Padre Antonio Piaggio (1713 – ca. 1796/7) was an Italian priest and scholar, who invented a machine to unroll carbonized

scrolls A scroll (from the Old French ''escroe'' or ''escroue''), also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Structure A scroll is usually partitioned into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyru ...

from

Herculaneum Herculaneum is an ancient Rome, ancient Roman town located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of ...

in the 1750s, and spent the years 1779-1795 recording the activity of

Vesuvius Mount Vesuvius ( ) is a Somma volcano, somma–stratovolcano located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, about east of Naples and a short distance from the shore. It is one of several volcanoes forming the Campanian volcanic arc. Vesuv ...

in a diary, for Sir William Hamilton.

Herculaneum papyri

Abbot Piaggios machine Device-to-unroll-papyri 1756 Vatican

In 1752, the

Villa of the Papyri The Villa of the Papyri (, also known as ''Villa dei Pisoni'' and in early excavation records as the ''Villa Suburbana'') was an ancient Roman Empire, Roman villa in Herculaneum, in what is now Ercolano, southern Italy. It is named after its un ...

was discovered in the city of Herculaneum, having been buried during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rolled papyri scrolls had been carbonised and then preserved by the hot volcanic deposits, and many efforts were made to try and unroll and decipher them. Piaggio, who was a priest and curator of manuscripts in the

Vatican Vatican may refer to: Geography * Vatican City, an independent city-state surrounded by Rome, Italy * Vatican Hill, in Rome, namesake of Vatican City * Ager Vaticanus, an alluvial plain in Rome * Vatican, an unincorporated community in the ...

, was brought to Naples to assist, and invented a simple machine to unroll the manuscripts using silk threads attached to the edge of the papyrus. The unrolling was partially successful, but proved to be rather destructive for the fragile scrolls, yet vastly improving on the prevailing practice of eviscerating or scraping the scrolls.

Vesuvius

From September 1779 to August 1795, Piaggio kept a series of diaries for Sir William Hamilton, in which he recorded daily observations and sketches of Vesuvius, which he could see from his residence at Madonna Pugliano near Resina, on the western side of Vesuvius and the

Bay of Naples A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

. These diaries were presented by Hamilton to Sir

Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English Natural history, naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the European and American voyages of scientific exploration, 1766 natural-history ...

, and then presented by Lady Dorothea Banks to the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 1805. The diaries remain in the Royal Society archives today.

Sketches and engravings

One of Piaggio's sketches of the 1779 eruption of Vesuvius was used by Hamilton as the basis for an illustration in the lavish book 'Campi Phlegraei'; and a number of Piaggio's engravings remain in circulation. Hamilton used another of Piaggio's illustrations in a paper describing the 1794 eruption of Vesuvius. The caption records that Piaggio drew the sketch from Resina ''during the force of the eruption'', but that the proximity to the activity meant that it was incomplete since Piaggio's friends had had to rescue him ''in the midst of a shower of cinders and sulphureous ashes''. The

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

holds a drawing by

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (baptized 23 March 16095 May 1664) was an Italian Baroque painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school (painting), Genoese school. He is best known now for his etchings, and as the inventor of the printm ...

that was once from Piaggio's collections.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piaggio, Antonio 1713 births 1790s deaths Year of death uncertain 18th-century scholars 18th-century Italian Roman Catholic priests