author
Diogo de Carvalho e Sampaio
1750–1807
A Portuguese nobleman, magistrate, diplomat, and amateur scientist, he is remembered today for writing two notable late-18th-century works on color. His blend of legal, public, and scientific interests gives his life an unusual range for the period.
1 Audiobook
Tratado das Cores Que consta de tres partes: analytica, synthetica, hermeneutica
by Diogo de Carvalho e Sampaio
About the author
Born on 28 May 1750 and dying on 29 December 1807, he was a Portuguese nobleman whose career moved across several worlds at once: law, diplomacy, and science. He was a knight of the Order of Malta and worked as a judge, while also building a reputation as a serious amateur scholar.
He is best known for his writings on chromatics, especially Dissertação sobre as cores primitivas (1788) and Tratado das cores (1791). These works explored the nature of color, color mixing, and visual perception, making him a distinctive figure in the history of early color theory in the Portuguese-speaking world.
What makes him especially interesting is that he was not a specialist in the modern sense. Instead, he belonged to an older tradition of learned public figures who could be at once magistrates, diplomats, and investigators of the natural world.