Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments1

Sergius KoderaUniversity of Vienna

Abstract: Th is article surveys the vast range of diff erent literary genres to which Giovan Battista Della Porta (1535-1615) contributed; it thereby encompasses not merely Porta’s contributions to a specifi c form of science, his numerous texts on physiognomics and his infl uential Magia naturalis , but also his no less prolifi c literary production for the theater, since I argue that his scientifi c pro-duction can best be understood when viewed alongside it. In fact, when read together, these diff erent orientations his work took represent an amazingly coherent form of early modern thought--although one remarkably diff erent from later forms of science in that it constitutes a kind of performative natural philosophy, which I call scienza. Th is article, therefore, presents Porta less as a forerunner of modern science, instead situating his work for the laboratory as well as for the stage in the context of a peculiar form of theatricality. In short, Porta’s magus emerges as a very peculiar kind of stage director--an expert in the manipulation of appearances and audiences, and a dexterous creator of marvels. His practice echoes the very modes of dissimulation that were char-acteristic for the social comportment of a courtier in Baroque culture. Th e following article develops these ideas by pointing to some specifi c examples, namely Porta’s histrionic use of the magnet as described both in the second edition of the Magia naturalis (1589) and in some of his comedies, and his method of gathering and displaying fragmented parts of the human body for his work on palmistry (written between1599 and 1608).

1 Th is article develops the arguments I have put forward in “Giambattista Della Porta’s Histrionic Science,” California Italian Studies, 3 (2012) pp. 1-27. (free access at http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5538w0qd). I wish to thank Dana Jalobeanu for many invaluable suggestions. My thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their interesting remarks, especially for directing me to the works of Koen Vermeir on Kircher and theatricality; in addition, many thanks to Koen Vermeir for his generosity in giving me access to some of his pre-print texts.

JEMS 3 (2014), 1: 15–38

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16 Sergius Kodera

Keywords: Giovan Battista della Porta, William Gilbert, Baccio Bandinelli, magnetism, natural magic, natural philosophy, scienza, theatre, physiognomy, baroque science.

Introduction

Giovan Battista della Porta (1535-1615) was one of Europe’s main propo-nents of a decidedly non-academic, yet erudite natural magic in the context of Italian Naturalist philosophy.2 His works in this fi eld—a fi eld also encompass-ing the arts of physiognomy, ciphers, distillation and optics (to name but a few)—ranked him amongst the most famous and popular writers and scien-tists of his day. My contribution will not contest this general picture; instead, I seek to broaden its scope by including Della Porta’s works for the theater, for he was the only preternatural philosopher whose literary texts had a signifi -cant impact on the early modern European stage. I would argue that when viewed from a particular histrionic perspective, much of Porta’s oeuvre repre-sents an amazingly coherent form of early modern philosophy, although one remarkably diff erent from later forms of science in that it constitutes a kind of performative natural philosophy, which I will call scienza. It is an art (ars/technè) in the original sense: a combination of theory and practice entailing a specifi cally Early Modern culture of the imagination. Louise George Clubb has encapsulated the remarkable relationship between Della Porta’s scienza and the audiences of his plays in the following analysis: “Knowledge was not to be disseminated indiscriminately but in terms chosen to maintain epis-temic secrecy while communicating to the aspiring seer the spectacle of na-ture’s marvels and the manner of demonstrating them. Interesting questions arise here concerning Della Porta’s theatricality […]”3 Th erefore, I will here proceed to give some examples of how Della Porta’s experimental practice, evolving in the context of a preternatural philosophy, has a decidedly histri-onic character.4 I employ the words “histrionic” or “theatrical” in the sense

2 For a succinct introduction to the intellectual background and to Porta’s forerunners, see Brian P. Copenhaver, “Th e occultist tradition and its critics” in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (eds.) Th e Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed., vol. 1 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 454-457; Paola Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 13-34; Daniel Garber, “Physics and Foundations” in Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds.) Th e Cambridge history of science, vol. 3 Early modern science,. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. 21-61; pp. 33-36.

3 Louise George Clubb, “Review of Balbiani 2001,” Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003), pp. 188-89.

4 On this, see the interesting remarks regarding the connections between Della Porta’s art of memory and the stage in Lina Bolzoni, Th e Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press, trans. Jeremy Parzen, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001, pp. 163-69. See also Katherine MacDonald, “Humanistic Self-Representation

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 17

that what we would call a laboratory was actually a space in which experiments – remarkable and unique manifestations of the occult properties and affi nities that exist between certain objects—were produced by a magus who acts very much like a stage director.5 Conversely, I will also argue that the science of the preternatural manifests itself in Della Porta’s experiments in an unmistakably histrionic manner, aiming towards the creation of Marvellous events.6

Porta’s reticence to construct large systems or become openly involved with politics (let alone theology), as well as his inclination to leave the Peripa-tetic establishment alone, was quite prudent: When Campanella and Gior-dano Bruno published their ideas on new cosmologies and metaphysics, they had to pay dearly for their audacity.7 Another important aspect of Porta’s sci-enza was its close affi nity to the emerging cultures of the absolutist courts, which is also characteristic of Galileo’s approach to physics.8

Even though Porta’s work was from the onset severely hampered by close surveillance from the Roman Inquisition, this Neapolitan nobleman had suf-fi cient means and social standing to continue his works and remain in the

in Giovan Battista Della Porta’s Della Fisonomia dell’uomo: Antecedents and Innovation,” Th e Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005), pp. 397-414; Sergius Kodera, “Der Magus und die Stripperinnen. Giambattista della Portas indiskrete Renaissance-Magie,” in Brigitte Felderer and Ernst Strouhal, (eds.), Rare Künste. Zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Zauberkunst, Vienna: Springer, 2006, pp. 55-78, and Sergius Kodera Disreputable Bodies: Magic, Gender, and Medicine in Renaissance Natural Philosophy, Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010, pp. 251-73.

5 On this topic, see the interesting remarks made by Koen Vermeir with respect to Athanasius Kircher. Koen Vermeir, “Openness versus secrecy? Historical and historiographical remarks,” British Journal for the History of Science 45 (2012) pp. 165-188.

6 For the professors of secrets, the term experimentum meant something exactly between the medieval idea of “ordinary experience” and Galileo’s way of testing a hypotheses; see William Eamon, “Th e Accademia Segreta of Girolamo Ruscelli: A Sixteenth-Century Italian Scientifi c Society,” Isis 75 (1984) p. 333. Eamon emphasized that professors of secrets too experimentum to mean “a trial or empirical verifi cation of a recipe;” cf. William Eamon, “Science and Popular Culture in Sixteenth Century Italy: Th e ‘Professors of Secrets’ and Th eir Books,” Sixteenth Century Journal 16 (1985), p. 484. Th e term segreto shifts in meaning from an anti-rationalist notion of the “divinely revealed secret” to the “technical recipes that exploit the occult forces of nature without understanding (them)” to the seventeenth century experimenters’ program of actively and systematically uncovering the hidden workings of nature and its laws; cf. Ann Blair, “Review of Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature,” Renaissance Quarterly 49 (1996), p. 178.

7 For an elegant recent intellectual biography of Giordano Bruno, see Ingrid Rowland, Giordano Bruno. Philosopher/Heretic, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008. Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, is the best introduction to Bruno’s science. On the diff erent approaches of Porta and Bruno towards magic, see Hélène Védrine, “Della Porta e Bruno. Natura e magia,” Giornale critico della fi losofi a italiana 65 (1986), pp. 297-309.

8 Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: Th e Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 11-48.

