Reading D羹rer in Late Sixteenth-Century Padua.
Professor Laura Moretti's new paper 'Reading Dürer in Late Sixteenth-Century Padua: Matteo Macigni (ca. 1510–1582), His Library and the Annotated Institutionum geometricarum (Paris, 1535)' is .
The article contributes to the history of material culture and intellectual biography by definitively identifying the Paduan scholar Matteo Macigni (ca. 1510–1582) as the author of the annotations found in a 1535 copy of Albrecht Dürer’s Institutionum geometricarum currently preserved in Vicenza.
This research recovers Macigni's identity as a key, though understudied, figure in the Republic of Letters, shedding light on the specific intellectual milieu of the late sixteenth-century Paduan Studio. Macigni, a professor, private teacher and affiliate of the Accademia degli Infiammati, treated Dürer's theory not as a historical artefact, but as a living text to be mastered and integrated into the evolving Italian tradition. The rigorous, empirically focused environment Macigni championed ultimately served as a vital antecedent that would, towards the end of the century, favour the pivotal appointment of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) at the Paduan Studio.