VETTORI, PIETRO. - Born in Florence in 1499, died there in 1585, after a life entirely devoted to study, except for a false start in anti-Medicean politics, from which he immediately withdrew; and the Medici later settled that score with him without remainder, through a generous and long-lasting protection.
In fact V. was not a rebellious spirit, as he demonstrated by his life and by his work itself; and if by the pupils he had in very great number at the Studio of Florence, where from 1538 to the end he held the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence, and by the students of the classics throughout the world he continued to be regarded as «eruditorum corypheo, cui debetur quid-quid fructus ex eorum librorum lectione percipitur»
(from F. Kieslinger, Glasmalerei in Österreich, Vienna 1917, pl. 1)
GLASS - A foolish Virgin, stained glass from the parish church of S. Bartolomeo (1260-70) - Friesach.
(these are the words of the great Muret), nevertheless it is right to speak of him rather as one of the greatest masters of the age of the Counter-Reformation than as a great master of the age of humanism. His merit was to have brought philology to a scientific rigor not previously attained, and proof of this are his labors on Greek and Latin authors, some of whom, for example Clement of Alexandria, saw the light for the first time thanks to him. Famous is his Cicero published by the Giunti. Yet with all this his love for the classics ends up confined to philology. To see him writing in the vernacular the little treatise Della lode e della coltivazione degli olivi — his predecessors would have been scandalized by his sympathies for vernacular writers.
Of the mystical faith in the resurrection of Latin, a prerogative of his chair still with the Amaseo and the Bonamico, in him there is no longer any trace. How much the harmony between pietas and Sapienza had by now lost its bite in him can be seen in what should have turned out to be his philological work richest in ideological problems: Commentarium in primum librum Aristotelis de arte poetica (Florence 1560), in which instead one has the impression that in this respect he becomes a disciple of his own pupils.
Bibliography5 works
Giuseppe Toffanin