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18 Sergius Kodera

Regno for most of his life.9 One of his lifelong concerns was the devising and description of extraordinary experiments that would testify to his amazing abil-ities as a natural magician. Porta not only produced traditional recipe books and classical literature, but works where he divulged secrets of the trades—and also his own experiments.10 Yet he was not only one of the most renowned “profes-sors of secrets” of his time,11 but also authored at least seventeen successful works for the theater, some of them important mannerist plays.12

Th e fi rst edition of Porta’s Magia Naturalis (1558) already emphasizes the idea that the magus is not only a formidable theorist, but also must be a stage director (to employ an anachronistic term) of marvels. Porta thus seeks to forge an image of his own persona representing himself as an especially tal-ented and ingenious practitioner of such magical arts—one who should not be held responsible if his experiments are repeated unsuccessfully by less gifted persons. Porta also states that the natural causes of these marvels must be hid-den from spectators in order to preserve their marvellous eff ects.13 Actually,

9 For a short, but comprehensive biography of Della Porta, see Giovanna Romei, “Entry: Della Porta, Giovambattista,” in Vincenzo Capelletti (ed.), Dizionario biografi co degli Italiani, Vol. 37, Rome: Istituto Della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989, pp. 170-182.

10 William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 194-253 and esp. p. 195. Giovan Battista Della Porta, Della magia naturale libri XX, Naples: Carlino Vitale, [1589] 1611, p. 388: “Noi habbiamo raccolte alcune cose raccolte da’i scritti de gli antichi migliori, che ci parevano, l’habbiamo sperimentate, e le buone l’habbiamo portate qui, ma assai sono migliori quelle della nostra inventione, e de’i più moderni […] che anchora non sono state stampate […].” Adrian Johns, “Review of Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature,” Isis 86 (1995), p. 108 has highlighted the marketable aspect of such recipes. Th e professors of secrets ruined people by publishing their tricks of the trade; accordingly, “the relationship between books of secrets and the Philosophical Transactions was not one of simple inheritance . . .” On the popularity of sperimenti amongst the professors of secrets in general, see Eamon, Th e Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Magic and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy, Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2010, p. 57.

11 I borrow the term from Eamon, Th e Professor of Secrets, p. 195.12 Th e best introduction to Porta’s theater is still Louise George Clubb, Giambattista della

Porta, Dramatist, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964.13 Giovan Battista della Porta, Magiae naturalis, sive de Miraculis rerum naturalium libri IIII,

[1558], Antwerp: Christopher Plantin 1560, fol. 2v (lib. I, ch. 2): “Sit Magus naturæ dono artifex, & sciens ualde: nam sine artifi cio sciens, aut ignarus artifex, si quid naturale fortè non habeat, adeo coniuncta sunt, vt frustra terat operam, nec optato potiatur. Sunt autem quidam ita Naturæ muneribus in iis rebus habiles, & scientes, ut à Deo fi cti esse videantur. ... hoc dicere volui, vt si inscius fallitur, nobis vitio ne vertat, sed suam culpet inscitiam. hæc non tradentis, sed professoris imbecillitas est. Nam si hæc in manibus alicuius minus ingeniosi versabuntur: derogatur scientiæ fi des, fi tque, vt fortuita videantur, quæ verissima, ac necessariis eueniunt causis. Sic debita actiua passiuis addens mira produces, & si mirabiliora quæsieris, haberique vis, eorum suffi cientis causæ cognitionem tollito. Nam qui causas nouerit, nimium authoritati derogat, illud enim mirum; cuius causa latet spectantem, eatenus rari, insuetique illud retinens, quatenus causæ abditæ sunt.”

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 19

this mindset would hardly astonish Early Modern readers, for ps. Aristotle, in his Mechanics (848a 34-38), had maintained that machines should conceal their actual mechanisms in order to let the miracle (thauma) appear more impressive.14 Associated with this form of concealing an apparatus is also a special form of ingenuity on the part of the magus/stage director—and, as we shall see in a moment, this requires more than the mechanical device itself; in order to make the marvel function, an operator/magus must maintain and manage that mechanism as he would the ropes of a theater machinery. Indeed, Porta was seldom interested in purely mechanical devices: the world of cogs was not his main fi eld of interest. He rather preferred to work with objects allegedly possessing occult properties and creating spectacular visual eff ects, such as mirrors. Koen Vermeir describes the situation for Athanasius Kircher in very similar terms:

Th is play between veiling and unveiling was an important aspect of natural and artifi cial magic, but it was also part of demonstrations in experimental philoso-phy. Th e apparent ambiguities in openness and secrecy are actually constitutive of Kircher’s approach. Depending on the public, Kircher meticulously veiled or explained the causes behind his wondrous demonstrations. Diff erent kinds of wonder and theatricality were appropriate and could help in attracting patron-age. Th e beholders could be delighted or thrilled by the optical or mechanical illusions, or they reacted with anxiety if they feared demonic involvement.15

Magnets in Love

Among Della Porta’s favorite “magic” objects, magnets certainly played a lead-ing role and indeed the lodestone is a venerable magical object, neatly bifurcating into the categories of “active” and “passive” (male and female) with their reciprocal attraction and repulsion (sympathy and antipathy), categories intrinsic to the structure of Porta’s animistic magical theory.16 Th e second and much enlarged edi-tion of the Magia Naturalis (1589) includes a lengthy book on magnetism.

Because there is such a natural Concord and sympathy between the iron and the Loadstone, as if they had made a League; that when the Loadstone comes neer the iron, the iron presently stirs, and runs to meet it, to embrace by the

14 For an edition of the text, see Fritz Kraff t, Dynamische und statische Betrachtungsweise in der antiken Mechanik, Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1970, pp. 23-24. See also the illuminating comments in: Jan Lazardzig, “Gottesfaden und Weltenhebel. Zum Verhältnis von weißer Ma-gie und Mechanik im 17. Jahrhundert,” Morgen-Glantz. Zeitschrift der Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesellschaft 18 (2008), p. 117.

15 Vermeir, Openness, vs. secrecy, p. 183 16 On this topic, see Kodera, Disreputable Bodies, pp. 273-91.

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20 Sergius Kodera

loadstone. … And the loadstone runs as fast as the iron, and is a much in love with that, and unity with it; for neither of them will refuse to be drawn. … And Orpheus in his Verses relates, that Iron is drawn by the Loadstone as a Bride after the Bridegroom, to be embraced; … but if it once kist the Loadstone, as if the desire were satisfi ed, then it is at rest; and they are so mutually in love, that if one cannot come at the other, it will hang pendulous in the air.17

According to this quotation, inanimate things behave as though they are hu-man: they may fall in love with each other, then performing the most remarkable deeds in order to achieve union, in eff ect heterosexual relationships. Like humans who are “naturally” attracted to each other, the magnet and the iron attracted by that magnet will perform extraordinary feats in order to fi nd and embrace each other. Porta understands this physical union not merely in metaphorical terms, with the magnet’s power to attract the iron structurally identical to the way hu-man beings are attracted to one another. He also used the occult qualities of the magnet to create elaborate shows employing magnetic objects.18 Th e Magia has a detailed description of “How to make an army out of Sand to fi ght before you.” Th e spectators observed little fi gures of soldiers moving on a table as they

[…] drew neer together and were more neer the lodestone, the sands trembled; and by degrees, they seemed like those that take up their Spears, and when the lodestone was laid down, they laid down their spears, if they were ready to fi ght, and did threaten to kill and slay . . . and when the stones come neer to one the other, they seemed to fi ght, and run one with the other.19

17 See Giovan Battista della Porta, Natural magick [1589], London, 1658. Anastatic reprint, New York: Basic Books, 1957, p. 201 (ck. 7, ch. 20) Giovan Battista della Porta, Magia natu-ralis libri XX [1589], Rouen: Johannes Berthelin, 1650, p. 296 (lib.7, cap. 20): “Operatio haec est, quod inter ferrum, & magnetem adeo naturalis concordia, & sympathia est, quasi initio inter eos foedere, ut cum magnes ferro accedit, nutat illico ferrum, ei in eius occursum abit, amplexandum a magnete, illudque in suum amplexum recipit ita pertinaciter, ut vix multis distractionibus hinc inde jactando distrahi patiatur; nec minor est magnetis ad ferrum occursus conciliatio, mutuus amor, & conciliabulum, nemo enim eorum tractui renititur, sed lenior semper ad alterius occursum ultro se confert. ... Orpheus in suis carminibus, narrat, ita ferrum a magnete trahi, ut sponsa ad amplexus sui sponsi, immo ferrum adeo se maritandi cupidine sollicitatur, adeo ferventi desiderio magneti occurrere nititur, & haerere, ut quum suo pondere impeditur, erigit fastigium: quasi manus, ad lapidem nutans, & blande demulcens, impatien-sque suum gravari stabilimentum, nec se sua sorte contentum fatetur, nisi vel saltem osculo coniungens, veluti refricato desiderio conquiescit. Adeoque mutuoque amore defl agrant, ut nisi alteri alterum contingendi detur potestas, in aere pendulum teneatur.”

