Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T14:35:19.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Virgin and the Telescope: The Moons of Cigoli and Galileo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Sara Elizabeth Booth  and
Albert van Helden
Sara Elizabeth Booth
Affiliation:
University of Houston and Rice University
Albert van Helden
Affiliation:
University of Houston and Rice University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1612, Lodovico Cigoli completed a fresco in the Pauline chapel of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome depicting Apocalypse 12: “A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet.” He showed the crescent Moon with spots, as his friend Galileo had observed with the newly invented telescope. Considerations of the orthodox view of the perfect Moon as held by philosophers have led historians to ask why this clearly imperfect Moon in a religious painting raised no eyebrows. We argue that when considered in the context of biblical interpretation and the rhetoric of the Counter-Reformation, the imperfect Moon under the woman's feet was entirely consistent with traditional interpretations of Apocalypse 12.

Type
2. The Context of the Artists: Astronomy and its New Representations
Information
Science in Context , Volume 13 , Issue 3-4 , Autumn-Winter 2000 , pp. 463 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Amir. 1998. “Lunar Maps and Coastal Outlines: Thomas Harriot's Mapping of the Moon.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 29:345–68.Google Scholar
Alhazen, . 1924–1925. “Über das Licht des Mondes,” translated by Kohl, Karl Sitz-ungsbericht der Physikalisch-medizinischen Societät in Erlangen 56–57:305–98.Google Scholar
Alhazen, . 1925. Über die Natur der Spuren [Flecken], die man aufder Oberfläche des Mondes sieht, translated by Schoy, Carl. Hannover: Heinz Lafaire.Google Scholar
Ariew, Roger. 1984. “Galileo's Lunar Observations in the Context of Medieval Lunar Theory.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 15:213–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristotle, . 1930. De Caelo, translated by J. L. Stocks. In The Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, edited by Ross, W. D.. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Augustine, . 1958. On Christian Doctrine, translated by Robertson, D. W. Jr. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Baldini, Ugo. 1984 [1983]. “L'astronomia del Cardinale Bellarmino.” In Novità Celesti e Crisi del Sapere: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Galileiana, edited by Galluzzi, Paolo. Monograph 7, Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza. Florence.Google Scholar
Bible, . 1899. The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions in divers languages. The Old Testament first published by the English College at Douay, A. D. 1609 and The New Testament first published by the English College at Rheims, A.D. 1582. Baltimore and New York: John Murphy.Google Scholar
Bloom, Terrie F. 1978. “Borrowed Perceptions: Harriot's Maps of the Moon.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 9:117–22.Google Scholar
Byard, Margaret M. 1988. “Galileo and the Artists,” History Today 38 (Feb. 1988):30–38.Google Scholar
Chappell, Miles. 1975. “Cigoli, Galileo, and Invidia” Art Bulletin 57:91–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chappell, Miles. 1992. “Prefazione,” in Marco Chiarini, Serena Padovani, and Angelo Tar-tuferi, Lodovico Cigoli, 1559–1613: tra Mannerismo e Barocco, 11–19. Catalog of an exhibit in the Palazzo Piti, 19 July to 18 October. Florence: Amalthea.Google Scholar
Cigoli, Lodovico Cardi da. 1992. Trattato pratico di prospettiva di Ludovico Cardi detto il Cigoli: manoscritto Ms 2660A del Gabinetto dei disegni e delle stampe degli Uffizi a cura di Rodolfo Profumo. Rome: Bonsignori.Google Scholar
Clavius, Christopher. 1612. Commentarius in Sphaeram Ioannis de Sacrobosco, vol. 3. In Opera Mathematica, 5 vols. Mainz.Google Scholar
Danto, Arthur C. 1981. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dicks, D. R. 1970. Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle. London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Duhem, Pierre. 1913–1959. Le Système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmolo-giques de Platon à Copernic, 10 vols. Paris: Hermann.Google Scholar
Duhem, Pierre. 1985. Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds, translated and edited by Ariew, Roger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1988. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, translated by Bredin, Hugh. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr. 1984. “Galileo, Florentine Disegno, and the ‘Strange Spottedness’ of the Moon.” Art Journal 44:225–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr. 1990. The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Science and Art on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. 1962. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, Ptolemaic and Copernican, translated by Drake, Stillman. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. 1890–1909. Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, edited by Favaro, Antonio. Florence: Barbèra.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo. 1989. Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger, translated by Van Helden, Albert. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grant, Edward. 1985. “Celestial Perfection from the Middle Ages to the Late Seventeenth Century.” In Religion, Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall, edited by Osier, M. J. and Farber, P. L., 137–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hevelius, Johannes. 1647. Selenographia sive Lunae Descriptio. Gdansk.Google Scholar
Kelly, Sister Suzanne O. S. B., . 1965. The De Mundo of William Gilbert, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Menno Hertzberger.Google Scholar
Kemp, Martin. 1981. Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kemp, Martin. 1990. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. 1604. Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena, quibus Astronomiae Pars Optica Traditur. In Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2. Munich: C. H. Beck (1937–).Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. 1630. Somnium seu Astronomia Lunari. In Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11, part 2. Munich: C. H. Beck.Google Scholar
Lasareff, Victor. 1938. “Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin. ”Art Bulletin 20:26–65.Google Scholar
Lattis, James M. 1994. Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of the Ptolemaic System. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levey, Michael. 1986. Giambattista Tiepolo: His Life and Art. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Mâale, Éimile. 1949. Religious Art from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Mâale, Éimile. 1972. The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, translated by Nussey, Dora. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Matteoli, Anna. 1980. Lodovico Cardi-Cigoli. Pittore e Architetto. Pisa: Giardini.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Scott L. 1994. “The First Naturalistic Drawings of the Moon: Jan Van Eyck and the Art of Observation.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 25:317–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Scott L. 1996. The Scientific Voice. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Ostrow, Steven F. 1996a. Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrow, Steven F. 1996b. “Cigoli's Immacolata and Galileo's Moon: Astronomy and the Virgin in the Early Seicento.” Art Bulletin 78:219–35.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. 1954. Galileo as a Critic of the Arts: Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific Thought. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. 1956. “Galileo as a Critic of the Arts: Aesthetic Attitude and Scientific Thought.” Isis 47:3–15.Google Scholar
Plutarch, . 1918. On the Face that Appears on the Orb of the Moon. In Selected Essays of Plutarch, translated by Prickard, A. O., 2:246–312. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Reaves, Gibson and Pedretti, Carlo. 1987. “Leonardo da Vinci's Drawings of the Surface Features of the Moon.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 18:55–58.Google Scholar
Reeves, Eileen. 1997. Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Trabucco, Agostino. 1957. “La‘Donna ravvolta di sole’(Apoc. 12)L'interpretazione ecclesiologica degli esegiti cattolici dal 1563 alla prima metà del secolo XIX.” Marianum 19:1–58.Google Scholar
Van Helden, Albert, and Winkler, Mary G., see Winkler, Mary G. and Albert Van Helden.Google Scholar
Warner, Marina. 1976. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Winkler, Mary G. and Van Helden, Albert. 1992. “Representing the Heavens: Galileo and Visual Astronomy.” Isis 83:195–217.Google Scholar
Winkler, Mary G. 1994. “Johannes Hevelius and the Visual Language of Astronomy.” In Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, edited by Field, J. V. and James, Frank A. J. L.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar