Giovanni Baptista Ferrari

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Aurantium corniculatum. Hand-colored copper engraving from Hesperides , 1646

Giovanni Baptista Ferrari , also Giovanni Battista Ferrari (* 1584 in Siena ; † February 1, 1655 ibid) was an Italian Jesuit and professor in Rome , botanist and u. a. Editor of illustrated plant books and a Latin-Syrian dictionary.

Life

Giovanni Baptista Ferrari was linguistically and scientifically gifted, taught Hebrew for 21 years and spoke and wrote ancient Greek and Latin excellently . He was the editor of a Latin- Syrian dictionary ( Nomenclator syriacus , 1622).

The plant lover Ferrari belonged to the circle of Cardinal Barberini , who owned his own garden with exotic plants ( Horti Barberini ).

Ferrari himself published, among other things, a four-volume work on the cultivation of ornamental plants ( De Florum Cultura ) in 1632 , illustrated with copperplate engravings (including by Anna Maria Variana , possibly the first professional female engraver). The first book deals with the design and maintenance of the garden and garden tools. The second book gives descriptions of the different flowers, while the third book covers the culture of these flowers. The fourth book continues this with a treatise on the uses and beauty of flower species, including their various varieties and mutations.

Another work in Giovanni Baptista Ferrari's oeuvre are the " Hesperides, sive, De Malorum aureorum cultura et usu " (Hesperides, or, the cultivation and use of the golden apples) ', first published in 1646. The table is dedicated to citrus fruits and their many varieties and variations. He also described medicinal preparations that were based on citrus flowers or fruits and described limes, lemons and pomegranates as medicinal plants against scurvy .

The garden historian Helena Attlee calls it a typical product of the scientific revolution that occurred during this period and which separated from the previously accepted worldview of antiquity and laid the basis for modern natural science. Instead of building on ancient texts, Ferrari used empiricism : as far as he could, he examined each fruit carefully, counted its segments and seeds, tasted the juice and recorded the color, texture and thickness of the skin. With the help of his friend Cassiano dal Pozzo , one of the great scholars who corresponded with scholars across Europe, he sent questionnaires to citrus growers across Italy. Among the recipients were princes, cardinals, peasants and gardeners. It is probably thanks to Passau's connections that Ferrari received so many answers to his questions. His questionnaire asked for information about the name of the plant, the origin of the name, the appearance of the tree, the leaves, the flower and the fruit as well as their use. The task turned out to be daunting: each region of Italy that grew citrus plants often cultivated their own special varieties, and where these varieties were used their naming was different. Ferrari himself jokingly compared the difficulties of his task of creating a logical taxon for citrus fruits with the challenges faced by the hero of the legend Heracles when he stole the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides .

In its evaluation, Ferrari divided citrus plants into strict categories: citrus lemons, lemons and oranges. He decidedly assigned the numerous hybrid forms to one of these categories and created another category for particularly strikingly shaped fruits, which he named frutte che scherzano (joke fruits ). The nomenclature he developed is extremely descriptive. He called one variety " Limon Pomum Adami distortum et digitatum ", which translates as "Fingery deformed Adam's apple lime". The designation actually became the official name of this variety and was in use long after the taxonomy used today by the natural scientist Carl von Linné in 1749. Despite his modern approach, Ferrari also resorted to medieval explanations when empirical science did not help him. He explained the bizarre hand-shaped shape of the Citrus medica var. Sarcodactylis , also called the Buddha's hand , citron with myths that are reminiscent of Ovid's metamorphoses.

The engravings contained in Hesperides are by Cornelis Bloemaert II , Claude Goyrand , Johann Friedrich Greuter and Camillo Cungi based on models by renowned Roman painters and draftsmen of the Baroque ( e.g. Pietro da Cortona , Andrea Sacchi , Nicolas Poussin , Pietro Paolo Ubaldini , F. Perier, Francesco Albani , Philippe Gagliard , F. Ramanelli, Guido Reni , Dominic Zampieri and H. Rinaldi). The fruits are shown in their natural size, one as a whole fruit including leaves and the other cut open. The other panels show Hercules , mythological scenes, garden buildings, orangeries, garden tools, etc.

Gardener's knife, hand-colored after an illustration in Hesperides , 1646

Works

  • Hesperides Sive De Malorvm Avreorvm Cvltvra Et Vsv Libri Quatuor . Rome: horror; Mascardi, 1646 (several new editions or secondary editions)
  • De Florum Cultura. Flora Sive Florum Cultura . Rome: Paulinus, 1633 (several new editions or secondary editions)
  • Orationes . Rome, 1627 (several new editions or secondary editions)
  • Nomenclator syriacus . Rome: Paulinus, 1622

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Helena Attlee: The Land Where Lemons Grow . P. 35.
  2. ↑ a b Helena Attlee: The Land Where Lemons Grow . P. 36.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Helena Attlee: The Land Where Lemons Grow . P. 37.
personal data
SURNAME Ferrari, Giovanni Baptista
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ferrari, Giovanni Battista
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian Jesuit and professor in Rome, botanist
DATE OF BIRTH 1584
PLACE OF BIRTH Siena
DATE OF DEATH February 1, 1655
Place of death Siena