The life

The life of Giovanni Marsili covers the last three quarters of the eighteenth century, more precisely from 1727 to 1795, and touches on some of the main locations of European culture of the eighteenth century: Padova, Venice, Florence, Paris, London...

Born in Pontebba into a wealthy Venetian family engaged in the timber trade, Marsili studied with the Venetian Jesuits, gaining a vast culture in the humanities and developing a remarkable passion for letters. Since his youth he devoted himself to poetry and the study of the Italian language: he was a member of the Accademia degli Orditi, of the Ricovrati and of the Granelleschi (founded by Daniele Farsetti and Gaspare and Carlo Gozzi).

After graduating in medicine at the Studium patavinum (1747), he made educational trips in Italy and abroad, coming into contact with important scientists of the time and improving his literary skills. He also began studying botany, at a time when the new ideas promoted by Charles Linnaeus began to take hold in this science, going beyond the conception of botany as an aid to medicine and affirming a new way of classifying plants.

In 1760 he was appointed professor of botany and Prefect of the Botanical Garden of Padova, also surpassing, among others, the candidacy of Pietro Arduino, who had held the regency of the Garden since the death of the previous prefect (1757).

Marsili supported the Linnean methodologies and the idea that the teaching of botany should not be limited to the medical field and dedicated himself to a renovation of the Botanical Garden: he had the monumental walls and the prefect's house restored, he rebuilt the hydraulic machine that channelled the water from the Alicorno canal to the fountains, planted an arboretum from scratch and, thanks to the exchange of seeds with various Italian and foreign botanical gardens, the number of cultivated plants increased considerably. He also contributed to the foundation of the Botanical Garden of Pavia (1772) and, apparently, that of Parma (1773).

The scientific production of Marsili is not particularly rich, but he was the first Padovan botanist to publish a work on mushrooms (Fungi Carrariensis Historia, 1766), a subject for which the Botanical Garden of Padova will later become a world reference point. Also important is his dry herbarium, still preserved, which was also used by Marsili as a tool for teaching. He was a member of the Agrarian Academy, of the Academy of Humanities and Arts and a commission charged with drawing up a new pharmaceutical code for the Republic of Venice.

He died in 1795 after a progressive paralysis, as a result of which, in 1793, he was supported in his post as prefect by his friend and successor Giuseppe Antonio Bonato.

For his whole life, Marsili cultivated a great passion for art and above all for books, amassing a rich collection which would later constitute the founding nucleus of the Botanical Garden’s Library.