Alchemist Cardinal

Portrait of Francesco Maria del Monte

Ottavio Leoni (1578–1630)

In the early seventeenth century, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte served as the unofficial Florentine cultural ambassador in Rome. He regularly entertained visiting dignitaries and represented the Medici family's interests within the Vatican. He was an avid art collector, glass enthusiast and amateur alchemist.  He was a patron to the artist Caravaggio, to the astronomer Galileo and a dear friend to Neri's employer Don Antonio de' Medici.

The strong bond of affection between Don Antonio and Cardinal Del Monte is clear from their extensive correspondence and gifts to each other.  In addition to their passion for alchemy, the two shared a strong interest in glassmaking technology. There is a chance that the cardinal met glassmaker Antonio Neri in Florence; in 1602 he visited the Casino di San Marco, where the glass foundry was located and he returned in 1608, although by then Neri was in Antwerp. Del Monte's biographer Zygmunt Waźbiński offers, "It is very likely that Cardinal Del Monte, with his interest in glass, had known then (in 1598) the [future] author [Neri] of L'Arte Vetraria." [1]

Del Monte collaborated with Niccolò Sisti, the grand duke's glass foundry master at Pisa, where Neri also worked for a time. Sisti often provided Del Monte with glassware for Medici customers within the College of Cardinals in Rome. The cardinal's patronage also brought many glassmakers in Rome to the appreciation of the papal court.  After his death, Del Monte's will shows that at his main residence, the Palazzo Madama, he maintained an entire room, "gabinetto dei vetri" [cabinet of glasswork] that housed five hundred pieces of glassware. It cannot go without mention that he was also the proud owner of what has become one of most celebrated pieces of ancient glass, now referred to as the Portland Vase.

There are indications in Neri's 1600 manuscript that he visited Rome. If so, it is hard to imagine him not seeking an audience with the cardinal, either at his villa on the Pincio,  overlooking the city or at the Palazzo Madama, now offices of the Italian Senate. The palazzo was appointed in fabulous luxury and arranged to accommodate a constant flow of dignitaries from around the world. The villa, on the other hand, was where the cardinal's alchemy laboratory was located. This was a more secluded retreat where the cardinal could entertain guests with more discretion.
   

Michelangelo Caravaggio, c. 1597
Casino Ludovisi.

As the sixteenth century ended and a new one dawned, Del Monte sheltered the rough-and-tumble painter Michelangelo Caravaggio, whom he set up with an in-house studio and an allowance. However, in 1606, the master of Realism fled Rome after reportedly murdering a tavern waiter over a tennis wager, but not before executing his only known fresco on the vaulted ceiling of Del Monte's own alchemy laboratory. Looking out over Rome, on the panoramic Pincio, in the Villa that later became the Casino Ludovisi and is now known as the Casino dell'Aurora, Caravaggio put his brush to work. 

According to Gian Pietro Bellori, the early biographer of artists, Caravaggio executed the oil painting sometime between 1597 and 1600. [2] Depicted in the mural are the three brothers Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto: the masters of the universe. The image is a double allegory of the three basic chemical substances of Paracelsus (salt sulfur and mercury) and the four Aristotelian elements (air, earth, water and fire). Jupiter with the eagle stands for sulfur and air, Neptune with the seahorse stands for mercury and water and Pluto with the three-headed dog Cerberus stands for salt and earth. Jupiter is reaching out to move the central celestial sphere in which the sun (fire) revolves around the earth. [3] 

The villa was a relatively secluded retreat where the Cardinal could entertain guests discretely, including his friend Galileo–Del Monte and his older brother Guidobaldo helped land Galileo the chair of mathematics at the university in Pisa. This is also where Galileo demonstrated his telescope for interested dignitaries in Rome. It would be interesting to hear the astronomer’s comments on Caravaggio's tribute to heliocentrism.

[1] Neri 1612.
[2] Bellori 1672, pp. 197-216.
[3] Wallach 1975, pp. 101-112.

