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Gian Vincenzo Pinelli (1535 – 31 August 1601) was anItalianhumanist, born inNaples and known as a savant and a mentor ofGalileo. His literary correspondence put him at the center of a European network ofvirtuosi. He was also a notedbotanist, bibliophile and collector of scientific instruments.
He died inPadua, where he is commemorated byVincenzo Pinelli, and by theAroid genusPinellia.
His enormous library was probably the greatest in 16th-century Italy, consisting of around 8,500 printed works at the moment of his death, plus hundreds of manuscripts. When he died, in 1601,Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc was in his house and spent some of the following months studying his library and taking notes from its catalogues. Pinelli's secretary, Paolo Gualdo, wrote and published (1607) a biography of Pinelli which is also the portrait of the perfect scholar and book-collector.
His collection of manuscripts, when it was purchased from his estate in 1608 for theBiblioteca Ambrosiana, filled 70 cases. Pinelli stood out among the earlybibliophile collectors who established scientific bases for the methodically assembled private library, aided by the comparatively new figure—in the European world— of thebookseller.
His love of books and manuscripts, and his interest inoptics, labored under a disability: a childhood mishap had destroyed the vision of one eye, forcing him to protect his weak vision with green-tinted lenses. Cautious and withdrawn by nature, detesting travel whether by road or canal boat, wracked by thegallstones that eventually killed him, he found solace in the library he amassed over a period of fifty years (Nuovo 2003).
Leonardo's treatise on painting,Trattato della Pittura, was transcribed in theCodex Pinellianusca. 1585, perhaps expressly for Pinelli who made annotations in it. Pinelli's codex was the source for theBarberini codex from which it was eventually printed, ostensibly edited by Raphael du Fresne, in 1651[1]Archived 2012-07-17 at theWayback Machine. Pinelli's interest in the new science of optics was formative forGalileo Galilei, for whom Pinelli opened his library in the 1590s, where Galileo read the unpublished manuscripts, consisting of lecture notes and drafts of essays on optics, ofEttore Ausonio, a Venetian mathematician and physician, and ofGiuseppe Moleto, professor of mathematics atPadua (Dupre).
Beside his Greek and Latin libraries of manuscripts his collection included the original Arabic manuscript from which was translated and printed theDescrizione dell'Africa ofLeo Africanus.
He was among Europe's early botanists, and also collected mathematical instruments. He had taken musical instruction from the greatmadrigalistPhilippe de Monte, with whom he continued a correspondence. He kept his amanuensis Camillus Venetus (Zanettus) busy.
In the field of botany, he collected herbs in his garden and corresponded with the father of Italian botany,Luca Ghini, who pioneered the techniques of drying and pressing plant material for aherbarium and whose papers he transcribed after Ghini's death, while the botanists who would be considered Ghini's heirs, likeAndrea Mattioli andUlisse Aldrovandi, clamored for them.
Pinelli's voluminous correspondence with the French humanist and book collectorClaude Dupuy was published in 2001.
