Two Views of the Moon, in Siderius Nuncius (The Starry Messenger)
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.Over the course of nineteen nights in 1609, Galileo trained his homemade telescope on the heavens. His observations, recorded and disseminated in his 1610 book Starry Messenger, transformed human understanding of the moon. While Renaissance science had inherited an ancient view of the moon as a perfectly spherical and unblemished orb, Galileo’s drawings revealed its surface to be more like that of our planet: rugged and uneven, marked by valleys, craters, and mountains.
Artwork Details
- Title: Two Views of the Moon, in Siderius Nuncius (The Starry Messenger)
- Artist: Galileo Galilei (Italian, Pisa 1564–1642 Arcetri outside Florence)
- Date: 1610
- Medium: Book
- Dimensions: Closed: 9 5/8 × 6 13/16 × 1/2 in. (24.4 × 17.3 × 1.3 cm)
- Classification: Books
- Credit Line: Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, D.C. (QB41 .G15 1610b)
- Curatorial Department: Photographs