Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of GalileoThe remarkable astronomical discoveries made by Galileo with the new telescope in 1609-10 led to his famous disputes with philosophers and religious authorities, most of whom found their doctrines threatened by his evidence for Copernicus's heliocentric universe. In this book, Eileen Reeves brings an art historical perspective to this story as she explores the impact of Galileo's heavenly observations on painters of the early seventeenth century. Many seventeenth-century painters turned to astronomical pastimes and to the depiction of new discoveries in their work, yet some of these findings imposed controversial changes in their use of religious iconography. For example, Galileo's discovery of the moon's rough topography and the reasons behind its "secondary light" meant rethinking the imagery surrounding the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception, which had long been represented in paintings by the appearance of a smooth, incandescent moon. By examining a group of paintings by early modern artists all interested in Galileo's evidence for a Copernican system, Reeves not only traces the influence of science on painting in terms of optics and content, but also reveals the painters in a conflict between artistic depiction and dogmatic representation. Reeves offers a close analysis of seven works by Lodovico Cigoli, Peter Paul Rubens, Francisco Pacheco, and Diego Velázquez. She places these artists at the center of the astronomical debate, showing that both before and after the invention of the telescope, the proper evaluation of phenomena such as moon spots and the aurora borealis was commonly considered the province of the painter. Because these scientific hypotheses were complicated by their connection to Catholic doctrine, Reeves examines how the relationship between science and art, and their mutual production of knowledge and authority, must themselves be seen in a broader context of theological and political struggle. |
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... Moon in brightness , and that she [ was ] not the dump heap of the filth and dregs of the universe . " 22 Moreover , those who agreed that the moon's dim face was brightened by this secondary light tended to discard the traditional ...
... Moon ; the metaphor arose when the speakers in this dialogue discussed the lunar body's ability to reflect images from earth.25 Clearchus of Soli , whom Plutarch portrayed as a wayward student of Aristotle , believed that the moon was a ...
... moon do not appear as one but as having something like isthmuses between them , the brilliance dividing and ... moon's spots — the most celebrated instance being the Habsburg ruler Rudolph II's conviction that he saw the Italian ...
... moon . Nor was this particular compar- ison an idle metaphor — though those , too , flourished during the debates over the lunar substance — for the practice of painting or engraving the telescopic moon was for a brief period a common ...
... moon's daily , monthly , and annual libration . In what would be among the last of his contributions to early modern astronomy , Galileo described the changing angles from which the moon's surface is seen from a mobile earth in terms ...
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Painting the Heavens: Art and Science in the Age of Galileo Eileen Adair Reeves No preview available - 1997 |