Ulisse Aldrovandi, Bologna

Ulisse Aldrovandi was born in Bologna, Italy On September 11, 1522 to parents Teseo Aldrovandi and Veronica Marescalhci. While Ulisse's father was a notary of the secretary of the Senate of Bologna, his mother was from a wealthy noble family. His father died young, when Ulisse was six, and his mother raised him and his five siblings in the district of Vivaro. Ulisse demonstrated an aptitude for learning at a young age, and when he was fourteen was sent to Brescia to apprentice with various important merchants. During his young adult life, Ulisse traveled extensively, participating in pilgrimmages in Spain, France and Jerusalem. Throughout his travels, he took notes on the various natural specimens he encountered, and gradually fostered a love for the natural world. Ulisse married twice, first to the wealthy and beautiful Paula Macchiavelli, who died nineteen months after their marriage, and second to Madonna Francesca, who bore him two children.

In his later life, Ulisse was regarded as one of the most prominent naturalists in Bologna, Italy. Throughtout his life, he collected natural specimens and works of art, all of which became a part of his personal collection. Eventually, Ulisse converted his personal collection into a private museum. In 1561, he became the first full professor of natural science at Bologna University. While at the University, he helped to create a museum primarily dedicated to zoology. In 1574, he was appointed as chief physician at the university, due to his continued interest in the practicality of science and its medicinal uses. Ulisse Aldrovandi was also an accomplished artist, and painted many images that were eventually transformed into the illustrations that appear in his writings. His Opera Omnia is a set of thirteen volumes of natural history, dealing with subjects such as orinthology, metals, insects, and monsters.

During his life, he published three volumes of natural history devoted to birds (1599-1601), and one on insects (1602). The remaining volumes were published posthumously between 1605 and 1677 in Bologna, Italy. Ulisse Aldrovandi died in 1605, due to long lasting complications from a kidney disease. In 1796, thirty four of his manuscripts were removed from the university by commissaries of the Napoleonic army. The manuscripts were returned in part in 1815. It is possible, then, that the thirteen volume Opera Omnia might have been at the University of Bologna for the two hundred years until they entered the possession of the next owner, Freidrich Carl Bauermeister, a rare book dealer and collector based in Glasgow, Scotland. Most of Aldrovandi's original manuscripts and illustrations currently reside in the University of Bologna.

The first edition printing dates of the volumes are as follows: Volume I (Orinthology) 1599; Volume II (Orinthology) 1600; Volume III (Insects) 1602; Volume IV (Orinthology) 1603; Volume V (Mollusca, Crustacea, Testacea, and Zoophytes) 1606; Volume VI (Fishes) 1613; Volume VII (Solid-hoofed Quadrupeds) 1616; Volume VIII (Bisulcated Quadrupeds) 1621; Volume IX (Oviparous Quadruapeds) 1637; Volume X (Serpents and Dragons) 1640; Volume XI (Monsters) 1642; Volume XII (Minerals and Mining) 1648; Volume XIII (Dendrology) 1668.

Sources:

Guiseppe Olmi, "Il collezionismo scientifico," in Il teatro della natura di Ulisse Aldrovandi edited by Raffaella Simili (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2001), 20.

Huxley, Robert, ed., The Great Naturalists (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 59-63.

Sherman Bishop, "Aldrovandi's Natural History," University of Rochester Library Bulletin (Rochester: University of Rochester Library, 1950).

Ulisse Aldrovandi, Aldrovandi on Chickens, trans. L. R. Lind (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963).

Image courtesy of Museo di Palazzo Poggi, accessed March 6, 2014.

http://www.museopalazzopoggi.unibo.it//poggi_eng/palazzo/foto/prot