Author: Pignotti, Lorenzo
Biography:
PIGNOTTI, Lorenzo (1739-1812: NBG)
As a foreign-language author, “the father of Italian fable” (Browning) requires only a brief headnote. He was the son of a merchant, born on 9 Aug. 1739 at Figline in Tuscany. Orphaned when still a child, he was adopted by an uncle along with his sisters and was sent for his education to the seminary of Arezzo. But he did not wish to enter the priesthood and enrolled instead at the university of Pisa over the objections of his guardian. He graduated with a degree in medicine and philosophy in 1763 and established a practice in Florence, where he was welcomed in fashionable circles and began to write poetry of all kinds—fables, satires, encomia, etc. The translation of his poem “Robert Manners” by Robert Merry (q.v.) was the first of his works translated into English, followed almost forty years later by his posthumously published History of Tuscany, translated by John Browning. He gave up his medical practice in 1769 to accept the chair of Natural Philosophy at the newly founded Accademia dei Nobili at Florence, leaving in 1774 for the same position at Pisa. He was a popular lecturer but poor health obliged him to retire from teaching (on full salary) in 1801 to become historiographer of the kingdom of Etruria—a region including most of Tuscany along with parts of Lazio and Umbria. For a year 1809-10 he served as Rector of the University of Pisa, where he died on 5 Aug. 1812. He did not marry but left the bulk of his estate to his nephews, who erected a monument in his memory in the Camposanto of Pisa. (NBG 40 cols 224-5; it.wikipedia.org 18 Oct. 2023; John Browning, “An Historical Account of the Life and Writings of Lorenzo Pignotti” in Pignotti, History of Tuscany [1823] 1: xxv-lc) HJ