Realdo Colombo

Realdo Colombo (c. 1515, Cremona – 1559, Rome) was an Italian professor of anatomy and a surgeon at the University of Padua between 1544 and 1559.

Matteo Realdo Colombo or Renaldus Columbus, was born in Cremona, Lombardy to an apothecary named Antonio Colombo. Although little is known about his early life, it is known he took his undergraduate education in Milan, where he studied philosophy, and he appears to have pursued his father's profession for a short while afterwards. He left the apothecarys' life and apprenticed to the surgeon Giovanni Antonio Lonigo, under whom he studied for 7 years. In 1538 he enrolled in the University of Padua where he was noted to be an exceptional student of anatomy. While still a student, he was awarded a Chair of Sophistics at the university. In 1542 he returned briefly to Venice to assist his mentor, Lonigo.

Realdo Colombo studied philosophy in Milan, and then he trained to be a surgeon for several years under a Venetian named Giovanni Antonio Plato, also known as Lonigo or Leonicus. By 1538, during the years of Andreas Vesalius, Columbus had arrived at Padua where he studied medicine, anatomy, and he lectured to arts students on sophistics, or logic. Columbus became a close friend of Vesalius and possibly assisted him at a dissection. Vesalius was away in Basle when Columbus was temporarily appointed to teach in his place, and eventually, Columbus received this position more permanently.

In 1544, Columbus went to the University of Pisa and performed many dissections; he was referred to “As Master of Anatomy and Surgery.” Then in 1548, Columbus went to Rome where he taught anatomy at the papal university for about ten years until his death in 1559. While Columbus was in Rome, he took on a project with Michelangelo and became his personal physician and friend. He intended to collaborate with Michelangelo on an illustrated anatomy text to rival De Fabrica but this never came to pass, likely due to Michelangelo's advanced age. Although not much is known about Columbo's biography, his relationship with the more familiar Michelangelo has helped historians better understand his views. He also performed the autopsy on the body of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

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