petrarch's vision to restore the best of Greek as well as Latin classical writing to western Europe. Vettori edited and commented upon Cicero's letters and political writings, Aristotle's works on poetry and rhetoric, and various texts by Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, Sallust, and Terence. Additionally, he edited the Latin works of his friend and contemporary Giovanni Della Casa.* Vettori's interests, conveyed through his surviving correspondence and published orations (Epistolarum libri X, Orationes XIV, et liber de laudibus Iohannae Austriacae, 1586), like those of his humanist contemporaries, focus primarily on moral and ethical concerns identified by Cicero and Aristotle that he saw as germane to issues of his own generation. His broad education and concern with practical matters also led him to compose a work in the Tuscan vernacular on the culti­vation of olives (Trattato delle lodi et della coltivatione de gl'ulivi, 1569).

Bibliography

G. Fragnito, Memoria individuale e costruzione biografica: Beccadelli, Della Casa, Vet-tori alle origini di un mito, 1978.

Luci Fortunato DeLisle