CANEVARI, DEMETRIO. — Italian scholar, physician, philosopher, and bibliophile, b. in Genoa on 9 March 1559, d. in Rome on 22 September 1625. He received minor orders in his native city between 1580 and 1584, then practised medicine in Rome for fourteen years, receiving from Pope Urban VII the title of pontifical proto-physician (archiater). Of his rich library, the juridical section, bequeathed to his nephew Gian Luigi, was completely dispersed; the philosophical and medical section, containing more than 5,000 volumes and diminished by a theft, is now held by the Opera pia del sussidio C., founded by testamentary disposition of the scholar.
More than to his medical writings, C. owes his fame to the erroneous belief that a particular type of binding originated from his library. It was highly prized among bibliophiles: in Morocco leather of various colours, most often red, with the boards decorated with fillets and solid ornaments of the Aldine type; the centre is dominated by a cameo depicting Apollo on a chariot, whipping the horses (one white and one black), which rear up towards a crag topped by Pegasus. Around the medallion appears the motto ΟΡΘΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΜΗ ΛΟΞΙΩΣ. More than one hundred specimens are known, in 8vo, 4to, and folio; the largest group is held by the library of the Oratorian Fathers in Naples. G. Fumagalli was the first to demonstrate that the attribution of these bindings to C. was false, and that they were made in Rome and should be assigned to the first half of the sixteenth century; G. D. Hobson, taking up Fumagalli’s thesis, advanced the hypothesis that they were made for the library of Pier Luigi Farnese.