Talk:Alessandra Giliani

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[Untitled][edit]

Real historical documents for this person doesn't exist. Also Medici on pp.29-30 retaines the story untrustable. --Enzian44 (talk) 01:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Myth or History?[edit]

The article misleadingly describes Alessandra Giliani as if her existence were undisputed. The point of view of modern historians is that her story is a legend created by Alessandro Machiavelli.

The first mention of Giliani is in 1739 by Alessandro Machiavelli in Effemeridi sacro-civili perpetue bolognesi. Some sources, including Oakes (2007), repeat and embellish upon what he wrote as if he were a reliable source. Some make much of the woodcut of a figure standing by a dissecting table, a figure they think looks female, and assume must be Giliani. Never mind that the picture appeared as the frontispiece in only one of the 49 editions of Mondino's anatomy book, one published in Leipzig between 1490 and 1512, and that nothing with it identifies the figure as female or Giliani. Much is also made of a contemporary inscription supposed to exist in the church "San Pietro e Marcellino degli Spedolari di Santa Maria di Mareto, o d'Ulmareto." Writers posit that the church is in Bologna, or Florence, or Sienna, or even Rome, but none has found it yet, let alone the inscription.

Even Medici (1857) and Barbara Quick acknowledge the controversy, but the English Wikipedia article does not. The article should be rewritten to reflect the consensus of scholarship. Many of the sources are in Italian, so some fluency would be helpful.

Medici, Michele (1857). Compendio storico della Scuola anatomica di Bologna (in Italian). p. 28-30. Retrieved 30 August 2014.(in Italian)
Lollini, Pier-Luigi; Pelagatti, Laura (October 1983). "Mondino de' Liuzzi". Le Scienze (in Italian). Rome: Scientific American. Retrieved 30 August 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |trans_title= (help)(in Italian)
Grafton, Anthony (1990). Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691055442. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
Bacchelli, Franco (2005). "LIUZZI, Mondino de'". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Treccani, L'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 30 August 2014.(in Italian)
Veneziani, Sabrina (April–June 2009). "Una fanciulla al tavolo di Mondino de' Liuzzi?" (PDF). Rivista per le Medical Humanities (in Italian). Bellinzona: Edizioni Casagrande. Retrieved 30 August 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |trans_title= (help); Unknown parameter |registration= ignored (|url-access= suggested) (help)(in Italian)
Merri (January 2010). "Interview: Historical Fiction Author Barbara Quick". Book Illuminations. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
Findlen, Paula (2014). "Listening to the Archives: Searching for Eighteenth-Century Women of Science". In Govoni, Paola; Franceschi, Zelda (eds.). Writing about Lives in Science: (Auto)Biography, Gender, and Genre. Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress. pp. 87–116. Retrieved 30 August 2014.

Choulant, Ludwig (1920). History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 30 August 2014.
Tite, Lacy (Summer 2011). "Anathomia corporis humani". Lacy Paschal. Retrieved 30 August 2014.