Bernardo Davanzati
Bernardo Davanzati (31 August 1529 – 29 March 1606) was an Italian agronomist, economist and translator.
Contents
Biography
After a temporary stay in France, Davanzati lived in Florence, where in 1547 he joined the Florentine Academy, where he held important positions.
Later he was a member of the Accademia degli Alterati and from 1582 he collaborated with the Accademia della Crusca.
The commercial and banking activity undertaken allowed him to invest the capital earned in the purchase of land and buildings, including the Palazzo Davanzati.
Writings
Davanzati was major translator of Tacitus. He also attempted the concision of Tacitus in his own Italian prose, taking a motto Strictius Arctius reflecting his ambition.[1][2] The translation of Tacitus' work was commissioned by the Accademia degli Alterati in response to a book by Henri Estienne, in which the French scholar argued for the superiority of the French language over Italian, stating that only the former could best render Tacitus' literary style. Davanzati translated the Annals and then other works of Tacitus in a concise style, with fewer words than the text. Although he drew on Dante and the Trecentists for form, he made ample use of the Florentine spoken language of the time. Because of his excessive desire for brevity, he sometimes succeeded in being obscure; nevertheless, his translation, with all its archaisms and Florentineisms, was considered "the most marvelous that has ever been made" (Ugo Foscolo).
He wrote on economics as a metallist.[3] His works included Notizie dei cambi (1582) and Lezione delle monete (1588).[4] These two writings, which contain observations on the use of currency as a commodity of exchange and information on the commercial applications of foreign exchange, are set in the Italian mercantilist panorama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Lesson of Coins, in particular, contains many features of the modern theory of Central Banks; for example, it states that currency is a public good, a service that the prince renders to the people and that it must be paid for by general taxation, etc. It can be found in translation on the websites of the most prestigious foreign faculties of Economics; only in Italy it is no longer reprinted.
His Scisma d'Inghilterra was first published in 1602 in Rome. It was a concise version of a work of Girolamo Pollini, on the English Reformation, which itself was dependent on a Latin work of 1585 written by Nicholas Sander and Edward Rishton.
John Milton used its imprimaturs (from the 1638 edition) as an illustration on his Areopagitica.[5][6][7]
He also composed the treatise Del modo di plantre e custodire una Ragnaja e di uccellare a ragna, on the techniques of hunting birds with traps, whose paternity was recognized for the first time by Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, and finally the translation of the Volgarizzamento della Natura del voto by Hero of Alexandria. Even in these writings Davanzati's style is stringent, sober, far from the verbose and academic style of his contemporaries.
Notes
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- ↑ Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton Blackwell (2003), p. 573 note 28.
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External links
- Script error: No such module "In lang". treccani.it, Davanzati, Bernardo.
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