Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri (1772-1826)
(Laura Giovannelli, University of Pisa)
Highly praised by both Byron and the Shelleys, Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri was one of the most eminent figures gravitating around the Pisan Circle. Eulogized as “the first surgeon on the continent” (Byron to John Murray, 24 January 1817; Byron 1830: 74) and often referred to as simply “the celebrated Vaccà”, he was portrayed by Mary Shelley as the “most famous surgeon in all Italy” and “a very pleasant man – a great republican & no Xtian” (Mary Shelley to Marianne Hunt, 24 March 1820; Shelley 1980-1988: 136). In 1820, the Shelleys were introduced to him thanks to Anglo-Irish hostess Margaret King, formerly Lady Mount Cashell, an expatriate and political radical who had settled in Pisa with her partner George William Tighe, where they adopted the alias “Mr and Mrs Mason” (Curreli 1997: 73). A sort of health advisor herself, Mrs Mason acted as an intermediary so that Percy might have a diagnosis from the Italian luminary, who prescribed a wholesome lifestyle and thermal cure as a treatment for the poet’s nephritis. It is no mystery that Thomas Medwin and Byron, too, would join the company of Vaccà’s patients. Byron even asked the renowned physician if he could help him find a reliable doctor for personal assistance during his stay in Greece (Byron to Edward John Trelawny, 22 June 1823; Trelawny 1858: 164).
Born on 3 February 1772 in Montefoscoli, a village of feudal origins in today’s Pisan municipality of Palaia, Andrea Antonio Vaccà Berlinghieri belonged to “an illustrious dynasty of physicians” coming from Massa Carrara and subsequently moving to Pisa at the end of the seventeenth century (Palajia 2004: 101). Andrea was the second son of Francesco Maria, a medical officer in Buti and Ponsacco and, from 1766, Professor of Theoretical Surgery at the University of Pisa, and Rosa Pardini, the daughter of a lieutenant from Buti. An experienced doctor hailed as the “Tuscan Hippocrates”, as well as a scientist who wrote pioneering treatises and developed new surgical instruments, Francesco Vaccà hardly concealed his pro-French and pro-Masonic sympathies and egalitarian creed, in a peculiar blending of “academic power and political allegiance” (Montorzi 2004: 83). Unsurprisingly, he had to face attacks by the reactionary and conservative fringes of the Tuscan governments that had alternated across the years, to the point of being taken to trial (1799) and having his assets in Montefoscoli temporarily confiscated. In spite of this, he did not refrain from pursuing social ascendancy and eagerly confronting his rivals (Del Vivo 2009: 35). Further traces of his vigorous, open-minded personality are to be found in the intellectual breadth and cosmopolitan scope of the educational training he made accessible to his three sons, who travelled and studied in various regions of the Italian peninsula and Europe. The first-born Leopoldo (1768-1809) studied in Paris, specialized in and taught Physics at the University of Pisa and, enthusiastically embracing the cause of liberty, finally embarked on a military career in the ranks of the Napoleonic army, dying prematurely in Lerici on his journey home, in the wake of a hectic campaign period abroad. Similarly struck by an early death, Giuseppe (1776-1803) studied Fine Arts and Music in Rome and would later teach Civil Law in Pisa.
Andrea’s remarkable case history weaves together many of these strands. First of all, the fact of “being republican & no Xtian”, in Mary Shelley’s words. Indeed, the Vaccà Berlinghieri’s family was the perfect example of an academic, secular middle class deeply affiliated with the university milieu and its governance in Pisa (Montorzi 2004). Their love for knowledge, dedication to scientific research and patriotic/democratic faith (sometimes labelled as sheer Jacobinism) proved inalienable identity traits. With his father, strong-willed Andrea shared a sense of loyalty to the Italian liberal movement, a bright mind and a jovial temperament, a quality which, among other things, made him a beloved figure within the community of students and patients alike. As his granddaughter observed in her encomiastic memoir, Andrea found the medical art “in its infancy, and made it great” (Vaccà Giusti 1878: 76), setting up the first surgical medical school in Pisa and breaking new ground in the realms of urology and ophthalmology. At the age of fifteen – just two years before the Storming of the Bastille, of which he was a historical witness – he left for Paris with his brother Leopold for an apprenticeship in what was then a cutting-edge centre. He could thus benefit from the teaching of masters of the calibre of Pierre-Joseph Desault, Raphaël Bienvenu Sabatier, and Antoine Dubois. In the French capital, where he would repair again in 1799, when the restored Grand Duchy of Tuscany took retaliatory action against upholders of democratic rule, Andrea put into practice what he had been learning from Desault, routinely performing anatomical dissections of corpses (Rosini 1826: 18-19). After an additional training period in London, under the guidance of John Hunter and Benjamin Bell, he returned to Pisa, where he graduated in Philosophy and Medicine (1793) and held the chair of Clinical Surgery for over twenty years (1803-1826). His professional standing was strengthened by the publication of a dozen state-of-the-art works, and his reputation became so great that monarchs and dignitaries from different countries, such as Egypt and Russia, entrusted their health to his care.
