Matteo Luigi Canonici was born at Venice on 5 August 1727 and became a Jesuit in 1743. His natural bent was towards history and antiquities, and when Accademico of the College of St. Catherine at Parma he formed a first collection of medals and books, but in 1768, when the Jesuit Order was suppressed in the kingdom of Naples and Duchy of Parma, it was confiscated. Canonici, who had retired to Bologna, only received a small sum of money in return. Next he collected pictures, but this scandalized his superiors, and he was forced to get rid of them, obtaining in exchange a museum of medals. In 1773 a further suppression of the Order took place, and Canonici retired to Venice, where he set himself to study history, and collected coins, statuary, printed books and manuscripts, chiefly during autumn journeys to Rome, Naples, Florence or elsewhere. He acquired for instance en bloc the collections of the Duke of Modena, and the library of Giacomo Soranzo of Venice, which was itself partly derived from the Biblioteca Recanati. He always holed that the Jesuits would be restored, and inteded in that case to make them his heir, but eventually died at Treviso, in October 1805, without making a will.