1 See Le Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale (editor in chief Antonio Favaro), revised and enlarged edn, 20 vols., Florence: G. Barbèra, 1968 (henceforth OG plus volume number), vol. 19, p. 522. This was Galileo's second will; in his first, made on 15 January 1633 (a few days before he left Arcetri for Rome, where he was going to meet the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition), he left his heirs to decide in which church to bury him: see ibid., p. 521.

2 Galileo's mother, Giulia Ammannati (1538–1620), was buried in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, in Florence, on 10 August 1620: see OG 19, no 28, p. 443.

3 Pagano, Sergio, I Documenti Vaticani del Processo di Galileo Galilei (1611–1741), new augmented, revised and annotated edn, Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2009, no 114, p. 164 Google Scholar: ‘vehemente sospetto d'heresia’.

4 OG 18, no 4197, pp. 379–380: ‘Molto Reverendo Padre, Da Monsignor Assessore è stata letta avanti la Santità di N. Signore la lettera di V. Rev., in cui gli dava avviso della morte di Galileo Galilei e accennava ciò che si crede debba farsi et intorno al suo sepolcro et all'ossequio; e S. Beatitudine, col parere di questi miei Eminentissimi, ha risoluto che ella, con la sua solita destrezza, procuri di far passare all'orecchie del Gran Duca che non è bene fabricare mausolei al cadavero di colui che è stato penitentiato nel Tribunale della Santa Inquisitione, et è morto mentre durava la penitenza, perchè si potrebbono scandalizzare i buoni, con pregiuditio della pietà di S. Altezza. Ma quando pure non si potesse distornare cotesto pensiero, dovrà ella avvertire che nell'epitafio o inscrittione, che si porrà nel sepolcro, non si leggano parole tali, che possano offendere la riputazione di questo Tribunale. La medesima avvertenza dovrà pur ella havere con chi reciterà l'oratione funerale, procurando di vederla e considerarla ben, prima che si reciti o si stampi. Nel savio avvedimento di V. R. ripone la Sua Santità il rimedio di cotesto affare. Et il Signore la conservi. Di Roma, li 25 Gennaio 1642. Di V. R. Come fratello, Il Card.^le Barberino’. See also Giorgio Bolognetti's letter to Francesco Barberini, on 12 January 1642, in OG 18, no 4194, p. 378; and Francesco Niccolini's (the ambassador of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to the Holy See) letter to Giovanni Battista Gondi on 25 January 1642, in OG 18, no 4196, pp. 378–379.

5 For a detailed and insightful reconstruction of the events that led to the two burials of Galileo in the Santa Croce Basilica, see Galluzzi, Paolo, ‘I Sepolcri di Galileo: Le Spoglie “Vive” di un Eroe della Scienza’, in Berti, Luciano (ed.), Il Pantheon di Santa Croce a Firenze, Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1993, pp. 145–182 Google Scholar; English version by Gorman, Michael J., ‘The sepulchers of Galileo: the “living” remains of a hero of science’, in Machamer, Peter (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 417–447 Google Scholar, on which I partly rely in what follows. On the grave of the Galilei family see Piazzesi, Paolo (ed.), Le Lapidi Terragne di Santa Croce, 3 vols., Florence: Polistampa, 2012, vol. 2, no 94, pp. 376–379 Google Scholar. On the importance of tombs as political and cultural statements in the early modern period see the contributions of Carrara, Elena, Freddolini, Francesco and Giometti, Cristiano, in Sicca, Cinzia M. (ed.), Scultura a Pisa nell'Età Moderna: Le Sepolture dei Docenti dello Studio, Pisa: PLUS, 2007 Google Scholar; as well as Schraven, Minou, Festive Funerals in Early Modern Italy: The Art and Culture of Conspicuous Commemoration, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014 Google Scholar.

6 Besides the published version ( Viviani, Vincenzo, ‘Racconto Istorico della Vita del Signor Galileo Galilei’, in Salvini, Salvino (ed.), Fasti Consolari dell'Accademia Fiorentina, Florence: Giovanni Gaetano Tartini & Santi Franchi, 1717, pp. 397–432 Google Scholar), we still have two manuscript versions of Viviani's biography of Galileo, which the author kept tinkering with until the end of his life: see Gal. 11, ff. 24r–68r and 73r–118v (the abbreviation Gal. refers to the collection of Galilaean manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, in Florence); the later version, indicated by B, was published by Favaro in OG 19, pp. 597–632. For a discussion of the argumentative and rhetorical structure of Viviani's biography of Galileo, with special reference to Vasari's biography of Michelangelo, see Segre, Michael, ‘Viviani's life of Galileo’, Isis (1989) 80, 2, pp. 206–231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Galileo's sad letter to Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, on 12 May 1635, in Le Opere di Galileo Galilei: Edizione Nazionale. Appendice, 4 vols., Florence: Giunti, 2013–2017 (henceforth OGA), vol. 2, no 3121[1], pp. 336–338 Google Scholar.

