Giorgio Valla (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
: ''Georgius Valla'';
Piacenza 1447–
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
1500) was an Italian academic, mathematician, philologist and translator.
Life
He was born in Piacenza in 1447. He was the son of Andrea Valla and Cornelia Corvini. At the age of fifteen Giorgio Valla moved to
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...
, where he was educated by the famous Neoplatonic Hellenist
Constantine Lascaris. Among his works is a Latin translation of the
Hieroglyphica of Horapollo and
Aristarchus's ''On the Sizes and Distances'' (1488). The ''
De expetendis et fugiendis rebus'' is the most valuable work produced by Valla.
He lectured in physics and in medicine at
Pavia
Pavia (, , , ; la, Ticinum; Medieval Latin: ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy in northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the ...
and
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...
. His ''magnum opus'' included
Boethian arithmetic and music, and
Euclidean geometry, law and rhetoric, among other matters.
[(here cited page 128)]
Works
Treatises
* ''De orthographia'' (1495), Vienna.
* ''De expedita ratione argumentandi'' (1498; also Basel, 1529).
* ''Logica'' (1498), Venice.
* ''De simplicium natura'' (1528) Strassburg (on pharmacology).
* ''Georgii Vallae Placentini viri class. De expetendis et fugiendis rebus'' (1501, 40 books in 2 vols.), pr.
Aldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius (; it, Aldo Pio Manuzio; 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preser ...
, Venice.
Commentaries, critical editions and translations
* ''Hori Apollinis Niliaci Hieroglyphica'', per Georgium Vallam in latinum translata, ms. Vat. lat. 3898.
* ''Problemata Alexandri Aphrodisei, per Georgium Vallam in latinum translata'', Venice: Antonio de Strada, 1488.
* ''Galeni introductorium ad medicinam Georgio Valla interprete'' (1491), pr. Bartholomaeus de Zanis, Venice.
* ''Opus magnorum moralium Aristotelis'' (1522), with Latin translation by Girardo Ruffo Vaccariensi, Paris.
* ''Juvenalis cum tribus commentariis'' (1485, repr. 1495), Venice.
* ''M. Tullii Ciceronis epistolae familiares'' (1505), Lyons.
* ''Preface'' to the ''Commentary on Juvenal'' of
Antonio Mancinelli (1494), Venice.
References
Further reading
*
1447 births
1500 deaths
Italian Renaissance humanists
15th-century Italian mathematicians
Italian philologists
Italian translators
Italian Latinists
People from Piacenza
Translators from Greek
Translators to Latin
University of Pavia faculty
15th-century Latin writers
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