The paper gives an overview of the historiography of mathematics in Italy before 1860. The author singles out the origins of the Italian tradition in the history of mathematics in ``a long tradition of biographical and bibliographical research dating from the Renaissance''. So she devotes the first two sections to Editions of ancient classics and Biography. Next in the seventeenth century the history of mathematics in Italy was developed in encyclopedic works as those by G. Biancani, G. Riccioli and F. M. Deschales. Critical history, however, originated only in the eighteenth century and was developed either by historians or by mathematicians. Besides minor contributions, the work of G. Fontana, J. L. Lagrange, P. Cossali and G. Libri are explained insofar they belong to this period. To each of them a whole section is devoted. The paper contains many useful bibliographical references.