Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli

Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli
Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli
Born	1729 Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Died	31 July 1808(1808-07-31) (aged 78–79) Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Alma mater	University of Pisa
Occupations	Writer Intellectual Civil Servant Diarist
Writing career
Language	Italian
Period	18th century
Genres	Treatise satire
Literary movement	Enlightenment
Notable works	Nuovi dialoghi dei morti Efemeridi

Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli or Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni (1729 - 31 July 1808) was an Italian civil servant and essayist. Born and dying in Florence, he served as director of the Uffizi Gallery from 1775 to 1793. He was the last member of a Florentine patrician family.

Orphaned early in life, he studied law at the University of Pisa but did not gain his doctorate. In 1758 he joined the Secretariat of State of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. A supporter of the Tuscan Enlightenment, he wrote several books, essays and dissertations on art and culture. In the 1770s, he replaced the scholar Giovanni Lami as the editor of the erudite "Novelle letterarie" journal of Florence. He also wrote the 80-volume Efemeridi, a collection of diaries offering an incredible fresco of Florentine society between 1750 and 1799.^[1] He died in Florence.

• Efemeridi Archived 2020-08-13 at the Wayback Machine, Florence, 1759-1808 - preserved in the Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze.
• Memorie per servire alla vita di Dante Alighieri ed alla storia della sua famiglia, Venice, Zatta, 1759.
• Nuovi dialoghi dei morti, Florence, 1770.
• Saggio Istorico della Real Galleria di Firenze, Florence, 1779.
• Catalogo delle pitture della Regia Galleria, Florence, 1779.
• Sbozzo di una dissertazione sopra la pena di morte, Florence, 1760-1761 - preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (Archivio Pelli Bencivenni, cartella 13 inserto 170)

• (in French) Philippe Audegean, Le plus ancien programme de l'abolitionnisme italien: le Discorso della pena di morte de Giuseppe Pelli (1760-1761), in La peine de mort, edited by Luigi Delia and Fabrice Hoarau, CORPUS, revue de philosophie, 62 (2012), pp. 135–156.
• (in Italian) Silvia Capecchi, Scrittura e coscienza autobiografica nel diario di Giuseppe Pelli, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2006.
• (in Italian) Miriam Fileti Mazza, Bruna M. Tomasello, Galleria degli Uffizi 1775-1792. Un laboratorio culturale per Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, Modena: Franco Cosimo Editore, 2003.
• (in Italian) Miriam Fileti Mazza, Bruna M. Tomasello, Catalogo delle pitture della Regia Galleria compilato da Giuseppe Bencivenni già Pelli. Gli Uffizi alla fine del Settecento, 2004.
• Zapperi, Roberto (1966). "Bencivenni Pelli, Giuseppe". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 8: Bellucci–Beregan (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. pp. 219–222. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.

• (in Italian) Le Efemeridi di Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli Archived 2020-08-13 at the Wayback Machine, edited by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze
• (in Italian) Opere di bencivenni Pelli Archived 2015-08-02 at the Wayback Machine - on the site of the Fondazione Memofonte