8 OG 19, p. 617: ‘fu arrestato nel delizioso palazzo della Trinità de’ Monti appresso l'ambasciador di Toscana, et in breve (essendogli dimostrato il suo errore) retrattò, come vero catolico, questa sua opinione; ma in pena gli fu proibito il suo Dialogo, e dopo cinque mesi licenziato di Roma (in tempo che la città di Firenze era infetta di peste), gli fu destinata per arresto, con generosa pietà, l'abitazione del più caro et stimato amico ch'avesse nella città di Siena, che fu Mons.^r Arcivescovo Piccolomini: della qual gentilissima conversazione egli godè con tanta quiete e satisfazione dell'animo, che quivi ripigliando i suoi studii trovò e dimostrò gran parte delle conclusioni meccaniche sopra la materia delle resistenze de’ solidi, con altre speculazioni; e dopo cinque mesi in circa, cessata affatto la pestilenza nella sua patria, verso il principio di Dicembre del 1633 da S. S.^tà gli fu permutata la strettezza di quella casa nella libertà della campagna, da esso tanto gradita’.

9 OG 19, p. 618: ‘Per l'avviso delle quali traduzioni e nuove publicazioni de’ suoi scritti restò il Sig.^r Galileo grandemente mortificato, prevedendo l'impossibilità di mai più supprimergli, con molti altri ch'egli diceva trovarsi già sparsi per l'Italia e fuori manuscritti, attenenti pure all'istessa materia, fatti da lui in varie occasioni nel corso di quel tempo in che era vissuto nell'opinione d'Aristarco e del Copernico; la quale ultimamente, per l'autorità della romana censura, egli aveva catolicamente abbandonata. Per così salutifero benefizio che l'infinita Providenza si compiacque di conferirgli in rimuoverlo d'error così grave, non volle il Sig.^r Galileo dimostrarsele ingrato con restar di promuover l'altre invenzioni di altissime conseguenze’.

10 Galluzzi, op. cit. (5), p. 421.

11 Opere di Galileo Galilei Linceo, 2 vols., Bologna: Heirs of Evangelista Dozza, 1655–1656, vol. 1, p. 22 Google Scholar. In order to better understand Viviani's strategy, it is worth noticing that the inscription is printed next to a letter and a poem praising Galileo's merits (the ‘Adulatio perniciosa’ (originally published in 1620), ibid., pp. 20–21), both by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, later to become Pope Urban VIII (see Barberini's letter to Galileo, on 28 August 1620, in OG 13, no 1479, pp. 48–49). The inscription was most likely by Viviani, although Nelli later ascribed it to Pierozzi, and criticized it for its poor literary quality: see Nelli, Giovanni Battista Clemente, Vita e Commercio Letterario di Galileo Galilei, 2 vols., Lausanne: [s.e.], 1793 [yet Florence: Francesco Moücke, 1791], vol. 2, p. 877 Google Scholar.

12 Testamento dell'Illustrissimo Signor Vincenzo Viviani. Rogato da Ser Simone Mugnai, Florence: Pietro Gaetano Viviani, 1735, pp. 3–4 Google Scholar.

13 Testamento dell'Illustrissimo Signor Vincenzo Viviani, op. cit. (12), p. 4: ‘eleggendo la Sepoltura per il suo proprio Cadavere nella detta Chiesa di S. Croce sotto alla detta statua, e memoria del predetto Gran Galileo, ed accanto, o sotto alle di lui ossa, quando saranno ivi trasportate; ed intanto, che non sarà adempito il suddetto suo concetto, vuole, ed ordina, che il suo Cadavere si ponga in deposito, vicino a quello del medesimo Sig. Galileo’.

