Tommaso Giannini was a prominent professor at the ferrarese Studium between sixteenth and seventeenth century. Probably influenced by Platonic sympathies nurtured by the Court and partly by the University milieu, in 1587 he published his first work titled De providentia ad sententiam Platonis et Platonicorum liber unus, which was a catalyst for his academic career. A compilative work in essence, the De providentia displays a large amount of sources always tacitly used: Marsilio Ficino, Jacques Charpentier, Giulio Serina, Stefano Tiepolo, Teofilo Zimara, Bessarion, Agostino Steuco and amid the ancients Plotinus, Plutarcus, Sirianus, Proclus, Giamblicus, Apuleius, Calcidius, Ammonius, Psellus. A small place is reserved to Giovanni Pico della ...