page_title: Iacopo da San Cassiano
section_title: From Mantua to Rome
hierarchical_section_title: Iacopo da San Cassiano / Biography / From Mantua to Rome
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Potrebbe trattarsi di Francesco Gonzaga (1444-1483), figlio di Luigi III Gonzaga, che venne nominato cardinale all'età di 16 anni da parte di papa Pio II Piccolomini.
context_page_description: Iacopo da San Cassiano, also known as Iacobus Cremonensis, was an Italian humanist and mathematician. He translated from Greek to Latin the writings of Archimedes and parts of Diodorus' Bibliotheca historica.
context_section_description: In Mantua in 1446, he succeeded Vittorino, who died in that year, as the director of the Giocosa. The Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga entrusted him with the education of his children Federico (1441–1484) and Francesco (1444–1483). Iacopo left school and the service of the Marquis in 1449, having to bear to Rome to plead "a certain cause of his" in front of Pope Nicholas V. In that same year, however, he was back in Mantua, and would move permanently to Rome only after April 1451.
  At the court of Nicholas V, he was entrusted with various scientific tasks, including revising the translation and commentary of the Almagest done by Trapezuntius. This caused a huge controversy between the two humanists that ended with the flight of Trapezuntius from Rome. In addition to this, he was entrusted with the translation of some books of the Bibliotheca historica of Diodorus.
  It is not clear whether Iacopo had already finished his translation of the Archimedean works in his years in Pavia and Mantua. D'Alessandro and Napolitani have found the autograph of the translation of Iacopo, codex Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1538 of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and have shown that the Cremonese humanist used for his translation a Greek antigraph not traceable to any of the Greek manuscripts of Archimedes known today.
  It is not known exactly when Iacopo died, but it was probably in 1453 or 1454.
caption: Portrait of Francesco Gonzaga by Andrea Mantegna, c. 1461.
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