14 See Nelli, op. cit. (11), vol. 2, Tav. IX, no V and p. 870; see also footnote 241, below.

15 Salvini, op. cit. (6), p. 433: ‘quello istorico racconto a forma d'Elogi disteso’. Thus Salvini, in the first published edition of Viviani's biography of Galileo, describes the inscriptions, referring them to Viviani's Racconto Istorico (Historical Account). An English translation of the inscriptions is available in Suter, Rufus, ‘The Galileian inscriptions on the facade of Viviani's house in Florence’, Osiris (1956) 12, pp. 225–243 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the first in-depth study is Büttner, Frank, ‘Die ältesten Monumente für Galileo Galilei in Florenz’, in Kunst des Barock in der Toskana: Studien zur Kunst unter den letzten Medici, Munich: Bruckmann, 1976, pp. 103–117 Google Scholar; a more comprehensive one is offered in Lunardi, Roberto and Sabbatini, Oretta (eds.), Il Rimembrar delle Passate Cose. Una Casa per Memoria: Galileo e Vincenzo Viviani, Florence: Polistampa, 2009 Google Scholar.

16 We also have a number of drafts and preliminary versions among the Galileo papers at the National Central Library in Florence (see especially Gal. 13 and 318).

17 See Viviani, Vincenzo, Grati Animi Monumenta, Florence: Pietro Antonio Brigonci, [1702]Google Scholar, title page: ‘Uti fuerunt conscripta Florentiæ in Fronte Ædium A DEO DATARUM/Anno Salutis 1693’ (‘as they were written on the facade of the House GIVEN BY GOD, in 1693 AD’).

18 Here Viviani plays with the name of Louis the Great (Louis le Grand, or Louis XIV), king of France from 1643 to 1715, whose name at birth was Louis Dieudonné (Louis ‘the God-given’).

19 Viviani had published his first ‘divination’ of the fifth book of Apollonius’ Conics in 1659 (Federico Commandino had translated the first four books from the original Greek into Latin in 1566; the remaining four books were thought to be lost). Viviani's book sparked a lifelong controversy with Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679), a fellow member of the Accademia del Cimento. Viviani began the work while he was still with Galileo, in 1640–1642, and later worked on it only occasionally, until Borelli discovered a copy of an Arab translation of the first seven books of Apollonius’ Conics in the library of the Grand Duke in Florence, in 1658. In 1659 Viviani decided to publish his work as it was (only two of the planned three parts were completed, and the third was never published), and Borelli eventually published the Latin translation of Books 5–7 in 1661, calling the reader's attention to Viviani's failed attempt at ‘divining’ the actual contents of Apollonius’ work. See Favaro, Antonio, ‘Amici e Corrispondenti di Galileo Galilei. XXIX, Vincenzio Viviani’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (1912–1913) 72, Part II, pp. 1–155 Google Scholar; reprinted in Favaro, Amici e Corrispondenti di Galileo, 3 vols. (ed. Galluzzi, Paolo), Florence: Salimbeni, 1983, vol. 2, pp. 1009–1163: 1055–1066Google Scholar. For an assessment of Viviani's divination attempt see Loria, Gino, Le Scienze Esatte nell'Antica Grecia, 5 vols., Modena: Antica Tipografia Soliani, 1893–1902, vol. 1, pp. 161–166 Google Scholar, vol. 2, pp. 226–227.

20 Viviani was born on 5 April 1622, and was sixteen years old when he started visiting Galileo, on 25 January 1639, as we read in Gal. 210, f. 244^br: ‘25 Genn.^o 1639 – torna giù l'Ambr. e ua su V.^o’ (‘25 January 1639 – Ambrogetti comes down and Viviani goes up’). Marco Ambrogetti was a Latin scholar who was assisting Galileo with the translation of some of his works, which he intended to publish abroad, with Elzevier; Ambrogetti comes back to Florence from the hill of Arcetri, while Viviani goes the opposite direction to visit Galileo. It was not until the summer 1639, however, that Viviani actually moved in to Galileo's villa, as we gather from a marginal note Viviani penned in the margin of a biographical sketch he wrote on Torricelli (Gal. 131, f. 9v): ‘Giunse dunque il Torricelli alla Villa d'Arcetri (doue abitaua il Galileo) verso la fine del Settembre del med:^mo anno, anzi a dì 10 d'Ottobre 1641 – et io avanti al 7^bre 1639’ (‘Thus Torricelli arrived at the Villa in Arcetri, where Galileo lived, towards the end of September of that same year, before 10 October 1641 – whereas I arrived by September 1639’; the words ‘anzi … 1639’ = ‘before … 1639’ were added in margin). See Viviani's recollections in his letter to abbot Salviati, on 5 April 1697, in Fabroni, Angelo (ed.), Lettere Inedite di Uomini Illustri, 2 vols., Florence: Francesco Moücke, 1773–1775, vol. 2, pp. 4–22 Google Scholar, 6–7; see also Viviani, Vincenzo, Quinto Libro degli Elementi d'Euclide, ovvero Scienza Universale delle Proporzioni Spiegata colla Dottrina del Galileo, Florence: alla Condotta, 1674, p. 99 Google Scholar; and OG 19, p. 622. On the precise date see Favaro, Antonio, ‘Vincenzo Viviani e la Sua “Vita di Galileo”’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (1902–1903) 62, Part II, pp. 683–703 Google Scholar, 699; and Favaro, op. cit. (19), pp. 1018–1019.