18 Th is histrionic aspect of scientifi c experiments remains characteristic well into the seven-teenth century and beyond. For criticisms from members the Royal Society of this spectacular character of experiments, see for example William Eamon, “Markets, Piazzas, and Villages,” in Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds.), Th e Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3 Early Mod-ern Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 206-223, p. 216.

19 Porta, Natural Magick, pp. 199-200; Magia 1650, p. 294 (lib. 7, cap. 17): “Sub ta-bula laeva manu magnetem optimum admonebam, quo admoto, sistrum cornu incedebant, ex

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 21

Here, the magus plays the role of an almost demonic stage director who, much to the amazement of his audiences, activates seemingly inanimate fi g-ures to behave like warriors—while his hands (which are holding a couple of lodestones) remain concealed. Porta explains that the trick functions with fi gurines made of fi nely pounded iron.20 However, such experiments generally aimed more towards the creation of meraviglia than towards the theoretical explication of natural phenomena. A crafty stage director can produce many more marvels through these forms of attraction and repulsion, whether he exercises his ingenium on the stage or in the laboratory, as Porta remarks in the conclusion to this segreto: “[...] but if one that is ingenious do the business, he will do more and greater Feats then we can write of.” 21 What is also at issue here is an interplay between concealing and revealing: the “demonic show” was intended for a general uneducated public, whereas the explanations Porta gave to his reading public of savants (and, more importantly, potential pa-trons!) consisted in another form of theatricality: here the magus presents himself as a cunning mastermind who dexterously manipulates the marvel-lous—but occult—properties of objects and is thus capable of exerting power over his audience’s imagination. 22

Of course, magnetism already had a long history by Porta’s time, and the lodestone is a venerable magical object,23 used since antiquity as a love charm since its capacity to attract iron testifi es to the sympathy between inanimate objects.24 I do not wish to dwell on this matter here, but merely to introduce

altera parte dextra alos lapide dextra cornu, quum propinquius essent, magneti magis adhaeren-do, harenulae inhorrescebant, ac paulatim se attollentibus, hastas imitabantur, inclinatio mag-nete, inclinabantur & hastae, quasi praeliature mortem, & excidium minarentur, & perfectior magnes, eo setae longius erigebatur, & motis paulatim manibus, exercitus pedetentim moveba-tur, & proprius cohaerentes lapides, manus committitur praeliantium, & simul commisceretur, sic reliqua cornua, & turmae accedentes praelii simulacrum vincere, nunc vinci, nunc hastas erigere, submittere, ut plus minus magnes accedit, & vehementius vos orbem extendit.”

20 Porta, Natural Magick, p. 202 describes a performance with a dancing needle that is guided by the magus who holds a magnet: “ […] by reason of this consent and discord of the loadstone, I use to make pretty sport to make my friends merry […] and this is a pretty sight to show your friends, that cannot but admire it.” See Porta, Magia 1650, p. 298 (bk. 7, ch. 24).

21 Porta, Natural Magick, pp. 199-200, Magia 1650, p. 295 (lib. 7, cap. 17): “Sed si quis ingeniosus ministraverit, pura, et maiora, quam scribi possunt, operabitur.”

22 Again see Vermeir, Openness vs. Secrecy.23 J. A. Bennett, “Magnetical Philosophy and Astronomy from Wilkins to Hooke,” in R.

Taton and C. Wilson (eds.), Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, Part A: Tycho Brahe to Newton (Cambridge) 1989, pp. 222-230. Albert Radl, Der Magnetstein in der Antike. Quellen und Zusammenhänge, Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1988. Herbert W. Meyer, A history of electricity and magnetism, Norwalk, Conn.: Burndy Library,1972.

24 For an introduction to the magnet as magical object, see Brian P. Copenhaver, “A Tale of Two Fishes, Magical objects in Natural History from Antiquity through the Scientifi c revolu-tion,” Journal of the history of ideas, 25 (1991), pp. 373-98. Among its other portentous quali-ties, the magnet can be used as an instrument to detect unfaithful wives; cf. Giovan Battista

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22 Sergius Kodera

William Gilbert’s reaction to Porta in order to emphasize that the latter’s his-trionic scienza was severely criticized by one of the most innovative contem-porary writers on the subject. Gilbert describes Porta’s theory in the following ways.

It is the height of absurdity to speak of these substances (i.e.: the lodestone and the iron) thus confounded together, as warring with each other and quarreling and calling out from the battle for forces to come to their aid. Now iron itself when touched with loadstone seizes iron with no less force that loadstone itself. Th ese fi ghts, seditions, conspiracies in a stone, as though it were nursing quarrels as an occasion for calling in auxiliary forces, are the maunderings of a babbling hag, rather than the devices of an accomplished prestidigitator (i.e. Porta).25

Gilbert’s polemical outburst at Porta’s segreti with magnets – he is appar-ently referring to the above passages from the Magia naturalis – highlights the peculiar way in which Porta had used the magnet as a device of wonder for his magical shows. According to Gilbert, Porta’s theory of magnetism is clearly unscientifi c gibberish, unworthy of an accomplished magus. Gilbert’s ap-proach is thus markedly diff erent form Porta’s and it is precisely the performa-tive context in which the latter sets his work with magnets (the conspiracies, seditions, fi ghts)—that arouses the former’s wrath, thus delineating an en-tirely diff erent approach to the phenomenon of magnetism. According to Gil-bert, magnetism is a natural phenomenon that can be explained in a wider cosmological context,26 whereas for Porta the lodestone is a marvellous toy endowed with spectacular occult powers of attraction and repulsion: a toy that

Della Porta, Natural Magick, p. 216 (bk. 7, ch. 56). Porta claims to have tested this segreto [1558] 1588, fol. 88r (bk. II, ch. 21). Th e magnet’s “attractive virtue” serves Porta as evidence that seemingly inanimate objects in some sense have souls. He even says that the soul of the magnet can be visualized an idea that is dismissed out of hand by Gilbert: “I oft saw with great delight a Loadstone wrapt up in burning coles, than sent forth a blue fl ame, that smelt of brim-stone and iron: and that being dissipated, it lost its quality of its soul that was gone, namely its attractive vertue.” Porta, Natural Magick, p. 192 (bk. 7, ch. 2).

25 Gilbert, On the magnet, transl. P. Fleury Mottelay [1893] New York: Dover Publica-tions 1958 [1600], p. 103; William Gilbert, De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure : physiologia noua, plurimis & argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata, London: Short, 1600, p. 63: “Atque ista quidem ita confusa pugnare inter se et litem intendere; atque ex pugna auxiliare copias advocari, absurdissimam. Atqui ferrum ipsum tactum magnete, ferrum non imbecillius quam magnes rapit. Quare illae pugnae, seditiones, coniurationes in lapide, ac si perpetuas aleret lites unde auxiliares peteret copias, nugantis sunt vetulae deliramenta non magi praestantis inventa.” For more fi erce criticisms of Porta’s approach, see for instance ibid, p. 67.

26 See the stimulating discussion of Gilbert in John Henry, “Th e Fragmentation of Renais-sance Occultism and the Decline of Magic,” History of Science 46 (2008), pp. 1-48 at pp. 27-28: “Gilbert went on to show that the earth was a giant magnet, and must have a soul, and be capable of making itself move in the ways required by Copernican astronomy.” See also John

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 23

could be manipulated just as the actors on his stage were, behaving as though moved by the concealed hand of the magus/ stage director who controlled their (again) occult quality of attraction and repulsion.

