DAVANZATI, BERNARDO. - Scholar, b. in Florence on 31 Aug. 1529, d. there on 29 March 1606. He was a member of the Florentine Academy, then of that of the Alterati - D. was the tenth regent - taking the name Silente and, as his emblem, a circle of barrels with the words « Strictius arctius », which were his true literary code. His academic activity did not prevent him from attending to commerce, which he practiced in Lyon and Florence.
In response to the French Hellenist Henri Estienne, to prove the concise force of the Italian vernacular he translated the first book of Tacitus's Annals (1596). Encouraged by its reception, he continued the translation of the entire Tacitean work, published 31 years after his death by the academicians of the Crusca. D., a religious man - in his notebooks he devoted a broad section to the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church to prove that « philosophia et coeterae artes deserviunt theologiae » - prepared an Italian version of the Vera et sincera historia schismatis Anglicani (Cologne 1586, Rome 1586), by the Jesuit Nicholas Sanders, a work that he reduced to simple narrative by modifying the original, that is, by removing « the exclamations and the discourses ». As a prose writer D. was admired by Alfieri, by Giordani, by Tommaseo, by Leopardi, who defined the translations from Tacitus as most vigorous and most original.
Bibliography2 works
Studies: C. Guasti, Aneddoto biografico sul Tacito del D., Prato 1883; G. Quintarelli, Il Tacito fiorentino, Verona 1895; G. C. Noaro, La teoria dei rambi esteri di B. D., Rome 1920; F. Flora, Storia della lett. ital., II, 1, Milan 1948, pp. 238-42.