Ghini, Luca

(b. Croara d’Imola, Italy, ca.1490; d. Bologna, Italy, 4 May 1556)

botany.

A prominent pioneer in the creation of the first botanical gardens in sixteenth-century Italy and in the collection of the earliest herbaria, Ghini exerted his influence primarily through correspondence and teaching, for he wrote little and published nothing in his lifetime. His career reflects the growth and emancipation of botanical research within university medical schools.

His father, Ghino Ghini, was a notary in Imola; this profession may have been in the family, for Ghini’s only son, Galeazzo, was also a notary. Ghini was sent to study medicine at Bologna, where he was appointed to read “medicina practica” in 1527. During the next decade the title of his post grew more specifically botanical: in 1535 it was noted “let him lecture on Simples” (ie., botany as herbal therapeutics); these lectures led to a course on Galen’s book On Samples (1537), then an associate chair “on Simples,” and finally a professorial chair (1539). In 1544 he was invited to become professor of simples at Pisa, where he stayed until 1554. Nevertheless, he remained attached to Bologna, where he had married Gentile Sarti in 1528 and had been granted citizenship in 1535; he spent his vacations there and maintained a house, close to that of his wife’s family, with a garden for his private work, where he could try to grow seeds sent him from abroad. Among his successess was “Medica” (Medicago sativa) from spain.

While teaching at Bologna, Ghini introduced, probably for the first time, the herbarium or hortus siccus, the technique of pressing and drying plants which could then be attached to cards and filed as a source of reference more reliable than an illustration. His collection was also used for the dissemination of knowledge, for when inquiries were addressed to him, he could send a labeled card to exemplify his answer. For instance, in reply to an appeal by Pietro Mattioli, Ghini mentions enclosing specimens of two varieties of “lesser Horminum” (Salvia sclarea) treated in this way. The two oldest surviving herbaria were assembled by Gherardo Cibo da Roccacontrada and Michele Merini, who had been Ghini’s pupils. Another pupil, John Falconer, compiled one much admired at the time.

Shortly after his arrival at Pisa, Ghini became actively involved in the creation of the botanical garden there, which disputes with Padua the title of the oldest in Europe set up as an aid to university teaching and research, as opposed to herb gardens intended purely for the immediate supply of medicinal plants. In a letter of July 1545, Ghini describes two expeditions to the mountains, in search of plants for the garden, the site of which was already being cleared. He also became its first prefect and therefore was responsible for the original collection. Ulisse Aldrovandi owned a catalog of the 610 plants that were in the garden in Ghini’s time. Ghini had much to do also with the foundation in 1545 of another botanical garden, at Florence, capital of the duchy to which Pisa then belonged.

In 1554 Ghini returned to lecture at Bologna, where he died two years later. His influence was to be felt not only through the new institutions and techniques he helped to establish but also through his pupils, among them some of the outstanding naturalists of the next generation. While he was holidaying at Bologna in 1549, Aldrovandi studied with him, later claiming that his love for botany dated from that time. The affiliation was sustained by correspondence and the exchange of specimens; Aldrovandi also visited Ghini at Pisa, attended his lectures there, and went botanizing with him in the hills behind Lucca. Andrea Cesalpino studied under him at Pisa and succeeded him as prefect of the botanical garden in 1554, Luigi Anguillara, first prefect of the Padua botanical garden, was another pupil, as were two English herbalists of the new school, William Turner and Falconer.

In 1551 Mattioli asked Ghini’s help in the identification of a number of Dioscorides’ plants on which he had no information. Ghini’s reply, his “Placiti” on these plants, demonstrates his methods. The context obliged him to start with the accounts of Dioscorides or Pliny, then relate them to actual plants known to him; the leaves were his preferred indicator. To help him in these inquiries he procured specimens of the flora of Greece and the Levant from merchants and asked Greek’soldiers or his Greek maid about the modern Greek names, in order to compare them with those in classical sources. Luckily, one of Ghini’s brothers spent some years in Crete and could supply him with seeds or branches. Besides Crete, Ghini refers to receipt of material from Egypt, Syria, Spain, Sicily, and Calabria; and even “papyrus” leaves from the island of Sāo Tomé, used for wrapping sugarloaves, were not unworthy of his investigation. Certainly he was far from being merely a bookish scholar: the “Placiti” often recall his collecting expeditions in the Apennines, along the Tuscan shore, and on a sail round Elba, where he admired the abundance of Medicago marina.

The “Placiti” is our only evidence on Ghini’s reseraches. Although he is supposed to have begun compiling a pictorial herbal on plants of which there were as yet no illustrations, he abandoned it when Mattioli published his own commentaries on Dioscorides, to which Ghini had in effect contributed. Another manuscript, now lost, discussed the kindred topic of plants known to practicing apothecaries but not included in the written tradition of materia medica.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ghini’s only published works—and those long after his death were minor medical tracts. Much more important is the letter to Mattioli, published as “I placiti di Luca Ghini intorno a piante descritte nei commentarii al Dioscoride di P. A. Mattioli,” G. B. de Toni, ed., in Memorie del R. Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 27 no. 8 (1907). Toni’s commentary has been used for the identifications in this article.

Toni is also the author of papers touching on aspects of Ghini’s work, which is summarized in his “Luca Ghini,” in A. Mieli, ed., Gli scienziati italiani, I (Rome, 1921), 1–4. See also A. Chiarugi, “Le date di fondazione dei primi orti botanici del mondo,” in Nuovo giornale botanico italiano, 60 (1953); and “Net quarto centenario delta morte di Luca Ghini,” in Webbia, 13 (1957), 1–14; and L. Sabbatani, “Alcuni documenti su la vita di Luca Ghini,” in Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di scienze, lettere ed arti (Padua), n.s. 39 (1923), 243–248.

A. G. Keller