Francesco Fedeli, nicknamed Francesco Maggiotto or also il Maggiotto (1738 – 13 September 1805) was an Italian

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

from

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

Life

Francesco Maggiotto was the son of Domenico Fedeli, with whom he shared the nickname "Maggiotto"; in the early years he was trained in the same style as his father's. At first, he was also influenced, among others, by

Piazzetta Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (also called Giambattista Piazzetta or Giambattista Valentino Piazzetta) (February 13, 1682 or 1683 – April 28, 1754) was an Italian Rococo painter of religious subjects and genre scenes. Biography Piazzetta was ...

Pittoni Giambattista Pittoni or Giovanni Battista Pittoni (6 June 1687 – 6 November 1767) was a Venetian painter of the late Baroque or Rococo period. He was among the founders of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice, of which in 1758 he became the ...

Tiepolo Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( , ; March 5, 1696 – March 27, 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an import ...

and Zuccarelli, drawing inspiration from contemporary painting styles. The painting ''La Pittura e la Natura'' (1769) was painted in this early period, and Maggiotto offered it to the

Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia The is a public tertiary academy of art in Venice, Italy. History The Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia was founded on 24 September 1750; the statute dates from 1756. The first director was Giovanni Battista Piazzetta; Gianbattista Tiepolo ...

; today it is still stored in the

Gallerie dell'Accademia The Gallerie dell'Accademia is a museum gallery of pre-19th-century art in Venice, northern Italy. It is housed in the Scuola della Carità on the south bank of the Grand Canal, within the sestiere of Dorsoduro. It was originally the gallery o ...

. He also imitated

Pietro Longhi Pietro Longhi (1702 or November 5, 1701 – May 8, 1785) was a Venetian painter of contemporary genre scenes of life. Biography Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in the parish of Saint Maria, first child of the silversmith Alessandro Falca and ...

's style but with less irony and greater moralism. In the following years, his painting style became more detached and the commission of works about

Mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...

and

Religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

increased. Among other things, in 1778 he painted a series of 168 small''Ritratti di dogi'', ''dogaresse'', ''veneti patriarchi'', ''cardinali e pontefici'' in oil on copper for the bibliophile Maffeo Pinelli; those paintings went lost, even though some of them could be found in the antiques market. Later he adopted painting styles that somehow anticipated

neoclassicism Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was ...

: this is the case of the ''Trionfo della Croce'' and the monochrome angels painted for the

Scuola grande di San Giovanni Evangelista The Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista is a confraternity building located in the San Polo ''sestiere'' of the Italian city of Venice. Founded in the 13th century by a group of flagellants it was later to become one of the five '' Scuole G ...

and paintings for Chiesa di San Francesco della Vigna. Starting from the

1790s File:1790s montage.jpg, 420x420px, From top left, clockwise: Atlantic slave trade and abolitionism gain momentum over Europe and the Americas, as bans began to be enacted in countries such as Denmark-Norway (1803), the United Kingdom (1807), and ...

, he had a strong stylistic involution: this is the case of the ''Autoritratto con gli allievi Pedrini e Florian'' (1792). Of considerable importance is the fact that in 1771 he was appointed master of painting in the Venetian Academy, of which he also became president (1790). There he had, among his pupils, some painters that would become prominent of Venetian neoclassicism, such as

Lattanzio Querena 200px, The Deposition of Christ San Zanipolo Lattanzio Querena (1 November 1768, in Predella in Valle di Scalva – 10 July 1853) was an Italian painter, depicting historical and sacred subjects,Giovanni Carlo Bevilacqua, Natale Schiavoni and even

Francesco Hayez Francesco Hayez (; 10 February 1791 – 12 February 1882) was an Italian painter. He is considered one of the leading artists of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, and is renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories, and ...

. In 1796, he was appointed "inspector of public paintings in

" with the aim of reporting on the state of publicly owned paintings, a public office that he held even at the beginning of the French occupation Maggiotto died in

on 13 September 1805.

Scientific interests

Maggiotto also carried out some experiments and built some machines in the field of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

, and in particular

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

; he also wrote a few works about his experiences. Furthermore, according to what can be inferred from Maggiotto's testament and the

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

of one of his pupils, Giovanni Carlo Bevilacqua, Maggiotto invented and built some

telescopes A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...

and camerae obscurae. Thanks to his research, he was also appointed member of the

Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

The electric machine

In a letter to abbot

Giuseppe Toaldo Giuseppe Toaldo (Pianezze, 11 November 1719 - Padua, 11 July 1797) was an Italian Catholic priest and physicist. Biography Giuseppe Toaldo was born in 1719 in Pianezza near Vicenza. In his fourteenth year he entered the seminary of Padua, in ...

