Giambattista della Porta | |
|---|---|
 Giambattista della Porta in 1589 | |
| Born | late 1535 |
| Died | 4 February 1615(1615-02-04) (aged 79) Naples, Kingdom of Naples |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Occultism,astrology,alchemy,mathematics,meteorology, andnatural philosophy |
Giambattista della Porta (Italian pronunciation:[dʒambatˈtistadellaˈpɔrta]; 1535 – 4 February 1615), also known asGiovanni Battista Della Porta, was anItalian scholar,polymath andplaywright who lived inNaples at the time of theRenaissance,Scientific Revolution andCounter-Reformation.
Giambattista della Porta spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavours. He benefited from an informal education of tutors and visits from renowned scholars. His most famous work, first published in 1558, is entitledMagia Naturalis (Natural Magic).[1] In this book he covered a variety of the subjects he had investigated, includingoccult philosophy,astrology,alchemy,mathematics,meteorology, andnatural philosophy. He was also referred to as "professor of secrets".[2]
Giambattista della Porta was born atVico Equense, nearNaples, to the noblemanNardo Antonio della Porta. He was the third of four sons and the second to survive childhood, having an older brother Gian Vincenzo and a younger brother Gian Ferrante.[3] Della Porta had a privileged childhood including his education. His father had a thirst for learning, a trait he would pass on to all of his children. He surrounded himself with distinguished people and entertained the likes of philosophers, mathematicians, poets, and musicians. The atmosphere of the house resembled an academy for his sons. The members of the learned circle of friends stimulated the boys, tutoring and mentoring them, under the strict guidance of their father.
In addition to having talents for the sciences and mathematics, all the brothers were also extremely interested in the arts, music in particular. Despite their interest, none of them possessed any sort of talent for it, but they did not allow that to stifle their progress in learning theory. They were all accepted into theScuola di Pitagora, a highly exclusive academy of musicians.
More aware of their social position than the idea that his sons could have professions in science, Nardo Antonio raised the boys more as gentlemen than as scholars. Therefore, the boys struggled to learn to sing, as that was considered a courtly accomplishment of gentlemen. They were taught to dance, ride, perform well in tournaments and games, and dress well. The training gave della Porta, at least earlier in his life, a taste for the finer aspects of privileged living.[4]
In 1563, della Porta publishedDe Furtivis Literarum Notis, a work aboutcryptography. In it, he described the first known digraphicsubstitution cipher.[5]Charles J. Mendelsohn commented:
He was, in my opinion, the outstanding cryptographer of the Renaissance. Some unknown who worked in a hidden room behind closed doors may possibly have surpassed him in general grasp of the subject, but among those whose work can be studied he towers like a giant.[6]
Della Porta invented a method which allowed him to write secret messages on the inside of eggs. Some of his friends were imprisoned by the Inquisition. At the gate of the prison, everything was checked except for eggs. Della Porta wrote messages on the eggshell using a mixture made of plant pigments andalum. The ink penetrated the eggshell which is semi-porous. When the eggshell was dry, he boiled the egg in hot water and the ink on the outside of the egg was washed away. When the recipient in prison peeled off the shell, the message was revealed once again on the egg white.[7]De Furtivis Literarum Notis also contains one of the earliest known examples ofmusic substitution ciphers.
In 1586 della Porta published a work onphysiognomy,De humana physiognomonia libri IIII (1586). This influenced the Swiss eighteenth-century pastorJohann Kaspar Lavater as well as the 19th-century criminologistCesare Lombroso. Della Porta wrote extensively on a wide spectrum of subjects throughout his life – for instance, an agricultural encyclopedia entitled "Villa" as well as works onmeteorology,optics, andastronomy.
In 1589, on the eve of the early modern Scientific Revolution, della Porta became the first person to attack in print, onexperimental grounds, the ancient assertion thatgarlic could disempower magnets. This was an early example of the authority of early authors being replaced by experiment as the backing for a scientific assertion. Della Porta's conclusion was confirmed experimentally byThomas Browne, among others.[8]
In later life, della Porta collected rare specimens and grew exotic plants. His workPhytognomonica lists plants according to their geographical location. InPhytognomonica the first observation of fungal spores is recorded, making him a pioneer ofmycology.
