Michele Mercati

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Michele Mercati

Michele Mercati (8 April 1541 – 25 June 1593) was a physician who was superintendent of the Vatican Botanical Garden under Popes Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, and Clement VIII.

Biography

Mercati was born in San Miniato, Tuscany, the son of Pietro Mercati, physician to Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII. He was educated at the University of Pisa, where he took degrees in medicine and philosophy. He was interested in natural history, mineralogy, palaeontology, medicine, and botany, and produced a book on these subjects entitled the Metallotheca, which was not published until 1717.

Amongst other things, Mercati collected prehistoric stone tools along with fossils and minerals. These, in conjunction with his classical education and the growing Vatican Library collection of ethnographic artefacts from Asia and America, enabled him to include in the Metallotheca one of the first accounts of the manufacture and use of polished stone axes, flint arrowheads, and stone blades.

David Clarke describes Mercati as "the archaeological counterpart of Cardano in mathematics, Vesalius in anatomy, Galileo in the physical sciences and Copernicus in astronomy."

External links

Michele Mercati
Wunderkammer His cabinet of curiosities (museum)

References

Clarke, D.L., 1978, Analytical Archaeology (second edition), London: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-85460-5

Authority control	WorldCat VIAF: 71736034 LCCN: n82122992 ISNI: 0000 0000 8344 5785 GND: 100209211 SUDOC: 133430111

Persondata
Name	Mercati, Michele
Alternative names
Short description	Italian physiciain
Date of birth	8 April 1541
Place of birth	ROME
Date of death	25 June 1593
Place of death	ROME

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