Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio
| Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1330 Chioggia |
| Died | 19 October 1388 Abbiategrasso |
| Nationality | Venetian |
| Other names | Giovanni de' Dondi |
| Occupation | doctor, clock-maker |
| Known for | the Astrarium |
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio (c. 1330 – 1388), also known as Giovanni de' Dondi, was a doctor and clock-maker in Padua, now in Italy. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction. The Astrarium, which he designed and built over a period of 16 years, was a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium, constructed only 60 or so years after the very first mechanical clocks had been built in Europe, and demonstrated an ambitious attempt to describe and model the solar system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication.
Giovanni was the second son of Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio and Zaccarota Centrago or Centraco of Chioggia. His father was a doctor and astronomer, and builder of a large astronomical clock in the tower of the Palazzo Capitaniato of Padua in 1344.
Giovanni lived with his father from 1348 to 1359, and shared his father's interest in astronomy and clockmaking. In 1348 he began working on what he called his astrarium or planetarium. He described in detail the design and construction of this project, which was to occupy him until 1364. His manuscripts provided enough material for modern clockmakers to build reconstructions. In 1371 he served as ambassador to Venice, but after the conflict between Padua and Venice in 1372, joined the University of Pavia, and served as diplomat and scholar until his death in Abbiategrasso on 19 October 1388. He is buried at Sant'Eustorgio in Milan.
It is frequently reported, in sources from the 19th and early 20th centuries to the present, that the "Marquis Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio" was responsible for introducing the Padovana chicken, which closely resembles the Polish breed, from Poland to Italy. However the Dondi who was ennobled was the soldier Francesco Dondi, created Marquis by King John III Sobieski in 1676; no journey to or contact with Poland by Giovanni Dondi in the 14th century is documented.
Dondi wrote on a wide range of subjects. His most celebrated work is the Tractatus astrarii or Planetarium, which describes the Astrarium. It is one of the earliest surviving descriptions of its kind, predated by only a few years by the Albion and Horologium of Richard of Wallingford. In the introduction, Dondi writes that his machine was built in accordance with the 13th-century Theorica planetarum of Campano di Novara, and to demonstrate the validity of the descriptions of the motion of heavenly bodies of Aristotle and Avicenna. The Tractatus survives in twelve manuscript sources. The autograph in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Padua (MS. D39) and a copy of it, also in Padua, are certainly the work of Dondi. The other sources are rewritten versions of the autograph, to which Dondi's contribution is as yet unclear. The autograph manuscript was published in 1987 in a critical edition with colour facsimile and French translation by Poulle as the first volume of the Opera omnia of Jacopo and Giovanni Dondi.
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