GIAMBULLARI, Pierfrancesco. — Man of letters, born in Florence in 1495, died there on 24 Aug. 1555. He enjoyed the protection of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, and of Leo X. In 1515 he was appointed canon of the basilica of San Lorenzo.
First custodian of the Laurentian Library, he appears among the earliest members of the Accademia degli Umidi, later called Fiorentina, in which, among other duties, he was entrusted with the reform of the language (1551). He wrote love lyrics and carnival songs, later repudiated. His principal work is the Storia d’Europa (Venice 1566) in seven books, left unfinished and judged by Giordani “the most perfect prose of the sixteenth century.” Though conceived on a broad scale and diligently researched (including the use of Liutprand’s Antapodosis), it does not depart from the humanistic rhetorical type and covers the period from 877 to 947. In the dialogue Il Gello (Florence 1546) G. advanced the curious derivation of Florentine from the Aramaic. The first example of an author’s grammar of Tuscan is Della lingua che si parla e si scrive a Firenze (ibid. 1551). Among his academic lectures, noteworthy is De l’ sito, forma e misura dell’Inferno dantesco (ibid. 1544).