Fabio Colonna (called ''Linceo''; 1567 – 25 July 1640) was an Italian naturalist and

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

Biography

He was the son of Girolamo Colonna, a

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

and antique dealer who was also editor of the fragments of the Latin poet

Ennius Quintus Ennius (; c. 239 – c. 169 BC) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce, Apulia, (Ancient Calabria, ...

. As a youngster he became proficient in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

before attending the

University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...

, where he graduated in law in 1589. He suffered from

epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrical ...

, which prevented him from practicing law, so he turned to studying the ancient authors of medicine, botany and natural history. He noticed numerous errors and omissions in

Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of ''De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-vol ...

' '' Materia medica'', but his commentary on that work is now lost. In the period between 1606 and 1616, Colonna studied

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

, finding evidence for their organic origins. The publication of his first works on botany, such as ''De purpura'' made him a celebrity among naturalists and one of the first members of the

Accademia dei Lincei The Accademia dei Lincei (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rom ...

in Naples, which had been founded by

Federico Cesi Federico Angelo Cesi (; 26 February 1585 – 1 August 1630) was an Italian scientist, naturalist, and founder of the Accademia dei Lincei. On his father's death in 1630, he became briefly lord of Acquasparta. Biography Federico Cesi was ...

in 1612. In the following years, his academic activity at the Lincei was intense, including the writing of the ''Apiario'' and the ''Tesoro Messicano'' that the Lincei published in 1625 and 1628. Colonna became interested in the recently invented

telescope 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

microscope A microscope () is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisibl ...

, corresponding with

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

and other Lincean academics on astronomy. In 1625 he published two drawings, ''Apiarium'' and ''Melissographia'', regarding

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

s. Colonna was also interested in music, inventing a stringed,

meantone temperament Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, that is a tuning system, obtained by narrowing the fifths so that their ratio is slightly less than 3:2 (making them ''narrower'' than a perfect fifth), in order to push the thirds closer to pure. Me ...

instrument, the ''pentecontachordon'', having 50 strings in which the octave is divided into 31 parts and the tone into 5 parts. Colonna was a pupil of

Ferrante Imperato Ferrante Imperato (1525? – 1615?), an apothecary of Naples, published ''Dell'Historia Naturale'' (Naples 1599) and illustrated it with his own cabinet of curiosities displayed at Palazzo Gravina in Naples; the engraving became the first pict ...

and a friend of

Giambattista della Porta Giambattista della Porta (; 1535 – 4 February 1615), also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and Reformation. Giamba ...

and

Bartolomeo Maranta Bartolomeo Maranta, also Bartholomaeus Marantha (1500 – 24 March 1571) was an Italian physician, botanist, and literary theorist. The Marantaceae, a family of herbaceous perennials related to the gingers, are named after him. His name was also ...

Selected works

''Φυτοβασανος''
("Phytobasanos": "Torture of plants"), Naples, 1592. * ''Minus cognitarum ��*
''Minus cognitarum rariorumque nostro coelo orientium stirpium εκφρασις''
1616 (

Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, sitting "majestically on a urban arboretum." It is the "largest independently funded public library of scien ...

) *
''Minus cognitarum stirpium pars altera''
1616. Part 2. Includes (p. 85) ''Erucæ rutaceæ, eiusque chrysalidis & papilionis observatio'' (Linda Hall Library) * ''Ekphrasis altera'', Rome, 1616. It contains 156 drawings by Colonna himself as well as two appendices: ''De Purpura ''and ''De glossopetris dissertatio'', where Colonna makes an argument in favor of the organic origin of the

glossopetra Sharks continually shed their teeth; some Carcharhiniformes shed approximately 35,000 teeth in a lifetime, replacing those that fall out. There are four basic types of shark teeth: dense flattened, needle-like, pointed lower with triangular upp ...

e.
''Purpura''
1616. About

Tyrian purple Tyrian purple ( grc, πορφύρα ''porphúra''; la, purpura), also known as Phoenician red, Phoenician purple, royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye, is a reddish-purple natural dye. The name Tyrian refers to Tyre, Lebanon. It is ...

.
''La sambuca lincea, ovvero dell'istromento [sic] musico perfetto''
Naples, 1618 (''The Lincean sambuca, in other words about the perfect musical instrument''), the construction of the ''pentecontachordon''.
"De glossopetris"
In: ''De corporibus marinis lapidescentibus quae defossa reperiuntur, auctore Augustino Scilla – Addita dissertatione Fabii Columnae De glossopetris'', Rome, 1747

Sources

The first version of this text was partially or fully derived from the projec
Mille anni di scienza in Italia
and edited by the Istituto Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze. It is released under the Creative Commons License CC-BY-3.0.

Notes and references

External links

*
Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries
High resolution images of works by and/or portraits of Fabio Colonna * Colonna's (1616
''De purpura ab animali testaceo fusa''
– digital facsimile from the

* Colonna's (1616
''Minus cognitarum stirpium''
– digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library * Colonna's (1616
''Minus cognitarum rariorumque nostro coelo orientium stirpium''
– digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library {{DEFAULTSORT:Colonna, Fabio 16th-century Italian botanists Italian paleontologists 1567 births 1640 deaths Members of the Lincean Academy 17th-century Italian botanists

Biography

Selected works

Sources

Further reading

Notes and references

See also

External links