Jacopo Dondi dall'Orologio (1290–1359), also known as Jacopo de' Dondi, was a doctor, astronomer and clock-maker active in

Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...

, Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. He was the father of Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio. Jacopo Dondi wrote on a number of subjects, including surgery, pharmacology, astrology and natural science.

Life

Astronomical clock by Novello Dondi Padova XV century

Jacopo Dondi was born in

Chioggia Chioggia (; , ; ) is a coastal town and (municipality) of the Metropolitan City of Venice in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Geography The town is located on a small island at the southern entrance to the Venetian Lagoon about sou ...

, the son of a doctor named Isacco. He attended the

University of Padua The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...

and was elected municipal physician in Chioggia in 1313. In about 1327 he married Zaccarota Centrago or Centraco, with whom he had eight children; the second-born child,

Giovanni Giovanni may refer to: * Giovanni (name), an Italian male given name and surname * Giovanni (meteorology), a Web interface for users to analyze NASA's gridded data * ''Don Giovanni'', a 1787 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend of ...

, became famous as the builder of the

Astrarium An astrarium, also called a planetarium, is a medieval astronomical clock made in the 14th century by Italian engineer and astronomer Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio. The Astrarium was modeled after the Solar System and, in addition to counting tim ...

. On 28 February 1334, Jacopo received

Venetian Venetian often means from or related to: * Venice, a city in Italy * Veneto, a region of Italy * Republic of Venice (697–1797), a historical nation in that area Venetians might refer to: * Masters of Venetian painting in 15th-16th centuries * ...

citizenship from the

Doge Doge, DoGE or DOGE may refer to: Internet culture * Doge (meme), an Internet meme primarily associated with the Shiba Inu dog breed ** Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency named after the meme ** Kabosu (dog), the dog portrayed in the original Doge image ...

Francesco Dandolo Monument to Doge Francesco Dandolo Francesco Dandolo (died 1339) was the 52nd Doge of Venice. He ruled from 1329 to 1339. During his reign Venice began its policy of extending its territory on the Italian mainland. Family The Dandolo fa ...

. In 1342 he moved to Padova, where he became a professor of medicine and of astronomy at the University. He supervised the construction of a large public clock with a dial, commissioned by Prince

Ubertino I da Carrara Ubertino I (or II) da Carrara (also ''Uberto'', ''Umberto'' or ''Umbertino''; died 29 March 1345), called Novello and better known as Ubertinello, was the Lord of Padua from 1338 until his death. Tomb of Ubertino da Carrara Youth Ubertinello wa ...

. He may also have contributed to its design. The clock was installed in the tower of the Palazzo del Capitaniato of Padua in 1344. There is some evidence that it indicated and struck the hours from 1 to 24, and also that it displayed the age and phase of the moon and the place of the sun in the zodiac. Both the tower and the clock were destroyed in 1390, when the Milanese stormed the palace. A replica of the clock is in the

Torre dell'Orologio, Padua Torre dell'Orologio is a clock tower located in the Piazza (Plaza) Dei Signori and positioned between the ''Palazzo (Palace) del Capitanio'' and the ''Palazzo dei Camerlenghi'' in Padua, or Padova, Italy. It is also referred to as the astronomica ...

, which was built in 1428. He died in Padua between 29 April and 26 May 1359, and was buried outside the Baptistry of San Giovanni, Padua.

Written works

The most celebrated work of Jacopo Dondi is the ''Aggregator'' or ''Promptuarium medicinae ed Enumeratio remediorum simplicium et compositorum'', completed in 1355 and conserved in manuscript in the Vatican (''Vat. lat.'' 2462, 14th century), the Collegio di Spagna, Bologna (MS 153, dated 1425) and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (''Lat.'' 6973 and 6974). It was published in Strasburg in about 1470 by the "R-printer" ( Adolph Rusch) and in Venice in 1481 by Michele Manzolo. It was reprinted in Venice in 1542 by Tommaso and Giovanni Maria Giunta, and again in 1576. The section on surgery, ''Enumeratio remediorum simplicium et compositorum ad affectus omnes qui a chirurgo curantur'', was included in the ''Chirurgia: de chirurgia scriptores optimi quique veteres et recentiores'' of

Conrad Gesner Conrad Gessner (; ; 26 March 1516 – 13 December 1565) was a Old Swiss Confederacy, Swiss physician, natural history, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist. Born into a poor family in Zürich, Switzerland, his father and teachers quickly ...

