Michele Mercati

Michele Mercati (* April 6, 1541 in San Miniato, † June 25, 1593 in Rome ) was an Italian polymath.

Trained was the son of a physician at the University of Pisa. His eponymous grandfather belonged to the Florentine humanist Marsilio Ficino circle around. Important teacher was Andreas Caesalpinus. Mercati studied medicine and philosophy. He was also interested in natural history, mineralogy, paleontology, and botany. During the reign of the Popes Pius V, Gregory XIII. , Sixtus V and Clement VIII he had now apostolic prothonotary, as prefect responsible for the papal gardens. From the previously existing garden of medicinal plants he created during the reign of Pius V. the Botanical Gardens of the Vatican. He wrote a book, The Museum of Stones, Metallotheca Vaticana, his areas of interest, which was not published until 1717. The illustrations for this contributed to the engraver Eisenhoit of Warburg. Here he described the Vatican collection of " art and marvels ."

Mercati collected, often as a travel companion of Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini (later Clement VIII ), prehistoric stone tools, fossils and minerals. The first scientist he recognized, not least because of his classical education, his access to the Vatican Library and the Vatican collection of artifacts from Asia and Africa, stone tools as such. He described first flint arrowheads, stone axes and stone blades. His collection was considered as the largest and most important of its kind, but went under after his death and is only deducible from the catalog. The British archaeologist David L. Clarke introduced him to the importance for archeology on a par with Gerolamo Cardano for mathematics, Andreas Vesalius of Anatomy, Galileo Galilei of Physics and Nicolaus Copernicus in astronomy. Mercati reported on ancient statues and their find circumstances and initiated the re-erection of the Lateran obelisk. He promoted artists such as the paderbornischen engraver Anthony Eisenhoit, in which he gave 130 stitches in order.

Works

  • Metallotheca. Opus posthumum. Rome 1719 (online) in HathiTrust.
Pope Clement VIII Protonotary apostolic Anton Eisenhoit Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Integrated Authority File
569729
de