Skip to main content
(c) 2023 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Andrea Alciati
(c) 2023 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(c) 2023 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Andrea Alciati

Milan, 1492 - 1550, Pavia
BiographyAlciati, Andrea (Italian lawyer, scholar, and printmaker, 1492-1550)
Note: Alciati was a scholar, author, and lawyer, best known for having applied humanist philological methods to legal studies. He taught at Avignon, Bourges, and worked in Milan, Pavia, Bologna and for Ercole II d'Este in Ferrara. In the art world, he is known for the very successful book "Emblematum liber," which he compiled in his spare time ca. 1520. It was originally a collection of Latin epigrams, many from the "Anthologia Graeca," published in 1494. While Alciati had intended the work only for distribution among his friends and acquaintances, the printer Heinrich Steiner published them in Augsburg in 1531, without his consent and with the addition of an image illustrating each epigram; this was the first emblem book.


LC name authority rec n80037772
LC Heading: Alciati, Andrea, 1492-1550
found: Wikipedia, German, via WWW, December 17, 2013 (Andrea Alciato, also spelled Alciati, in Latin Andreas Alciatus; born May 8, 1492 in Alzate Brianza; died January 12, 1550 in Pavia; Italian lawyer and humanist)
Person TypeIndividual
Last Updated8/7/24