Th ese fundamental conceptual diff erences between the two contemporary authors become apparent when we compare their—superfi cially very simi-lar—set-ups for experiments employing magnets that are afl oat in water ba-sins. Porta’s example comes from the world of mountebanks and impostors:

For women shall see a man of Wood rowing, a little boat well waxed, in a large vessel full of water, and they can counterfeit hereby as impostors do divination by water. Th e fraud is thus began. Th e vessel is fi lled with water, a little ship of Wax is put into it, or else of Wood. In the middle sits a little man of Wood, fastened through the middle with a Hogs Bristle, so equal balanced, that with every light motion he may easily stir himself. Let him have oars in his hands, and under his feet a piece of Iron. Let the Alphabet be made on the brim of the vessel, round about. Wherefore a woman coming to enquire of some doubtful matter, the little man of Wood, as it he would give a true answer, will row to those letters that may signify the answer. For he that holds the Loadstone in his hand, under the table, can draw the boat which way he will, and so will answer by joining these letters together.27

Of course, this description of a wheel of letters with the little boat acting as dial or pointer is highly reminiscent both of many contemporary illustra-tions of Lullian wheels and of more or less erudite varieties of divinatory mag-ic. Porta quite frequently uses such visual elements in diff erent contexts, for instance in his treatise on ciphers. To be sure, Porta emphasizes that the forces of the magnet are employed in this way by saltimbanchi, by cheats. He thus makes it quite clear that this kind of spectacle should not be taken as seri-ously as other manifestations of magnetic power, since it is designed to deceive women and children, i.e., uneducated and vulnerable audiences. Even so, Porta’s own motive—to infl uence and impress other people by the display of

Henry, “Animism and Empiricism: Copernican Physics and the origins of William Gilbert’s experimental method,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (2001), pp. 99-119.

27 Porta, Natural Magick, p. 204; Magia 1650, p. 302 (lib. 7, cap. 30): “Quomodo lig-neus homo naviculam moveat, & alia ludicra. Nec leves hinc eveniunt doli, ut saepe videant mulieres ligneum hominem ceream naviculam amplo in cratere aquae pleno remis agentem, fi ngentes, ut impostores, hydromantiae speciem. Dolus hic orditur. Crater aqua repleatur, & in eo navicula cerea imponatur, vel lignea; in medio homunculus ligneus accommodetur, suilla seta per medium infi xus, ita in aequilibrio positus, ut levi quocunque motu, se facile movere possit, habeat in manibus remos. Sub pedibus ferri frustillum. In crateris circuitu alphabetum sit exaratur. Mulieri igitur de dubiis rebus responsa petenti, quasi vera responsurus ligneus homunculus, manibus cymbam agitans ad eas literas navigabit, quae responsum signifi care possunt. Nam qui sub tabula magnetem in manu habuerit, quo placuerit cymbam ducet, & sic combinatis elementis, responsa reddet.”

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24 Sergius Kodera

such meraviglia—coincides with his more elaborate and original examples, such as the army made from sand. Th ese shows are explicitly designed to stu-pefy and thereby win the admiration of his peers—including not only his friends but, of course, a wide readership: indeed, most of the people who watched his plays were most likely moderately educated men and women.28 Th e spectators’ emotional reactions constitute the prime objective of Porta’s histrionic scienza. He was far less interested in the theoretical framework that might explain the causes of magnetism: as any other causa occulta, it was by defi nition hidden and therefore must remain so.29 Porta was more interested in the sense of amazement these experiments would create in his audiences, and he wished the spectators to marvel at the magician’s prowess in construct-ing and directing such a divinatory device. So the magus has no need to elab-orate a coherent theory of the causes of occult properties, his objective is rather to create a unique impression upon his audiences.

Th e aura of mysticism and magic that Porta sought to create around his magnetic experiments emerges even more strongly when we compare them to how Gilbert sought to prove that iron rods afl oat in water basins are actually inherently magnetic:

Th at this is so you may learn from the following experiment: A small piece of cork, round, and the size of a fi lbert, has an iron wire passes through it to the middle of the wire; fl oat this in still water and approach (without contact) to one end of that wire, the end of another wire: wire attracts wire, and when the one is withdrawn slowly the other follows, yet this action takes place only within fi t limits.30

Th is experiment, almost contemporary with the Magia Naturalis, is far less spectacular than Porta’s and is directed towards a very a diff erent audience, with a very diff erent scope. Gilbert’s fl oating rods of iron depend only to a very limited extent on the ingenuity of the operator; there is no hand shifting fi gurines or dials; the movement of the iron rods depends on the earth’s mag-netism, which could be called an occult force, but the scope of his experiment could not have been more diff erent form Porta’s intentions.

28 On Porta and his precarious relationship to the saltimbanchi, see Kodera, Histrionic Sci-ence with references.

29 Porta, De i miracoli et maravigliosi eff etti 1588, fol. 9v (lib. 1, cap. 8): „[...] sono occulte, perché con demonstrationi evidente non si possano sapere; e l’intelletto nostro, non le può comprendere: perciòche stanno nascoste nella maiestà e gravità della natura, la onde la natura ha voluto più tosto che queste cose simili s’ ammirino, che le sappino.“

30 Gilbert, On the magnet, p. 49; Gilbert, De magnete, p. 29: “[…] quod sic cognoscito: suberis Cortex exiguus, nucis avellanae magnitudine, rotundus, trajicitur ferreo fi lo, usque ad medium fi li: in aqua tranquilla cum nataverint, appone similius alteri, proprè (ita tamen ut non tangat) fi nem alterius ferrei fi li: & fi lum, fi lum trahit, & alterum lente subductum sequitur, atque hoc tantum convenientibus terminis perfi citur.”

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 25

In conclusion, Porta neither necessarily believed that all the marvels he was describing in his books were real, nor did he seem very interested in the theo-retical explanations of occult properties. His central narrative was centered upon the theatrical mise en scene; this, he claimed, was responsible for creating delight; a delight that nature herself appreciates in her spectacles.

Magnetic Actors

If for Porta the laboratory constitute a little stage, his theater is also a space where audiences view actors behaving like natural objects with occult proper-ties: just as magnetism is a form of physical attraction, the universal law of sympathy and antipathy, love and hatred, is enacted by the personae on Porta’s stage. A case in point is Attilo, the innamorato in the Sorella (1604), who says: “amor mi ha fatto bussola di naviganti, che, volgendola di qua e di lá quanto si voglia, come si lascia libera, da se stessa si riduce alla sua tramontana”— (“Love turned me into a sailor’s compass, that, whichever way you turn it, the moment you let it go, it turns back to its northern wind”).31 Th e emotional life of humans thus appears, to Porta, as magnetic; therefore, within this cir-cular reasoning, it appears to be eminently logical that the lodestone is a pow-erful love-charm.32

As we have seen, his representations of the lovers on stage are also paral-leled by the forces through which the magnets attract iron. Of course, one may now object that the above remark is made in an entirely diff erent context--the stage--and that it is intended to be merely metaphorical. To my mind, this reading is anachronistic, because the natural magician relies precisely on metaphor and on metonymy in his theory as well as in his practice: the uni-versal passions of attraction and of repulsion that permeate and govern the cosmos are identical and active not only in human beings but also in magnets--as well as in all other material objects of the world. Th is is why the magus may manipulate both and by the same means.

31 Act I, Scene 3, in Giovan Battista Della Porta, Teatro, ed. by Raff aele Sirri, Naples: Ed-izione Scientifi ca Italiana, 4 Vols. (Edizione Nazionale delle opere Giovan Battista della Porta Vol. 15), 2000-2003 vol. 3, p. 142; Giovan Battista Della Porta, Th e Sister [La sorella], intr. and transl. by Donald Beecher and Bruno Ferraro, Ottawa: Dovehouse. [1604] 2000, p. 88.

