Marble Busts and Fish Fossils

Nuncius ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-483
Author(s):  
Elena Canadelli
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
The Public ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Natural History Collection ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
University Of Padua ◽  
The University

The historical catalogs of the museum collections contain a wealth of information for historians seeking to reconstruct their contents, how they were displayed and the ways in which they were used. This paper will present the complete transcription of a draft catalog that was prepared in 1797 for the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities of the University of Padua. Conserved in the university’s Museum of Geology and Paleontology, the catalog was the first to be compiled of the museum, which was established in 1733 thanks to the donation by Antonio Vallisneri Jr. of his father Antonio Vallisneri Sr.’s collection of antiquities and natural history. The catalog was compiled by the custodian of the museum, the herbalist and amateur naturalist Bartolomeo Fabris. It is of great interest because it provides a record of the number and nature of the pieces conserved in the museum at a time when natural history and archeology collections were still undivided. It also provides indications as to how such collections were arranged for display in the public halls of a university at the end of the eighteenth century. Based on this catalog, with additional information drawn from other manuscript and published sources and museum catalogs from the 1830s conserved in various institutes at the University of Padua, it is possible to reconstruct the contents and layout of a significant late 18th-century natural history collection.

The Public and Economic Activities of the Hִatim Family of Istanbul: A Chapter in the History of the Jewish Leadership in Istanbul and Jerusalem in the 19th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-127
Author(s):  
Leah Bornstein-Makovetsky
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Elite ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

This article discusses the biographies and economic and public activities of the Ḥatim family in Istanbul in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century. Most of the attention is focused on R. Shlomo Ḥatim and his son Yitsḥak, who were members of the Jewish elite in Istanbul and settled in Jerusalem at the ends of their lives. R. Shlomo, who is said to have served the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul, settled in Jerusalem more than ten years before the leaders of the Jewish economic elite in Istanbul were executed in the 1820s. His son, surviving this purge, followed much later, immigrating to Israel in 1846, but died immediately thereafter. This article provides insights into the business activities of the Ḥatim family, as well as the activities of Yitsḥak Ḥatim as an Ottoman official in Istanbul. I also discuss two more generations of this family, considered an elite, privileged one, and that was highly esteemed among well-known rabbis in the Ottoman Empire. I also discuss the ties that developed between the communities of Istanbul and Jerusalem in the first half of the 19th century as a result of initiatives of officials in Istanbul and of immigration from Istanbul to Jerusalem.

scholarly journals Art. XIX.—The Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew Manuscripts in the Hunterian Library in the University of Glasgow

1899 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 739-756
Author(s):  
T. H. Weir
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Natural History Collection ◽  
The University ◽  
William Hunter

Dr. William Hunter (d. 1783) bequeathed to the University of Glasgow, along with his Natural History Collection, a library containing about twelve thousand volumes of printed books and six hundred manuscripts. The latter were catalogued by G. Haenel, in his Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum, Leipzig, 1830, columns 786–798. In regard to the Oriental manuscripts, however, he frequently does no more than state in what languages they are written, and that not always correctly. Thanks to the courtesy of the Keeper of the Museum, who gave every facility of access to the cases, the following is an emended list of the Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew manuscripts. With the exception of No. 7, none of these is written on vellum.

scholarly journals The Physics Cabinet of the University of Padua. At the crossroads between Veneto and Europe

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Fanny Marcon ◽  
Giulio Peruzzi ◽  
Sofia Talas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
International Scientific Community ◽  
International Dimension ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Padua ◽  
The University ◽  
Material Evidence

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, new lectures in natural philosophy based on direct and immediate demonstrations began to spread through Europe. Within this context, a chair of experimental philosophy was created at the University of Padua in 1738, and the new professor, Giovanni Poleni, established a Cabinet of Physics, which became very well known in eighteenth-century Europe. In the following two centuries, Poleni’s successors continued to acquire thousands of instruments used for teaching and research, which today are held at the Museum of the History of Physics of the University of Padua. The present paper describes the main peculiarities of the collection, comprising instruments from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. We also discuss the current acquisition policy of the museum, aimed at collecting material evidence of the research and teaching activities in physics that are carried out in Padua today. We will outline both the local peculiarities of the collection and its international dimension, based on the contacts that have been established throughout the centuries between Padua and the international scientific community. Some aspects of the circulation of scientific knowledge in Europe and beyond will thus also emerge.

