Girolamo Ruscelli
Girolamo Ruscelli (1518–1566) was an Italian Mathematician and Cartographer active in Venice during the early 16th century. He was also an alchemist, writing pseudonymously as Alessio Piemontese. Girolamo Ruscelli was born in Viterbo (from a family described by different sources as of humble origins, of minor nobility, or notaries), probably in 1518, although in many texts list the year of birth as 1504. He lived in Aquilea, then in Padua, and later in Rome where in 1541 he founded the "Accademia dello Sdegno". He later moved to Naples, and finally in 1548 he moved to Venice where he remained until his death. The exact term to describe his business is polygraph, a literary man who, immediately after the invention of printing, earned a living working for a publisher on his own works or translating and often plagiarizing the work of others. He was a writer on the most varied subjects, both as author or curator, and on behalf of third parties, in this latter function in particular until 1555 in partnership with the publisher Plinio Pietrasanta. In that year he was tried by the Inquisition for the unlicensed publication of a satirical poem, Il capitolo delle Lodi del Fuso published by Plinio Pietrasanta in Venice 1554, and fined 50 ducats (about 6oz of gold), after which the small publishing company did not long survive. Most of his later works were published by Vincenzo Valgrisi. A mannerist portrait of Ruscelli by his friend Bernardo Tasso found in Il Minturno overo de la Bellezza by Bernardo's son Torquato Tasso. Based on documents on from testamentary bequests, it is known that Ruscelli's wife was Virginia Panarelli, sister of Teofilo Panarelli a doctor with Protestant sympathies who was hanged and burned in Rome in 1572. It is generally accepted that he was Alessio Piemontese (in Latin, Alexius Pedemontanus), a pseudonym under which he wrote an immensely popular book of alchemy first published in 1555, De Secreti Del Alessio Piemontese, which included recipes for alchemical compounds, cosmetics, dyes, and medicines.
