Azure, a fess Gules, accompanied, in chief, of a comet between two estoiles Or and, in base,
of
an oak tree between two hedgehogs combattant Proper on a terrasse Vert.
Azzurro con una fascia rossa accompagnata in capo da una cometa posta tra due stelle d'oro,
in punta una quercia al naturale terrazzata di verde accostata da due ricci al naturale e affrontati.
Those are canting arms: Ricci means hedgehog in Italian and Curbastro is said to come from the latin name for the oak tree (quercus).
The inventor of tensor calculus (1884) is from a family of wine producers based in Capriolo. The Ricci-Curbastro House (old Franchini House) is located Via San Vitale, 31 (Bologna). The traditional Ricci-Curbastro shield is the basis for the stylized commercial logo now used on the label of most Ricci-Curbastro wine bottles. Fortunately, they have retained the unmodified shield for their Franciacorta Demi Sec (label at right) reproduced on the frontispiece of this page...
However, the colors used in the wine label depart significantly from the heraldic colors which can be found elsewehere (example at left). Strictly speaking, the composition of the shield violates the traditional heraldic rule of tinctures which ordinarily forbids the juxtaposition of two colors like gules and azure.
In 1884, Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro started the investigations of quadratic differential forms which led him to invent tensor calculus (1884-1894). The text he published about that with Tullio Levi-Civita in 1900 was entitled Méthodes de calcul différentiel absolu et leurs applications. Ricci-Curbastro signed this particular work with the abbreviated moniker Ricci for the first and only time (this is how he remains known to most scientists today). That momentous treatise is what would enable Albert Einstein to formulate General Relativity in 1915.
