Alciati, Andrea (1492-1550)

Italian humanist lawyer. He wrote in particular on civil law. He also found time to produce his Emblemata (1531), one of the first and most popular collections of allegorical images, which had a profound influence on the imagery of Mannerist and baroque art.

In his Emblemata each image is accompanied by a Latin inscription pointing up its moral or spiritual meaning. There were many editions of the book and it was widely translated.

Alciati was probably born in Milan; he began his legal studies there and continued them at Pavia and Bologna. He lived in France 1518-22 and 1527-33, where he was professor of law at Avignon and then at Bourges. On returning to Italy in 1533 he taught in Bologna, Ferrara, and Pavia. His importance as a jurist lies very largely on his ability to apply to ancient legal texts, in particular the compilation of Roman laws known as the Corpus iuris civilis or Justinian's Code, the techniques of historical criticism and philology that were already being employed in other disciplines by Renaissance humanists. One of his best-known works in this field is his Paradoxa. He also published a volume of notes on the historian Tacitus.