VETTORI, PIETRO. — Born in Florence in 1499, he died there in 1585, after a life wholly devoted to study, apart from a false start in anti-Medici politics, from which he immediately withdrew; and the Medici later fully made amends to him for it through generous and prolonged protection.
In fact, V. was not of a rebellious disposition, as he demonstrated both through his life and through his work itself; and although his numerous students at the University of Florence, where from 1538 until the end he held the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence, and students of the classics throughout the world continued to look to him as «eruditorum corypheo, cui debetur quid-quid fructus ex eorum librorum lectione percipitur»
(from F. Kieslinger, Glasmalerei in Österreich, Vienna 1917, pl. 1)
VETRO — A Foolish Virgin, depicted in a stained-glass window of 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 lay in having brought philology to a scientific rigor not previously attained, as is demonstrated by his labors on Greek and Latin authors, some of whom—for example, Clement of Alexandria—saw the light of day for the first time through his efforts. His Cicero, published by the Giunti, is famous. Yet his love of the classics ultimately remained confined to philology. To see him writing in the vernacular the short treatise Della lode e della coltivazione degli olivi, his predecessors would have been scandalized by his sympathies for vernacular writers.
There is no longer any trace in him of the mystical faith in the resurrection of Latin, the prerogative of his chair even in the time of Amaseo and Bonamico. How much the accord between pietas and Wisdom had by then lost its incisiveness in him can be seen in what ought to have become his philological work richest in ideological problems: Commentarium in primum librum Aristotelis de arte poetica (Florence 1560), in which, on the contrary, one has the impression that in this respect he becomes the disciple of his pupils.