JUAN ANDRÈS. — Spanish man of letters and philosopher. Born in Planes (Valencia) in 1740, died in Rome on 12 January 1817. At the age of fifteen he entered the Society of Jesus in Tarragona. He was professor at the college of Gandia when, by order of Charles III, the Spanish Jesuits were arrested (1767) and deported first to Corsica and then to Italy. He taught philosophy in Ferrara, where he was an active member of the local academy; later he was tutor in Mantua and librarian in Parma. After the Society of Jesus was restored in the Kingdom of Naples, he went to Naples, where under the French regime he became Prefect of the Royal Library (1806) and perpetual secretary of the Academy of Antiquities; these positions were confirmed by the Bourbons.
Through methodical study and personal research in archives and libraries, he acquired a profound knowledge of Italian literature and philosophy. One of his earliest works, *Saggi sulla filosofia del Galileo* (Essays on the Philosophy of Galileo), Mantua 1775, vindicated the great Florentine’s primacy in the reform of the experimental method. He engaged in a courteous polemic with Tiraboschi, who traced the origins of Seicento style to Spanish domination in Italy: *Lettere dell'abate D. G. A. al Sig. fra Gaetano Valenti Gonzaga... sopra una pretesa cagione del corrompimento del gusto italiano nel secolo XVII*, Cremona 1776. Among his lasting contributions to Italian scholarship are the *Catalogo dei codici MSS. della famiglia Capilupi di Mantova*, Mantua 1797, and the *Anedota graeca et latina ex MSS. codicibus Bibl. Regiae Neapolitanae*, vol. I: *Prodromus*, Naples 1816 (containing the history of the library). Another brief but learned treatise, *Dell'origine e delle vicende dell'arte d'insegnare a parlare ai sordomuti*, Venice 1793 (repr. Naples 1796), was later issued with additional sources by G. Ferreri in *Documenti per la storia dell'educazione dei sordomuti*, Milan 1909.
Yet Andrés’s magnum opus, which earned him the favor of contemporary sovereigns, was first printed by Bodoni: *Dell'origine, progressi e stato attuale d'ogni letteratura*, 7 vols., Parma 1782–89 (several reprints with corrections and additions; in 1822 these were gathered into a supplementary volume to the Parma edition). The work was translated into Spanish, like other writings of his, by his brother Carlo. This veritable literary encyclopedia, though remarkable for the breadth of its information, could not escape the pitfall of much second-hand erudition and superficial treatment of fundamental topics; yet Carducci’s sweeping condemnation of it seems altogether excessive. Andrés paid the tribute to the encyclopedic ideal that he himself deplored in other writings.
A special mention must be made of the *Cartas familiares* he sent to his brother Carlo and published in five small volumes, Madrid 1786–93 (with a further volume, Valencia 1800). They belong to the genre of literary travelogues across the peninsula and vividly reflect the Italian literary milieu at the close of the eighteenth century. One may say that, among the Spanish Jesuits exiled to Italy by Charles III, Andrés was the one who most fully assimilated Italian culture.