Professione: man of letters, artist, critic, historian, scientist, philosopher
Luogo: Rijeka and Kvarner
Autore: Unknown

Francesco Patrizi or also de Pretis, was born in Krk in 1529. He studied in his hometown with Petruccio da Bologna and later, he attended  University in Padua and among the students he was the president of the Congregation of Dalmatians.
He was soon noticed in Padua and in Venice, where, in 1553 a collection of his studies was published: Città Felice ( Happy City); Dialogo dell’Honore (Dialogue about the Honor); Il Bargnani; Discorso sulla diversità dei furori poetici (Conversation on the difference of the poetic furies); Lettere sopra un sonetto di Petrarca ( Letters about a Petrarchan sonnet).
He came back to Krk but after a while he left again for Venice and Ferrara.
He became a friend of Alfonso d’Este, Scipione Gonzaga, Agostino Valerio, Girolamo della Rovere, Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini and other famous men. He travelled a lot in Italy and Spain. He went several times in the East and in 1571 he was in Cyprus when the city was taken by the Turkish.
He was a scholar at the University of Ferrara from 1578 to 1592, when Cardinal Aldobrandini invited him to Rome to become professor in philosophy at “La Sapienza”. When the Cardinal became Pope with the name of Clement VIII he went on to honor him. Patrizi died in Rome in 1597 and he was buried in the church of St Onofrio in the same grave as Tasso.
Patrizi was one of the most brilliant figure of the intellectual Italy during the XVI century, one of the greatest and most educated minds to have honoured the Italian culture. He extended his interest in all areas of knowledge and he wanted to make philosophy the summary of learning.
His work, very extensive, embraces Literature, Art, Critique, History, Science, Military Art, Philosophy.
He was a poet too, but without success. He wanted to be an innovator even in this field and in 1558 he published a poem, Eridano, written in new “heroic” lines of thirteen syllables.
In 1560 ten of his dialogues about Della Historia came out  and in 1562 other ten dialogues about Della Retorica. Afterwards he concentrated on philosophy, publishing in 1581 the Discussioni Peripatetiche (Peripatetic Conversation). Two years later, may be following Machiavelli’s example, but certainly for Italy’s love, with his Roman army made of Polybius, Titus Livius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus he dealt with a completely different argument.
When he was in Ferrara he continued studying Literature and Philosophy, taking part to the vast Italian intellectual movement and to the various academic controversies..
In 1585 he published an Opinion in defence of Ludovico Ariosto and the following year he turned back to poetry releasing: Della Poetica-La Deca historiale and Della Poetica-La Deca disputata. Later he went back to science. In 1587 he published the Nuova Geometria (New Geometry) in honour of Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and Philosophia de rerum Natura, that raised the greatest interest. Just before leaving for Rome he wrote his most important philosophical work: Nova de Universis Philosophia, hailed as it appeared -1591- as the creation of a genius, but rejected and stigmatized by ecclesiastical authority. Among his major pieces must be nominated Paralleli militari (Military Parallels) -1594-
Patrizi belonged to that “elite” of Italian men for whom horizons were always too tight and the spaces for their activities were too narrow. They aspired to rise to the summits of human knowledge in order to reach a broader view of their multifaceted work.
In 1578 he dealt also with hydraulic engineering and presented to Bentivoglio a study to split waters of Reno river from those of Po. Meanwhile he learned more about music theory and, in relation to Greek music – as it was said by Zenatti in his work Francesco Patrizi, Horatius, Ariosto and Tasso – he wrote “better than Galilei, Gaffuri and Valgurio”. He attempted all the knowledge paths, hungry for follow  an unexplored way.
He tried to reform Philosophy and Maths , Poetry and History, Botanic, Physics and Art of War. He gave important inputs to the study of natural phenomena.
He is credited to be the first to have observed them with an insightful originality and he is considered an innovator in the study of light, of ‘ebb and flow’ of water, in the theory of motion of the Earth, in the research of the reproductive system of plants.
Great importance had his Nova de Universis Philosophia (1591), developed to fight Aristotelianism and  Scholastica and to assert the fullness of Platonism. It is one of those pieces that are placed on the edge of the modern times and they, closing with the past,mark a brightful moment in the story of Italian civilization. It is the first masterpiece that precedes the glorious renewal of the Italian science, achieved during Galileo’s time and carried on during the XVII century.
This work, troubled and uncommon, divided in four parts, “Panaugia” or of light, “Panarchia” or of  principle of things, “Pampsichya” or of soul, “Pancosmia” or of world, still preserves its great structure and he brings up magnificent glimpse of light, in spaces that remains still dark for the time. We can rightly say that Neoplatonism that will renew Italy finds its force in Patrizi.
Even in his time Francesco Patrizi was honoured as a great Italian man.
According to Rossi, a biographer of XVII century, he was the most erudite Italian man of the time. He intentionally wrote in Italian the dialogues on the Poetic Art to support the success of this language on Latin. And in the preface he states the predominance of the “volgare” compared to the erudite and Latin language of the the Humanists. This cultural statement earned him a very heartfelt honour: be part of the Academy of Crusca from 1587.
The distressing conditions of Italy at that time, under the yoke of many foreign forces, powerless and unable to take fighting its rightful place of strong and alive nation, tormented Patrizi as well as Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Castiglioni and many others Italian writers of the 1500s. He wrote his works about the Roman Army and military art, even knowing to venture in an unknown field, but his hope was that Italy, learning to use weapons and following the example of the elders, could be again what it had been during the Roman period: free and great.