Vincenzo Vincenzi, “Geometer and Engineer to Cardinal Borja”

• Autores: Mercedes Gómez-Ferrer Lozano, Yolanda Gil Saura
• Localización: Nuncius: annali di storia della scienza, ISSN 0394-7394, Vol. 32, Nº. 1, 2017, págs. 111-145
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper analyses the figure of Vincenzo Vincenzi on the basis of documents that place him in Valencia in 1635 as engineer and geometer to Cardinal Gaspar de Borja y Velasco. Vincenzi, who was born in the Urbino region, worked as a hydraulic engineer at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli. In Rome he made his name as the inventor of the wind gun and the mobile fountain, inventions that were disseminated through the works of Benedetto Castelli and, above all, those of Giovanni Faber who also served as an intermediary, recommending Vincenzi’s services to cardinals such as Emmanuele Pio di Savoia and taking it upon himself to find buyers for the wind gun. Vincenzi worked for the Bentivoglios on the bonifica del Gualtieri, and the Venetian Republic expressed its desire to purchase a number of his inventions, after which he travelled to Spain at the request of Borja in order to drain a salt marsh on the cardinal’s estates.