Witelon - portrait of the first Polish scientist in Padua
"Pretty is what you like", wrote Witelon, the first Polish scientist of international fame. And although this statement sounds banal nowadays, in 13th century Europe it sounded like heresy. However, it was not his divagations on the borderline between aesthetics and psychology, but his pioneering treatises on the essence of light, that caused Witelon's portrait to hang above Galileo Galilei's university chair at the University of Padua.

Witelon - graduate of the University of Padua
The Palazzo del Bo in Via VIII Febbraio is the historic home of the University of Padua, which you could already read about on the pages of the Polonica Institute. Here, in the former butcher's palace or inn, as others like to say (hence the ox head in the coat of arms), classes have been held for 800 years. Since its foundation, this university, the second oldest in Italy and the fifth in the world, has relied on the personal commitment of scholars and thinkers.
In 1222, a group of professors and students, in protest against threats to the independence of science, left the University of Bologna and founded the university we know today. Its motto became the slogan: Universa Universis Patavina Libertas (The freedom of Padua is universal for everyone).

Among Padua's greatest free thinkers, Galileo Galilei, one of the greatest physicists of all time, held an undisputed place. In addition to his strictly scientific achievements, this Renaissance scientist also went down in history for his conflict with the church and the Grand Inquisition. The reason for this was his magnum opus, Dialogue on the Two Most Important Systems of the World, in which he fiercely defended the theses of Nicolaus Copernicus, also a Paduan alumnus. And it is the wooden cathedral, preserved for more than 400 years, from which Galileo Galilei taught, that stands at the centre of the hall known as the Sala dei Quaranta, or Hall of the Forty, in the Palazzo del Bo. Forty portraits of prominent students of the Paduan university hang on the walls around a lectern bitten by the teeth of time. Among them we find an image of Witelon.

Image of Witelon in the Palazzo del Bo
Compared to the Galileo Cathedral, which remembers the seventeenth century, the painting depicting Vitellon is not very aged. Similarly, the other paintings collected in the Hall of Forty in the Palazzo del Bo, although they look old, are contemporary. They were painted in 1942 by Gian Giacomo Dal Forno and placed in an interior arranged by the architect Gio Ponti. They were commissioned by the then rector, Carlo Anti. As one might suspect, it was his idea that all the figures were provided with Renaissance costumes and attributes.

Witelon is also depicted in this way. In a white-grey kaftan, reminiscent of a dove's wings, decorated with geometric patterns. He is wearing a headdress that is a variation on the flattened beret, known as a shaperon, with a characteristic sash flowing down the side of his head. The scholar holds a rolled up parchment in one hand and an eyepiece in the other. On the left side of the painting, "Witello Polacco" is inscribed, while on the right side, "XIII Secolo" (13th century) is inscribed, as the exact date of his birth is unknown.

Witelon - the first Polish scientist
Photography is a two-dimensional medium and often distorts the real properties of objects. This is also the case with the paintings from the Sala dei Quaranta. For they appear to be a uniform plane. In reality, each is a separate entity, although they hang one next to the other.

Undoubtedly, this kind of illusion would have intrigued Witelon himself. After all, he was, among other things, the author of a treatise (as comprehensive as its title): Vitellon the Learned Mathematician on Optics, that is, on the essence, cause and incidence of the rays of sight, colours and shapes, which is commonly called perspective, books ten. This work was referred to in research by Leonardo da Vinci and Nicolaus Copernicus, while the astronomer Johanes Kepler even included Witelon's name in the title of his dissertation.

Unfortunately, not much can be said about the life of Witelon himself, the first Polish scientist. What we do know for sure is that his mother was Polish and he wrote about himself "in nostra terra, scilicet Polonia", i.e. "in our land, that is Poland". He was also supposed to have been born at the turn of the third and fourth decades of the 13th century near Legnica, but there is no source evidence for this hypothesis. Similarly, the date and place of Witelon's death remains a mystery, although there are indications that he was close to Wrocław.

Fortunately, works have survived that attest to the greatness of their author. These visionary works laid the foundations of modern perceptual psychology and greatly enriched optics, meteorology and - note - demonology. After all, Witelon, who was one of the first foreign students in Padua and studied canon law there, also wrote a treatise on the chief cause of repentance and the nature of demons.

Witelon, Kochanowski and Batory - what did they have in common?
While Witelon would have been one of the first Natio Ultramontana, or newcomers from over the mountains (i.e. the Alps), as the non-Italian scholars were termed, he is not the only Pole in Padua's hall of fame. In the Palace's Hall of Forty, to the right of Witelon, there is a portrait of Klemens Janicki, a doctor of philosophy and poet who wrote in Latin. Even further to the right is a likeness of Giovanni Kochanowski, as this is how the Italians spell the name of Jan of Czarnolas. On the left, below the painting by Witelon, one can admire a portrait of Stefan Batory, who has been attributed Hungarian nationality, but the Padua museum materials emphasise that he was king of Poland. Interestingly, it is not certain that the monarch studied in Padua.

To Kochanowski's right, Franciscus Skorjna de Poloczo - Francis Skaryny of Polotsk - is worth mentioning. His nationality in Padua is Ruthenian, although today it should be written - Belorussian. He was, however, undoubtedly associated with the Republic as a 16th-century humanist and author of the first translation of the Bible into Ruthenian. He first studied in Krakow, and years later, already a doctor of medicine from Padua, he founded the first printing house in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Vilnius.

It should be noted, however, that there were many more wise men and artists who came to this university "from over the mountains" than just those mentioned above.

"The eye receives no other information than light, colour and angular size," wrote Witelon. In the face of, inexorably short days and long nights, light is what we long for most. So perhaps, in a moment of autumn quiet, when planning future travels, many of us will add a visit to the Sala dei Quaranta in the Palazzo del Bo to our Italian holidays...

The Sala dei Quaranta (degli Quaranta) in the Palazzo del Bo, the main building of the University of Padua (Università Degli Studi Di Padova), contains paintings from 1942 by Gian Giacomo Dal Forno. The commissioner of the paintings was Carlo Anti, rector at the time. The paintings depict:
. - Witelon,
- Klemens Janicki,
- Jan Kochanowski,
- Franciszek Skaryna,
- Stefan Batory.