Ulisse Aldrovandi Research Articles

Storia del ripristino delle lapidi di Aldrovandi e dell’VIII Centenario all’Archiginnasio

The Archiginnasio Palace, commissioned by Pope Pius IV as the main building of the Bologna University founded in 1088, was built from 1562 to 1563, and later abandoned in 1803 following Italy’s Campaign by Napoleon, to the become city Library. It was heavily damaged during the Allied bombing on January 29th, 1844. Two historical marble inscriptions were also destroyed. They were devoted to Ulisse Aldrovandi’s five teaching decades in that Palace, and to the globally attended Royal opening celebration of the 8th Centennial of the Bologna University in 1888. The history of the two plaques is traced back, ending up with their restored replacement at the entry of the Anatomical Theater, Archiginnasio’s most renown masterpiece created in 1636.

Protestant Hermeneutics and the Persistence of Moral Meanings in Early Modern Natural Histories

Abstract Peter Harrison explains the disappearance of symbolic meanings of animals from seventeenth-century works in natural history through what he calls the “literalist mentality of the reformers.” By contrast, the present article argues in favor of a different understanding of the connection between hermeneutics and Protestant natural history. Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Brenz, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Jean Calvin continued to assign moral meanings to natural particulars, and moral interpretations can still be found in the writings of Protestant naturalists such as Conrad Gesner, Caspar Heldelinus, Jeremias Wilde, Thomas Penny, and Thomas Moffett. If there are differences between Protestant and Catholic interpretations of animals, then these differences derive from the reformer’s greater insistence on providing textual support for assigning symbolic meanings, their resulting greater reluctance in assigning prophetic meanings to animals, and their elimination of spiritual interpretations of animals that are in tension with central tenets of Protestant theology. These differences in hermeneutics and theology may explain some of the divergences between the symbolic interpretations of animals proposed by Protestant natural historians and their Catholic colleague, Ulisse Aldrovandi.

Sailing the ocean of nature: Francesca Fontana Aldrovandi in early modern Bologna

ABSTRACT The history of science is increasingly directing its attention to the diachronic examination of women's involvement within spaces dedicated to scientific inquiry. While this field of study boasts rich and meticulous historiography, delving into the sixteenth century leaves the impression of encountering either a noticeable absence of women in the realm of natural history or an underexplored period in this regard. Undoubtedly, within the Italian context of the time, the cultural milieu shaped by the Counter-Reformation further heightened the social challenges faced by women. Notwithstanding these challenges, a noteworthy female figure emerges in the latter half of the sixteenth century – Francesca Fontana, the second wife of the natural history scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605). From an overall view of the sources, Fontana seems to assume a pivotal role in the realization of collections and works attributed to the eminent naturalist. This study aims to delineate the role played by Fontana within Aldrovandi's ‘officina naturale.’ By examining the available documents in a chronological order, my aim is to provide insights into the evolution of her education and her practical and technical skills, harnessed in the pursuit of her husband's enterprises and scholarly contributions.

Redating the arrival of Tropaeolum minus in Italy

At a European level, Tropaeolum minus is the first species of this genus that arrived in our continent, around 1570, immediately used as an ornamental, vegetable and pharmaceutical plant. According to Italian sources, instead, T. minus arrived in Italy only in 1642: the species of this genus which was known in Italy at the time was T. majus, imported in 1596. However, in the Italian Renaissance herbaria, there are four specimens dated to the last decades of 1500, clearly recognisable as T. minus, which would confirm its import around 1570. Thanks to the analysis of these herbarium specimens and documental sources of the second half of the XVI century (Ulisse Aldrovandi’s manuscripts and watercolour plates, the lists of species cultivated in that period in the principal Italian botanical gardens, the manuscript code I cinque libri di piante by Pietro Antonio Michiel), it is possible to demonstrate that the arrival of T. minus in Italy has to be redated at the second half of the XVI century. Furthermore, this work allowed the specimens of Tropaeolum preserved in the Erbario Aldrovandi to be identified correctly, which were formerly attributed to T. majus following the Italian scientific literature available so far.Graphical abstract

Saving temporary exhibitions in virtual environments: The Digital Renaissance of Ulisse Aldrovandi – Acquisition and digitisation of cultural heritage objects

As per the objectives of Project CHANGES, particularly its thematic sub-project on the use of virtual technologies for museums and art collections, our goal was to obtain a digital twin of the temporary exhibition on Ulisse Aldrovandi called “The Other Renaissance”, and make it accessible to users online. After a preliminary study of the exhibition, focusing on acquisition constraints and related solutions, we proceeded with the digital twin creation by acquiring, processing, modelling, optimising, exporting, and metadating the exhibition. We made hybrid use of two acquisition techniques to create new digital cultural heritage objects and environments, and we used open technologies, formats, and protocols to make available the final digital product. Here, we describe the process of collecting and curating bibliographical exhibition (meta) data and the beginning of the digital twin creation to foster its findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. The creation of the digital twin is currently ongoing.

