Galileo's Moon
Tribute to Galileo’s Moon Phases
The artist Davide Ragazzi developing the Moon as pictorial subject for many years. Inside of his art atlas of cosmos he presenting paintings with satellite photographs as subjects. In 2019 and 2020, he made a series of art tributes to Galileo Galilei, the father of observational astronomy.
Galileo’s moon drawings outside the sidereus nuncius
Galileo Galilei used the chiaroscuro technique of Florentine Disegno to make 7 watercolors reproducing the Earthshine of the Moon phenomenon (called also secondary or ashen light) which he first observed through a telescope, from November 30th 1609 through January 19th 1610. The chiaroscuro technique in wash drawing was preferred by Galileo because it was the most suitable, at the time, to represent the phenomenon of the light of the Earth reflected from the Moon: the Earthshine.
The 7 watercolors, conventionally named F1-F7 (in order of increasing lunar age), were reproduced by Galileo on two separate sheets (6 in the first, 1 in the second) and used as a model for the etchings intended to illustrate the first edition of the Sidereus Nuncius, but they were not included among the illustrations published in the volume. At first, Galileo probably thought of including them in the first printed copy but then decide to exclude them, because of the strong scientific debate that his revolutionary theory on Earthshine, still undisclosed, would have produced in society if published. The two sheets with 7 watercolors were placed next to the manuscript of Sidereus Nuncius and preserved, but they were not published as illustrations in the first printed edition of the volume, by the will of Galileo. Currently, the sheets with the watercolors and the manuscript of Sidereus Nuncius are preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence (BNCF, Gal. 48, f.28).
tribute to galileo’s moon by davide ragazzi
The artist Davide Ragazzi has been developing the Moon as pictorial subject for many years. Starting from realistic and timely observations of the Moon, he processes scientific data, technological aspects and art research. Davide Ragazzi’s tribute is to Galileo art lover and scientist who, after scientific observations made with his telescope, reproduced pictorial representation of the Moon to study and demonstrate a scientific phenomenon, introducing the world to the modern science. Painting and technology, art and science are connections that Davide Ragazzi has chosen to highlight in different expressive methologies, including tributes to illustrious scientists of the past.
[Enza Di Vinci]
40x35 cm
black satin varnish for engraving, ancient paper framed on canvas
2020