Giorgio Valla
Giorgio Valla (Latin: Georgius Valla; 1447 – January 23, 1500) was an Italian academic, mathematician, philologist and translator.
Born~Died 1447 ~ 1499Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 6:50 PM
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Giorgio Valla (Latin: Georgius Valla; 1447 – January 23, 1500) was an Italian academic, mathematician, philologist and translator.1
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.2
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.3 He died in Venice.
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
This page is based on “Giorgio Valla” from English Wikipedia, (r1352314698) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 6:50 PM · r153390 · Text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.