Bartolomeo Maranta
| Bartolomeo Maranta | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1500 or 1514 Venosa |
| Died | 24 March 1571 Melfi or Molfetta |
| Fields | Botany, Medicine |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Maranta |
Bartolomeo Maranta, also Bartholomaeus Marantha (1500 – 24 March 1571) was an Italian physician, botanist, and literary theorist.
The Marantaceae, a family of herbaceous perennials related to the gingers, are named after him. His name was also given to a street in Rome.
Maranta was born in Venosa, in 1500 or 1514, to the lawyer and academic Roberto Maranta, originally from Venosa, and Beatrice Monna, a noblewoman from Molfetta. Having graduated at Naples, around 1550 he moved to Pisa where he became a student of the botanist and physician Luca Ghini.
From 1554 to 1556, he worked with the botanical garden of Naples that Gian Vincenzo Pinelli had founded, and around 1568 helped found a botanical garden in Rome.
He was a friend of the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, and twenty-two letters from their correspondence survive. Maranta was also both the friend and rival of Pietro Andrea Mattioli. The two competed upon the death of Ghini over which of them would inherit their teacher's papers and herbarium. Maranta died in Molfetta or Melfi.
Maranta was physician to the Duke of Mantua and later to Cardinal Branda Castiglioni. He combined his interests in medicine and botany in Methodi cognoscendorum simplicium (1559), in which he organized the subject of botanical pharmacology by nomenclature, species identification, and medicinal properties.
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