Botanical memory: five centuries of floristic changes revealed by a Renaissance herbarium (Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1551-1586).

We analysed the spatially explicit floristic information available in the herbarium of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1551-1586) to track floristic changes in the surroundings of Bologna across five centuries. Aldrovandi's data were compared with the Flora della Provincia di Bologna by Girolamo Cocconi (1883) and the Floristic Database of Emilia-Romagna (1965-2021). We explored potential variations in native range and life forms composition, and habitat affinity of the species in the three floras, also contrasting between native and alien species. Native species, mainly in terms of variations of hydro-hygrophytes, chamaephytes and therophytes, provide clear signals of human disturbance and habitat loss. Signals of climate change are provided by the high-mountain species, that were comparably rare between Aldrovandi and current flora and more represented in Cocconi, probably reflecting the effect of the Little Ice Age. Our findings also indicate the increasing importance of alien species from the Renaissance onwards. In this perspective, Aldrovandi's herbarium preserves the memory of the first signs of a radical transformation of the European flora and habitats. Finally, the study warns about the risk of dismissing herbaria and herbarium specimens collection, which would cause irreparable lacunas in our botanical memory, hindering our ability to predict biodiversity trajectories.

Notes on a Renaissance Bestiary by Ulisse Aldrovandi

Abstract A unique codex in the University of Bologna, crafted as a single monographic volume, transmits an extremely interesting treatise by the naturalist and antiquary Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605). Entitled Discorso sopra alcuni animali quadrupedi per i quali si possono esprimere i 7 peccati capitali, literally ‘discourse about those animals through which it is possible to [symbolically] express the seven mortal sins,’ it was completed, according to an earlier copy (BUB Aldrov. 91, cc. 472r–482v), on 12 August 1578. The work was dedicated to Alessandro degli Orsi, a nobleman of the city and infantry commander in Hungary, who was honored in 1585 with the gran croce. This article suggests a reconstruction of lost decorations in one of the Orsi family mansions, either the Palazzo Orsi or the Villa Orsi. It also considers the moral implications of virtues versus vice represented by four-legged animals.

Knowing Old Age in the Renaissance: Medicine, Poetry, and Spirituality in Ulisse Aldrovandi's Encyclopedia of Old Age.

Over more than thirty years the Bolognese botanist, natural historian, and physician Ulisse Aldrovandi compiled his Pandechion epistemonicon-a manuscript encyclopedia composed of pasted note slips drawn from books he was reading. This article examines the 580 slips that comprise Aldrovandi's Pandechion entry on old age. The entry allows us to examine how an early modern physician and his intellectual community approached old age as an epistemological problem with medical, poetic, and spiritual dimensions. Aldrovandi's engagement with old age in the Pandechion presents a fluid set of disciplinary boundaries for how we understand old age in the past and present.

The journey of a book from the sixteenth to the twentieth century

Two handwritten notes found in a small volume published in 1564 – an older one relating to the first owner bearing the name of Ulisse Aldrovandi placed at the top of the title page, and the second one bearing the location on the tail of the book – have aroused great interest in the possibility that it could belong to the famous naturalist’s library in Bologna. A third note, placed on the doublure of front cover, refers to an unknown later owner whose identity will be sought out, based on the little information reported. Starting from these handwritten notes, the journey of the book is reconstructed in space – from Aldrovandi’s library in Bologna to the Historical Library of the Orazio Comes Botanical Museum kept at the MUSA Museum Centre in Portici – and in time – from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

