Lorenzo Valla (Laurentius Valla in his Latin name; Rome, 1406/1407 - ibid., August 1, 1457) was an Italian humanist, orator, educator and philosopher, considered the pioneer of historical and philosophical criticism, cousin of the also humanist Giorgio Fence.

He was known in his time for his demonstration that the Donation of Constantine, a document by which the papacy claimed control of extensive territories in the West, was a forgery. In the field of biblical philology, his greatest contribution was the commentaries on the New Testament, which would be the basis of the textual criticism of later humanists such as Erasmus of Rotterdam. Another aspect for which he was relevant is his writing of a new Latin grammar, the Elegances of the Latin language (De elegantia linguae latinae), which surpassed the medieval grammars and taught a classical Latin of great correctness and elegance. Likewise, his treatise on Aristotelian logic stands out Dialectical Disputations (Dialecticae disputationes), which simplified and rationalized the decadent Christian scholasticism.