Over the course of his long life as a publicist Della Porta became increasingly aware of the Hieroglyphica by Horapollo. Della Porta developed a peculiar way of using hieroglyphic images to develop, confirm, propagate, and memorize his ideas about, and practice of, natural magic. He took a thoroughly idiosyncratic view of hieroglyphs, one that was directed towards his practical goals as experimenter and natural magician. This chapter argues that Della Porta conceived of hieroglyphs as abbreviations or memory aids for recipes for practices in his natural magic, and as visualizations of instructions for action. Hieroglyphs function simultaneously as testimony of the foundations of natural magic—of universal sympathies and antipathies—and as their emblematic confirmation. In tandem with this, and over the years hieroglyphs became convenient rhetorical topoi that lent credibility to some of the key tenets of Della Porta’s natural magic, and in ever new combinations they were useful in organizing the memory. This essay treats key texts by Della Porta, Magiae naturalis libri IV (1558); De furtivis litterarum notis vulgo De ziferis libri IV (1563), L’arte del ricordare [1566); De humana physiognomia (1584, 1602); the second, expanded edition of the Magiae naturalis libri XX (1589); Phytognomonica (1588); and Villae (1592).
University of Vienna, Austria - ORCID: 0000-0003-3119-2749
Chapter Title
Fig-bulls, Bull-Cows, and Other Animals: The Vicissitudes of Renaissance Hieroglyphs in Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Natural Magic
Authors
Sergius Kodera
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0836-9.05
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2025
Copyright Information
© 2025 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
Hunting Secrets
Book Subtitle
Giovan Battista Della Porta and the Invention of Experimental Magic
Editors
Donato Verardi
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
168
Publication Year
2025
Copyright Information
© 2025 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0836-9
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0835-2
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0836-9
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0837-6
Series Title
Knowledge and its Histories
Series ISSN
3035-5974
Series E-ISSN
3035-5923