Paolo Giovio

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Paolo Giovio.

Monument to Paolo Giovo by Francesco da Sangallo, in San Lorenzo Basilica, Florence.

Paolo Giovio (April 19, 1483 – December 11, 1552) was an Italian physician, historian and biographer. He is best remembered as a chronicler of the Italian Wars. His eyewitness accounts of many of the battles form one of the most significant primary sources for the period.

[edit] Biography

Little is known about his youth years. His family was from the Isola Comacina of Lake Como. His father, a notary, died around 1500. He was educated under the direction of his elder brother Francesco, a humanist and historian. Although interested by literature, he was sent to Padua to study medicine. He graduated in 1511.

He worked as physician in Como but, after the spreading of the plague in that city he moved to Rome where Pope Leo X assigned him a cathedra of Moral Philosophy and, later, that of Natural Philosophy in the Roman university. He was also knighted by the Pope.^[1] In the same period he started to write historical essays.

In 1517 he was appointed as personal physician by the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (the future pope Clement VII). In the field he wrote some treaties, like the De optima victus ratione, in which he expresses his doubts about the current farmacology and the need to improve prevention before the cure. Clement VII made him bishop of Nocerca.

Giovio also wrote an account of Dmitry Gerasimov's embassy to Clement VII, where related detailed geographical data on Muscovy.

In 1536 Giovio had a villa built for him on the Lake Como, which he called Museo and which he used for his collection of portrait of famous people. In 1549 Pope Paul III denied him the title of Bishop of Como, and he decided to move to Florence, where he died in 1552.