21 Viviani, Vincenzo, De Locis Solidis Secunda Divinatio Geometrica, Florence: Pietro Antonio Brigonci, 1701, p. 120 Google Scholar (the volume is divided in two halves, with different paginations; all page references, here and henceforth, refer to the second half): ‘En Tibi, Amice Lector, hoc Anno 1702, cum suis Epigrammatis ære incisam Orthographiam Ædium A DEO DATARUM, unde tandem in lucem prodit Secunda Geometrica hæc Divinatio, quæ post sex & quinquaginta Annos ab Auctore conscripta fuit; & cujusmodi novem ac viginti ab hinc Annis fuerat typis impreßa. Habes hìc ejusdem Auctoris grati animi monumenta: tum erga potentissimum Galliarum Regem LUDOVICUM MAGNUM, cujus amplissimis Honorariis Ædes ipsæ comparatæ sunt, & instauratæ: tum erga Celsitudines Regias Mediceæ Gentis, Patronos clementissimos, quorum profusam liberalitatem ab Anno ætatis suæ xvi. est expertus: tum erga Præceptorem amantissimum GALILÆUM, cui, quantulumcumque id est, quod in Geometria progreßus est Auctor, totum se debere profitetur. Tantas ergo beneficentias, quum apud Posteros testatas ipse relinquere cuperet, & ingravescente ætate, afflictaque valetudine, ac ingruente mortis periculo, omnes alias vias præclusas eße animadverteret; Anno Sal. ciɔ dc lxxxxiii. Elogia hæc in fronte earumdem Æedium, quàm citissimè fieri potuit, inscribi jussit. Nunc ut ad exteros etiam, qui non peregrinantur, sempiternò propagetur hæc sua grati animi significatio, typis ea, ut vides, mandari curavit; ut (si fortè in posterum hæc ipsa, aut temporis edacis culpa, aut succeßorum in Ædibus voluntate, ad alia substituenda, fuerint abrasa) in indelebili Eruditorum memoria perpetuò maneant’.

22 See Viviani, op. cit. (21), f. ✠ 3r: ‘Elaboratum Anno 1646. Impressum Florentiæ ab Hyppolito Navesi Anno 1673. Addendis auctum, & in luce prolatum Anno 1701’.

23 Viviani devoted most of his time to gathering and editing Galileo's papers and letters, especially after Vincenzo, Galileo's son, died in 1649, only seven years after his father; also, Viviani was asked to edit Torricelli's collected works, after the latter's passing, in 1647. He also attended to various assignments on behalf of the Grand Duke, and taught at the Accademia del Disegno from 1647 until his death in 1703. Finally, he pursued his own researches and studies, especially in geometry, but also in physics and optics.

24 See Pappi Alexandrini Collectionis Quae Supersunt (ed. Hultsch, Friedrich), 3 vols., Berlin: Weidmann, 1876–1878, vol. 2, pp. 636.23 Google Scholar, 672.12–13 and 672.20–21; see also Vogel, Kurt, ‘Aristaeus’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (editor in chief Gillispie, Charles C.), 18 vols., New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970–1990, vol. 1, pp. 245–246 Google Scholar.

25 As in the case of Viviani's first ‘divination’ ( De Maximis et Minimis Geometrica Divinatio in Quintum Conicorum Apollonii Pergæi adhuc Desideratum, Florence: Giuseppe Cocchini, 1659 Google Scholar), the reason for the long delay in the publication was his original plan for a work in five books (according to Pappus, Aristaeus’ own work was in five books), of which only three were eventually published due to the large number of his commitments: see the author's own report, as told in Viviani, op. cit. (21), ff. ✠† 3r–4v, in which he himself compares the similar fates of these two works of his; on ff. ✠† 4v–5r he also offers an explanation for his attempt and choice of the term divinatio.