Cassandra Fedele

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Robin
Keyword(s):  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
University Of Padua ◽  
The University ◽  
Female Scholar ◽  
Biographical Tradition

Cassandra Fedele (b. 1465–d. 1558) was the most renowned female scholar of Latin and Greek in Europe by 1500. On her death she left a book of 121 Latin letters and three orations, published posthumously in 1636. She was born to citizen-class parents Angelo Fedele and Barara Leoni in Venice, neither of them scholars. Her father hired a Servite friar, Gasparino Borro, to teach her Latin and Greek. She delivered her first public oration in Latin at the University of Padua in 1487: published in Modena in 1487, Nuremberg in 1488, and Venice in 1489. Fedele delivered her second Latin oration before the doge Agostino Barbarigo and the Venetian senate in 1487. After her marriage to the physician Gian-Maria Mappelli, she disappeared from the public arena until 1556 when she delivered an oration in honor of Queen Bona Sforza of Poland on her arrival in Venice. The biographical tradition attests to her having written poetry and a book titled Ordo scientiarum (The order of the sciences) but no trace of this work survives.

Notes on the typification of several chameleon taxa (Sauria: Chamaeleonidae)

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-117
Author(s):  
Charles Klaver
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Type Locality ◽  
Type Material ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
History Museums

Abstract The obscure or dubious designation of the name-bearing type(s) and hence the type locality of three valid chameleon taxa, viz. Brookesia superciliaris, Calumma fallax and Trioceros schubotzi, is researched and clarified. It concerns type-material of the natural history museums of Berlin, London and Paris. In the appendix additional information as to the presence of name-bearing types in various museum collections is presented to amend the checklist of Glaw (2015).

Wykładowcy prawa rzymskiego w Oksfordzie i w Cambridge w XVIII wieku

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Łukasz Jan Korporowicz
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
University Education ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The University

The article contains characteristics of the fourteen professors who gained their appointment to the Regius Chair of Civil Law in Oxford and Cambridge in the 18th century. Their academic careers as well as their many out-of-academia duties are described in the article. The analyses of the collected materials allowed the author to assert that the condition of teaching Roman law in the 18th-century England resembled the general crises of the university education in England in the aforementioned epoch. For most of the lecturers the academic posts were more or less sinecures that provided a social prestige and honourable social position. Only the late 18th century brought some changes in the methods of teaching Roman law and in the appointments of the professors. To a fuller extent these changes could not be observed to bring expected effects before the mid-19th century.

Fruitful collaborations: the Taylor White project in the Blacker Wood Natural History Collection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Williams
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Academic Libraries ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Research Collaborations ◽  
Initial Acquisition ◽  
Natural History Collection ◽  
Mcgill University

As part of a themed print issue of Notes and Records dedicated to a research project surrounding the eighteenth-century Taylor White collection of animal paintings, this article provides context by describing the initial acquisition of the collection, and by situating it within the larger Blacker Wood Natural History Collection held at McGill University Library. Highlights of the Blacker Wood Collection are discussed, along with the collection's founder, Dr Casey Wood. The second part of the article provides a brief examination of the movement, in some academic administrative circles, towards the ‘de-professionalization’ of librarian work within academic libraries, and offers an outline of the specialized skills that librarians bring to the description, analysis and preservation of special collections. The Taylor White Project is then offered as an example of research collaborations between scholars and librarians; a description of the advantages of embedding a scholar within specific library collections to work with, rather than replace, a librarian is provided. The author suggests this strategy as one potential answer to the question of ‘de-professionalization’, to move away from divisive discussions towards a more symbiotic relationship between scholars and librarians.

THE CATALOG OF THE MINERALOGICAL COLLECTION OF THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD II (1747–1792): COLLECTING AND LEARNING IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNARITA FRANZA ◽  
ROSANNA FABOZZI ◽  
LETIZIA VEZZOSI ◽  
LUCIANA FANTONI ◽  
GIOVANNI PRATESI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Evaluation ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Metal Content ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Historical Archive ◽  
Natural History Collections ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
The University

ABSTRACT The Collectio Mineralium (1765) currently preserved at the Historical Archive of the Natural History Museum of the University of Firenze, is the unpublished catalog of the mineralogical collection that belonged to Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792). The catalog is a 110-page register, with the golden emblem of the House of Habsburg at the center of the binding, containing information about 242 mineralogical samples. Each specimen is carefully described (i.e., habit, metal content, product value) and its locality given. The interpretation of the text has also returned information on most of the mining deposits in the Austro-Hungarian territories in the eighteenth century. Therefore, the interpretation of this catalog—that on the basis of the literature appears to be the first catalog of a collection belonged to a Habsburg emperor—represents an important step toward enhancing our understanding of Habsburg natural history collections and reflected the transition from wonder-rooms to commodity collecting. Leopold's private collection was no longer an ‘instrument of wonder’ but it became representative of scientific collecting characterized by the establishment of systematic mineralogy, and by a careful economic evaluation of the mineralogical samples collected as a symbol of the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

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