DONI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. - Epigraphist, man of letters, and writer on music, b. in Florence to a patrician family in 1594, d. there on 1 Dec. 1647. He took an interest in epigraphy and, during his travels in France and Spain, collected inscriptions. In Rome, where he enjoyed the protection of Card. Francesco Barberini and served as secretary of the Sacred College, he completed, certainly shortly before 1632, a substantial enlargement of the Gruterian Corpus, begun in Florence.
A letter from Gerolamo Aleandri to Card. Federico Borromeo, dated 1627, indicates that by that date D. had collected more than 6,000 inscriptions. Autograph slips by D. are preserved in cod. Vat. lat. 7113. The two parts of a collection written in his own hand are contained respectively in cod. A 293 of the Marucelliana Library in Florence and in cod. Napoletano XII, G. 73. In 1731 A. F. Gori published in Florence a Corpus of Doni’s inscriptions selected from all the preceding collections. D. invented a musical instrument which, in honor of his protector, he called the “lira barberina” and described in the dissertation Commentarii de lyra Barberina. He also wrote a Trattato della musica.