Who Read Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola?

Abstract

Among the philosophers of the sixteenth century who deserve wider attention than they have hitherto received is Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469- 1533).x As nephew and near contemporary of the more famous member of the Pico family, Giovanni (1463-1494), he has often been obscured by his uncle's brilliance and originality in the eyes of later scholars. His own work as a philosopher, however, is not without interest, both for its content and for its historical importance.Gianfrancesco Pico was a man of many interests and his personal life was filled with enough exciting episodes to make it sometimes seem more like fiction than fact. Widely praised by his contemporaries as a poet, humanist, and scholar, he was friend and correspondent to some of the foremost figures of his time.2 It will be my purpose here to determine what, if any, philosophical influence his works had on thinkers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.