32 Th e link between human sexuality and magnetism is also apparent in the following quote from Magia 1650, p. 32 (lib. 1, cap. 13): “Impudentissimæ meretrici, non impudentia solum, sed virtus etiam inest, vt quae tetigerit, vel secum habuerit, vim habeant impudentem, et im-pudentem reddendi: vnde qui illius sæpius se contemplatus fuerit speculo, vel induerit exuuias, ei redditur & in impudentia, & in libidine similis. Nec solum ferrum à magnete contactum trahitur, sed cætera allicit ferrea, ac vti dicemus anulus vnus, quem rapiet magnes, multos at-trahit, vt tanquam catena pendere videatur, & mutuò illius transferatur virtus. Idemque in cæteris obseruare licet.”

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26 Sergius Kodera

As in Porta’s tricks with magnets, the lovers on his stage are expected to perform the most remarkable deeds before they can be happily united. Dou-ble cross-dressing is one of the more common examples: in order to arouse the desire of a virgin, the lover in the Fantesca enters her family’s service disguised as a maid, only to then parade in male clothes before the girl’s window, leading the object of his love to believe that he is the servant’s brother.33 It could be said that their bodies are performing the breakneck movements not only rem-iniscent of the motions lodestones can perform, but also caused by the same occult, universal forces of attraction and repulsion that permeate the entire creation. Th e iron and the magnet behave just as the topical innamorato and the innamorata, just as the sand army’s seemingly erratic movements of attrac-tion and repulsion, or even those of a simple magnet and a needle (in this case, when they are being forcibly moved towards each other’s’ identical poles). Th e particular setting of Porta’s comedies is well in tune with his general strategy as a dramatist: most of Porta’s comedies are structured by peripety--providen-tial intervention--even if his happy ends are always the result of natural causes, usually the timely return of a family member missing for decades and hence believed dead.34 Th e labyrinthine pattern should appear hopelessly frustrating until suddenly resolved by a fi nal peripety, a coup de théâtre with unexpected and satisfying dramatic impact producing order out of chaos and a happy ending all around.35 Just like the iron and the magnet in Porta’s experiments, actions onstage are meant to appear as manifestations of marvellous but natu-ral forces, inevitably pointing up the author’s ingenuity. And like the iron in Della Porta’s magnetic games, the actors seem to lack agency: controlled by the magus/stage director pulling the strings behind the scenes, they are moved by external natural powers, thus akin to physical objects moved by the invisi-ble hand of a mastermind. Th e lovers on Porta’s stage are driven by a regimen

33 Della Porta, Fantesca (1592), act I, scene 1, in Teatro vol. 2, p. 118. For a succinct sum-mary of all of Della Porta’s plays, see Clubb, Giambattista della Porta, pp. 70-142; for a list of tentative dates of the composition of Porta’s various plays, ibid., pp. 300-301. Many of these intricate ruses are echoed in Shakespeares’s comedies, such as Twelfth Night and Th e Merry Wives of Windsor. On these connections, see also the summary remarks in Clubb, “Nicht durch das Wort allein. Jenseits der Sprache von Della Portas Th eater,” Morgen-Glantz. Zeitschrift der Chrsitian Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesellschaft 18 (2008), pp. 174-77.

34 Della Porta, Introduction to: Sister, p. 25 and p. 30.35 Giovan Battista Della Porta, Gli duoi fratelli rivali: Th e two rival brothers, ed. and trans.

Louise George Clubb, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, p. 9. Della Porta’s com-edies have been aptly described as exercises in Counter-Reformation ideology. And indeed, his plays conclude before night falls, and (even against the will of the protagonists) end with marriage, with death or emigration the sole alternatives. Transgression on the lover’s side occurs only on the surface, as sogno, or momentary disturbance of an otherwise static social order. Cf. Michele Rak, “Modelli e macchine del sapere nel teatro di Giovan Battista della Porta” in Maurizio Torrini (ed.), Giovan Battista della Porta nell’ Europa del suo tempo, Naples: Guida, 1990, pp. 409-10 and Clubb, “Nicht durch das Wort allein,” p. 181.

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 27

of power that elides verbal negotiation. “Love” on Della Porta’s stage is always “besotted;” it is a somatic phenomenon caused by an imbalance of the hu-mors.36 Like magnetism, beauty – the cause of sexual attraction—manifests itself as a non-discursive, natural power over other, less attractive individuals.37

According to Porta, infatuation can thus also be (and indeed often is) med-icated with drugs. Emblematic of this practice is an often-repeated joke, put into the mouth of a witty servant and directed to the innnamorato (who is raving with love): “Pigliate silopi e medicine che vi purghino il corpo” (“Take syrups and medicines to purge your body”).38 Th ese graphic representations of

36 Beginning with Avicenna’s Canon medicinae on the subject of mad love, the somatic foun-dation of amor heroicus, was, frequently the object of debate in contemporary medical, magical and philosophical texts. Th is ailment is described in detail in Bernhard Gordon’s Lilium medicinae (c.1285). Della Porta examines the phenomenon in various places, for instance in the second edi-tion of the Magia naturalis Magick, pp. 230-32 (bk. 8, ch. 14). For a concise introduction to the topic, its connections to magic and the doctrine of spiritus from the perspective of Neoplatonism, see Christopher S. Celenza, “Th e revival of Hellenistic philosophies,” in James Hankins, (ed.) Th e Cambridge companion to Renaissance philosophy. Cambridge, UK, New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 2007, pp. 89-92; for the general contexts: Eros and Anteros the medical traditions of love in the Renaissance, ed. by Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella. Ottawa: Dovehouse 1992. John Charles Nelson, Renaissance Th eory of Love: the Context of Giordano Bruno’s Eroici furori, New York: Columbia University Press 1956. See also Hjalmar Crohns, “Zur Geschichte der Liebe als ‘Krankheit,’” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 3 (1905), pp. 66-86. For Renaissance sources discussing the phenomenon see Marsilio Ficino, De amore/Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon Marsile Ficin, ed and transl. by Raymond Marcel. Paris: Belles Lettres, pp. 224-25 (lib.,VI, cap. 9) and pp. 324-26 (lib.VII, cap. 4); Tomaso Garzoni, L’ ospidale de’ pazzi incurabili, ed. by Stefano Barelli. Roma: Antenore, 2004, p. 314 f. (Discorso 18: De’ pazzi d’amore).

37 For example Clarizia, in the Fratelli rivali (1601), is described in the following words: “Un si stupendo spettacolo di bellezza rapì a sé tutti gli occhi e cuori de’ riguardanti: restar le lingue mute e gli animi sospesi […] .” Della Porta, Gli duoi fratelli 1.1, p. 59. (“So dazzling a spectacle of beauty ravished to itself the eyes and hearts of all observers: tongues fell silent, spirits hung suspended […]”) Translation ibid., p. 60. Clubb (ibid., p. 39) says: “Carizia im-parts a sense of the supernatural, of miracle, without departing from the letter of the rule of verisimilitude or returning to medieval rappresentazioni sacre.” See ibid. for further references. I disagree with Clubb’s claim that Della Porta is here catering to a need for staging “some ‘reali-ties’ important to late Renaissance Christian thought” (ibid.); instead, I believe that (at least in Della Porta’s case) meraviglia is deliberately presented as a secular, natural phenomenon. In a similar vein (to give one more example), in the Carbonaria (1606) a beautiful virgin’s noble outward appearance saves her from being raped by pirates. Cf. Carbonaria (1606) 5.3, in Della Porta, Teatro, vol. 2, p. 535: “[…] che la generosità dello aspetto e la maestà della bellezza sforza ancor le genti barbare a non cercarle cosa contra il suo volere.” Th is mental habit seems to have been fairly common in Naples; see Guido Panico. Il carnefi ce e la piazza. Crudeltà di Stato e violenza popolare a Napoli in età moderna, Naples: Edizioni scientifi che Italiane, 1985, p. 53 where he reports that virtually the only way for a convict to arouse compassion from an oth-erwise merciless crowd was through his or her youth and beauty--otherwise, the crowd would cheerfully watch the convict’s ignoble death; the other possibility for empathy with the convict was a disproportionately severe verdict.

