A Dutch Pharmacist in Early Modern Rome

Abstract

The Accademia dei Lincei functioned through the activities and publications of its appointed members, but also through associated collaborators, who themselves profited from the Lincean network. One of these para-Lynceans was Enrico Corvino, a Roman speziale and botanist of great renown. In this paper I look for the testimonies on Corvino’s active and passive network throughout Italy and part of Europe, which was created during visits from foreign apprentices/specialists to his pharmacopolium (pharmacy) and his hortus (on the Gianicolo), and through a correspondence now largely lost; the networking consisted in the exchange of information, but especially in the sending of seeds (semi; campioni) and plants, all this in close collaboration with his son Francesco, who after his father’s death (1639) pursued his work until he died (1679) and his daughter Maddalena, a gifted miniaturist, who produced designs of the plants, a parallel way of irradiation of the Hortus Corvinus and its plants. This original tracking through contemporary European sources reveals many direct and indirect, and so far unknown, connections with prominent European scholars. It also shows a clearer picture of the Roman speziale’s network, started in collaboration with the Accademia, but largely exceeding it after its end in 1630.