John de Fontana

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Fire witch from Johannes de Fontana's Bellicorum instrumentorum liber , around 1420/30 (BSB Munich Cod. Icon. 242)

Johannes de Fontana (also Johannes Fontana , Italian Giovanni Fontana , Giovanni da Fontana ; * around 1395 , † 1455 or a little later) was an Italian doctor and author of the 15th century. He has written numerous treatises on technical-scientific topics, of which the Bellicorum instrumentorum liber from around 1420/30 is particularly well known .

Life

Johannes de Fontana studied artes liberales and medicine one after the other at the University of Padua , which he completed in 1418 and 1421 with a doctoral examination. His teachers included the Aristotle commentator Paulus Venetus (d. 1429) and the natural philosopher Biagio Pelacani da Parma (d. 1416). In 1421 Fontana took over a diplomatic mission to the Condottiere Francesco Bussone da Carmagnola on behalf of the Doge of Venice . He mentions stays in Rome and Crete at unknown times. In the 1430s he worked for a time as the Venetian city doctor of Udine . He died in 1455 or later.

Works

Fontana wrote 20 works, ten of which have survived.

  • Bellicorum instrumentorum liber , around 1430/30, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. Icon. 242
  • Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum
  • Della prospettiva

Fontana is best known for authoring an early depiction of a magic lantern (silhouette projection), dated around 1420.

Giovanni da Fontana is also known as the inventor of the letter lock (around 1420).

Editions and translations

  • Horst Kranz (Ed.): Johannes Fontana: Opera iuvenalia de rotis horologiis et mensuris. Youth works on wheels, clocks and measurements. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-515-09909-7 (critical edition with translation)
  • Horst Kranz (Ed.): Johannes Fontana: Liber instrumentorum iconographicus. An illustrated machine book. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-515-10660-3 (critical edition with translation)
  • Horst Kranz, Walter Oberschelp (Ed.): Mechanical memorization and encryption around 1430. Johannes Fontana's Tractatus de instrumentis artis memorie. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-515-09296-8 (critical edition with translation, introduction and investigation)

literature

  • Eugenio Battisti, Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti: Le macchine cifrate di Giovanni Fontana , Arcadia Edizioni, Milano 1984, ISBN 978-88-85684-06-5

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The biographical information according to Johannes Kranz: Academic technology in the 15th century. Content and terminology of a rediscovered youth publication by Johannes Fontana. In: Technikgeschichte (2007) 74, issue 2, pp. 119–147, here pp. 124–126.
  2. ↑ Johannes de Fontana: Bellicorum instrumentorum liber cum figuris (BSB Cod. Icon. 242).
  3. ↑ Christian Bachmann: Security: A basic need as a challenge for technology. Springer, Basel 1991, p. 92.
personal data
SURNAME John de Fontana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fontana, Giovanni; Fontana, Giovanni there
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Medieval author of an early illustration of a magic lantern (silhouette projection), dated around 1420
DATE OF BIRTH 1395
DATE OF DEATH 1455