Mostri e mirabilia naturae da Francis Bacon a Athanasius Kircher

This essay explores the history of the concept of monstrum from Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum to Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneaus (1664), as well as its relationship with the origins of science; as in the early modern age, the term monstra is considered as a synonym for mirabilia naturae. The introductory part focuses on the difficult definition of “monster”, starting from Aristotle’s famous sentence in De generatione animalium: whoever does not looks like his parents, or whatever happens in a different way from the “generality of cases”, is included within the category of the “monstrous”. Monster is a being, whose anomaly represents a warning; therefore, monsters may be considered as signs, susceptible of an allegorical, moral and even political interpretation. In another acceptation of the term, monsters may be considered as the privileged witnesses of the richness and fecundity of nature. In the second part, Bacon’s theory of monsters is exposed: they are classified as instantiae deviantes, within that interpretation of nature, through which the Lord Chancellor lays the epistemological foundations of the modern science. In the third, fourth and fifth parts, a taxonomy of monsters is given: at first, by means of the cabinets des curiosités, which flourished in sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy, from Naples to Rome, from Bologna to Milan, with famous collectors such as Ferrante Imperato, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Manfredo Settala, Athanasius Kircher; then, through the “books of secrets”, which are at the same time a new, successful literary genre and a way of thinking nature, an aspect of natural history. Among the “professors of secrets”, there are Giovan Battista Della Porta, Ambroise Paré, Leonardo Fioravanti, Jean Fernel, Pierre Borel, Kenelm Digby, and Athanasius Kircher, again, with some disciples of his, such as Kaspar Schott. Secrets of nature and mirabilia naturae are finally compared: the classical list of mirabilia, from Pliny the Elder to Kircher, completes the taxonomy of monsters. The sixth and last part of this essay offers an explicative theory of monsters and prodigies: the marvels of nature are magnetic phenomena, which seem to imply a mysterious action at a distance. Such magnetic action can be accounted for on the basis of the Renaissance, Ficinian and Neoplatonic concept of spirit – conceived as the universal vehicle of occult sympathies and antipathies - and then through the seventeenth concepts of corpuscular effluvia, introduced by Pierre Gassendi in his Physica (1658), and sphaera activitatis, produced by the effluvia which each body emits, and surrounding it. This sphere is the place when most of marvelous phenomena happen.

The Western-European Tradition of Depicting the Chameleon in Russian Popular Printst

This article examines the iconographical, historical, and cultural context of On the Chameleon Beast, a popular Russian print from the first half of the eighteenth century. The print reproduces an illustration from The Spectacle of Human Life (Rus. Zrelishche zhitiia chelovecheskogo) (1712), a now-lost anthology of fables from the Petrine period. The motif of the chameleon, an exotic animal which does not occur in Russia, is obviously borrowed from a foreign source; nevertheless, the interpretation of this motif is apparently an invention of the Russian artist. Unlike in non-Russian iconography, the Russian chameleon is depicted as a kind of a monster, clumsily walking upon the Earth against a postapocalyptic landscape. The numerous possible paragons of the popular print chameleon examined in the article originate from the depiction of the chameleon in Conrad Gessner’s Historia Animalium (first published in the album Icones Animalium in 1553). Until the late seventeenth century, the illustrations in Gessner’s books had a great impact on the iconography of the chameleon, as well as of other animals. The influence can be noted in three different visual contexts: firstly, in emblems (starting with the publication of Marcus Gheeraerts’ De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (Truthful Fables on Animals, 1567) and with the 1591 edition of Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata); secondly, in illustrated books on natural history (Pierre Belon, Edward Topsell, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Basilius Besler, etc.); and thirdly, in different types of printed graphic arts (from the highly artistical printings of professional academic art (Marcus Gheeraerts, Adriaen Collaert) to the popular prints of mass culture). The genetic connection of the Russian popular print chameleon with Gessner’s illustrations can be easily demonstrated by comparisons with a later, more anatomically precise tradition beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century (Claude Perrault, Antonio Tempesta, Cornelis de Bruijn, Antonio Vallisneri, Albertus Seba). In the Russian popular engraving, other images originating from Conrad Gessner’s work are the famous Cat of Kazan and a series of depictions of poultry, such as the Kalkun lubok.

Sixteenth-century tomatoes in Europe: who saw them, what they looked like, and where they came from.

