Born in the parish of Santo Stefano on Murano to Daniele Miotti and Angela Licini, he was the first of three brothers and two sisters. He came from a wealthy family of glaziers which owned a furnace, but he left the family business in the hands of his brother Alvise, preferring a career in the church. After studying in the
patriarchal seminary in Venice at San Cipriano, run by the
Somaschi Fathers, he distinguished himself in classics, mathematics, physics and astronomy. He joined the
Camaldolese cultural circle at
San Michele in Isola, where he met
Angelo Calogerà and
Fortunato Mandelli. He became a priest at
Santa Maria e San Donato and led a cloistered life, declining the many academic posts offered to him and devoting himself to designing and building instruments for physics and astronomy demonstrations, which were used and highly valued by
Jérôme Lalande,
Paolo Frisi,
Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich and
Alessandro Volta. Mainly made of card and wood, few of them now survive, though one for demonstrating the
tautochrone curve of a
cycloid and another for
parabolic motion do remain. Many small fragments and gadgets also survive in the
Murano Glass Museum. ==References==