, printed at Zurich in 1555 by his cousins Andreas and Iacobus Gesner, and in the ''Thesaurus chirurgiae'' of Peter Uffenbach (1610). The ''Aggregator'' should not be confused with the illustrated ''Herbarius'' of

Peter Schöffer Peter Schöffer or Petrus Schoeffer () was an early German printer, who studied in Paris and worked as a manuscript copyist in 1451 before apprenticing with Johannes Gutenberg and joining Johann Fust, a goldsmith, lawyer, and money lender. Amon ...

(Mainz, 1484; subsequently reprinted at Venice, in Latin and in Italian with the title ''Herbolario''), which was subtitled ''Aggregator practicus de simplicibus''. In natural science, Dondi published in about 1355 a ''Tractatus de causa salsedinis aquarum et modo conficiendi sal artificiale ex aquis Thermalibus Euganeis'' (Biblioteca del Seminario, Padova, ms. 4540), which was included in Giunti's ''De balneis omnia quae extant apud Graecos, Latinos et Arabas'' (1553), together with ''De fontibus calidis agri Patavini consideratio'' by his son Giovanni. Dondi's treatise on the tides, ''De fluxu atque refluxu maris'', probably dates from between 1355 and 1359. It was frequently cited in the 14th and 15th centuries; the ''De fluxu ac refluxu maris subtilis et erudita disputatio'' of Federico Delfino (1559) plagiarises it, as does the anonymous 16th-century manuscript ''Questio de estu sive de fluxu et refluxu maris per sex horas'' in the Biblioteca Casanatense of Rome. Dondi is credited with having painted the first topographic map of the territory of Padua. Now lost, it was used by his son Giovanni in the negotiations following the war of 1372–73 between Venice and Padua, and is described as "a map by the hand of Jacomo de' Dondi, physician, who was a most subtle man in the art of painting" ("''una carta facta per man de un maistro Jacomo de' Dondi fisico, el qual fo subtilissimo homo in l'arte de pinger''"). Dondi made an adaptation to the meridian of Padua of the astrological ''Tabulae de motibus planetarum'' or ''Toletanae'', the

alfonsine tables The ''Alfonsine Tables'' (, ), sometimes spelled ''Alphonsine Tables'', provided data for computing the position of the Sun, Moon and planets relative to the fixed stars. The tables were named after Alfonso X of Castile, who sponsored their cr ...

attributed to Alfonso X el Sabio, King of Castile. The work was in the possession of Giovanni in 1389, and was cited and praised by Beldomandi in his ''Canones de motibus corporum supercoelestium'' (1424), but was later lost. It has also been suggested that it was the work not of Jacopo but of one of his sons, either Gabriele or Giovanni. In his ''Ad inveniendum primum ascendens nativitatis'', preserved in manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (1468; ''Canon. misc.'' 436) and the Osterreichische Nationalbibliotek, Vienna, (15th century; ''Lat.'' 5208), Dondi showed that the

ascendant The ascendant (Asc, Asc or As) or rising sign is the astrological sign on the eastern horizon when the person was born. It signifies a person's physical appearance, and awakening consciousness. Because the ascendant is specific to a particula ...

at the time of birth was the same as the

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air c ...

of the moon at the time of conception. A short historical work preserved in manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (''Marc. lat.'' X, 34 (3129)) and the Biblioteca del Seminario of Padua (MS. 11) dates from about 1334. Dondi also wrote on grammar. Bernardino Scardeone records a manuscript copied in Venice in 1372 of Dondi's ''expositiones'' on the ''Magnae derivationes'' of Uguccione da Pisa. Thought to be lost, the work survives in manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, (301), the Bodleian (''Canon. misc.'' 201) and the Biblioteca universitaria of Pavia (''Aldini'' 258).

Life

Written works

References

Further reading