*The material in this post first appeared in a different form on  27 Nov. 2013 and 4 Jul. 2014.

Bibliomaniac

Broadway Tower, Worcestershire.
The home of Phillipps' Middle Hill Press

In 1612, Antonio Neri published his famous book on glassmaking, L'Arte Vetraria. [1] The venture was bankrolled by Medici prince Don Antonio for whom Neri had worked as an alchemist and glassmaker in 1601 and possibly a couple of years earlier. The printer was Giunti, the venerated Florentine family of typographers who set up their first press in Venice a century and a half earlier. In Neri's era, they operated as the de facto press for the grand dukes in Florence and they are still in business today.

Neri's book was noticed almost immediately; in a 1614 letter addressed to Galileo, Roman Prince Federico Cesi practically begged his astronomer friend to send a copy. [2] Cesi was the founder of the "Accademia dei Lincei" [Society of Lynxes] a group of naturalists who formed an early version of what would later be called 'scientific societies.' The book was tailor made for such groups who were interested in performing their own experiments, however, sales did not exactly catch fire among the public. 

A few decades later, another scientific society was formed in London, with a charter signed by no less than King Charles II. The Royal Society really gave Neri's book a major boost when in 1662; founding member Robert Boyle commissioned Christopher Merrett to translate the work into English. [3] A year earlier, a second edition had been printed in Florence and a year later, another Italian edition appeared in Venice. [4]

From there, the book took off, sprouting multiple new translations in the Netherlands, Germany, France and Spain. There are many interesting stories of how the book spread across Europe; one of the most fascinating deals not with the book itself but with a publisher. Without any doubt, Sir Thomas Phillipps was the most colorful of any of Neri's printers. In 1826, Phillipps' press issued a reprint of Merrett's original English translation, which was by then over a century and a half old. [5]

By the 19th century, L'Arte Vetraria, or "The Art of Glass" as it was dubbed in English, had passed its prime as the bible of glassmakers. As one would expect, methods and technology had matured considerably over the intervening two centuries. Nevertheless, Phillipps recognized its importance. He was also a bit eccentric. As a child, by his sixth birthday, he already owned over a hundred books; his grand ambition was to own one copy of every book ever printed, a quest he carried into adulthood. He was born in Manchester, the product of a clandestine relationship between a textile baron and a woman other than the one to whom his father was married. Nevertheless, he appears to have been well cared for and inherited what Wikipedia reports was a "substantial estate." [6] A fortune that he promptly started to whittle away, spending lavishly on books and manuscripts. He attended University College Oxford and within a few years, he was made a fellow of the above-mentioned Royal Society. 

Depending on where you stand, Phillipps was a classic example of British eccentricity, a brilliant and dedicated preservationist or a completely obsessed crazy-man. Possibly all three. By the end of his life, he had amassed an estimated sixty thousand manuscripts and forty thousand books. At the time it was the largest such private collection in the world. He housed his treasure in a castle that he had built for the purpose, Broadway Tower, in Worcestershire (see photo above). It is said that he would walk into various bookstores and buy the entire stock; his agents around Europe provided a steady stream of new material. Apparently, he himself possessed a sense of humor about his odd obsession, coining the term "vello-maniac" (referring to the vellum bindings common to many books of that period).

The story does have a darker side, albeit with a silver lining. In 1842, Phillipps started collaborating in research with James Halliwell, then an undergraduate at Cambridge studying Shakespeare. Halliwell became romantically involved with Phillipps eldest daughter Harriett, but Phillipps refused consent for them to marry (which they did anyway). Meanwhile, Phillipps had run through the family fortune and started to borrow heavily. He developed paranoia against Halliwell and vowed that he would never gain control of the collection. He entered negotiations to donate the books and manuscripts to the British Library, but his conditions were unpalatable and a deal was never reached. He wanted to stipulate that the order of books should never be reshuffled and that no Roman Catholic, especially his son-in-law, ever be permitted to touch or view the collection. He became so fearful  about Halliwell that he hired 250 men to move the collection, which took two years, at which point the abandoned castle started to fall into ruins. 

