Pietro Verri

Scholar and economist, born in Milan, Lombardy, N Italy. He was, with brother Alessandro Verri, one of the leading lights of the review Il Caffè (1764–6) and of Italian Enlightenment. His much praised essays on the economic structure of the region, Saggio sulla grandezza e decadenza del commercio di Milano sino al 1750 (1763) earned him a number of administrative posts. Among his other treatises are Meditazioni sull'economia politica (1771), Discorso sull'indole del piacere e del dolore (1773), and Pensieri sullo stato politico del Milanese nel 1790 (1790).

Pietro Verri (1728-1797) was born in Milan to a conservative noble family and received a strongly religious education, from which he began to rebel when he reached his twenties. He wrote Gli elementi del Commercio (Elements of Commerce) and Discorso sulla felicità (Discourse on Happiness) but is most famous for his Osservazioni sulla tortura (Observations on Torture) and for his involvement in the journal Il Caffè (together with his brother Alessandro Verri, the famous philosopher Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Secchi), an important reference on Milanese illuminism.