Girolamo fracastoro titian biography

Girolamo Fracastoro (1476/8–1553), a celebrated medical doctor, as well as an astronomer, mathematician and poet, proposed the theory of contagion and in 1530 wrote an epic poem that gave the name ’syphilis‘ to the virulent, sexually transmitted disease that was ravaging Italy in that period.

His most important medical book De Contagione (On Contagion), which explains how and why plague was spread, was published in 1546.

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478 — August 6, 1553), Italian ...

Vasari recorded in the 1568 edition of his Lives of the Artists that Titian had painted a portrait of Fracastoro.

Before it was conserved the painting was in poor condition and obscured by thick dirty varnish, and its attribution to Titian was doubted. However, recent conservation treatment has revealed the technical brilliance with which the paint was handled in the best-preserved parts of the portrait.

Although most of the modelling of the black parts of the coat has been lost, Titian’ Girolamo Fracastoro - AcademiaLab RYK