Fulvio Orsini (11 December 1529 – 18 May 1600) was an Italian
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...
,
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
, and
archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
. He was a descendant of the
Orsini family, one of the oldest, most illustrious, and for centuries most powerful of the
Roman princely families, whose origins, when stripped of legend, can be traced back to a certain Ursus de Paro, recorded at Rome in 998.
Life
Orsini was the natural son of Maerbale Orsini of the line of Mugnano. Cast off by his father at the age of nine, he found a refuge among the
choir boys of
St. John Lateran, and a protector in Canon Gentile Delfini. He applied himself energetically to the study of the ancient languages, published a new edition of
Arnobius and of the
Septuagint
The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...
, and wrote works dealing with the history of Rome.
Orsini brought together a large collection of antiquities and built up a costly library of
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...
s and
book
A book is a structured presentation of recorded information, primarily verbal and graphical, through a medium. Originally physical, electronic books and audiobooks are now existent. Physical books are objects that contain printed material, ...
s, including the
Vergilius Vaticanus, which later became part of the Vatican library. Orsini became also a friend and patron of
El Greco, while the painter was in Rome (1570–1577). Orsini's collection would later include seven paintings by the artist (''View of Mt. Sinai'' and a portrait of Clovio are among them).
[M. Scholz-Hansel, ''El Greco'', 19]
The monograph (Ed. 1887) by Pierre de Nohac (1859-1936), historian and member of the École Française de Rome, is one of the most authoritative work on Fulvio Orsini.
Importantly, the History of the Orsini family in terms of descendant and of similarity is repeated at least twice, the first in the 16th century with Fulvio Orsini of the Mugnano line of the Orsini (Maerbale Orsini) as described above, philologist and a specialist in textual science, the second in the 20th and 21st centuries, with
Emmanuel Raimondo Bertounesque of the Gravina line of the Orsini family (Raimondo Orsini d'Aragona), chemist and expert in medicinal chemistry.
Fulvio Orsini was a Renaissance genius who combined antiquarianism and philology in his research work. "His library was developed block by block acquisitions of books belonging to humanists: those of Angelo Colocci (1474-1549), Orsini's former master, Michele Forteguerri († after 1560), Pomponius Laetus (1428-1498), Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), Ange Politien (1454-1494), ...".
Fulvio Orsini bequeathed his collection to the Vatican Library on his death in 1600.
References
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Footnotes
1529 births
1600 deaths
Writers from Rome
Fulvio
Italian Renaissance humanists
16th-century Italian writers
Writers from the Papal States
{{Italy-hist-stub