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The Wizard of Naples: Science and Celebrity in the Renaissance and Beyond

  • William Eamon

This chapter looks at the serendipitous encounter between the surgeon Leonardo Fioravanti (1517-1588) and the magus Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615) as a mirror reflecting a distinctively Renaissance phenomenon, one that has also gained a foothold in modern culture: scientific celebrity. Mention of it invites a third participant in the story, the contemporary mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), a Renaissance scientific celebrity more familiar to moderns. Renaissance celebrity, whether of artists, authors, or popes, was always to some degree a performance art. Each of the characters of the chapter became scientific celebrities that performed in different roles and different spaces: Della Porta the aristocrat in court culture, Fioravanti the popular healer in print culture, and Galileo the court favorite and hero of the new scientific virtuosi. By interweaving the lives of these three characters, so different from one another yet in their own ways each characteristically Renaissance, the chapter explores, by way of a story, the question of how Renaissance scientific celebrities were made and how being a celebrity shaped the practice of science.

  • Keywords:
  • Renaissance,
  • Magic,
  • Science,
  • Celebrity,
  • Secrets,
  • Della Porta,
  • Fioravanti,
  • Galileo,
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William Eamon

New Mexico State University, United States

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  • Publication Year: 2025
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  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

The Wizard of Naples: Science and Celebrity in the Renaissance and Beyond

Authors

William Eamon

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0836-9.04

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2025

Copyright Information

© 2025 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

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

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

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

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