BackgroundSoon after the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first tomatoes were presented as curiosities to the European elite and drew the attention of sixteenth-century Italian naturalists. Despite of their scientific interest in this New World crop, most Renaissance botanists did not specify where these ‘golden apples’ or ‘pomi d’oro’ came from. The debate on the first European tomatoes and their origin is often hindered by erroneous dating, botanical misidentifications and inaccessible historical sources. The discovery of a tomato specimen in the sixteenth-century ‘En Tibi herbarium’ kept at Leiden, the Netherlands, triggered research on its geographical provenance and morphological comparison to other tomato specimens and illustrations from the same time period.MethodsRecent digitization efforts greatly facilitate research on historic botanical sources. Here we provide an overview of the ten remaining sixteenth-century tomato specimens, early descriptions and 13 illustrations. Several were never published before, revealing what these tomatoes looked like, who saw them, and where they came from. We compare our historical findings with recent molecular research on the chloroplast and nuclear DNA of the ‘En Tibi’ specimen.ResultsOur survey shows that the earliest tomatoes in Europe came in a much wider variety of colors, shapes and sizes than previously thought, with both simple and fasciated flowers, round and segmented fruits. Pietro Andrea Matthioli gave the first description of a tomato in 1544, and the oldest specimens were collected by Ulisse Aldrovandi and Francesco Petrollini in c. 1551, possibly from plants grown in the Pisa botanical garden by their teacher Luca Ghini. The oldest tomato illustrations were made in Germany and Switzerland in the early 1550s, but the Flemish Rembert Dodoens published the first image in 1553. The names of early tomatoes in contemporary manuscripts suggest both a Mexican and a Peruvian origin. The ‘En Tibi’ specimen was collected by Petrollini around 1558 and thus is not the oldest extant tomato. Recent molecular research on the ancient nuclear and chloroplast DNA of the En Tibi specimen clearly shows that it was a fully domesticated tomato, and genetically close to three Mexican landraces and two Peruvian specimens that probably also had a Mesoamerican origin. Molecular research on the other sixteenth-century tomato specimens may reveal other patterns of genetic similarity, past selection processes, and geographic origin. Clues on the ‘historic’ taste and pest resistance of the sixteenth-century tomatoes will be difficult to predict from their degraded DNA, but should be rather sought in those landraces in Central and South America that are genetically close to them. The indigenous farmers growing these traditional varieties should be supported to conserve these heirloom varieties in-situ.

Aldrovandi, truthfully drawing naturalia, and local context

This essay focuses on the 16th -century Bolognese naturalist and collector Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) and his enormous image collection of naturalia. Do these images present a specifically Bolognese form of visual natural science, and was his visual format of truthfulness new at the time? Did Local visual culture leave clear marks on Aldrovandi's image collection? On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.

Antichità in giardino, giardini nell’antichità: studi sulla collezione Giusti a Verona e sulla tradizione delle raccolte di antichità in giardino

The time span indicated by the subtitle of Kathleen Wren Christian’s fundamental Empire without End: Antiquities collections in Renaissance Rome, c.1350–1527 (2010), eloquently demonstrated the early origins of a phenomenon that she and many others have continued to document for Roman collections of antiquities. Pomponio Leto, probably the most avid of these early collectors of inscriptions, also collected statues, to be judiciously placed in his garden on the Quirinal. Members of the wealthy elite who not only had sumptuous urban residences but also owned property on the outskirts of the city were able to organize excavations on their own estates, and the discovery there of figural nudes and mythological subjects, in particular, helped to bring about a shift in taste in the 1470s and 1480s. From then on, until the Sack of Rome in 1527, popes and princely members of the Curia began to lay out pleasure gardens populated by figural sculptures. By the time of Ulisse Aldrovandi’s involuntary stay in Rome in the mid-century, he was able to compile a list of the antiquities displayed in some eighty private collections, as well in the papal gardens and some public spaces and churches.

The earliest-published recognition of a trace fossil and its producer

The recognition of fossil material as organic represented a sea change in European understanding of geology. Throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, several thinkers approached the same line of reasoning, from Leonardo da Vinci to Nicolas Steno. Among fossil material, trace fossils are furthest removed from the living organism, and the identification of trace fossils as such is extremely rare in the period, even when body fossils were increasingly being seen as organic. Alongside Leonardo da Vinci, whose personal observations in the early 16th century remained unpublished for centuries, and Ulisse Aldrovandi, whose account of trace fossils was published posthumously in 1648, I here show that Bernard Palissy also recognised the biological origins of at least one form of trace fossil. The publication of Palissy’s identification occurred in 1580, 68 years before Aldrovandi’s was published, and 23 years before the manuscript on which that publication was based. Moreover, like Aldrovandi, Palissy’s recognition includes specific identification of the trace as being produced by pholad molluscs. Palissy’s is therefore the oldest example of an ichnological identification to be found in the published literature.

Rediscovery of a Mesoamerican greenstone sculpture from the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi

Abstract This article presents a pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican greenstone sculpture, formerly held in the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) and recently rediscovered by the author in the storerooms of the Museo Civico Medievale in Bologna. After a discussion of Aldrovandi’s general attitude towards natural and cultural specimens from the New World, the article explores the ways in which the Bolognese polymath described and illustrated the sculpture in his Musaeum metallicum (1648), where he named it as ‘Idolum pileatum’. It is argued here that Aldrovandi’s main interest was not so much proto-anthropological as of a taxonomic kind, in line with his interest in material culture as both an antiquary and a natural historian. The last section of the article explores the sculpture’s cultural biography, reconstructing its collection history and also putting forward a hypothesis for the circumstances of its arrival in Bologna.

