The prefect Marsili

Bust of Giovanni Marsili, on the monumental walls of the Botanical Garden of Padua in a photograph from the 1930s (from the collection Iconoteca dei Botanici)

Giovanni Marsili fully embodies the image of the erudite man of the eighteenth century, interested in knowledge in all its forms. Graduated in medicine, he devoted himself to botany to the point of becoming a professor of this subject at the Studio Patavino and being appointed Prefect of the Botanical Garden, a post he held for more than thirty years. With a solid humanistic background, he wrote poems with a playful and rustic spirit and joined the Accademia dei Granelleschi, committed to defending the Italian language from French and dialectal influences. Passionate about fine arts, he collected paintings, antiques and, above all, books, and he managed to put together a personal library of more than 2500 pieces.

His versatile nature clearly emerges when one examines the fundamental stages of his life, as well as the environments he frequents: his humanistic studies and those in the medical field, the journeys that lead him to be in constant contact with the science of time both nationally and internationally, his commitment to the care of the Botanical Garden and the study of plants, his participation in important Italian and foreign scientific and literary academies, and his constant search for beautiful and precious books to enrich his collection.

Furthermore, the works he wrote, even if not particularly numerous, well express his many facets.