The Death of a Naturalist: Knowledge and Community in Late Renaissance Italy

Abstract

In the spring of 1556 the sixteenth-century community of scholars engaged with natural history, one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving sciences of the century, lost one of its most important and beloved members. On May 4th of that year Luca Ghini (ca. 1490–1556), who had been the first physician to teach medicinal simples at the University of Bologna, died, leaving behind a widow and young children (Fig. 7.1). News of his death was not entirely unexpected since Ghini had been ailing for several months. They mourned the man and they commiserated with his family. Most importantly, they wondered how they could possibly replace this living repository of all the important and hard-won botanical knowledge. Ghini played a singularly authoritative role in establishing the significance of botany to sixteenth-century medicine. His death marked a turning point for this community.