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 Leone X. In 1515 he was appointed canon of the basilica of S. Lorenzo.
First custodian of the Laurentian Library, he appears among the earliest members of the Accademia degli Umidi, later the Fiorentina, in which he held, among other offices, that of reformer of the language (1551). He wrote love poetry and carnival songs, which he later repudiated. His principal work is the unfinished Storia d'Europa (Venice, 1566), in 7 books, judged by Giordani to be “the most perfect prose of the sixteenth century.” Composed with a broad conception and diligence in the use of sources (including Liutprando’s Antropodosis), it nevertheless does not depart from the humanistic rhetorical type, and covers the years from 877 to 947. In the dialogue Il Gello (Florence, 1546), G. maintained the curious derivation of Florentine from Aramaic. The first example of a grammar by a Tuscan author is Della lingua che si parla e si scrive a Firenze (there, 1551). Worth recalling among his academic lectures is the De' I sito, forma e misura dell'Inferno dantesco (there, 1544).