Piero Vettori

Pietro Vettori in a 16th-century drawing.

Piero Vettori (1499 – 8 December 1585; Latin: Petrus Victorius) was an Italian writer, philologist and humanist.

Biography

Vettori was born in Florence and in his life dealt with numerous matters, from agriculture to sciences, from rhetorics to moral philosophy, and also catalogued codexes in Florence and Italy. However his main interest was the study of ancient classics, especially Greek texts.

In 1522 he traveled to Spain with his cousin Paolo Vettori, naval commander of the Papal States, and there he collected numerous ancient inscriptions which, once back to Florence, he tried to interpret. An adversary of the House of Medici, after the deat of the Republic and the establishment of the Duchy of Florence in 1530, Vettori retired to San Casciano Val di Pesa, where he wrote the Trattato delle lodi et della coltivazione de gli ulivi ("Treaty of the pleas and the cultivation of olive trees").

In 1538 Duke Cosimo I de' Medici called him to Florence, offering him a position as professor of Greek and Latin in the Studio Fiorentino, where he taught until 1583. His other works include the Castigationes (commentaries) of Cicero's family letter, and editions of works by Varro, Cato, Aeschylus, Sallust, Aristotle, Euripides's Electra and others. He also edited the works of his friend Giovanni della Casa after the latter's death.

In 1553 he published the first 25 books of the Variarum lectionum, followed by other thirteen in 1569 and republished integrally in 1582. Vettori died in Florence in 1585.

Sources

• Lo Re, Salvatore (2006). "La crisi della libertà fiorentina: alle origine della formazione politica e intellettuale di Benedetto Varchi e Piero Vettori". Studi e testi del Rinascimento europeo (Rome: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento) (29)).

External links