Francesco Stelluti
Francesco Stelluti (* 1577 in Fabriano ; † November 1652 ibid) was an Italian naturalist. He worked in the fields of mathematics , microscopy , literature and astronomy . Together with Federico Cesi and Johannes Van Heeck alias Johannes Eck, he founded the Accademia dei Lincei in 1603 . A drawing by him from 1630 is considered to be the oldest drawing that was made with the help of a microscope.
Life
Francesco Stelluti was a son of the couple Bernardino Stelluti and Lucrezia Corradini. As a member of Fabriano's upper class, the parents envisaged a legal career for their son, which is why Francesco Stelluti moved to Rome towards the end of the 16th century to study there. In Rome he met Federico Cesi and Johannes Eck. In 1603 he founded the Accademia dei Lincei with them. As a member of the academy he called himself Tardigradus; his sign was the planet Saturn. Both indicate that he was more of a helper than an initiator and that his intellectual agility was rated as less than the Cesis and Ecks. He taught mathematics and astronomy at the Accademia, but had to leave Rome in 1604 and return to his hometown. Then he went to the royal court in Parma. Eck also came there after returning from trips in October 1605. Eck had brought a collection of butterflies with him, which Stelluti used to create the illustrations for a classification of butterflies . This was the beginning of his study of entomology .
In 1608 or 1609 Eck and Stelluti returned to Rome. In 1610 Galileos Sidereus nuncius came out. Stelluti's initial reluctance towards this work and its creator soon gave way to unreserved admiration. Parts of an exchange of letters between Stellutis and Galileo have been preserved; however, apart from a few references to telescopic observations, they contain no technical discussions.
In 1612 Stelluti was elected managing director of the Accademia. In this capacity he was also responsible for the publication of Galileo's Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari and Il saggiatore . For both books he wrote introductions in verse form.
Stelluti made the first microscopic observations to be published in 1625. He probably used an instrument that Galileo had sent to Cesi the year before. At that time he was working on an encyclopedia that he wanted to dedicate to Cardinal Francesco Barberini in order to win his support for the Accademia. A treatise on bees should be published in advance. On the frontispiece of this apiary, detailed pictures of bees have been printed ten times larger.
In 1630 Stellutis came out with commented translation of the satires of Persius . It was inserted - on the occasion of a mention of the city of Arezzo , from where the Barberinis should come from - a Descrizzione dell'ape , i.e. a description of bees. The illustrations for this, printed using the woodcut technique, came from the Apiarium published by Cesi, but only showed the objects in a six-fold enlargement. A grain beetle was shown in ten times magnification, some details even in twenty times magnification.
After the death of Cesis in 1630, the Accademia ran into trouble. Stelluti tried to win Cardinal Barberini as a patron, but he did not give the Accademia much support.
In 1637 Stelluti's synoptic pictures of Portas De humana physiognomia came out, and in 1637 he published depictions of fossil wood finds from the area of Todi , which clearly shows the influence of Cesis. Cesi had assumed that so-called metallophytes were to be found between metals and plants. Stelluti himself had initially been inclined to believe that it was simply petrified wood, but then joined Cesi's theory.
In 1651 the description of the flora and fauna of Mexico came out. This work also contained Cesi's taxonomic system, for which Stelluti wrote an introduction. This ended the activities of the first Accademia dei Lincei.
Stelluti probably spent most of his later years helping Cesi's widow through the vicissitudes of her life.
literature
- G. Gabrieli: “Francesco Stelluti, Linceo Fabrianese”, ibid., Ser. 7, 2 (1941), 191-233.
- C. Ramelli: “Discorso intorno a Francesco Stelluti da Fabriano”, in Giornale arcadico di scienze, lettere ed arte 87 (1841), 106-135.
- David Bardell: The First Record of Microscopic Observations . BioScience Vol. 33, No. 1 (Jan. 1983), pp. 36-38.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Stelluti, Francesco |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian naturalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1577 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fabriano |
| DATE OF DEATH | around 1651 |