In the end, Phillipps died at the age of 79 in 1872. After a court decision, Harriett did inherit her father's collection and Halliwell did gain control. The silver lining is that the two undertook to carefully disperse the collection to some of the most prestigious libraries in Europe. This project took multiple generations to finish. In fact, the final parcel of books from the Phillipps collection sold at auction in 2006, at Christie's.

[1] Neri 1612.
[2] Cesi 1614a, 1614b.
[3] Neri 1662.
[4] Neri 1661, Neri 1663.
[5] Neri 1826.
[6] "Thomas Phillipps" Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Phillipps 
* This post first appeared here on 5 Oct 2014.

The Paracelsans

Image of Paracelsus

In the late sixteenth century, the writings of an obscure physician started to become very popular around Europe. Born in 1493 with the name of Theophrastus von Hohenheim, "Paracelsus"[1] was the son of a German physician living in Switzerland. Before marriage, his mother worked in an abbey hospital. Paracelsus took a degree in medicine from the university at Ferrara and proceeded to practice medicine as he wandered through Germany, France, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Russia. 

Paracelsus died in 1541, nearly half a century before the various pamphlets he wrote started to be noticed and reprinted. In his lifetime he was not honored, but hounded out of one European city after another for defying traditionally accepted medical practices and insisting on doing things his own way. He was known for somewhat difficult personality, and the gloomy but steadfast conviction that the world would shortly come to an end. Today he is celebrated for diagnoses based on careful observation of nature, and of his patients actual symptoms, a radical departure from the norm for his time. 

By the end of the sixteenth century, his writings were being circulated among the intelligentsia of the Florentine royal court in Italy. His opinions extended not only to medicine and anatomy, but also to alchemy, botany, pharmacology, astrology, and what would later be called psychology. Paracelsus' philosophy was a powerful influence on the education of Antonio Neri in the discipline of alchemy.  Neri's father was the royal physician to Florentine Grand Duke Ferdinando de' Medici, and almost certainly did not subscribe to Paracelsan ideas, but Antonio seems to have taken a different path. His benefactor, Prince Don Antonio de' Medici was a confirmed Paracelsan.

By the time Neri's book on glassmaking appeared in 1612, the priest counted himself a devoted Paracelsan spagyricist and he as much as says so. In the book's introduction, he holds out the future possibility of publishing “the experience of my endeavors over many years, working in diverse parts of the world […in] the chemical and spagyric arts.” [2] Paracelsus had pioneered two new disciplines that he named "iatrochemistry" and "spagyrics." Iatrochemistry dealt with the use of minerals and chemicals in medicine; spagyrics made use of plants and their extracts. Here we get a hint that Neri's true passions lie beyond the formulation of glass. Speaking about the potential of chemistry in medicines, also in the introduction, he writes, "These are matters of nature to which I believe there is no higher calling in the service of humanity." The same techniques and terminology used to produce medical remedies shows up in Neri's glass formulations. Twice, he refers to ingredients as "medicine," [3] which he adds to the glass melt in "doses." He also uses the somewhat specialized apothecary's term 'ana', [4]  which means "in equal parts." 

Paracelsus coined the word "spagyric" in his book Liber Paragranum, [5] where he argues medicine should be based on the physical laws of nature alone. The word derives from two Greek terms: spao meaning to separate and ageiro meaning to combine. The underlying philosophy recurs throughout the history of alchemy. To enhance the special properties of a plant, break it down, to its separate constituents, then purify each and recombine them for a more potent product. 

Herein lay the bones of Neri’s empirical methodology with glass; one built on the processes of reduction, purification and recombination. These methods appear throughout his technical recipes. Neri utilizes the method with both plant and mineral ingredients, in the preparation of basic materials and pigments and throughout his medicinal work. You could say that these very techniques and the resultant near mania he developed for purification are responsible for the high reputation of his glass formulas. His colors were bright and clear beyond what was produced by typical preparation by artisans of his time. 

