Son of the illustrious physician Francesco, reader in theoretical surgery at the University di Pisa, Andrea was born in Pisa on February 3, 1772. Sent to study in Paris in 1787, he was a pupil of the anatomist Pierre Joseph Desault (1744-1795) and of the famous obstetrician Jean-Louis Baudelocque (1745–1810). After studying for two years he went to London, attracted there by the fame of John Hunter (1728-1793), one of the most highly acclaimed surgeons of the time. Upon returning from England, the tumultuous events that led to the storming of the Bastille obliged him to go back to Pisa, where he completed his studies in 1791, becoming a doctor in medicine. A reader at the University of Pisa, he returned to Paris in 1799 where he attended the lessons of such famous surgeons as Philippe-Jean Pelletan (1747-1829), Antoine Dubois (1756-1837) and Alexis de Boyer (1757-1833). It was during this second stay in Paris that he wrote the Traité des maladies vénériennes [Treatise on venereal diseases] (1800). Returning to Pisa again, he became professor of Surgery. He was the first physician in Italy to carry out the procedure experimented by John Hunter for aneurism of the popliteal fossa. A friend of the anatomist Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815), he supervised the publication of the famous plates of the Anatomia universale [Universal anatomy]. He died at Orzignano (Province of Pisa) on September 6, 1826.