Girolamo Porro

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Girolamo Porro (* approx. 1520 in Padua ; † after 1604) was an Italian engraver , wood cutter and publisher .

General plan of the botanical garden in Padua ( Herzog August Bibliothek , Wolfenbüttel)

Life

Little is known about Porro's life. He worked in Venice for most of his life and is said to have worked as late as 1604.

plant

Porro worked with wood and copper. He engraved almost 100 vignettes for Imprese illustri di diversi (1536) by Camillo Camilli and engraved for Orlando furioso (1548) by Ludovico Ariosto . In this work, Ariosto depicts European history and future, but also reflects the position of painters and poets and reminds his clients that their future fame depends not only on their own deeds, but also on the representation by poets. In this context, like the author, the illustrators also make use of the Ekphrasis , a clear representation that implements the cover sheet designed by Porro through the central perspective.

Orlando Furioso ( Bibliothèque nationale de France )

Porro created the map views for Tomaso Porcacchi's L'Isole piu famose del mondo (1572). Porcacchi was a scholar who did not travel outside Italy and whose knowledge of geography was poor. His strength lay in the editing of texts, from which he compiled information and developed a new text, interspersed with quotes from classical antiquity by Homer , Aristotle , Caesar , Virgil and by authors of the Italian language such as Dante , Petrarca and Ludovico Ariosto . Porro probably played a major role in this conception of L'Isole piu famose del mondo ; he is mentioned on the title page of the work. The headings of each card are elaborately designed, and attention is paid to the decorative function of the representation, for example a compass rose . The maps show a high density of topographical details such as rivers and coastlines and are kept in the style of the aesthetics of the Venetian cartography of the time. Large atlases were a new form of publication in the 16th century.

Map of India

In 1596 Porro published his own little world atlas.

Other works by Porro can be found in Funerali antichi di diversi Popoli et Natione by Tomaso Porcacchi (1574), while Porro created the portraits for Sommario delle Vite de 'Duchi di Milano by Scipione Barbò Soncino (1574). The maps in Girolamo Ruscelli's translation of Ptolemy's " Geographike Hyphegesis " from 1574 are by Porro.

De glie automati ouero make se moventi

In 1589 he printed and illustrated Bernardino Baldi's translation Heron of Alexandrias Automata under the title De glie automati ouero mache se moventi, libri due .

In 1591, Porro published L'horto de i semplici di Padova , a travel guide for the Padua Botanical Garden, which also had blank, numbered pages that corresponded to the numbered beds in the garden. This design was inspired by the theater of memory of the Renaissance and the emergence of everyday books in the mid-16th century.

literature

  • Fernanda Ascarelli, Marco Menato: La tipografia del '500 in Italia (=  Biblioteca di bibliografia italiana . Volume 116 ). Olschki, Florenz 1989, ISBN 88-222-3691-2 (Italian).

Web links

Commons : Girolamo Porro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Bryan: Porro, Girolamo . In: Walter Armstrong , Robert Edmund Graves (Eds.): Dictionary of Painters and Engravers . Biographical and Critical. 2nd Edition. tape 2 . George Bell and Sons, London 1889, OCLC 7728027 , p. 310 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive - New Edition, Revised and Enlarged).
  2. ↑ Mario Klarer: Ekphrasis . Image description as representation theory in Spenser , Sidney , Lyly and Shakespeare (= Stephan Kohl, Karl Reichl, Hans Sauer , Hans Ulrich Seeber, Hubert Zapf [ed.]: Book series of the Anglia . Volume 35 ). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2001, ISBN 978-3-11-091432-0 , pp. 30–31 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - Reprint 2015).
  3. ↑ Annette Gerstenberg: Thomaso Porcacchis "L'Isole piu famose del mondo" . On the text and word history of geography in the Cinquecento (with partial edition) (= Claudia Polzin-Haumann, Wolfgang Schweickard [Hrsg.]): Supplements to the journal for Romance philology . Volume 326 ). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2004, ISBN 978-3-11-094436-5 , pp. 83–84 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - Reprint 2011).
  4. ↑ Friedrich Klemm : History of Technology. Man and his inventions in the western world (=  insights into science ). 3. Edition. BG Teubner, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-322-91106-3 , p. 202 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ Tore Frängsmyr: The Structure of Knowledge: Classifications in Science and Learning since the Renaissance . University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley 2001, ISBN 0-9672617-1-6 , pp. 34 (English, proceedings).
personal data
SURNAME Porro, Girolamo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian engraver, wood cutter and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH around 1520
PLACE OF BIRTH Padua
DATE OF DEATH after 1604