Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci (also Botterini) 1698, Sondrio, Italy – 1749, Madrid) was a historian, antiquary and ethnographer of New Spain, the Spanish Empire's dominions in North America.

Born in Italy of noble parentage, Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci studied in Milan and lived in Trieste and Vienna.

Boturini went to New Spain in 1736, where he remained eight years, exploring remote regions and, in the words of Prescott, "living much with the natives, passing his nights sometimes in their huts, sometimes in caves, and the depths of the lonely forests."

He copied more than 500 pre-Columbian inscriptions and made his own drawings of monuments and sculptures, and he investigated the history of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the hill of Tepeyac.

On 2 June 1744 after an investigation, the recently arrived viceroy in 3 November 1742, Pedro Cebrián, 5th Count of Fuenclara, had him imprisoned and impounded his collection.

He was accused of entering New Spain without license from the Council of the Indies and of introducing papal documents without a royal permit.

In Madrid he met Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia, another passionate collector of Indian antiquities.

Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia offered Boturini a place to live and financial support, and got the Council of the Indies to reconsider his case.

Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin [fr], beginning in 1827 or shortly thereafter, obtained important parts of the collection from a variety of sources.