Around 1600, documented in surviving letters from his friend, Emmanuel Ximenes, the two men discuss Paracelsus, but do so carefully since it is still a rather controversial topic. [6] By 1608, Neri seems a bit more relaxed, writing to a Ximenes nephew that he had cured diseases using the "grandissima meraviglia" (wonderfully grand) methods of Paracelsus. [7]

Mere months before his own death in 1614, Neri wrote a small tract titled Discorso. The full title translates to 'Discourse on Chemistry, What it is, and its Operations'. [8] In it, he "manifests right from the outset his adherence to the Paracelsan doctrine, which is not restricted to inorganic chemical operations involving the transmutation of metals, but has broader applicability to the field of medicine." [9] Neri begins:

The operations belonging to chemistry do not only, as some estimate, involve the transmutation of metals. It is a much more universal art, which in some ways also embraces medicine (or at least it comes very close in assisting) and it can be defined. It is an art, which resolves and reduces all ‘mixed bodies’ [corpi misti] into their primary elements, it searches out their nature and separates the pure from the impure and it makes use of the pure to perfect these bodies and even to transform one body into another. [10]

History has mostly remembered Neri as a glassmaker, but his own philosophy was a bit different. He considered himself first and foremost an alchemist and his art—the art of chemistry—was a discipline that embraced metallurgy, glassmaking and medicine. 

[1] often referred to as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, this concatination was not used to refer to himself. for a fascinating discussion see Thony Cristie's post here: https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/whats-in-a-name-2/
[2] Neri 1612, p. vii.
[3] Neri 1612, pp. 40, 104, medicina; p. 9, dose and throughout. 
[4] Neri 1612, p. 98 ana
[5]Opus Paragranum, written in 1529/30 not published until 1565. Cf. Paracelsus 1565.
[6] Neri 1980, pp. xlii–xliii, lix. In his letters, Ximenes is careful about references to Paracelsus. 
[7] Neri 1608; Zecchin 1987–89, p. 157. “… che già stava in casa il s.r. Zanobi Bartolini, che mostra gl’ effetti di mali da lui guariti secondo gli ordini Paracelsici di grandissima meraviglia…” [that previously when in the house s.r. Zanobi Bartolini showed the effects on sicknesses that he healed using the instructions of the great and marvelous Paracelsus ....].
[8] Discorso sopra la Chimica, che cosa sia, e sue Operazioni, Neri 1613.
[9] Grazzini 1983, p. 221. 
[10] For the original Italian, see Grazzini 2012.

Neri's Other Ruby Glass

Rhodochrosite, from the Sweet Home Mine, Colorado.

Antonio Neri is widely recognized for publishing a recipe for the coveted and difficult gold ruby glass. "Rubino," as it is sometimes called, achieves a deep ruby red color utilizing only powdered metallic gold as a colorant. Perhaps because of the notoriety of that prescription, Neri’s other transparent red glass is hardly known. His recipe #120 describes a deep red pigment based on manganese. Today manganese takes its place on the periodic table as an elemental metal, but in the early seventeenth century it had not been isolated from its mineral ore. What Neri calls manganese was actually its oxide, which occurs as a black powdery material. Its effects in glass have been known since the early Egyptian dynasties and before that, as a pottery glaze. By itself the oxide produces a tint often likened to violet or amethyst. In small quantities, it is used to neutralize the slight green tint introduced by iron impurities in clear glass. 

To make his ruby red pigment, Neri starts with high quality manganese oxide from Piedmont and processes it through several alchemical operations. I will not be delving into the chemistry in detail here, suffice it to say that he comes close to synthesizing a highly unstable explosive, the likes of which was not "discovered" for another two centuries. It is a striking illustration of how technical ability can be in place long before theory catches up, in this case thankfully so. 

