Among the names distinguished in Urbino for mathematical talent, that of Paciotti was conspicuous. Jacopo Paciotti, who held several situations of trust under the two first Dukes of the Rovere dynasty, was father of three sons, all eminent proficients in the exact sciences. Felice was one of those commissioned to rectify the Gregorian Kalendar, and invented an instrument for constructing dial-plates. Orazio became a military engineer, and erected fortresses for the States of the Church, for Savoy, and for Lucca, with such reputation that his services were sought for Poland and for the Emperor Rudolph. But the most remarkable of the family was Francesco,[*138] who, after enjoying a liberal education, and thoroughly grounding himself in architecture under Girolamo Genga, went to Rome, where, in 1550,[*139] he was named engineer-in-chief by Julius III. Next year, he was employed to fortify Ancona against the dreaded descents of the Turk; but, leaving this undertaking to be completed by Fontana, he passed in 1551, to the service of the Farnesi, and thence to that of Emanuel Duke of Savoy, with 60 scudi of monthly pay. He soon afterwards published a plan of Rome; but his attention was chiefly devoted to military architecture, in which his reputation rapidly spread. In 1558, he was employed by Philip II. to survey, and report upon, the principal defences of the Low Countries, for which he was remunerated with 6000 scudi, and a massive gold chain.
Paciotti was now on the ladder of royal favour, and, having accompanied Duke Emanuel to Paris, for his marriage, was decorated by Henry II. with another magnificent chain worth 1000 scudi. The gorgeous compliment, however, nearly cost him his life, for, while wearing it next day, he was set upon by two robbers, one of whom he slew, and wounded the other, a feat which procured him new marks of favour. The next ten years of his life were chiefly spent in the service of Savoy; but he was at various times summoned for engineering purposes to Spain and Flanders. The warm personal regard in which he was held by Philip II. was proved by his winning a bet, that he would make that proud monarch hold a light to examine his plans, and was more substantially shown by many rich presents which he carried from that court. In consequence of recommendations from his Catholic Majesty, he had from the King of Portugal the order of Jesus Christ; and in 1578, at the Duke of Savoy's request, the Castle of Montefabri was erected into a countship in his favour, by Francesco Maria II. of Urbino. After for several years superintending fortifications in the papal states, and those of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he retired to his native place, and passed the remainder of his life in honourable ease, enjoying from various sovereigns pensions of above 3000 scudi a year. He died in 1591, aged seventy, leaving behind him a European reputation, and three sons, in whom the mathematical talents of the family were hereditarily developed, all being military engineers of some note; one of them, Federigo, became a Knight of Malta, and Guidobaldo was blown up by a mine, while in the service of Charles V.
Gian Giacomo Leonardi is mentioned by a recent writer[140] as "one of those extraordinary men, so abundant in Italy during the fifteenth and following century, who have left little fame to posterity, and who, though universally known in their day, were after death forgotten, and overlooked by subsequent writers." Nor is this surprising in his case; for his distinction, gained in the camp, was spread still wider by his diplomacy. He was at one moment referred to on delicate points of honour between knights and sovereigns; at another consulted on questions of legal intricacy; whilst his writings have remained unedited and unknown. They are all upon fortification and engineering, and are enumerated by Promis in his elaborate compilation upon these subjects. His services, though eagerly sought by great monarchs, were affectionately devoted to his native princes, being long companion in arms of Francesco Maria I., and ambassador to Venice from Guidobaldo II. He was born at Pesaro, near which he had from the latter the countship of Monte l'Abbate in 1540, with permission to bear the name and arms of della Rovere, and died about 1560.
Although we have been led to mention engineers in connection with mathematical science, they were in these days usually architects, and regarded as belonging to the class of artists. Ricotti informs us that no vocation was more varied or laborious. Uniting the practice of arms with an intimate knowledge of design, their services were sought for in every part of Europe, either to plan fortresses, build palaces, cast statues, paint frescoes, execute hydraulics, or command troops. Lazzari, in his Uomini Illustri del Piceno, enumerates sixteen such as conferring lustre upon Urbino, but of these we shall only name one more. Muzio Oddi was nobly born there, in 1569. In 1595, he accompanied, as military engineer, a contingent sent by the Duke into Burgundy; and, three years after, employed his architectural skill for the festive decorations in honour of a visit by Clement VIII. to his native city. He had less success in placing a cupola upon the cathedral there, in 1604, which was said to contain 100,000 pounds of iron-work and 80,000 of lead, the weight of which brought it down in 1789. On some indistinctly recorded charge, he was thrown into the citadel of Pesaro, and there detained many years in a loathsome dungeon. Denied the use of books or writing materials, he made for himself ink of charcoal and candle-soot, mixed with water in a walnut-shell, and, by pasting together shreds of paper with bread-dough, contrived to jot down mathematical treatises on sundials and the square, using for compasses a couple of twigs tied together. On his liberation, in 1609, he passed into Lombardy, and spent above twenty years of exile in sighing for his country; nor was it till within two years of the close of life that he was appointed mathematical professor at Urbino. He died at seventy, leaving a Treatise on Mathematics, in two volumes 4to.
