Cover illustrations: The central image is Mercury helping a nude female figure crowned by a star to get out of a well, Gabriel Ladame (engraver), frontispiece to Vittorio Siri’s Il Mercurio ouero historia de’ correnti tempi di d. Vittorio Siri, consigliere, elemosinario, & historiografo della maestà christianissima (Paris, Sebastiano Mabre-Cramoisy: 1672), vol. XII, 19.4 × 13.2 cm. Etching and engraving. © The Trustees of the British Museum. The background image is the frontispiece by Isabella Piccini (engraver) for Marcello Malpighi, Opera posthuma: in quibus excellentissimi authoris vita continetur, ac pleraque quae ab ipso prius scripta aut inventa sunt confirmantur, & ab adversariorum obiectionibus (Amsterdam: Donatum Donati 1698). Engraving, 23.4 × 19.2 cm. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Rar 6211,
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at
LC record available at
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download:
ISSN 1568-1181
ISBN 978-90-04-45932-8 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-46452-0 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.