Giovanni Fontana was a fifteenth-century Venetian physician and engineer who portrayed himself as a magus. He was born in Venice in the 1390s and attended the University of Pauda, where he received a his degree in arts in 1418 and his degree in medicine in 1421. University records list him as "Master John, son of Michael de la Fontana". His most famous promoter at the University was the scholastic Paul of Venice

Paul of Venice

Paul of Venice was a Roman Catholic Scholastic philosopher, theologian, and logician of the Hermits of the Order of Saint Augustine.-Life:...

. He tells us that the Doge

Doge

Doge is a dialectal Italian word that descends from the Latin dux , meaning "leader", especially in a military context. The wife of a Doge is styled a Dogaressa....

 of Venice sent him to Brescia to deliver a message to the condottiere Francesco Carmagnola. He was also employed as the municipal physician by the city of Udine

Udine

Udine is a city and comune in northeastern Italy, in the middle of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic sea and the Alps , less than 40 km from the Slovenian border. Its population was 99,439 in 2009, and that of its urban area was 175,000.- History :Udine is the historical...

.

Works

Fontana composed treatises on a diverse array of topics. We have early works of his on water-clocks, sand-clocks and measurement. Fontana composed one of the earliest Renaissance technological treatises, Bellicorum instrumentorum liber. His machine book contains siege engines and fantastic inventions such as a magic lantern and a rocket-propelled bird, fish, and rabbit.

External links

• Bellicorum instrumentorum liber at the Bavarian State Library.