The pigment he did succeed in making is for now a mystery. Manganese carbonate, which can form ruby red crystals might fit the bill, except that it decomposes at the temperatures of molten glass. It occurs in nature as the mineral rhodochrosite as seen above. [1] Below is Neri's recipe for "Transparent Red in Glass" from his 1612 book L’Arte Vetraria. Most of the terminology is straightforward, with the exception of a few terms. 'Porphyry' is a hard granite used for grinding stones. 'Reverberation' is indirect radiation in a furnace, where the heat is reflected from the walls. 'Sublimation' is when certain materials vaporize directly from a solid form and recondense without passing through a liquid phase.

Grind manganese impalpably, then mix it with an equal amount of refined saltpeter and put it into a clay pan set to the fire, reverberating and calcining it for 24 hours. Take it then and wash its saltiness away with warm common water. Once separated from the salt, let it dry. It will be a ruby-red color. With this, mix an equal weight of sal ammoniac and grind them together over porphyry stone with distilled vinegar, which they will soak up. Leave this alone to dry and then put it in a retort with a wide body and a long neck. Heat it in sand for 12 hours to sublimate. 

Then break up the glass. Take all the deposits in the neck and body of the retort and mix it with the residual remains in the bottom. Weigh it and combine it all with as much sal ammoniac as was lost in the first sublimation. Grind everything together over the porphyry stone, with distilled vinegar for it to soak up. Then put it in a retort to sublimate as above. Repeat this sublimation, in this manner, many times until in the end, the manganese will all remain fusible in the bottom. 

This is the medicine that tints crystal and pastes in a diaphanous red color and a ruby red as well. Use 20 oz of this medicine per ounce of cristallo or glass, but more or less may be used accordingly to govern the color. The manganese should be the very best from Piedmont, so that it will have the effect of tinting the glass a beautiful ruby color and be a sight of wonderment.

[1] Manganese carbonate, MnCO3.

Confessor to an Alchemist

View of Badia Fiesolana - 
Gaspar Van Wittel called 'Vanvitelli' (1652/3-1736)

Early seventeenth century  Catholic priest Antonio Neri is remembered for his 1612 book on glassmaking recipes [1] and more recently as an alchemist quite competent in the field of chemical investigation.[2] A great deal has been learned about his life, but one of the enduring mysteries is the question of his religious order. The Archdiocese of Florence records for this period were largely destroyed in a fire and no definitive evidence has ever been found concerning his specific affiliation with the Church. [3]

There were dozens of practicing orders in and around Florence at the time and none of them present an obvious fit for a group that would be engaged in the education of a young alchemist. Contemporary records yield a handful of clues, each with its own set of merits and problems. Here we will take a closer look at just one of those possibilities. 

In 1614, at the age of thirty-eight, Neri apparently died rather suddenly, of a cause that is not known today. Folklore tells that he had previously promised to reveal the recipe of the philosopher's stone to his sponsor, Prince Don Antonio de' Medici. The 'stone' was conceived to be a substance with miraculous powers including the ability to transmute base metals into gold and to cure disease. The story tells that Don Antonio was delayed in coming to Neri's side and the secret died with the priest.

On the Prince's orders, interviews were conducted by fellow alchemist and disciple Agnolo della Casa.[4] In his notes, Della Casa remarks that a "relative of F. Benedetto Vanda, Carmelite of S[anta] M[aria] Maggiore, confessor of P[riest] Antonio Neri" was suspected by Don Antonio of stealing the secret of the philosopher's stone from Neri on his deathbed. [5] Setting aside for the moment the issue of a dying man's whispered secrets, this passage provides us with the name of Antonio's regular confessor, Benedetto Vanda. It establishes that Vanda was a Carmelite and it seems that Neri was attending Santa Maria Maggiore, [6] the Carmelite run church just west of the baptistery in Florence. [7]

