Giovanni Fontana, also known as Johannes de Fontana ( – c. 1455), was a fifteenth-century Italian physician and engineer. He was born in Venice in the 1390s and 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 ...

, where he received his degree in arts in 1418 and his degree in medicine in 1421. University records list him as "Master John, son of Michael de la Fontana". His most famous promoter at the university was the scholastic Paul of Venice. He tells us that the Doge of Venice sent him to Brescia to deliver a message to the condottiere Francesco Carmagnola. He was also employed as the municipal physician by the city of

Udine Udine ( ; ; ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in northeastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Carnic Alps. It is the capital of the Province of Udine, Regional decentralization entity ...

Works

Fontana composed treatises on a diverse array of topics, including measurement of heights or depths by falling stones. We have early works of his on water-clocks (with wheels), sand-clocks and measurement. Fontana studied trigonometric measurements, mentioned in ''De trigono balistario'', and through his own designed instrument, also explained in a larger treatise, however, apparently lost. He wrote a treatise on perspective, and showed it to the painter Jacopo Bellini. Grafton notes "Modern scholars often note that early engineers did not supply formal working drawings of their devices, but represented them in real time, functioning, in a way that did not give away their secrets but could appeal to patrons. Fontana, however, makes a superb exception to this rule. ... He drew not only male and female devils inspiring terror in real time by their fearsome appendages, but also the underlying mechanisms, which he laid out with the abstracting brilliance of a fifteenth-century Giacometti or Max Ernst. ... Fontana insisted that he was no magus. When witnesses at Padua exclaimed that a torpedo he had designed must run by diabolic power, he refuted them with contempt: the device was purely mechanical, as befitted a maker who was also a master of both medieval Archimedean statics and optics and of Renaissance engineering craft."

Bellicorum instrumentorum liber

Fontana composed one of the earliest Renaissance technological treatises, ''Bellicorum instrumentorum liber''. His machine book contains siege engines and fantastic inventions such as a

magic lantern The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that uses pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lens (optics), lenses, and a light source. ...

and a rocket-propelled bird, fish, and rabbit. Fontana also built a 4-wheeled "bike" with rope connected by gears. Sparavigna 2013 notes, "He illustrates the designs of musical instruments such as mechanical organs (Puerilia) and masks, keys and locks, warships, double mirrors, stoves and surgical instruments. The code contains a part dedicated to hydraulic projects, public fountains, systems of water distribution, experiments with siphons, and also alembics and alchemical vessels for two or more liquids. According to 0,6 this manuscript shows that Fontana aimed to investigate a series of devices from ancient books of mathematicians and naturalists such as

Archimedes Archimedes of Syracuse ( ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Greek mathematics, mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and Invention, inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse, Sicily, Syracuse in History of Greek and Hellenis ...

Heron Herons are long-legged, long-necked, freshwater and coastal birds in the family Ardeidae, with 75 recognised species, some of which are referred to as egrets or bitterns rather than herons. Members of the genus ''Botaurus'' are referred to as bi ...

Philo Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian J ...

, and even

Ovid Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...

and

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

, and the Arab writers, mainly from

Al-Kindi Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī (; ; ; ) was an Arab Muslim polymath active as a philosopher, mathematician, physician, and music theorist Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understandin ...

, to his contemporary artists and craftsmen."

Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum

In the book ''Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum'' (Secret of the treasure-room of experiments in man's imagination), written ca. 1430, Fontana described

mnemonic A mnemonic device ( ), memory trick or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember. It makes use of e ...

machines, written in his cypher. At least ''Bellicorum instrumentorum liber'' and this book used a cryptographic system, described as a simple, rational cipher, based on signs without letters or numbers. It has been suggested that some illustrations slightly resemble Voynich illustrations. During this time he also met with the Count of Carmagnola.

References

External links

''Bellicorum instrumentorum liber'' at the Bavarian State Library

* ttps://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10023795x/f15.item Complete scans of ''Secretum de Thesauro'' BNF NAL 635 {{DEFAULTSORT:Fontana, Giovanni 1390s births 1455 deaths 15th-century Italian engineers 15th-century Italian physicians Venetian engineers Military technology books Italian male writers Medieval military writers 15th-century Venetian writers Venetian Renaissance humanists Physicians from the Republic of Venice

Works

Bellicorum instrumentorum liber

Secretum de thesauro experimentorum ymaginationis hominum

See also

References

External links