CANEVARI, DEMETRIO. — Italian scholar, physician, philosopher, and bibliophile, born in Genoa on 9 March 1559, died in Rome on 22 September 1625. He took minor orders in his native city between 1580 and 1584, then practiced medicine in Rome for fourteen years, receiving from Pope Urban VII the title of pontifical protophysician (archiatra). Of his rich library, the legal section, bequeathed to his nephew Gian Luigi, was completely dispersed; the philosophical and medical section, numbering over 5,000 volumes, though diminished by theft, is now housed at the Opera pia del sussidio C., founded by the scholar’s testamentary disposition.
More than to his medical writings, C. owes his fame to the erroneous belief that a particular type of binding, highly prized among bibliophiles, originated from his library. This binding, in various-colored morocco (most often red), features boards adorned with filets and rich Aldine-style ornaments; the center is dominated by a cameo depicting Apollo in a chariot, lashing the horses (one white, one black) that rear toward a crag topped by Pegasus. Around the medallion is the motto OPÉNIS KAI MIH AQÉIΩΣ. Known examples exceed one hundred, in 8vo, 4to, and folio formats; the largest concentration is found in the library of the Oratorian Fathers in Naples. G. Fumagalli first demonstrated that the attribution of these bindings to C. was false and that they are of Roman manufacture, dating to the first half of the 16th century; G. D. Hobson, endorsing Fumagalli’s thesis, advanced the hypothesis that they were produced for the library of Pier Luigi Farnese.