Another earlier document names Vanda as Parocchiano (parish priest) of the abbey called Badia Fiesolana at San Domenico outside the city of Fiesole, located in the Tuscan hills just to the north of Florence. [8] Beyond these two references, Vanda seems to disappear into the mists of time. [9] While Priest Neri was free to pick anyone qualified to hear his confessions, a likely choice would have been a leader in his own congregation. Vanda's monastery lies three kilometers, less than two miles as the crow flies, across the hills from the villa in Serpiolle once owned by the Neri family and a similar distance to his childhood residence in Florence on Borgo Pinti. The route was an easy walk, even if uphill. [10]
Here the evidence takes a twist. While Vanda was the parish priest at Badia Fiesolana around the time of Neri's ordination, the monastery itself was run not by Carmelites, but by Canons Regular of the Lateran, [11] an Augustinian sect. The two orders are unrelated and report through different hierarchies. Why a Carmelite should be leading an Augustinian [12] institution is not clear. [13] However, the abbey was heavily patronized by the Medici family. They paid for extensive construction, renovation and expansion projects dating back to the fifteenth century. When the bishop of Fiesole moved to a new cathedral in 1439, the abbey was given to the Canons. If Neri did serve his initial training for the priesthood here, his novitiate, perhaps his career was already under Medici direction. In earlier times Cosimo the Elder and Giuliano de' Medici had private contemplation cells at the abbey. The Medici funded library there had been a long-time meeting place for humanist intellectuals, as was the Medici Villa half a kilometer away. Marsilio Ficino and others met there regularly. [14] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a student of Ficino and a friend to Savonarola, was sheltered by Lorenzo de' Medici in a nearby house. Pope Innocent VIII would have rather seen him tried for heresy, but the pope allowed the Medici to harbor him under special considerations.
The way of life of the Canons Lateran is a good fit for Neri. Their houses were self-governing. They followed the rule of Augustine of Hippo independent of the main Augustinian order. The Priests did not serve congregations. They acted independent of each other; they went into the world and did physical work with the laity. There is no ready evidence implicating the canons at San Domenico in the practice of alchemy, which makes them a less attractive possibility for Neri. However, their specific mandate was to relieve the suffering of the sick and the poor. This mission would have been satisfied with ease by producing medicinal remedies at Don Antonio’s Casino. 


[1] L'Arte Vetraria, Neri 1612.
[2] Rodwell 1870.
[3] Florentine Archdiocese records prior to 1650 were destroyed in a fire. See Zecchin 1987–89, vol. 1, p. 169, note 12.
[4] Casa 1614. Cf. Galluzzi 1982, pp. 53, 54.
[5] See Grazzini 1983, pp. 217, 218. 
[6] Not to be confused with San Pier Maggiore, Neri's childhood parish church.
[7] See Galluzzi 1982, p. 53; Casa 1614; cf. Grazzini 1983, pp. 217, 218.
[8] AOI 1587–1591, cf. Butters 1996, pp. 415, 416. 
[9] I have not been able to find any other reference to Benedetto Vanda, which may not be his birth name, but one chosen when he joined the Carmelites.
[10] The Badia Fiesolana [Abbey of Fiesole] is located in San Domenico, about halfway between Florence and nearby Fiesole.
[11] The Canons Regular of the Lateran (C. R. L.), their full title is Canons Regular of St. Augustine of the Congregation of the Most Holy Savior at the Lateran. They occupied the monastery from 1440 until 1778.
[12] Although ancient in origin, the Canons Regular of the Lateran adopted the rule of St. Augustine of Hippo.
[13] The two groups did share use of the liturgical 'Carmelite Rite' practiced at mass. 
[14] Canons lateran Matteo Bosso, see Mutini 1971; Timoteo Maffei see Moroni 1879. The canons hosted humanists Pico della Mirandola, Angelo Poliziano, Roberto Salviati, Demetrio Calcondila, Marsilio Ficino and Lorenzo de’ Medici.
*This post first appeared here 12 Nov 2014.

Lake of Flowers

'The Miracle of the Immobility of Santa Lucia'

Leandro Bassano, using Florentine lakes.

