Alessandro della Spina (born 13th century-died 1313) was a Dominican friar, credited with the invention of spectacles.
Spina was a Dominican friar, in the second half of the 13th century, at the monastery of the Church of Santa Caterina, Pisa. The church's history is known by a manuscript, the Chronica antiqua, a Pisan chronicle of the 14th century. This chronicle portrays him as a modest, intelligent, and mechanically versed copyist and illuminator, "capable of remaking anything he saw". [1]
In 1305, Jordan of Pisa, a friar of the same monastery, was recorded to have spoken of Spina in one of his sermons; lay listeners wrote the sermons down. Jordan declared that glasses were less than 20 years old, and he had known their creator well, but without giving his name.
In the 17th century, Carlo Roberto Dati argued Jordan meant Spina. He did not have access to the Chronica antiqua manuscript, but relied on a transcription by his friend Francesco Redi, who had altered the text by modifying or omitting phrases. When Dati died in 1676, Redi published a letter on Spina's invention of spectacles, falsifying both the Chronica antiqua and Jordan's sermon.
In the 17th century, people wanted to give a name and country to the inventor of glasses. [2] Out of parochialism, people wanted it to be a fellow citizen of their town.
Around the same time, Ferdinando Leopoldo Del Migliore wrote that Spina was a Florentine, then in 1684 he too made forgeries to attribute the invention of spectacles to fellow Florentine Salvino D'Armati. The myth of Salvino, inventor of glasses, was transmitted until the 20th century. [2] It was not until 1920 that the manufacture of this fake was revealed by the philologist Isidoro del Lungo.
In 1956, historian Edward Rosen published a detailed history of deliberate forgeries or unintentional errors in the invention of eyeglasses, passed down from author to author, since the 17th century. [2] According to Rosen, Allessandro della Spina was indeed a friar in Pisa, but he was not a native of that city. [2]
Fra Angelico, O.P. was a Dominican friar and Italian Renaissance painter of the Early Renaissance, described by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". He earned his reputation primarily for the series of frescoes he made for his own friary, San Marco, in Florence, then worked in Rome and other cities. All his known work is of religious subjects.
Pisa is a city and comune (municipality) in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the city contains more than twenty other historic churches, several medieval palaces, and bridges across the Arno. Much of the city's architecture was financed from its history as one of the Italian maritime republics.
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