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Notes on Galileo’s Moon, in Contemplatio in the Visual Arts and Literature (1400-1700): Festschrift for Walter S. Melion, eds.Stijn Bussels, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Michel Weemans, and Elliott D. Wise, (Intersections, 88), Brill, 2024, p. 464-477.
In this essay, I highlight a lesser-known aspect of Galileo Galilei’s (1564–1642) character, namely the role that he played in the artistic milieu of his day. As a humanist, Galileo befriended many of the artists in his milieu. Thus, his telescopic ‘eye’ came into contact with the actual eyes of contemporary visual artists. Erwin Panofsky’s essay, “Galileo as a Critic of the Arts: Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific, Thought” (1956), on Galileo’s friendship with Ludovico Cigoli (1559–1613) and, more particularly, his advice for the Madonna of the Immaculata Assunta in the dome of the Pauline chapel (1612) of Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome). is a suitable starting point.*,1 Notes to Galileo’s Moon explores the tension between the human eye, the lens, and the arts – one that was also fueled by the key debate of the era: the paragone, or the hierarchical struggle between the artistic disciplines. I will show how Galileo’s ‘scientific gaze’ was not distinct from a ‘painterly gaze.’ For Galileo the telescope was more than a technical refinement for observation; it was it was an optical prosthesis he used to reach for the artistic image through contemplation.
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the article deals with the interrelation between galileo and the visual arts. it presents a couple of drawings from the hand of galileo and confronts them with…
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
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Galileo’s wash drawings that survive – and to a certain degree, the etchings in the first edition of the Sidereus Nuncius – exemplify drawing as rationalized observation for the representation of knowledge and ideas as it had been conceived and practiced by Florentine artists during the previous two centuries, and which had been institutionalized in curriculum of the Accademia del Disegno. There is no doubt, in my view, that the drawings and etchings are in Galileo’s hand, despite recent speculation to the contrary as I note. Bredekamp and his colleagues – despite their misattribution – provided the great service of investigating the SNML in minute detail along with a rigorous analysis of Galileo’s imagery. In the forger’s failure to grasp the visual representation of observed nature in Galileo’s imagery in the SNML, lies its efficacy as a means for conveying the discovery of knowledge.
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We discuss rare early depictions of the Moon by artists who actually observed Earth's nearest neighbor rather than relying on stylized formulas. The earliest, from the 14th and 15th centuries, reveal that revolutionary advances in both pre-telescopic astronomy and naturalistic painting could go hand-in-hand. This link suggests that when painters observed the world, their definition of world could also include the heavens and the Moon. Many of the artists we discuss - e.g., Pietro Lorenzetti, Giotto, and Jan Van Eyck - actually studied the Moon, incorporating their studies into several works. We also consider the star map on the dome over the altar in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo, Florence (c. 1442), whose likely advisor was Toscanelli. In addition, we examine representations by artists who painted for Popes Julius II and Leo X - Raphael and Sebastiano del Piombo, both of whom were influenced by individuals at the papal court, such as the astronomer, painter, and cartographer Johann (Giovanni) Ruysch and Leonardo da Vinci. We also discuss Leonardo's pre-telescopic notes and lunar drawings as they impacted on art and science in Florence, where Galileo would study perspective and chiaroscuro. Galileo's representations of the Moon (engraved in his Sidereus Nuncius, 1610) are noted, together with those by Harriot and Galileo's friend, the painter Cigoli. During the 17th century, the Moon's features were telescopically mapped by astronomers with repercussions in art, e.g., paintings by Donati Creti and Raimondo Manzini as well as Adam Elsheimer. Ending with a consideration of the 19th-century artists/astronomers John Russell and John Brett and early lunar photography, we demonstrate that artistic and scientific visual acuity belonged to the burgeoning empiricism of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries that eventually yielded modern observational astronomy.
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