38 Sorella (1604) act 1. sc 1, (Teatro, Vol. 3, p. 130) Della Porta, Sister, p. 76.

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28 Sergius Kodera

the power emetics hold over our emotional lives point to Della Porta’s notion that meraviglie such as iconic beauty and besotted love elide verbal negotia-tion, since they are natural forces. According to Porta’s Coelestis Physiognomia, one of his most important theoretical texts, such emotional dispositions are due to an imbalance of the medical humors, and thus cannot be corrected through learning or the development of a spiritual culture.39 Mutatis mutan-dis, I believe these epiphanic appearances on stage can be read as a succinct description of the kind of somatic reaction Porta wished to induce in his audi-ences. Not only will natural objects not obey words, their occult virtues also serve to silence the open-mouthed crowd witnessing the magus performing his miracles.

Th e nexus between the stage and nature is also the central theoretical basis and main justifi cation for natural magic: as has been shown according to Por-ta, delight in magic stems from the notion that the universal law of love and hatred moving the entire universe are per se inexplicable forces, thus inducing a state of marvel in those minds incapable of understanding the hidden causes of the marvellous. Porta maintains that sympathy and antipathy are such cau-sae occultae, and that they are the basic forces in all things. In producing all these marvels, even nature herself cannot forgo this fascination: Porta remarks that Nature fi nds delight in her own shows, thus implying, I believe, that even Nature cannot fully understand the causes of these forces (otherwise, she could not be delighted by her own works). It follows that in this respect, the natural magus cannot but imitate his mistress Nature. 40

39 Giovan Battista Della Porta, Coelestis Physiognomonia. Della celeste fi sionomia, ed. by Alfonso Paolella, Naples: Edizione scientifi ca Italiana (Edizione nazionale delle opere di Giovan Battista della Porta, vol. 8) [1606] 1996, fol. 228v (Proemio to bk 6): “Gia nei libri passati s’è abondevolmente dimostrato, come da segni del corpo si possino costumi riposti ne’ più segreti luoghi dell’animo investigare veramente cosa assai degna, & ammirabile, resta che […]. si tratti di cosa più mirabilissima,[…] cioè che conosciuti i tuoi, ò gli altrui vitij, possi levarli via, e scancellarli del tutto. A che dunque ci gioverìa questa arte, se conosciuti i tuoi defetti, non potessi quegli convertirli in virtudi? Ma ciò non con pensieri, imaginationi, ò persuasioni di morali Filosofi , che per lo più vane riescono, ma con purgationi, locali rimedij, e natural virtù di herbe, pietre, & animali & occulte proprietadi […]. Perciochè l’habito dell’anima potersi mutar con diligentia dice esser cosa chiara, con cibi, con bere, & con essercitij mutar il temperamento in meglio.” For a further discussion of this passage, see Kodera, Disreputable Bodies, pp. 263-5. In these theatrical representations of the use of emetics to cure the disease of love, Della Porta is also referring to the remedies of the professors of secrets. One of their most renowned exponents, Leonardo Fioravanti, made use of such a drug, which he called precipitato (mercuric oxide). He claimed that this substance was a powerful (and one may add, dangerous) segreto for treating almost every internal disease. Eamon, in Th e Professor of Secrets, pp. 79-83; p. 207 describes the contemporary moral backdrop against which the cleansing of body and soul through these drastic cures was supposed to take place.

40 Magia 1560, fol. 10v (lib. 1, cap. 9): “Proprietatibus quoque occultis animatibus, vege-tabilibus, et speciebus omnibus inest (vt ita dicam) compassio quædam, quam Græci sym-patheian, et antipatheian, nos tritius consensum, dissensumque dicimus: quædam enim mutuo

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 29

To some extent at least, this also accounts for an even more all-encompass-ing vision Della Porta had of his laboratory/stage, in which his spectators are to be brought under the magus’ spell by means of drugs.41 For instance, in order to induce bad dreams in a person, Porta recommends a recipe he “fre-quently” uses: a fumigation containing human cranium and powdered lode-stone.42 Apart from this slightly disconcerting testimonial and the attendant implications for Porta’s personal taste in narcotics, the fascinating issue here is that his audience has no choice but to participate in the game. It is as if Porta wishes to expose his spectators (or, as the case may be, victims) to a kind of “total theater.” Th e power of drugs for infl uencing the imagination allows us to modify our perception upon the objects of Porta’s scientia. From a modern perspective, we tend to think that drug-induced hallucinations are individu-ally diff erent and therefore cannot be compared to theatrical performances in a meaningful way. Yet there is evidence to the contrary; for apart from the infamous recipe for the witch’s unguent, the dissemination of which caused much clamor, Porta also published other recipes for creating collective halluci-nations. One of these strange party-gags, as it were, is a fantastic recipe mak-ing people appear to have heads of horses or of asses.43 Again, this is a

connubio sibi associantur, & tanquam foedere devinciuntur, aliqua verò sibi ipsis infesta, et simultate dissentiunt, caecisque laborant discordiis: vel horribile aliquod, et destructivum ha-bent, quod rationibus ullis et probabilibus, nec quæri nec arctari possunt: nec prudentis erit huiusmodi causarum aucupio probare, nisi quod spectaculo eo fuerit Natura ipsa delectata, nec aliquid placuit esse sine pari, et nil esse in Naturæ occultis quod arcana quadam proprietate non vigeat, et peculiari: quorum admiratione ductus Empedocles omnia per litem, et concordiam fi eri, et dissipari affi rmavit, ac illa rerum omnium semina esse, et reperiri in elementis per qua-litates sibi invicem dissidentes et consentientes, quas diximus.”

41 For Porta’s naturalistic explanation of the power contained in the infamous witches’ unguent, namely hallucinogenic substances such as belladonna, see Kodera, Histrionic Science, pp. 13-15 with references.

42 Magia 1560, fol. 99v-100r (lib. 2, ch. 5): “Sic sæpè factitare solemus: Interfecti vi re-center viri calcaneum in pulverem redigimus, cui magnetis parum addimus, porrò simul com-mixta, si accensis carbonibus inieceris, vt locis pluribus fumus domicilii culmina petat, dormi-entes laruarum occursaculis, deterrimis spectris, horribilibusque affi cies.” On the use of human cranium as a medical drug in the Early Modern Period, see Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires. Th e History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 67 -112.

43 Magia 1560, fol. 78v (lib. 2, cap. 17): “Si vis autem, vt Equina, vel asinina videantur astantium capita […]. Equo abscinde caput, vel asino, non mortuo, ne languida sit virtus, eius-demque capacitatis fi ctilem fabricato ollam, oleo plenam, suique pinguedine, vt superemineat: os operculato, tenacique munias luto, ignem subdelentum, vt planè bulliens tribus seruetur diebus oleum, elixataque caro in oleum currat, vt nuda spectentur ossa, pila tundito, puluisque oleo permisceatur, quibus astantium capita perungantur: similiter in lampadibus stupei funiculi in medio statuantur, nec propè, nec longè vt res postulat, & monstruoso spectaberis vultu. Ex iis multa discas componere: satis enim dixisse videor, si diligens fuerit intuitor.” Ibid., fol. 78v- 79r (lib. 2, cap. 17): “Ex humano capite recenter obtruncato electum oleum, animalibus faciem hominis inducit, sic variis animalium capitibus, monstrusiora reddes corpora, si iis accensis liciis illustretur domus,

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30 Sergius Kodera

performance where the perceptions of the audience are allegedly under the total control of the natural magus.

We have seen the ways in which Porta’s experiments, exceptional events artfully produced by a dexterous magus, have decidedly histrionic character. It is as though the magus enters the theater, and in doing so replaces the stage director. I would argue that when viewed from a particular histrionic perspec-tive, much of Porta’s oeuvre represents an amazingly coherent form of early modern philosophy, a scienza which is remarkably diff erent from later forms of science in that it constitutes a kind of performative natural philosophy.

