LA LEGNAME, GIOVANNI FILIPPO. - Scholar, born in Messina to a noble Sicilian family ca. 1428, died perhaps in Spain after 1491, the year in which he appears in the service of King Ferdinand the Catholic. Raised at the court of Alfonso of Aragon, he lived on familiar terms with Ferdinand, the king's illegitimate son and his successor to the throne of Naples.
NE EQUITIS SICVLI AD SIX. III.
PON. MAX. PREFATIO.
Emper ego a paruulo studui
D.P. ut cum claris & illustri
bus uicis cōfuckerem: ne cō
liter a maioribus meis quos
uerius possum qixantus
inter magnificos & inligues
connumerare degenerarem
Horum enim cōfueudine uirtutibus: moribus
graeris mei nobilitatem cogitabam non solum
tueri & conferare: uerum etiam augere & dari
orem reddere. Cōq bis opibus & fortunis par
esse nō possess: ut uari sunt hominum casus &
euentus: dedi operam ne ociosus essem: dedida
q & ignauia marteserem: qua re nibi esse pōc
apud igenuos & qbe nurelos homines magis
alienum. Sumpſiq laborem hulucemodii & in
dustriam nō illaudabdem apud me meq apud
posteros inutilam: ut mea opera atq ingenio li
bri elegantes imprimeretur. Atq ita qplurimus
de me bone meritis essem non ingratus: praxta
(Ist. Enc. Catt.)
LA LEGNAME, GIOVANNI FILIPPO - Ph. De Barberis, Opuscula
de adventu Christi et de Sibyllis, with a preface by G. F. L. L.,
Rome, 1481 - Copy in the Casanatense Library.
In 1469 he was in Rome, and perhaps already in that year he published some books, having set up a printing house in his own home: the first volumes with certain dates, however, are from the following year. About 50 publications are remembered under the name De Lignamine (as La L. had himself called in Latin), not all of them identified, falling between the years 1470-76 and 1481. It seems established that his activity was that of a publisher, but not of a printer: in some gatherings bearing his name the types of Han, of Giorgio Teutonico and others have been recognized. The tradition that makes him a professor of medicine at the University of Perugia and then archiater to Sixtus IV is legendary. It is certain, however, that this pontiff held him in great esteem and loaded him with many benefits, among them that of using the surname and the family arms of the Della Rovere: a privilege also enjoyed by La L.'s son, Antonio, archbishop of Messina.
He wrote: Incliti Ferdinandi regis vita et laudes (1472); the continuation, from 1316 to 1469, of the Cronica Summorum Pontificum attributed to Riccobaldo da Ferrara (1474), by some ascribed to the Dominican Filippo de Lignamine, his relative; a study on the sect of the disciplinati and another on illustrious women, both lost, whose title and precise date are unknown. In addition, prefaces, dedications and Latin verses, which reveal him as a humanist of good taste.