Giorgio Valla (
Latin: Georgius Valla;
Piacenza 1447–
Venice 1500) was an Italian academic, mathematician, philologist and translator.
Life
He was born in Piacenza in 1447. He was the son of Andrea Valla and Cornelia Corvini. At the age of fifteen Giorgio Valla moved to
Milan, where he was educated by the famous Neoplatonic Hellenist
Constantine Lascaris. Among his works is a Latin translation of the
Hieroglyphica of Horapollo and
Aristarchus's On the Sizes and Distances (1488). The De expetendis et fugiendis rebus is the most valuable work produced by Valla.
He lectured in physics and in medicine at
Pavia and
Venice. His magnum opus included
Boethian arithmetic and music, and
Euclidean geometry, law and rhetoric, among other matters.[1]
In 1496, he was arrested for 8 months due to suspicions of conspiring with persons of the
Trivulzio family who were allied with the king of France, Charles VIII.[2]
Works
Treatises
De orthographia (1495), Vienna.
De expedita ratione argumentandi (1498; also Basel, 1529).
Logica (1498), Venice.
De simplicium natura (1528) Strassburg (on pharmacology).
Georgii Vallae Placentini viri class. De expetendis et fugiendis rebus (1501, 40 books in 2 vols.), pr.
Aldus Manutius, Venice.
Commentaries, critical editions and translations
Hori Apollinis Niliaci Hieroglyphica, per Georgium Vallam in latinum translata,
ms. Vat. lat. 3898.
Problemata Alexandri Aphrodisei, per Georgium Vallam in latinum translata, Venice: Antonio de Strada, 1488.
Galeni introductorium ad medicinam Georgio Valla interprete (1491), pr. Bartholomaeus de Zanis, Venice.
Opus magnorum moralium Aristotelis (1522), with Latin translation by Girardo Ruffo Vaccariensi, Paris.
Juvenalis cum tribus commentariis (1485, repr. 1495), Venice.
M. Tullii Ciceronis epistolae familiares (1505), Lyons.
Preface to the Commentary on Juvenal of
Antonio Mancinelli (1494), Venice.