Physiognomics by Candlelight

Th e segreto with asses’ heads may also be read as an allusion to what Porta became most famous for, namely the theory and practice of the art of physi-ognomics.44 In itself a histrionic art, physiognomics was introduced in classi-cal antiquity to delineate the characteristics of the various personae on stage; it also looms large on Porta’s stage and merits a separate investigation. Th e following example highlights the histrionic character of Porta’s laboratory, where his interest in physical criminals and other disgraziati sometimes as-sumed quite bizarre forms. In his treatise on palmistry, the Chirophysiognomia (written perhaps between 1599 and 1608 and published posthumously in an Italian translation 1677),45 the author claims to have collected imprints and drawings of the hands and feet of executed criminals and prisoners, as well as

quod fi do claude pectori, nam vti arcana ab antiquis celabantur, nec ita faciliter ex eorum eruitur dictis. Aliter tamen docet Anaxilaus nec irritè: Equorum virus à coitu accipitur, nouisque lampadi-bus ellychniis accensum, hominum capita, equina visui monstrifi ce repræsentat: de asinis sic quoque proditur. Sic illud, quod apriam vocant in suibus, cum subant: acceptum enim, & accensum idem præstat. Sic animalium reliquorum auricularibus accensis sordibus. Si illud perures, quod dicemus sperma, eoque spectatorum facies perunxeris, eorundem animalium conspicies capita, serua.” For a longer discussion of this topic, see my forthcoming article “Negotiating Neo-Platonic Image Th e-ory: the Case of Giambattista della Porta’s Physiognomics.” in Berthold Hub/Sergius Kodera (eds), Iconology. Neoplatonism and Art in the Renaissance Perspectives and Contexts of a Controversial Alliance. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies.

44 On the impact of Porta’s Physiognomic, see Oreste Trabucco, “Il Corpus fi siognomico dellaportiano tra censura e autocensura,” Atti del convegno dei Lincei 215 (2005), pp. 235-72; on the story of the text of the Coelestis Physiognomia, see the introduction to the edizione nazio-nale: Giovan Battista Della Porta, Coelestis physiognomonia. Della celeste fi sionomia. Ed. Alfonso Paolella. Edizione nazionale delle opere di Giovan Battista Della Porta, 8. Naples: Edizioni scientifi che italiane, 1996, pp. IX-XVI.

45 See Giovan Battista della Porta, De ea naturalis physiognomoniae parte quae ad manuum lineas spectat. Chirophysiognomia, ed by Oreste Trabucco, Naples, 2003 Edizione nazionale delle Opere di Giovan Battista della Porta, 9, introduction pp. XXI and XLVII-LVI for a detailed account of the author’s unsuccessful eff orts to get several versions of the Latin manuscript through the eccle-siastical censorship. I am using the general term physiognomics for all these arts, because at least for Porta the word referred not merely to the faces of human beings, but also to their other body parts.

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 31

of people who had died an untimely death. To this aim, Della Porta befriended the viceroys’ hangman, who duly informed him of the dates of executions in order to allow the magus to make his plaster casts. Th ese models became later--“at night”, as Porta writes—the object of discussion among his friends; they sought to decipher the victims’ tragic fates from the lines and other physical features on the palms and soles, comparing them to the shapes of corresponding limbs in various animals.46 Ostensibly, Porta is here practicing a kind of art that could be termed more ‘scientifi c’ than that of the necromancers: instead of using the body parts of executed criminals for various potions or as amulets for en-chantments, he makes plaster casts from the palms and the feet of their corpses. Reminiscent of the fragments of excavated sculptures from classical, as well as of the representations of the human body in contemporary anatomical atlases (of course, I am here thinking of Vesalius), these objects provide the physiognomist with a more distanced and purportedly more objective access to the individual body. It not the disgraziato’s corpse as a whole that must be examined in order to become an expert in this art; rather, its decisive physical features, the lines on its the hand and feet, are transformed into abstract forms that then become a text to be deciphered and used as a prognostic and divinatory tool.

In the context of what was probably standard practice in contemporary drawing schools, Della Porta’s meetings in candlelight were less eccentric than they might appear to today’s readership. Porta’s nocturnal reading classes of the human body are reminiscent of two famous contemporary prints depict-ing the studio of the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli. Th e fi rst version (1531) of this Academy represents a gathering of artists as they are drawing fi gurines. Th e group of seven women and men is sitting at a table in a dark room lit by a single candle placed in the center of the table. Th e artists are using the result-ing shadow lines in order to develop their drawings; this artistic method is also echoed by the shadows cast by other objects in the room, and statues visible in the background of the picture. A second, more complex version of this highly popular image was published almost two decades later.47 Both visual rep-

Palmistry accordingly constituted a sub-branch of physiognomics, which already becomes apparent in Porta’s title (De ea naturalis physiognomoniae parte quae ad manuum lineas spectat).

46 Porta, Chirophysiognomia, p. 6: “Ut ergo maior supradictum hominum copia suppedita-ret, cum neapolitano carnifi ce pacti sumus, qui tunc Antonellus Cucuzza vocabatur, ut, cum in foro boario suspensos a furcis deponeret et ad Riccardum Pontem deferret – locus est a Ne-apoli mille passus longe distans, quo miselli pendent ad impiorum illac transeuntium terrorem, usque dum marcescentes contabescant-, mihi deportationis horam signifi caret meque ad eum locum conferens, manuum et pedum dispositiones rimabar easque stylo papyro designabam, aut cera et gypso intertexta lineamenta imprimebam, ut noctu, cum domi essem, cum aliis conferrem et collatis signis veritatem investigarem, eandem semper operam navando, donec signa omnia, quae certius suspendia minarentur, excernerem et mihimet ipsi satisfacerem.” (See also ibid. for Porta’s descriptions of his visits to prisons and to hospitals.)

47 For a thorough description and many references to the extant scholarly literature to Bandinelli’s Accademia in their 1531 and 1550 versions, see Nicole Hegener, Divi Iacobi Eqves.

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32 Sergius Kodera

resentations lend some insight into how these academies probably operated, and how important these – apparently nocturnal – meetings must have been for learning how to draw fi gures, not from “nature” but rather from the shadows of sculptures. In turn, the work of Bandinelli’s disciples is--I would contend--remi-niscent of the proverbial lucubrationes (“works by night lamps”), the nocturnal studies of the humanists, and may thus be seen as a statement on the artist’s part that this type of shadow drawing was actually on a par with those literary stud-ies—a visual commentary paralleling the exhaustive contemporary discussions of the paragone between visual and verbal art (ut pictura poiesis) as well as the myth-ical origin of painting from shadows recounted in Pliny.48 Th is method of draw-ing by shadows suggested in these prints is, of course, also reminiscent of the stage machinery described in Plato’s famous myth of the cave (Republic 514a–520a). Here too, the apparitions projected on the wall opposite the chained pris-oners are produced by objects carried by the actors (who are concealed by an-other wall from the view of the prisoners/spectators). Th e deceptive images pro-duced in Plato’s cave, for their part, naturally have intense bearings on Porta’s famous projects for a theatrical camera obscura that could render non-inverted images, and also upon his project of various devices employing mirrors, recom-mended as drawing aids in the Magia naturalis.

Bandinelli’s Academy prints can be taken as guides for imagining how Del-la Porta’s meetings might have looked like. Inspecting the plaster casts of hands and feet of the executed criminals was not merely another macabre (and perhaps fetishistic) episode in Della Porta’s little shop of horrors. Instead, these gatherings held by fl ickering candlelight were obviously arranged with the intent to draw, and therefore transform the recently organic forms of corpses from the three-dimensional form to that of a two-dimensional draw-ing. Accordingly, these shapes become more and more abstract in the original sense of the word, increasingly metamorphosed into a set of signs which in turn could be deciphered and read like a text.49

Selbstdarstellung im Werk des Florentiner Bildhauers Baccio Bandinelli, München: Deutscher Kunstverlag 2008, pp. 396-412. “Geradezu grotesk wirkt, dass sich selbst auf dem Tisch kein Modell fi ndet, und somit der zentrale Lehrgegenstand fehlt. … Der Betrachter fragt sich, was die Schüler zeichnen und, wenn sie nicht eines der zahlreichen Modelle skizzieren, weshalb diese dann so zahlreich vorhanden sind.” (ibid., p. 408)

48 Naturalis historia XXXV, 5, 15; on the topic and its reception into Renaissance philoso-phy and art theory, see Nuccio Ordine, La soglia dell’ombra, letteratura, fi losofi a e pittura in Giordano Bruno, Venezia: Marsilio, 2003 pp. 166-186 with many references.

