Bianchini was born of a noble family at
Verona, the son of Giuseppe Bianchini and his wife, Cornelia Vailetti. Educated by Jesuits in Bologna, and by the Paduan astronomer,
Geminiano Montanari, Bianchini spent most of his university years in
Padua studying comets while enrolled in Theology. This early training in astronomy established Bianchini's commitment to the experimental and physical sciences. 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. A paper by him on
Giovanni Domenico Cassini's new method of
parallaxes was inserted in the
Acta Eruditorum of
Leipzig in 1685. On 9 January 1706, Bianchini was elected member of the
French Academy of Sciences of Paris. Today, we know that this is impossible, because of the thick cloud cover on this
planet. He also worked on the parallax of Venus, and he measured the
precession of the
Earth's rotational axis. As part of his efforts to improve the accuracy of the calendar, Bianchini was commissioned by Clement XI to construct an important meridian line in the Basilica of
Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs) in Rome, a device for calculating the position of the sun and stars. According to a Catholic News Service online news story by Carol Glatz from 5 August 2011,
Pope Benedict XVI noted this when he explained the importance of astronomyespecially when clocks were primitive and prone to error – in the determination of certain liturgical celebration days and the times for certain daily prayers, such as the
Angelus. and the
Bianchini crater on the Moon are named in his honour. He also worked as a
topographer and
archaeologist of ancient Rome, and as a collector. In 1726, a structure (the columbarium of Livia) consisting of three sepulchral chambers of some of the servants and freedmen of
Augustus and his wife Livia were discovered near the
Via Appia, and excavated. Bianchini explored these rooms and published a description. In 1727, he fell through the ceiling of a vault while exploring the ruins of the palace of the Caesars on the
Palatine Hill (
Palace of Domitian), and was severely injured. He died in Rome on 2 March 1729, and was buried in Santa Maria Maggiore. A monument was raised to his memory in
Verona Cathedral. ==Books==