In 1814, Andrea married the beautiful, well-bred French widow of his brother Leopoldo, namely Sophie Caudeiron, whose literary salon welcomed prominent figures of the academic and artistic world, including Madame de Staël and the Shelleys. The couple had four sons, one of whom tragically passed away in childhood. At the age of fifty-four, in his house at Orzignano, Andrea would be fatally struck down by a bout of high fever, possibly typhoid. Three years after his death, a marble memorial monument commissioned to the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen was raised in his honour in Pisa’s Monumental Cemetery, where his and his father’s remains lay. Standing as an iconic reminder of the strong bond between Andrea and Francesco is the Temple of Minerva Medica, an impressive structure in neoclassical style, which the son inaugurated in 1823 to celebrate his father’s memory. Nested in a forest on a Montefoscoli hill, this pagan temple brimming with secret codes has been the object of much speculation that casts it as a Masonic venue, a private hall for delivering lectures on surgical anatomy, a nursing home, a leisure centre, and even a laboratory for autoptic dissection (Montorzi 2009: 4-5). This last hypothesis prompts us to reflect further on the impact of Andrea Vaccà’s bold enhancement of surgical practice alongside his experiments on dead bodies and, in relation to Mary Shelley’s conception of Frankenstein in 1816, on the titillating possibility that she might have actually heard of such a “practical surgeon […] in the first rank of his profession” (Shelley 1826: 341) well before meeting him in Pisa. There is reason to believe that this could have happened thanks to John William Polidori, whose father Gaetano was on quite familiar terms with Andrea (Del Vivo 2009: 147-148).
Works Cited
Byron, George Gordon, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, London, John Murray, 1830, Vol. I.
Curreli, Mario, “Una certa Signora Mason”: Romantici inglesi a Pisa ai tempi di Leopardi, Pisa, ETS, 1997.
Del Vivo, Caterina, La “Bella Vaccà”, Leopoldo e Andrea. Sophie Caudeiron e i Vaccà Berlinghieri, Pisa, ETS, 2009.
Montorzi, Mario, “I Vaccà Berlinghieri: una laica famiglia della borghesia accademica pisana tra scienza, politica e cultura nell’Europa della Restaurazione”, in Romano Paolo Coppini, Alessandro Tosi, Alessandro Volpi (eds), L’Università di Napoleone: la riforma del sapere a Pisa, Pisa, Edizioni PLUS, 2004, pp. 81-91.
Montorzi, Mario, “Prefazione”, in Caterina Del Vivo and Rita Panattoni, Andrea Vaccà e Ridolfo Castinelli. La costruzione del Tempio di Minerva Medica a Montefoscoli, Pisa, ETS, 2009, pp. 3-8.
Panajia, Alessandro, “Nobili, ‘dame’ e ussari a Pisa in periodo napoleonico”, in Romano Paolo Coppini, Alessandro Tosi, Alessandro Volpi (eds), L’Università di Napoleone: la riforma del sapere a Pisa, Pisa, Edizioni PLUS, 2004, pp. 93-109.
Rosini, Giovanni, Tributo di dolore e di lode alla memoria del Professore Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri, Cav. del Merito, Pisa, Capurro, 1826.
Shelley, Mary, “The English in Italy” (Review Article), The Westminster Review, 6, October 1826, pp. 325-41.
Shelley, Mary, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, edited by B.T. Bennett, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980-1988, Vol. I.
Trelawny, Edward John, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, London, Edward Moxon, 1858.
Vaccà Giusti, Laura, Andrea Vaccà e la sua famiglia: biografie e memorie raccolte da Laura Vaccà Giusti, Pisa, Mariotti, 1878.
Ultimo aggiornamento
29.10.2025