Landino, Cristoforo (1424–1492)

Italian humanist scholar. Born in Florence, Landino was one of the group of scholars who gathered round Lorenzo de' Medici in the Platonic Academy. He published commentaries on Virgil and Horace and translated Pliny's Natural History. His edition of Dante (1481) and lectures on Petrarch reveal the humanist interest in vernacular literature.

He became professor of poetry and rhetoric at Florence university in 1457, and later of Latin literature, a post which he held until his death. His Camaldolese Disputations about 1480, a dialogue modelled on the Tusculan Disputations of the Roman orator Cicero, gives an intimate glimpse of the kind of discussion engaged in by members of the Florentine academy.

The poetry of Virgil is one of the main topics, but the interpretations are still those of the medieval allegorists. The other subjects discussed, for example the comparative advantages of the active and the contemplative life, show the extent to which classical concepts permeated the Medicean circle.