Giovan Battista Nani

Who was Giovan Battista Nani?

Giovan Battista Nani, in French Jean Baptiste Felix Gaspard Nani, was a Venetian ambassador, librarian, archivist, amateur botanist and historian, born into a patrician family.

For 25 years Battista was the Republic of Venice's ambassador to France as well as making several diplomatic missions into Germany. He later became Procurator of San Marco. He wrote a history of the Republic of Venice in his free time, the Historia della Republica Veneta, which was translated into French by François Tallemant and Masclary, and continued by Michele Foscarini and Pierre Garzpni.

Nani wrote about the Conspiracy of Spain against the Venetian Republic, set up by the Marquis de Bedmar. The story was used by César Vichard de Saint-Réal in his Conjuration des Espagnols contre la République de Venise en l'année M. DC. XVIII, and in 1682 by Thomas Otway in playwright Venice Preserv'd, or A Plot Discover'd. Leopold von Ranke published his view on the conspiracy theory in Über die Verschwörung gegen Venedig, im Jahre 1618.