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.
New Mexico State University, United States
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
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