Michele Mercati

Michele Mercati (8 April 1541 – 25 June 1593) was a physician who was superintendent of the Vatican Botanical Garden under Popes Pius V, Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, and Clement VIII.

Biography

Mercati was born in San Miniato, Tuscany, the son of Pietro Mercati, physician to Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII. He was educated at the University of Pisa, where he took degrees in medicine and philosophy. He was interested in natural history, mineralogy, palaeontology, medicine, and botany, and produced a book on these subjects entitled the Metallotheca, which was not published until 1717.

Amongst other things, Mercati collected prehistoric stone tools along with fossils and minerals. These, in conjunction with his classical education and the growing Vatican Library collection of ethnographic artefacts from Asia and America, enabled him to include in the Metallotheca one of the first accounts of the manufacture and use of polished stone axes, flint arrowheads, and stone blades.

David Clarke describes Mercati as "the archaeological counterpart of Cardano in mathematics, Vesalius in anatomy, Galileo in the physical sciences and Copernicus in astronomy."

External links

• Michele Mercati
• Wunderkammer His cabinet of curiosities (museum)

References

• Clarke, D.L., 1978, Analytical Archaeology (second edition), London: Methuen. ISBN 0-416-85460-5

Persondata
Name	Mercati, Michele
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	8 April 1541
Place of birth
Date of death	25 June 1593
Place of death