Rediscovery of a Mesoamerican greenstone sculpture from the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi

Rediscovery of a Mesoamerican greenstone sculpture from the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi

Libro d’Uccelli in pictura. A study of manuscript 2 of the Alessandrina University Library of Rome

The manuscript 2 of the Alexandrine University Library in Rome, coming from the personal library of the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II Della Rovere, preserves inside about 300 color plates of birds and real and fantastic animals, all inserted in an extremely refined naturalistic context, in excellent condition. The sixteenth-century binding, richly adorned on the plates and on the back with allegorical and phytomorphic motifs inserted inside a geometric frame. The aim of the research was to reconstruct its history, starting from all those non-textual elements, of which the code is totally devoid, which identify the most properly physical-material aspect. Through the analysis of the paper and the watermark, of the binding and its ornamentation,and finally the opening coat of arms of the codex, it was possible not only to date it precisely but also to identify the workshop of origin and discover the one who orders its manufacture and that is the Bolognese natural scientist Ulisse Aldrovandi. A precious gift for the Duke Francesco Maria II who will become his patron, supporting him economically in the print of his scientific works.

Museo naturale Уліссе Альдрованді та його роль у розвитку природознавства в Європі у XVI ст.

Ulisse Aldrovandi was a famous Italian naturalist, the first full professor in the history of natural sciences, who made a large contribution into the establishment of museums and the science of natural history in Europe. The paper presents detailed information on Aldrovandi’s biography and the tangled path of formation of his scientific interests. A special attention is paid to the little known information on features of Aldrovandi’s natural history collections and unique museum, which were studied by the author personally in the University of Bologna, Italy in 2018. The museum, which was conceived and created by Aldrovandi, has been preserved practically unchanged with only insignificant losses. Collection catalogues, complied by the scientist and analysed by us, show Aldrovandi’s ambition to account, catalogue, and classify available natural items and other objects that, in his opinion, reflect the role of nature in humans’ life. A detailed survey of Aldrovandi’s illustrated multi-volume (400 volumes) encyclopedia, which was based on his collections, is presented in the paper. It is highlighted that, despite Aldrovandi’s progressive views and high level of education, naive interpretations with descriptions of fantastic creatures such as mermaids, sphinxes, dragons and others are given in his works along with scientific facts. Nevertheless, the scientist saw and noted the boundary between empiric investigation of the nature and its symbolic interpretation. Aldrovandi was the first scholar who involved a large deal of original and direct research into natural history and gathered a scientific collection of natural items. The majesty of his plan, the volume of his collections and scientific interests impressed the scientist’s contemporaries, who acclaimed Aldrovandi’s Museo Naturale as “the best cabinet of Europe and the largest micro cosmos of nature” in that time. It is emphasised that Aldrovandi’s natural history collection became part of the social and cultural context of the emergence of natural history as a scientific discipline. The extremely huge role of Aldrovandi’s museum in popularisation is also noted, since it proposed “wisdom” for the spread of scientific information in forms appropriate for sensation at that time.

Bryophytes and lichens in 16th-century herbaria

The diversity of bryophyte and lichen collections in 9 of the oldest preserved herbaria (dating from ca 1542 to 1577) was compared, including the first reports of bryophytes and lichens from the ‘En Tibi’ herbarium (possibly 1542–1544) and the herbarium of Leonhard Rauwolf (1560–1563). Bryophytes and lichens formed only a minority in each herbarium compared to the numbers of vascular plant specimens; numbers ranged from representatives of 21 genera in the herbarium of Ulisse Aldrovandi to the single genus Conocephalum in the Rauwolf herbarium. The focus was on large, handsome species of bryophytes and macrolichens, apart from small amounts of additional species collected as ‘by-catch’ in mixed collections. All herbaria together included 34 genera of bryophytes (36 species and 10 specimens identified to genus level) and 13 genera of lichens (24 species and 4 specimens identified to genus level). The diversity of mosses was higher than that of liverworts, and pleurocarpous mosses were more diverse than acrocarpous mosses. The collectors probably aimed at selecting material that was either characteristic of the vegetation in the respective areas of collecting or used for certain purposes (or both). The former hypothesis is supported by the small overlap in taxonomic diversity between the herbaria, and the latter by the fact that several moss, liverwort, and lichen genera are included whose traditional uses are well documented.