, Francesco Maggiotto explained his progress in the field of electricity and, in particular, in the development of a machine capable of generating electric discharges by rubbing (

triboelectric effect The triboelectric effect (also known as triboelectric charging) is a type of contact electrification on which certain materials become electrically charged after they are separated from a different material with which they were in contact. Rubb ...

). In the 18th century, the desire of scholars to carry out experiments and verify theories grew not only for research purposes, but also among students and, especially in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

, some workshops specialized in the construction of scientific equipment flourished. If needed or for lack of funds, as in the case of Italian scientist

Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi (28 October 1764 – 26 September 1852) was an Italian archdeacon, scientist, mathematician, political economist. He also wrote a book about pedagogy and invented the tonograph. Life Born at Altamura, in what is no ...

, the scholars had to build by themselves the scientific devices they needed. Maggiotto, in the letter, explains how he carried out countless tests and, together with his brother, he built many models of electric machines capable of releasing the " electrical fluid". His efforts, as well as those of other contemporary scholars, were to maximize the electric discharge in order to make the machine useful to

physicists A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

. Many tests had already been carried out, and various types of machines had been built which used cylinders or discs which, when rubbed with an external object, became charged with electrostatic energy and released very powerful sparks; this showed the

of the time that there was '' fluido elettrico'' (" electrical fluid"), as it was then called. Some models of electric machines coupled several cylinders or discs but this, according to Maggiotto, did not proportionally increase the electrostatic energy accumulated and therefore the intensity of the spark. Maggiotto noticed the excellent properties of

crystal A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituents (such as atoms, molecules, or ions) are arranged in a highly ordered microscopic structure, forming a crystal lattice that extends in all directions. In addition, macros ...

in generating electrostatic energy by rubbing, but a disk or cylinder made of crystal could not be built since there is no crystal of this size in nature and, even if there was, it would be too expensive. Maggiotto's idea, which improved the efficiency of the machine according to his own experiments, was to use a single disc or cylinder (rather than many), using multiple materials and in particular

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost South ...

for the real cylinder (the "wheel") with a diameter of ''30 oncie'', on whose circumference the crystals were fixed with screws. These crystals, during the movement of the wheel, rubbed against four ''strofinatori'', that is, bearings of eight

inches Measuring tape with inches The inch (symbol: in or ″) is a unit of length in the British imperial and the United States customary systems of measurement. It is equal to yard or of a foot. Derived from the Roman uncia ("twelfth"), ...

each, made up of ''crini'' (probably animal hair) covered with a very thin sheet of

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other with ...

(at the time commonly called ''oro cantarino''). Furthermore, these bearings were pressed against the surface of the wheel by means of springs. According to Maggiotto's experiments, this model of bearings was very efficient thanks to the particular insulating properties of the ''crini'' and his idea was copied by other developers of electric machines. The avbove bearings were connected to conducting materials (such as wires), in turn connected to some pots containing "tin sheets", whose purpose was to store the electrostatic energy produced by the machine. According to his experiments, the efficiency of the machine (and therefore the intensity of the electric discharge) was much greater than other machines and it achieved excellent results even with unfavorable environmental conditions such as the presence of high

humidity Humidity is the concentration of water vapor present in the air. Water vapor, the gaseous state of water, is generally invisible to the human eye. Humidity indicates the likelihood for precipitation, dew, or fog to be present. Humidity depe ...

in the

atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...

; this was due to the high electric resistivity of the ''crini'', used both in the bearings and for the insulation of conductors. According to Maggiotto, a similar machine could be built with a larger diameter as well as with a greater number of bearings and crystals, thus making the machine capable of generating more powerful electric discharges. This would make harder to operate the machine because of the greater necessary force; one way to overcome this drawback, according to Maggiotto, could be the use of

hydropower Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to Electricity generation, produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by energy transformation, converting the Pot ...

. Another advantage given by the machine is the ease of use and the fact that it could be easily repaired in case of breakdowns. The electric discharge generated and contained in the above pots was able to pierce "20 large sheets of carton paper, placed one above the other, which had the thickness of an inch and a half". Maggiotto understood that there is "no such a body in nature that does not entirely let the electrical fluid escape", i.e. all materials exhibit a certain degree of

electric resistance The electrical resistance of an object is a measure of its opposition to the flow of electric current. Its reciprocal quantity is , measuring the ease with which an electric current passes. Electrical resistance shares some conceptual parallels ...

and spread some electricity through the air and other means.

Works

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Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maggiotto, Francesco 1738 births 1805 deaths 18th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 19th-century Italian painters Painters from Venice Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia faculty 19th-century Italian male artists 18th-century Italian male artists