58 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
MarceELLo MALPpIGHI, 1628-1694 
Personal Qualities.—There are several portraits of Mal- 
pighi extant. "These, together with the account of his 
personal appearance given by Atti, one of his biographers, 
enable us to tell what manner of man he was. The portrait 
shown in Fig. 13 is a copy of the one painted by Tabor and 
presented by Malpighi to the Royal Society of London, in 
whose rooms it may still be seen. This shows him in the 
full attractiveness of his early manhood, with the earnest, 
intellectual look of a man of high ideals and scholarly tastes, 
sweet-tempered, and endowed with the insight that belongs 
to a sympathetic nature. Some of his portraits taken later 
are less attractive, and the lines and wrinkles that show 
in his face give evidence of imperfect health. According to 
Atti, he was of medium stature, with a brown skin, a delicate 
complexion, a serious countenance, and a melancholy look. 
Accounts of his life show that he was modest, quiet, and 
of a pacific disposition, notwithstanding the fact that he lived 
in an atmosphere of acrimonious criticism, of jealousy and 
controversy. A family dispute in reference to the boundary- 
lines between his father’s property and the adjoining land of 
the Sbaraglia family gave rise toa feud, in which representa- 
tives of the latter family followed him all his life with efforts 
to injure both his scientific reputation and his good name. 
Under all this he suffered acutely, and his removal from 
Bologna to Messina was partly to escape the harshness of 
his critics. Some of his best qualities showed under these 
persecutions; he was dignified under abuse and considerate 
in his reply. In reference to the attacks upon his scientific 
standing, there were published after his death replies to his 
critics that were written while he was smarting under their 
injustice and severity, but these replies are free from bitterness 
and are written in a spirit of great moderation. The follow- 
