Adventures and misadventures of a child prodigy of the Spanish Enlightenment: biographical notes on Juan Antonio Picornell and Obispo

Abstract

Juan Antonio Picornell, who was famous pedagogue Picornell y Gomila’s son, was a case of child prodigy of the Spanish Enlightenment. In 1785, he underwent a public exam at the University of Salamanca, when he was only three years old, and that act consecrated his name in the national press and it served the University to join the propaganda career that, with these contests, other institutions were playing. This work sheds new light, from archival sources, on the biography of that infant, honored in his childhood because of his early intellectual training, but later victim of abandonment, silence and a harsh reality. In addition, the article provides an updated state of the question about Juan Antonio Picornell’s studies.