49 I am of course referring to the various lines and shapes of individual palms which are amply described throughout the Chirophysionomia (see for instance lib. 2, cap.12 and passim). Even though Porta pokes fun at the simpletons who believe that letters or even entire texts can be found on individuals palms, he nevertheless concedes that one may read certain simple elements (which are the results or traces of celestial as well as natural forces)--for instance, the cross or t-shaped forms or stars, circles, triangles. According to Porta, these simple forms usually carry what we would call a very trite symbolic value: for example, a cross in the right

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Th e Laboratory as Stage: Giovan Battista della Porta’s Experiments 33

Th e act of transforming fragmented corpses into texts is, in Porta’s labora-tory, a theatrical event in its own right, one asserting its own importance through its special nocturnal setting and macabre subject, as well as the prog-nostic capacities ascribed to its procedure. It is precisely the capacity to “read” bodies that constitutes a major practical goal in Porta’s scienza of physiogno-my. On a technological level, the relationship between gypsum and drawing is here analogous to the relationship of the printed text to the manuscript, just as it parallels the relationship of theater script to the actor. In the kind of cir-cular reasoning forming the conceptual backdrop of a literary practice, the all-embracing function of Porta’s histrionic science again is clearly evident. In the dim candlelight, these gypsum and wax representations of the fragmented bodies of executed criminals must have created a spectacular and macabre shadow theater. Not only were these imprints once more displayed and hand-ed around similarly to the way in which the disgraziati had been paraded his-trionically through town prior to their execution: they also constituted a show of body parts, of metonymic signifi ers referring to entire bodies and to their astrologically determined fates. Like Porta’s actors on stage, these imprints of hands and feet bear the marks of natural forces: the physiognomist may read and interpret them, whilst the persons who fell victim to justice or illness were merely subject to these occult natural forces.

Conclusion

I hope to have brought evidence for the extent to which Porta’s laboratory practice is informed by a histrionic paradigm: his laboratory constitutes a stage for the transformations of life and death, performed under the magus’ hands. Porta’s taste for the macabre, often remarked upon, is indicative of a fantasy of total control over the body. I take this to be an attempt on Porta’s side to forge “a performative self ”—a mode of action that was a specifi c trait of many late Renaissance societies, and in fact a dire necessity in an increasingly repressive Neapolitan environment that was undergoing substantial economical and ideological transitions.50 Indeed, Porta’s insistence on a categorically sensual

place denotes a jovial temperament, sometimes even promising an ecclesiastical career. Chiro-physionomia p. 66 (lib. 2, cap. 15): “Cum saepissimae in manuum apicibus aliisve manum locis notas et lineamenta quaedam intrusa reperies, stellas vel cruces vel alios characteres imitantes, non solum coelestium virtutum infl uxibus impressas, sed quae etiam naturalium causarum concursu contingunt, operaepretium nobis videtur, quid foelicis eventus vel infortunii porten-dant, accuratius expendere. Crucis character, si Iovis tuberculi sedem occupat absque aliarum notarum consortio, et clara et nitida conspiciatur, Iovias omnis generis dignitates ostendit, etiam fortasse in ecclesiasticis offi ciis promotiones.” On this topic in general, see Hans Blumen-berg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1986, esp. pp. 58-85.

50 Eamon, Th e Professor of Secrets, pp. 144, 250, 313-314 and passim has outlined this kind of self-fashioning through the medium of print for the medical practitioner and porfessor of secrets

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and somatic foundation of the human mind seems to me a strikingly cohesive line along which his work can be understood. Th e magus/playwright does not merely exploit the natural properties of these emotions, for instance infatua-tion; he also cures the ailments of the social body, as for instance in the speedy detection of criminals. Th e message Porta wishes to convey with his experi-ments is quite unequivocal: a powerful magus is capable of diagnosing as well as curing all kinds of diseases not only in the human but also in the social body. Rather than being based on transferable knowledge, this specifi c capac-ity to bring forth miraculous works of art is founded on ingenium, an elusive set of innate qualities.51 In order to demonstrate this specifi c capacity for han-dling all kinds of natural objects as well as human beings, Porta stages meravi-glie --portentous events that are designed to leave his uneducated spectators stunned: the crowd’s amazement at the marvellous performances was indeed the essential confi rmation of their author’s magical prowess.52 Porta thus aims at an asymmetric and non-dialectical relationship between the mastermind and the multitude. In that context, the stage functions as an intricate apparatus devised for producing extraordinary physical eff ects in the spectators. Porta’s inter-twining of secrets and the spectacular disclosure of the hidden indicates that he did not wish to make his audiences capable of political action or juridical verdict. As with his magical drugs and histrionic experiments, Porta rather seeks to paralyze the spectator’s body and mind. Th is form of scientifi c control over the emotions was the most important pedigree of the learned magus in the specifi c political and economic environment of late-sixteenth-century Naples. Th e Neapolitan nobility had become impersonators of their own class—a phenomenon that anticipates the role of the courtier in absolutist Europe.

Th e development of modern science out of various cultural practices (such as collecting, alchemy, astrology, magic) and an eclectic mixture of Peripatetic and other philosophic traditions (Pythagorean, Platonic, Atomistic, Sceptic), as well as various literary forms (dialogue, drama, encyclopaedia, to name but a few) took on very diff erent shapes in the texts of diff erent Renaissance

Leonardo Fioravanti. Even though he came from much more humble origins than Porta, it was not primarily the quest for utility that drove Fioravanti, but rather the attempt to secure for him-self an elevated personal status in a society regulated by the feudal concept of honor.

51 On which, see for instance Kodera, Ingenium. 52 Louise George Clubb, “Review of Balbiani 2001,” Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003),

pp.188-89. Porta, Magia, 1650: p. 13 (lib.1, cap. 6): “Haec noscens Magus, ut agricola ulmos vitibus, sic ipse coelo terram vel, ut apertius loquar, inferna haec superiorum dotibus mirifi -cisque virtutibus maritat, & inde arcana Naturae gremio penitus latentia, veluti minister in publicum promit, quaequae assidua exploratione vera noverit, ut omnes cunctorum artifi ciis amore fl agrantes, sui contentur omnipotentiam laudari & venerari.” On the magician as per-former/actor and the conscious re-mystifi cation of natural phenomena, see also Paula Findlen, “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge. Th e Playfulness of Scientifi c Discourse in Early Modern Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990), p. 320.

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intellectuals. In the case of Porta, the study of nature was closely associated with the practices of dissimulation, marvel, and the histrionic display of its author’s almost unlimited power over bodies and minds. I would suggest that Porta’s scienza became such a success because it naturalized (and thereby le-gitimized) the social realities of many other members of educated elites in the various absolutist cultures of Europe.53 In order to ascend the social ladder, courtiers in particular had to rely on dissimulation. Accordingly, they had to objectify their peers; Porta’s histrionic scienza must have been so appealing to these audiences because it provided them with an ideology demonstrating how natural (and thus innocent) and yet how socially eff ective their glamor-ous social practices actually were. Porta’s literary strategy, in which he con-stantly tries to arrogate for his person the position of a magus with nearly unlimited power to create meraviglie, is a phantasm of omnipotence--yet it refl ects an objective loss in political power.

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Richard Sugg, Mummies, cannibals, and vampires. Th e history of corpse medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, London: Routledge, 2011.

Hélène Védrine, “Della Porta e Bruno. Natura e magia,” Giornale critico della fi losofi a italiana 65 (1986).

Koen Vermeir, “Openness versus secrecy? Historical and historiographical remarks,” British Journal for the History of Science 45 (2012) pp. 165-188.

——, “Die Wiederherstellung von Pluto. Th eatralität in alchemistischen Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit,” in H. Schramm, L. Schwarte and M. Lorber (eds.), Spuren der Avantgarde: Th eatrum alchemicum. Berlin: De Gruyter (forthcoming 2014).

Paola Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, Leiden: Brill, 2006.

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