Javier Patiño Loira

2026-2027

Francois Chevalier

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Ecologies of Decay: Spontaneous Generation and Nature’s Economy

Javier Patiño Loira is a scholar in early modern Italian and Spanish cultures, working at the crossroads between the history of science and the study of poetic and artistic discourse and practice. Javier obtained his PhD from Princeton University in 2016, and is now Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Age of Subtlety: Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe (2024), the first book-length study to examine 17th-century theories of concettismo through the lens of contemporary scientific and technological developments. Javier has published articles and book chapters on a variety of topics in early modern studies, including the formation of libraries, education, and translation. His research has been supported by research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Linda Hall Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

At the crossroads between the history of science and the analysis of poetic and artistic discourse, Ecologies of Decay argues that the study of spontaneous generation (the belief that a variety of creatures including insects, toads, and fungi emerged from decaying matter) crucially informed 17th-century views of nature’s “economy.” It contends that the belief that death and decay were just a new beginning for life and that individuals of one species could be born from the remnants of another species gave rise to increasingly complex forms of ecological thought: a world of horizontal links in which contiguity replaced lineage and nature remained whole by repurposing rot and bringing it back to the cycle of life. The book shows that clichés about “Baroque” culture, including the lure of death embodied by ruins and flesh-eating worms, made sense within a materialistic ecology of decay and regeneration that captivated scholars and creators with its protean, riotous creativity.

“The Sculptor and the Embalmer: Amber Inclusions as Nature’s ‘Art’ in Daniel Hermann’s De rana et lacerta (1583).” In Nature Bodied Forth: Metaphoric Dialogues of Matter, Making, and Meaning…, ed. by A. DiFuria, K. Goodchild, and A. Oettinger (Brill, forthcoming 2026). 

The Age of Subtlety: Nature and Rhetorical Conceits in Early Modern Europe. University of Delaware Press, 2024. 

“The Ingenuity of Fireflies: Conceits and Natural Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Italy.” I Tatti Studies, 27.1 (2024): 89–110.

“La deuda de un traductor: La poética de Aristóteles de Alonso Ordóñez (1624-26).” Revista de Filología Española 100.1 (2020): 215–243.

“Policing Talent in Early Modern Jesuit Rome: Difference, Self-Knowledge, and Career Specialization.” In The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe, ed. B. Fuchs and M. García-Arenal. University of Toronto Press, 2020, pp. 132–156.