Bernardino Baldi[*141] has a double claim upon our attention, as the most prolific writer whom the duchy has produced, and as one who devoted a large share of his literary labours to the illustration of his native state. He was born at Urbino in 1553, of a family which, during several generations, had held with credit various important situations in the magistracy. By force of that extraordinary diligence, which continued to stimulate his entire life, his youthful studies advanced with precocious success; yet it is singular to find him confessing that his early inclinations were all towards painting, and that his preference of his pencil to his grammatical exercises often brought him into intimate acquaintance with the birch. We cannot echo the observation of his biographer Affò,[*142] that this discipline may have deprived Urbino of a second Raffaele; but though he assuredly was gifted neither with the lofty genius nor the pervading sense of beauty which characterised his countryman, a deep devotional feeling would doubtless have inspired his paintings. The peculiar connection which existed at Urbino between the exact sciences and the liberal arts frequently attracts our notice; and this it may have been which led the thwarted painter to turn with his accustomed energy to mathematical studies, under Federigo Comandino, for whose edition of Euclid, published in 1572, he is said to have drawn the diagrams. It was about this time, that, urged by his parents to choose between law and medicine for a profession, he preferred the latter, rather, as he tells us, from its analogy with philosophical inquiries than with any special liking for the healing art. With these views he was sent to the University of Padua, where he brought his vast application successively to bear upon logic, and ethical and physical philosophy, varied by his favourite mathematics, and by a comprehensive cycle of Greek literature. To that seat of learning there then resorted the youth of ultramontane lands, whose harsh language so piqued Baldi's curiosity, and developed his prodigious philological talents, that in an inconceivably short time he mastered French and German. But these multifarious pursuits did not suffice his versatile mind, so he enlivened them by draughts of the Castalian spring. There may seem something ludicrous in an epic, entitled "Artillery," and illustrative of gunnery practice; but a theme so ponderous for poetry was suited to the spirit of the age, as well as congenial to its author's thoughts. A visit to the mountain home of Petrarch, at Arqua, gave, however, a lighter turn to his muse, and taught his number to flow in madrigals, to the honour of some nameless Laura of his love or fancy, containing more borrowed classicism than inspired passion.
In 1575 he returned home, to share the last labours, and watch the death-bed, of his friend Comandino, and to encounter from his parents many a remonstrance as to his neglected professional acquirements, of which, in the various food with which he had appeased his literary craving at the university, he seems entirely to have lost sight. But their efforts were vain. The Eugubinean tables, that philological enigma, having attracted his attention, he boldly encountered their solution, and studied Arabic as a stepping-stone to the lost dialects of Central Italy. His biographers insert Etruscan in the catalogue of his polyglot acquirements, but the tables of Gubbio remain a puzzle to antiquaries. Those who made literature a profession, before there existed a "public" to remunerate their exertions, looked for maintenance to princes or private patrons; and in 1580 Baldi gratefully accepted the offer of Don Ferrante Gonzaga, Lord of Guastalla, to instruct him in mathematics, on an allowance of ten scudi a month, besides board for himself and a servant,—an appointment which made him favourably known to Cardinal (afterwards St.) Carlo Borromeo, uncle of that prince, and to many persons of literary reputation who frequented his miniature court. There his time was divided between mathematical and poetic compositions, until, in 1586, a sudden change took place in his position by his adopting a clerical habit, at the request of Don Ferrante, in order that he might hold the Abbacy of Guastalla, the emoluments of which yielded him about 320 golden ducats. This promotion brought out a curious feature in the character of so hard a student, and we find him immediately repairing to Rome, to canvass for the higher honours of a titular bishopric, on being refused which, he struggled for permission to wear some trifling distinction in his canonical robes with pertinacity befitting a worldling rather than a philosopher. Neither was it from such a character that we should have looked for a zeal in the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline, which led him beyond the bounds of prudence in wielding his inquisitorial powers.[*143]
Those theological studies which usually precede ordination were in his case followed out with his wonted energy, after obtaining the preferment to which they are generally intended to lead, and it was probably then that he added Hebrew and Chaldee to his accomplishments. But his first great undertaking, after thus gaining a position of leisure and independence, was a General Biography of famous mathematicians. This he never completed for the press; but a sort of vidimus of the three hundred and sixty lives, which it was intended to contain, was printed after his death, with the title Cronica de' Mathematici. Several minor works in science and literature at the same time occupied his pen, among which were his Description of the Urbino palace, his Eulogy of that state, and his History of Guastalla. Nor were his poetic inspirations neglected, and, besides a variety of occasional effusions, his Nautica, or the Art of Navigation, was printed at Venice in 1590. We may include among his lighter labours an Essay on History, dedicated in 1611 to the Duke of Urbino, and lately published by Cardinal Mai.[144] Although, like most similar essays, some of its observations are trite and even trivial, the various topics are well handled, and many useful suggestions are offered as to the best method and style for history, the qualities requisite in its author and desirable for its students. It would have been well had Baldi attended, in his historical biographies, to his own recommendation, that the prolix and copious diction of Livy should be chastened by that terse and sententious manner found in Tacitus and Sallust. Nor were it amiss that he had construed less literally the maxim by which Pliny the Younger pleads for mediocrity, Content yourself to do much indifferently, if it be beyond you to do a little well.[145]