Athena Review Image Archive ™
Scilla, Agostino, portrait (ca. 1684)
Portrait of Agostino Scilla (painting ca. 1684)
Agostino Scilla (1629-1700) was a late Renaissance artist and naturalist. He studied with Roman artist Andrea Sacchi, and painted a ceiling fresco in the Sacrament Chapel of the cathedral at Syracuse in Sicily.
Scilla collected many fossils from Messina, Calabria, and Malta. He saw similarities between the everyday bones, teeth, and shells of local sea-life and the Miocene (23-5 mya) fossils of the region. Among his scientific observation, he found that fossil sea urchin shells never contained sediment grains bigger than the largest opening in the shell, even if the rock enclosing the shell did. This constituted evidence that fossil sea urchins could not have grown naturally in the rock (one of the standard misinterpretations of his time). He also noticed that fossil sea-urchin shells are often crushed (evidence of sediment compaction), and that fossil shark teeth are often water-worn, both indicating that the fossils could not have grown inside the rock.
Scilla’s findings were published in Italian, alongside his highly accurate drawings, in 1670 in a book entitled La vana speculazione disingannata dal senso ("The vain speculation disillusioned by the senses"). This publication is one of the earliest that used scientific observation and reasoning to argue that fossils are the remains of plants and animals from the past.
References:
Scilla,Agostino 1670. La vana speculazione disingannata dal senso,lettera risponsiva Circa i Corpi Marini,che Petrificati si trouano in vari luoghi terrestri ("The vain speculation disillusioned by the senses, a letter concerning the marine remains, which are found petrified in various terrestrial places").
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