An Introduction to Giambattista della Porta ebook

A Neapolitan, born about 1535 and dead in 1615, Giambattista della Porta gathered an academy of curious men in his own house and wrote of what nature keeps hidden and art knows how to put to work: the Magia naturalis, grown from the four books of 1558 to the twenty of 1589, the physiognomy that looks for the soul in the signs of the body, lenses and the camera obscura, devices worked by air, secret ciphers, memory, farming, and fourteen comedies. This book reconstructs his thought chapter by chapter: natural magic as an art that helps nature to complete its effects, the sympathies and celestial influences that govern it, his dealings with the censors, the European fortune of his books. Plates taken from his works, images of his time, diagrams, maps and a summary at the end of every chapter make it a handbook for readers meeting him for the first time.