F. Ruggieri (active in the 19th century) - Lot 77

F. Ruggieri (active in the 19th century) The Dominican astrologer Tommaso Campanella received at the court of Louis XIII following his persecution in Italy Oil on canvas 94 x 120 cm. Signed lower right: F. Ruggieri Trained in the Order of Preachers, Campanella was an early opponent of scholastic Aristotelianism in favor of a Telesio-inspired philosophy of nature, based on experience and the primacy of the sensible. Involved in a politico-religious conspiracy in Calabria (1599) aimed at establishing a theocratic monarchy, he was sentenced to a long prison term in Naples (1599-1626), during which he wrote most of his works, notably La Cité du Soleil, a political-philosophical utopia. After his release, he continued his intense intellectual activity, defending Galileo and developing a thought process combining metaphysics, politics, astrology and theology. A friend of Fabri de Peiresc, he was welcomed to France under the protection of Richelieu in 1634, and received a pension from Louis XIII. He died in Paris in 1639, an emblematic figure of heterodox and committed Dominican learning at the crossroads of the Renaissance and the Classical Age.