Science and technology in Italy various astronomical observations, and initial formulation of the first and second laws of motion. Galileo was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but was a founder of modern science. The astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who made many important discoveries about the Solar System; the physicist Alessandro Volta, who invented the electric battery, thus providing for the first time a sustained source of current electricity; the mathematicians Giuseppe Peano, Lagrange, Fibonacci, and Gerolamo Cardano, whose "Ars Magna" is generally recognized as the first modern treatment on mathematics, made fundamental advances to the field; Marcello Malpighi, a doctor and founder of microscopic anatomy;
Memorial to Alessandro Valtrini Memorial to Alessandro Valtrini The Memorial to Alessandro Valtrini is a funerary monument designed by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1639, and executed by his workshop in the same year. It is situated in the church of the San Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome. It has strong affinities with the "Memorial to Ippolito Merenda"; both were undertaken by Bernini's workshop and commissioned by Cardinal Francesco Barberini to commend the ecclesiastical work done by Valtrini and Merenda respectively. In aesthetic terms, both broke new ground in figuring Death as a moving skeleton carrying a flowing inscriptions and, in the