Tommaso Salvadori is remembered as the most important Italian ornithologist of all time.
He was born in Porto San Giorgio in 1835 and participated in the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860 as a medical officer. After moving to Turin, he began his academic career by writing numerous scientific works and became deputy director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Turin. During his long years there, he oversaw the expansion and reorganisation of the ornithological section, bringing it up to the standards of the best collections in Europe. He wrote about his work in Notizie storiche intorno alla collezione ornitologica del Museo di Torino, in which he relived his entire life as a scholar. Over the course of his very long career at Turin Museum he worked with no fewer than seven directors, without ever aspiring to hold the position himself.
One of the world’s leading ornithologists
Recognised as one of the world’s leading ornithologists and given also his vast output of published work, between 1890 and 1894 he collaborated on no fewer than three volumes of the ornithology catalogues of the British Museum in London. Between 1868 and 1913, he was also professor of natural sciences at Regio Liceo Cavour in Turin, leaving his chair at the age of 78.
In 1930, just a few years after his death in 1923, his great-granddaughter, Gladys Salvadori Paleotti Muzzarelli, donated his ornithological collection to the city of Fermo, together with the original container cabinets and Salvadori’s complete works, to be duly preserved and exhibited to the public.
The Natural Science Museum contains his personal ornithological collection, the result of excursions and hunting trips undertaken by Tommaso Salvadori in the Marche region (especially in the Fermo and Ascolano areas) and Sardinia. The collection includes specimens of regional and Italian avifauna, including extremely rare species, such as osprey, monk vulture, bearded vulture and eagle owl.
Salvatori was chosen on more than one occasion to participate in more distant and exotic official expeditions, but he always had to forgo these opportunities due to his unstable health. Yet he lived his entire, extremely long life in the name of his passion for ornithology.
The meticulous preparation of exhibits
He personally prepared most of the specimens in his collection, carrying out all the embalming and choosing the mounts used. Having dealt for a long time, and with great patience, with the observation of fauna, in preparing his specimen he devoted himself with extreme precision to the study of poses. In this way, he succeeded in restoring the liveliness of gestures that, even if they have been frozen in an instant, never appear static.