In the final part of Antonio Neri's 1612 book on glassmaking, [1] he presents several recipes that are devoted to pigments for painting. His intention for including them is for their application on glass objects, but these were the same materials used in general by fine artists in the early seventeenth century. 

In his recipe #110, the Florentine priest gives a wonderfully simple method to extract the color from common flowers. The term for these pigments is "lakes." Once obtained, the pigments were often used to dye a powdered carrier material in order to give them more body and behave like other paint. From there they might be mixed into egg-tempera, varnish or oil depending on the application. It is likely that Neri used similar pigments for the illustrations in his 1598 manuscript.[2] Here is his recipe in its entirety: 

A Way to Extract the Lake [3] and Color for Painting, from Orange Blossoms, Red Poppies, Blue Irises, Ordinary Violets, Red Violets, Carnations, Red Roses, Borage Flowers, Day Lilies, Irises, and From Flowers of Any Desired Color and the Greens of the Mallow, the Pimpernel and All the Plants. 

Take whichever flower you want, of any color you want, or even a [green] plant. If it will rub green from a leaf onto white paper staining it with color, then it will be good. The plants and flowers that do not show this effect are no-good. Put ordinary aqua vitae into a glass urinal, with a cappello [alembic cap] for its cover, making sure the said crystallo cap is as wide as possible. 

Into this cap, pack the leaves [or petals] of any flower or plant from which you want to release and extract the tincture. Now lute the mouth joint of the cap. Fit a receiver to its snout and lute that joint. Give it a moderated fire so that the volatile part [alcohol] of the aqua vitae rises into the alembic, and falls down into its volume upon the petals of the flowers, extracting the tincture. 

In time, drops will run down the snout of the cap into the receiver, colored and charged with the tincture. Once all of the volatile part of the aqua vitae passes and becomes colored, distill this colored volatile part of the aqua vitae in a glass vessel. [The alcohol] will pass white and will be useable three more times. The dye will remain in the bottom, which you should not allow to dry too much, but just moderately. Then you will have the very best tincture or lake for painting from an abundance of flowers and plants.

The "aqua vitae" he refers to is simply a distilled alcohol such as grappa. The important point here is that it is a potent solution of ethanol and water; a well-known modern equivalent would be vodka. The chemical apparatus he describes is about as simple as it got for alchemists. It has three parts; the first is a base consisting of (in this case) a urinal—an inexpensive and convenient glass container with a wide mouth. The second piece is what Neri calls a "cappello"; it is a special glass cap featuring a long tubular snout leading from the top, angled slightly downward. When the cap is affixed to the base with the materials inside and gently heated, vapor will condense in the cap and run down the snout for collection in the third piece, a "receiver" vessel. 

The material he uses to seal the pieces together was called "lute," a mixture of mud, cloth fibers, egg and some other materials that stick to the glass and withstand the heat of the fire. Its only purpose was to keep the glassware sealed until the procedure was complete. [4] 

In the mid nineteenth century, Mary Merrifield made an extensive survey of Italian manuscripts with recipes for artists. She included this comment about Neri's home town:

Florentine lake must have had considerable reputation in Venice, since Leandro Bassano contracted to employ it in his picture of the 'Combat of the Angles,' painted for the church of S. Giorgio Maggiore at Venice in 1597. [5]

Today, this painting is known as 'The Miracle of the immobility of Santa Lucia' and is shown at the top of this post.

[1] L'Arte Vetraria, Neri 1612.
[2] Discorso, Neri 1598-1600.
[3] Neri uses the word "lacca," the equivalent of "lacha" in other manuscripts. For a specific reference to Neri in this regard, see Merrifield 1849, v. 1, p. clxxxi.
[4] A word to the wise: high proof alcohol in a confined glass container near an open flame is a good way to cause a minor explosion and a fireball featuring glass shrapnel.
[5] Merrifield 1849, v.1, p. clxxxiii. She references Cicogna  1824–1858, v. 4, p. 349 for this information. 

