BIANCHINI

bianchini, francesco (1662-1729), italian astronomer and antiquary, was born of a noble family at verona on the 13th of december 1662. in 1684 he went to rome, and became librarian to cardinal ottoboni, who, as pope alexander viii. (1689), raised him to the offices of papal chamberlain and canon of santa maria maggiore. clement xi. sent him on a mission to paris in 1712, and employed him to form a museum of christian antiquities. he died at rome on the 2nd of march 1729. a paper by him on g.d. cassini's new method of parallaxes was inserted in the _acta eruditorum_ of leipzig in 1685. he published separately:--_istoria universale_ (roma, 1697), only one volume of which appeared; _de calendario et cyclo caesaris_ (1703); _hesperi et phosphori nova phaenomena_ (1729), in which he asserted venus to rotate in 24-1/3 days; and (posthumously) _astronomicae et geographicae observaliones selectae_ (1737) and _opuscula varia_ (1754). see fontenelle's "eloge" (_memoires de l'acad. de l'histoire_, p. 102, paris, 1729); mazzoleni, _vita di francesco bianchini_ (verona, 1735); tipaldo, _biografia degli italiani illustri_, vii. 288 (venezia, 1840); mazzuchelli, _scrittori d' italia_; maffei, _verona illustrata_, p. 254, &c.