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Giambattista della Porta
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Giambattista della Porta (1535? - 1615), also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, and John Baptist Porta was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation. Born in that city to the Italian noble Nardo Antonio della Porta, he was the third of four sons, second to survive childhood. Giambattista della Porta spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavors.
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Encyclopedia
Giambattista della Porta (1535? - 1615), also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, and John Baptist Porta was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation. Born in that city to the Italian noble Nardo Antonio della Porta, he was the third of four sons, second to survive childhood. Giambattista della Porta spent the majority of his life on scientific endeavors. He benefited from an informal education of tutors and visits from renowned scholars. His most famous work, first published in 1558, was entitled Magiae Naturalis (Natural Magic). In this book he covered a variety of the subjects he had investigated, including the study of: occult philosophy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology, and natural philosophy.
Childhood
Giambattista della Porta’s childhood was wonderfully privileged as he was able to receive the best education possible. His father, Nardo Antonio della Porta, had a thirst for learning, a trait he would pass onto all of his children. He surrounded himself amongst distinguished men and entertained the likes of philosophers, mathematicians, poets, and musicians. The atmosphere of the house resembled much of an academy for his sons. The learned circle of friends he enclosed himself in stimulated the boys as the visitors tutored and mentored them, under strict guidance of their father. He took an active interest in custom tailoring the education his boys would receive. Their education was extremely well rounded, surely moulding Giambattista into the Renaissance man that he was to become.
While all the brothers were extremely gifted with an affinity for the sciences and mathematics, all of the bothers were extremely interested in the arts, music in particular. Despite their interest none of them possessed any sort of talent for it, but they did not allow that to stifle their progress in learning of theory. They were all accepted into the Scuola di Pitagora, a highly exclusive academy of musicians. Apparently the pure impressiveness of their intellect was enough to allow three tone-deaf mathematicians into a school for the musically gifted. The status of the family as a symbol of knowledge and intellectual growth surely helped in their acceptance as well.
More aware of their social position than the idea that his sons could have professions in science, Nardo Antonio was raising the boys more as gentlemen; very well rounded gentlemen at that. Therefore, the boys struggled with singing, as that was considered a courtly accomplishment of gentlemen. They were taught to dance, ride equestrian, to take part and perform well in tournaments and games, and dress well so they could look good doing all these noble activities. The training gave della Porta, at least earlier in his life, a taste for the finer aspects of his privileged living, where he surrounded himself in noble company and lavish things. This kind of lifestyle, the façade and showmanship involved in presenting one’s self carried with Giambattista throughout his life.
Scientific disciplines
In 1563, Della Porta published De Furtivis Literarum Notis, a work about cryptography. In it he described the first known digraphic substitution cipher, and foreshadowed the concept of polyalphabetic substitution. Charles J. Mendelsohn commented:
- "He was, in my opinion, the outstanding cryptographer of the Renaissance. Some unknown who worked in a hidden room behind closed doors may possibly have surpassed him in general grasp of the subject, but among those whose work can be studied he towers like a giant."'
In 1586 Della Porta published a work on physiognomy. This influenced the Swiss Pastor Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801). Della Porta wrote extensively on a wide spectrum of subjects throughout his life -- for instance, an agricultural encyclopædia entitled Villa, as well as works on meteorology, optics, and astronomy.
In later life, Della Porta collected rare specimens and grew exotic plants. His work Phytognomica lists plants according to their geographical location.
His private museum was visited by travellers and was one the earliest examples of natural history museums. It inspired the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher to begin a similar, even more renowned, collection in Rome.
Pioneering scientific society
Della Porta was the founder of a scientific society called the Academia Secretorum Naturae (Accademia dei Segreti). This group was more commonly knows as the Otiosi, (Men of Leisure). Founded sometime before 1580, the Otiosi were one of the first scientific societies in Europe and their aim was to study the "secrets of nature." Any person applying for membership had to demonstrate they had made a new discovery in the natural sciences.
The Academia Secretorum Naturae was compelled to disband when its members were suspected of dealing with the Occult. Della Porta was summoned to Rome by Pope Paul V. Though he personally emerged from the meeting unscathed, the Academia Secretorum Naturae disbanded. Despite this incident, Della Porta remained religiously devout and became a lay Jesuit brother.
Della Porta was the inspiration for the founding another society devoted to scientific study, The Academy of the Lynxes, established in 1603 by Federico Cesi, concerned with discovering the truths behind the natural sciences. The founders chose the lynx as a symbol of the academy because cats had long been believed to have particularly sharp eyesight. A generation later, Della Porta joined this academy in 1610. Galileo Galilei became a member in 1611.
Technological contributions
His interest in a variety of disciplines resulted in the technological advances of the following: Agriculture, Hydraulics, Military Engineering, Instruments, Pharmacology. He published a book in 1606 on raising water by the force of the air. In 1608 he published a book on military engineering.
Additionally, della Porta perfected the camera obscura. In a later edition of his Natural Magic, Della Porta described this device as having a convex lens. Though he was not the inventor, the popularity of this work helped spread knowledge of it. He compared the shape of the human eye to the lens in his camera obscura, and provided an easily understandable example of how light could bring images into the eye.
Della Porta also claimed to have invented the first telescope, however, he died while preparing the treatise ("De telescopiis")in support of his claim (his efforts were also overshadowed by Galileo Galilei's invention of the "telescopium" in 1609).
Religious complications
A Catholic, della Porta was examined by the Inquisition in the years prior to 1578. He was forced to disband his Academia Secretorum Naturae, and in 1592 his philosophical works were prohibited from further publication by the Church; the ban was lifted in 1598. Porta's involvement with the inquisition puzzles historians due his active participation in charitable Jesuit works by 1585. A possible explanation for this lies in Porta's personal relations with Fra Paolo Sarpi after 1579.
Playwright
The 17 theatrical works that have survived from a total of perhaps 21 or 23 works comprise 14 comedies, one tragicomedy, one tragedy and one liturgical drama.
Although they belong to the lesser-known tradition of the commedia erudita rather than the commedia dell'arte -- which means they were written out as entire scripts instead of being improvised from a scenario -- Della Porta's comedies are eminently performable. While there are obvious similarities between some of the characters in Della Porta's comedies and the masks of the commedia dell'arte, it should be borne in mind that the characters of the commedia erudita are uniquely created by the text in which they appear, unlike the masks, which remain constant from one scenario to another. Indeed, the masks of the improvised theatre evolved as stylised versions of recurring character types in the written comedies. By the time Carlo Goldoni started writing new scripts in the 18th Century, the "improvised" comedy had become tired and predictable.
Works
Natural Magic 1558 expanded to 20 books 1589. English translation 1658. Available online at De furtivis Literarum Notis (1563) On secret codes and CryptographyVilla (1583-92) An agricultural encyclopaediaDe humana physiognomonia libri IIII (1586) On PhysiognomyDe refractione optices (1589) On OpticsElementorum curvilineorum libri duo (1601)De aeris transmutanionbus (1609) On MeteorologyDe distillatione (1610) Della Porta's chemical experiments and observations.
Further reading
- Clubb, Louise George (1965)
Giambattista Della Porta, Dramatist. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
External links
- . Selected pages scanned from the original work. Historical Anatomies on the Web. US National Library of Medicine.
- Burns, Paul An Illustrated Chronology
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