- Giannozzo Manetti
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 on25 March 1436 , of which he has left us a record, the "Oratio de Secularibus et Pontificalibus Pompis in Consecratione Basilicae Florentinae".He was a
Latin ist and a translator of Greek; he also studied Hebrew so that he could read theHebrew Bible and therabbi nic 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 theBiblioteca 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 onAristotle andbiographies ofDante Alighieri ,Giovanni Boccaccio ,Pope Nicholas V ,Francesco Petrarca , Seneca, andSocrates .Manetti's circle of humanist intellectuals included
Carlo d'Arrezzo ,Poggio Bracciolini ,Leonardo Bruni ,Francesco Filelfo ,Niccolo Niccoli ,Palla Strozzi , andLorenzo Valla .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.External links
* [http://www.humanistictexts.org/manetti.htm Manetti] at Humanistic Texts
* [http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it:6336/dynaweb/bibit/autori/m/manetti_g/ Selected works] at Biblioteca Italiana
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