10 Facts About Ignazio Danti

Ignazio Danti was born in Perugia in 1536 to a family of artists and scientists.

Ignazio Danti worked on many other significant scientific and cosmographic projects in Florence, including the large terrestrial globe of the Guardaroba, and a number of brass scientific instruments today in the Museo Galileo in Florence.

Between 1567 and 1569, Pius V, who belonged to the Dominicans, is said to have commissioned Ignazio Danti to furnish plans for the construction of a Dominican church and convent at Bosco Marengo in Piedmont; Ignazio Danti acted mainly as an adviser.

For much of his time in Florence, Ignazio Danti resided at the convent of Santa Maria Novella, and designed the quadrant and the armillary sphere that appear on the end blind arches of the lower facade of the church in 1572 and 1574, on the right and left respectively.

Ignazio Danti designed a large-scale gnomon for the church which allowed a thin beam of light to enter the church at noon each day through a hole just beneath the facade's rose window, although it probably was not completed by the time Danti left Florence.

Ignazio Danti spent some time in Perugia, at the invitation of the governor, where he prepared maps of the Perugian republic.

Ignazio Danti placed him in charge of the painters whom the Pope had summoned to the Vatican to continue the decoration of the palace, most notably to make a number of maps of the regions of modern Italy in the newly constructed Gallery of Maps along the Cortile del Belvedere.

Ignazio Danti showed himself a zealous pastor in his new office.

Besides the works already mentioned, Danti was the author of Trattato del'uso e della fabbrica dell'astrolabo con la giunta del planifero del Raja; Le Scienze matematiche ridotte in tavole, a revised and annotated edition of La Sfera di Messer G Sacrobosco tradotta da Pier Vincenzio Danti.

Ignazio Danti wrote the first Italian treatise on this topic to accompany the book.