Born Florence, (Italy), 1397
Died Florence, (Italy), May 1482
Paolo Toscanelli's astronomical significance hinges primarily on his comet observations.
Toscanelli was the second son of Domenico, a physician, and Biagia Mei. His family was one of the richest medical families in Florence. Toscanelli never married and, apart from short periods of time he spent outside Florence, he lived in the household of his father and later of his brother and his nephews.
Our knowledge of Toscanelli's life and works is limited to a few documents, and his fame as one of the greatest personalities of the 15th century is mainly attested by the eulogies of his contemporaries. He was astronomer, mathematician, and physician, knew Greek, and owned an important collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts.
Nicholas Krebs(Nicholas of Cusa) reported he knew Toscanelli in Padua, where Nicholas attended the university from 1417 to 1424; therefore, we can argue that Toscanelli studied there in the same years. They...
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Selected References
Apfelstadt, Eric (1992). “Christopher Columbus, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and Fernão de Roriz: New Evidence for a Florentine Connection.” Nuncius 7, no. 2: 69–80.
Barker, Peter and Bernard R. Goldstein (1988). “The Role of Comets in the Copernican Revolution.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 19: 299–319.
Celoria, G. (1921). Sulle osservazioni di comete fatte da Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli e sui lavori suoi astronomici in generale. Milan. Pubblicazioni del R. Osservatorio astronomico di Brera in Milano, 55. (First published in Uzielli, 1894.) (See pp. 308–385.)
Gallelli, C. (1993). “Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli.” In Il mondo di Vespucci e Verrazzano a cura di Leonardo Rombai, pp. 71–92. Florence: Olschki.
Garin, E. (1967). Ritratti di umanisti. Florence, pp. 41–67. English translation by Victor A. Velen and Elizabeth Velen. In Portraits from the Quattrocento. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Heilbron, J. L. (1999). The Sun in the Church. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, pp. 70–71.
Jervis, Jane L. (1985). Cometary Theory in Fifteenth‐Century Europe. Studia Copernicana, Vol. 26. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 43–85, 162–169.
Kronk, Gary W. (1999). Cometography. Vol. 1, pp. 268–269, 271–273, 275–279, 286–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Park, Katherine (1985). Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 226–233.
Settle, T. B. (1978). “Dating the Toscanelli's Meridian in Santa Maria del Fiore.” Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze 3, pt. 2: 69–70.
Toscanelli dal Pozzo, Paolo. Florenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechiano XI, 121, ff. 280r–280v with two horoscopes for 1448 and 1449.
——— Florenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 30, 15 ff. excerpted from Magl. XI, 121.
Uzielli, G. (1894). La vita e i tempi di Paolo Dal Pozzo Toscanelli: Ricerche e studi di Gustavo Uzielli: Con un capitolo (VI) sui lavori astronomici del Toscanelli di Giovanni Celoria. Rome.
Yeomans, Donald K. (1991). Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore. New York: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 24–25, 406–408, 410.
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Truffa, G. (2007). Toscanelli dal Pozzo, Paolo. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1391
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