* This post first appeared here on 14 Oct 2014.

The Glassmaker and the Astronomer

Portrait of Galileo Galilei, 1636 (detail),

by Justus Sustermans (1597-1681).

Galileo Galilei lived almost simultaneously with glassmaker and alchemist Antonio Neri. Both were employed by the Medici royal court in Tuscany and both spent considerable time in Florence and Pisa, possibly also in Venice and Rome. No direct contact is known to have occurred between the glassmaker and the astronomer, but their paths did cross many times, orbiting like two celestial bodies in the cosmos - albeit one with a bit more gravitas than the other. 

As a youth, Galileo was taught at the Cestello monastery by court mathematician Ostilio Ricci. This was around 1580 when Galileo was sixteen, and Neri was a four year old toddler, living only a block away and attending the Cestello church with his family. Neri's father and grandfather had just been granted citizen status, already well known for their medical prowess, and his father served on the board of the artist's guild based at Cestello. Galileo would go on to become good personal friends with Prince Don Antonio de' Medici, Neri's sponsor. Later, the astronomer would have telescope tubes made by Jacopo Ligozzi, a regular at the Casino di San Marco, where Neri worked as an alchemist and took his first steps into the craft of glassmaking. As Galileo started to experiment with lenses, Neri was leaving Italy for Antwerp and would be absent for seven years. Meanwhile Galileo landed a job at the Florentine court as mathematics tutor to Grand Duke Ferdinando's son, Cosimo II. 

Both Galileo and Neri worked hard for their achievements. In the hindsight of history, innovations are often romanticized into shining moments of inspiration, forgetting the painstaking effort and dogged persistence required to bring those ideas to fruition. For his telescopes, Galileo encountered tremendous difficulty both in the production of suitable glass and in grinding that glass into usable lenses. His celestial observations included sunspots, lunar craters and the planet Jupiter with its moons, which he named "Medicea Sideria" after his Medici benefactors. As these revelations became known, there was a clamor of orders for telescopes from princes throughout Europe and Galileo struggled to keep up. He maintained a circle of trusted craftsmen on Murano in Venice, and elsewhere, but still, the majority of output was unusable.

Initially, he had reasonable success grinding and polishing broken pieces of mirrors. In early 1610, Galileo held a demonstration in Pisa for his former pupil, Grand Duke Cosimo II. A short time later, the grand duke ordered that a special batch of glass be made for Galileo by Niccolò Sisti, for whom Antonio Neri had worked just a few years earlier. At the time, Neri himself was still in Antwerp and would not return until the following year.

Neri returned to Tuscany and wrote his book on glassmaking,  L'Arte Vetraria, but then turned his attention to other pursuits. This, just as Galileo's quest for high quality glass to make his lenses took off in earnest. Neri’s final manuscript places him in Pisa working on alchemical recipes. There was no more optimal moment for the two men to meet; both were working in Pisa, both knew Niccolò Sisti, Neri had just published his book and the astronomer was becoming desperate for clear flawless glass. If such a meeting ever occurred, it has not been recorded, and shortly thereafter, in 1614, Neri died of an unspecified illness.

On 20 December of that same year, four days before Christmas, Tommaso Caccini, Neri's childhood next-door neighbor, delivered a scathing denouncement of Galileo from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella church. While the sermon earned Caccini a reprimand, and was an embarrassment to his family, it did also serve as a start to Galileo's troubles with the inquisition.

While Antonio Neri may have never encountered the astronomer, shortly after the time of the priest’s death, the astronomer acquired Neri's book on glassmaking. One copy was sent to Rome, to Federico Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei, a scientific society to which Galileo belonged, and another copy was saved for the astronomer's personal library. Galileo continued his quest for flawless glass and in his correspondence he takes on the same obsession with purity of ingredients that Neri exhibits throughout his book.  

* This post first appeared here in a slightly different form on 18 Novenber 2013.