(Accademia, Venice), Christ on the Cross (Museo Civico,
Verona), and two Madonnas (Lovere and Brera, Milan). Ja-
copo is best known, however, for his two surviving
sketchbooks (Louvre, Paris and British Museum, London)
containing many experimental drawings and designs that
were later adapted by his sons in their own works. He re-
ceived many commissions for religious works in Venice
and Padua and in 1441 he triumphed over PISANELLOin a
competition to execute the portrait (now lost) of the ruler
of Ferrara, Leonello d’Este. The master of a flourishing
workshop, he died in Venice.
Belon, Pierre (1517–1564) French zoologist
Although born into a poor family at Le Mans, Belon was
allowed to pursue his education at the university of Paris
through the support of his local bishop. He was further
enabled to develop his interests in natural history by the
patronage of the wealthy Cardinal Tournon and the later
backing of FRANCIS I, with whose financial support he
traveled through much of Europe and the Near East. He
revealed the results of his researches in two works. In the
first, La nature et diversité des poissons (1551), he de-
scribed 110 species of marine animals. Like Guillaume
RONDELET, Belon used the term fish to cover virtually all
animals found in the sea; it was even allowed to include
the hyena! Belon also published an early ornithological
work, L’Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555). He died at
the hands of a highwayman in the Bois de Boulogne.
See also: ZOOLOGYBembine Table An inscribed bronze table-top made in
Rome in the first century ADand excavated in the 1520s
from the ruins of the temple of Isis (hence its other name
of “Isiac Table”). In 1527 it came into the possession of
Cardinal BEMBO. Its hieroglyphs made it an intriguing ob-
ject to Renaissance scholars (see EGYPTIAN STUDIES). An
accurate engraving of it was made by Enea Vico (1559)
and it was published in 1605 by Lorenzo Pignorio in his
Vetustissimae tabulae aenaea sacris Aegyptiorum simulachris
coelatae accurata explicatio (An accurate account of a most
ancient bronze tablet engraved with sacred symbols of the
Egyptians).Bembo, Pietro (1470–1547) Italian scholar, poet, and
humanist
Born at Venice, he was educated by Ermolao BARBARO
among others. He met the great scholar POLITIANin 1491
and in the same year traveled to Messina to learn Greek
from Constantine Lascaris. In 1493 he returned to Venice
and edited Lascaris’s Greek grammar for the printer MANU-
TIUS, who also issued Bembo’s editions of Petrarch (1501)
and Dante (1502). Gli Asolani (1505), dialogues on love
dedicated to Lucrezia BORGIA, brought Bembo to Urbino
where he is depicted as the advocate of platonic love in
Castiglione’s COURTIER. In 1513 in Rome Bembo published
De imitatione, which championed Ciceronianism (see CI-
CERO) and led to his appointment as secretary (1513–21)
to Pope LEO X, after which he went to Padua. In 1530 he
published Rime, a collection of his Italian poetry, and was
nominated historian and librarian of the Venetian repub-
lic. In 1539 he became a cardinal and moved back to
Rome, where he died.
Bembo was an important member of the skeptical
group which flourished around Leo X, and was patron of
the freethinking POMPONAZZI. He was also an important
figure in the revival of interest in vernacular poetry, start-
ing a vogue for imitations of Petrarch. He showed a much
greater sensitivity to form than did those humanists who
concentrated on classical literature; his Prose della volgar
lingua (1525), the first critical history of Italian literature
since Dante, used Petrarch and Boccaccio as models for a
vernacular which would be natural as well as artistic.
See also: BEMBINE TABLE
Further reading: Christine Raffini, Marsilio Ficino,
Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione: Philosophical, Aes-
thetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism
(New York: Peter Lang, 1998).BBeemmbboo,, PPiieettrroo 5511Pierre Belon A woodcut of a wading bird made by Pierre
Goudet (Gourdelle) for Belon’s L’Histoire de la nature des
oyseaux(1555).