Pietro Andrea Mattioli

Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (Italian: [ˈpjɛːtro anˈdrɛːa ɡreˈɡɔːrjo matˈtjɔːli]; 12 March 1501– c. 1578) was a doctor and naturalist born in Siena. His most important work was a commentary on the medicinal plants of Pedanius Dioscorides first published in 1544 which was translated into several languages and went into thirteen editions in his lifetime.

Biography

Mattioli was born in Siena to physician Francesco and his wife Lucrezia Buoninsegna. Although belonging to the city elite, the family was economically stressed, with thirteen children. His early studies are unknown but he may have studied in Venice, Siena, and Padua before he received his MD at the University of Padua in 1523, and subsequently practiced the profession in Siena, Rome, Trento and Gorizia, becoming personal physician of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Further Austria in Prague and Ambras Castle, and of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna. In 1527 he moved to Trent in the Val di Non. In 1528 he was a court physician for Bernardo Cles and he then married a woman named Elizabeth and they had a son. In 1539 Cardinal Cles died and the position was taken by Bishop Cristoforo Madruzzo who dismissed Mattioli. In 1542 he moved to Gorizia where he began to work on the De Materia Medica of Dioscorides which was eventually published in Italian in 1544 by Nicolò de Bascarini in Venice. A careful student of botany, he described 100 new plants and coordinated the medical botany of his time in his Discorsi ("Commentaries").