Ulisse Aldrovandi

Ulisse Aldrovandi
Born 11 September 1522
Bologna
Died 4 May 1605(1605-05-04) (aged 82)
Bologna
Alma mater University of Padua
Scientific career
Fields Naturalist
Notable students Volcher Coiter
Title page of Ornithologiae, 1599

Ulisse Aldrovandi (11 September 1522 – 4 May 1605) was an Italian naturalist, the moving force behind Bologna's botanical garden, one of the first in Europe. Carl Linnaeus and the comte de Buffon reckoned him the father of natural history studies. He is usually referred to, especially in older literature, as Aldrovandus; his name in Italian is equally given as Aldroandi.[lower-alpha 1]

Life

Aldrovandi was born in Bologna to Teseo Aldrovandi and his wife, a noble but poor family. His father was a lawyer, and Secretary to the Senate of Bologna, but died when Ulisse was seven years old. However, when Pope Gregory XIII, a member of Ulisse's mother's family was elected in 1570, the family's fortune improved.[1] His widowed mother wanted him to become a jurist.[2] Initially he was sent to apprentice with merchants as a scribe for a short time when he was 14 years old, but he found his vocation, after studying mathematics, Latin, law, and philosophy, initially at the university of Bologna, and then in Padua in 1545 and becoming a notary. His interests successively extended to philosophy and logic, which he combined with the study of medicine.[3]

He obtained a degree in medicine and philosophy in 1553 and started teaching logic and philosophy in 1554 at the University of Bologna. In 1559, he became professor of philosophy and in 1561 he became the first professor of natural sciences at Bologna (lectura philosophiae naturalis ordinaria de fossilibus, plantis et animalibus).[3] Aldrovandi was a friend of Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1574 – 1587), visiting his garden at Pratolino and travelling with him, compiling a list of the most valuable plants at Pratolino.[lower-alpha 2] He also formed fruitful associations with botanical artists such as Jacopo Ligozzi, to further develop illustrated texts.[4] He died in Bologna on 4 May 1605, at the age of 82.

Heresy

In June 1549, Aldrovandi was accused and arrested for heresy on account of his espousing of the anti-trinitarian beliefs of the Anabaptist Camillo Renato. By September, he had published an abjuration, but was transferred to Rome, and remained in custody or house arrest until absolved in April, 1550. During this time, he befriended many local scholars. While in light captivity there, he became more and more interested in botany, zoology, and geology (he is credited for the invention/first written record of this word[5]). From 1551 onward, he organized a variety of expeditions to the Italian mountains, countryside, islands, and coasts to collect and catalogue plants.

Work

Monstrorum Historia

Over the course of his life, he would assemble one of the most spectacular cabinets of curiosities: his "theatre" illuminating natural history comprising some 7000 specimens of the diversità di cose naturali, of which he wrote a description in 1595. Between 1551 and 1554, he organized several expeditions to collect plants for a herbarium, among the first botanizing expeditions. Eventually, his herbarium contained about 4760 dried specimens on 4117 sheets in sixteen volumes, preserved at the University of Bologna. He also had various artists including Jacopo Ligozzi, Giovanni Neri, and Cornelio Schwindt, compose illustrations of specimens.

Botanic garden

At his demand and under his direction, a public botanic garden was created in Bologna in 1568, now the Orto Botanico dell'Università di Bologna.[6] Due to a dispute on the composition of a popular medicine with the pharmacists and doctors of Bologna in 1575, he was suspended from all public positions for five years. In 1577, he sought the aid of pope Gregory XIII (a cousin of his mother), who wrote to the authorities of Bologna to reinstate Aldrovandi in his public offices and request financial aid to help him publish his books.

Collections

His vast collections in botany and zoology he willed to the Senate of Bologna; until 1742 the collections were conserved in the Palazzo Pubblico, then in the Palazzo Poggi, but were distributed among various libraries and institutions in the course of the nineteenth century. In 1907 a representative part were reunited at Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, where the 400th anniversary of his death was memorialized in a celebrative exhibition in 2005.

Neurofibromatosis

He was the first to have extensively documented the neurofibromatosis[7] disease, a type of skin tumour. Recently, however, it has been observed that in a work by Andrea Mantegna's, this type of disease had been pictured 80 years earlier than in Androvandi's work.[8]

List of selected publications

Of the several hundred books and essays he wrote, only a handful were published during his lifetime:

Honors

Notes

  1. ↑ As in the title page of his Le antichita de la citta di Roma brevissimamente raccolte, 1556.
  2. ↑ Observationes variae (Tomasi & Hirschauer 2002, footnote 52)

References

  1. ↑ Westfall 1995.
  2. ↑ Castellani 1970.
  3. 1 2 EB 1998.
  4. ↑ Tomasi & Hirschauer 2002.
  5. ↑ Vai & Cavazza 2003.
  6. ↑ Conan 2005, p. 96.
  7. ↑ Ruggieri, M.; Polizzi, A. (1 March 2003). "From Aldrovandi's "Homuncio" (1592) to Buffon's girl (1749) and the "Wart Man" of Tilesius (1793): antique illustrations of mosaicism in neurofibromatosis?". J Med Genet. 40 (3): 227–232. doi:10.1136/jmg.40.3.227. PMC 1735405. PMID 12624146 – via jmg.bmj.com.
  8. ↑ Bianucci 2016.
  9. ↑ IPNI.  Aldrovandi.

Bibliography

  • Bianucci, Raffaella; Perciaccante, Antonio; Appenzeller, Otto (October 2016). "Painting neurofibromatosis type 1 in the 15th century". The Lancet Neurology. 15 (11): 1123. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(16)30210-1.
  • Castellani, Carlo (1970). "Ulisse Aldrovandi". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 108–110. ISBN 0-684-10114-9.
  • Conan, Michel, ed. (2005). Baroque garden cultures: emulation, sublimation, subversion. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. ISBN 9780884023043. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  • EB (20 July 1998). Ulisse Aldrovandi. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2 November 2017.
  • Findlen, Paula (1994). Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-07334-0.
  • Tomasi, Lucia Tongiorgi; Hirschauer, Gretchen A. (2002). The flowering of Florence: botanical art for the Medici. 3 March-27 May (PDF) (Exhibition catalogue). Washington: National Gallery of Art. ISBN 0-85331-857-3.
  • Tosi, Alessandro, ed. (1989). Ulisse Aldrovandi e la Toscana: carteggio e testimonianze documentarie. Firenze: L.S. Olschki.
  • Vai, Gian Battista; Cavazza, William (2003). Four centuries of the word geology: Ulisse Aldrovandi 1603 in Bologna. Minerva. ISBN 978-88-7381-056-8.
  • Westfall, Richard S. (1995). "Aldrovandi, Ulisse". The Galileo Project. Rice University. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
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