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The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men.
Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza’s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for “books of secrets”; and looks at narratives of science in works by Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella. It concludes with Camilla Erculiani’s letters on natural philosophy and, finally, Margherita Sarrocchi’s defense of Galileo’s “Medicean” stars.
Combining literary and cultural analysis, Daughters of Alchemy contributes to the emerging scholarship on the variegated nature of scientific practice in the early modern era. Drawing on a range of under-studied material including new analyses of the Sarrocchi–Galileo correspondence and a previously unavailable manuscript of Sforza’s Experimenti, Ray’s book rethinks early modern science, properly reintroducing the integral and essential work of women.
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I TATTI STUDIES IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE HISTORY Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Florence, Italy K. J. P. Lowe, Series Editor Series Editorial Board Melissa Meriam Bullard James Hankins Katharine Park Lino Pertile Dennis Romano DAUGHTERS OF ALCHEMY Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy Meredith K. Ray Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2015 Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ray, Meredith K., 1969– Daughters of alchemy : women and scientific culture in early modern Italy / Meredith K. Ray. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-50423-3 (alk. paper) 1. Women in science—Italy—History. 2. Women scientists—Italy—Biography. 3. Science—Italy—History. I. Title. Q130.R37 2015 509.2'5220945—dc23 2014035683 For Owen Contents Introduction 1 1 Caterina Sforza’s Experiments with Alchemy 2 The Secrets of Isabella Cortese: Practical Alchemy and Women Readers 14 46 3 Scientific Culture and the Renaissance Querelle des Femmes: Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella 73 4 Scientific Circles in Italy and Abroad: Camilla Erculiani and Margherita Sarrocchi Epilogue 156 Abbreviations Notes 163 165 Bibliography 249 Acknowledgments Index 283 281 111 Daughters of Alchemy Introduction In 1581, the Venetian writer Moderata Fonte, borrowing the imagery of metallurgy, wrote eloquently of women’s untapped potential in the liberal arts as “buried gold,” needing only to be unearthed and given the same attention as that afforded to men: “Gold which stays hidden in the mines / is no less gold, though buried, / and when it is drawn out and worked / it is as rich and beautiful as other gold.”1 Daughters of Alchemy undertakes a similar task, mining the rich and complex landscape of scientific culture in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Italy to excavate the integral, but often overlooked, contributions of women. This book rethinks existing paradigms of early modern