His private museum was visited by travellers and was one of the earliest examples ofnatural history museums. It inspired theJesuitAthanasius Kircher to begin a similar, even more renowned, collection in Rome.
Della Porta was the founder of a scientific society called theAcademia Secretorum Naturae (Accademia dei Segreti). This group was more commonly known as theOtiosi, (Men of Leisure). Founded sometime before 1580, the Otiosi were one of the first scientific societies in Europe and their aim was to study the "secrets of nature." Any person applying for membership had to demonstrate they had made a new discovery in thenatural sciences.
TheAcademia Secretorum Naturae was compelled to disband when its members were suspected of dealing with theoccult. Della Porta was summoned toRome byPope Gregory XIII. Though he personally emerged from the meeting unscathed, theAcademia Secretorum Naturae disbanded. Despite this incident, della Porta remained religiously devout and became a layJesuit brother.
Della Porta joinedThe Academy of the Lynxes in 1610.[9][10]
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His interest in a variety of disciplines resulted in the technological advances of the following:agriculture,hydraulics,Military Engineering,instruments, andpharmacology. He published a book in 1606 on raising water by the force of the air. In 1608 he published a book on military engineering, and another ondistillation.
Additionally, della Porta perfected thecamera obscura. In a later edition of hisNatural Magic, della Porta described this device as having aconvex lens. Though he was not the inventor, the popularity of this work helped spread knowledge of it. He compared the shape of the human eye to the lens in his camera obscura, and provided an easily understandable example of how light could bring images into the eye.
Della Porta also claimed to have invented the firsttelescope, but died while preparing the treatise (De telescopiis) in support of his claim. His efforts were also overshadowed byGalileo Galilei's improvement of the telescope in 1609, following its introduction by Lippershey in the Netherlands in 1608.
In the book, della Porta also mentioned an imaginary device known as asympathetic telegraph. The device consisted of two circular boxes, similar to compasses, each with a magnetic needle, supposed to be magnetized by the samelodestone. Each box was to be labelled with the 26 letters, instead of the usual directions. Della Porta assumed that this would coordinate the needles such that when a letter was dialled in one box, the needle in the other box would swing to point to the same letter, thereby helping in communicating.[2]
ACatholic, della Porta was examined by theInquisition in the years prior to 1578. He was forced to disband hisAcademia Secretorum Naturae, and in 1592 his philosophical works were prohibited from further publication by the Church; the ban was lifted in 1598. Porta's involvement with the Inquisition puzzles historians due to his active participation in charitable Jesuit works by 1585. A possible explanation for this lies in Porta's personal relations withFra Paolo Sarpi after 1579.
The 17 theatrical works that have survived from a total of perhaps 21 or 23 works[11] comprise 14comedies, onetragicomedy, onetragedy and oneliturgical drama.
Comedies
Others
Although they belong to the lesser-known tradition of thecommedia erudita rather than thecommedia dell'arte - which means they were written out as entire scripts instead of being improvised from a scenario - della Porta's comedies are eminently performable. While there are obvious similarities between some of the characters in della Porta's comedies and the masks of the commedia dell'arte, it should be borne in mind that the characters of the commedia erudita are uniquely created by the text in which they appear, unlike the masks, which remain constant from one scenario to another. Indeed, the masks of the improvised theatre evolved as stylised versions of recurring character types in written comedies. One of Della Porta's most notable stock characters was theparasito orparassita, a gluttonous trickster whose lack of moral scruples enabled him to pull off stunts that initially might risk bringing the plot crashing down, but ended up winning the day in unexpected ways. The termparasito was translated byJohn Florio in his Italian to English Dictionary first published in 1598[12] asa smell-feast, a flatterer, a parasite, a trencherd or bellie friend, one that saieth and doeth all things to please the humor of another, and agreeth unto him in all things to have his repast scotfree. Perhaps the best example of this type is Morfeo in the comedyLa Fantesca.
