Paolo Dagomari di Prato

Who was Paolo Dagomari di Prato?

Paolo Dagomari da Prato, known in Latin as Paulus Geometrus, was a noted Florentine mathematician and astronomer, such a maestro dell'abbaco that he gained the epithet Paolo dell'Abbaco. Franco Sacchetti called him Paolo Arismetra e Astologo and Giorgio Vasari Paulo Strolago or Paolo Astrologo. He reputedly had 6,000–10,000 pupils over the course of his life, being praised by contemporaries like Giovanni Gherardi da Prato, Filippo Villani, and Giovanni Villani in his Cronica.

Paolo was born at Prato, the son of Piero Dagomari, who had moved to Florence. At Florence Paolo became the private tutor of Jacopo Alighieri and a friend of Giovanni Boccaccio, who praised him highly in his De genealogia deorum gentilium. The need for mathematics among the bankers and merchants of Florence led him to found a school of arithmetic at Santa Trinita. In 1363 he held the priorate of the quarter of S. Spirito from May–June. Paolo died in Florence and was buried in Santa Trinita under a now-lost epitaph. His portrait, in fresco, is painted on the vault of the Galleria degli Uffizi.