26 See Le Opere di Galileo Galilei: Prima Edizione Completa (ed. Albèri, Eugenio), 16 vols., Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 1842–1856, vol. 15, p. 372 Google Scholar. This same volume includes (pp. 373–380) the full text of the inscriptions, based on the printed sources.

27 See Favaro, Antonio, ‘Inedita Galilaeiana: Frammenti tratti dalla Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze’, Memorie del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (1879) 21, pp. 433–473 Google Scholar, 465–466. Also published in book form as Inedita Galilaeiana: Frammenti tratti dalla Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, Venice: Giuseppe Antonelli, 1880 Google Scholar.

28 See Favaro, op. cit. (27), pp. 467–473. Before the edition by Favaro, both versions of Viviani's text were published by Giovanni Battista Clemente Nelli (the son of architect Giovanni Battista Nelli, designer of the facade of Viviani's palace), who inherited the building and lived in it. See Nelli, Giovanni Battista Clemente, Grati Animi Monumenta Vincentii Viviani, Florence: Francesco Moücke, 1791 Google Scholar; and Nelli, op. cit. (11), vol. 2, pp. 857–867. They were also published by Albèri in Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, op. cit. (26), vol. 15, pp. 373–380.

29 See Favaro, op. cit. (27), pp. 467 nn. 1–3, 468 nn. 1–2, 469 n. 1, 470 nn. 1–2, 472  n. 1, 473 nn. 1–2. Favaro describes the manuscript owned by Galletti as ‘the original of Torre del Gallo’ in all these footnotes, and ‘the original autograph’ on p. 465.

30 I am currently working on a book (under contract with Brill) that will reconstruct the context of the inscriptions, also offering the critical edition of the Latin texts and their annotated translation, documenting Viviani's political and psychological strategy aimed at the recovery of Galileo's legacy and the republication of his works, especially the Dialogue.

31 See, for example, Lunardi and Sabbatini, op. cit. (15), p. 17: ‘A proposito del manoscritto del Viviani di proprietà del conte Galletti, dobbiamo far presente che non ci è purtroppo venuto modo di rintracciarlo’ (‘As to Viviani's manuscript, owned by Count Galletti, we have to acknowledge that we have been unable to trace it’). See also Favaro in OG 19, p. 11 n. 1: ‘Dell'autografo di queste iscrizioni, che non sappiamo dove ora si trovi’ (‘The holograph manuscript of these iscriptions, whose location is unknown’). As I will show, Favaro is in error, here: the manuscript of which Galletti provided him with a copy was not Viviani's holograph manuscript, but a copy in a professional copyist's handwriting, corrected by Viviani – and not by the Inquisitor, as Favaro (upon Galletti's suggestion, perhaps) wrongly believed: see Favaro, op. cit. (27), p. 467 n. 3.

32 See Alessandra Nardi, ‘Il Collezionismo alla Torre del Gallo tra Ottocento e Novecento’, MA thesis, University of Florence, 2010, Part I, Chapters 1–2 (‘Il Collezionismo dei Conti Galletti’, and ‘La Collezione Galileiana alla Torre del Gallo’), especially pp. 32–42. There were two portraits of Viviani, too: see Nardi, op. cit., p. 42. Paolo Galletti (1851–1914) started toying with the idea that Galileo could have made a number of his telescopic observations from the estate of Torre del Gallo, which his family had acquired in 1848 (see Galletti, Paolo, Galileo alla Torre del Gallo, Florence: Le Monnier, 1879 Google Scholar; and Palagi, Giuseppe, Milton e Galileo alla Torre del Gallo, Florence: Le Monnier, 1877 Google Scholar). Galletti's collection of Galileiana soon caught the attention of Antonio Favaro (1847–1922), the foremost Galileo scholar of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and editor in chief of the Edizione Nazionale of Galileo's works. The two were nearly of the same age, and soon started a long and friendly correspondence, exchanging opinions and documents: their letters, of which seventy-four survive, are preserved in Pisa, as a small but significant part of the huge Favaro archive housed at the Domus Galilaeana. Beginning with 1872, when he became the sole owner of Torre del Gallo, Galletti restored the edifice and promoted it as a century-old astronomical observatory, housing a gradually expanding Galileo Museum with what became an extraordinary collection of pictures, documents, scientific instruments, books and manuscripts. Brief descriptions of Galletti's collection are offered in Galletti, Paolo, Cenni sulla Torre del Gallo, Proprietà del Conte Paolo Galletti e sul Panorama che vi si Ammira, il Più Stupendo di Tutti i Dintorni di Firenze, Florence: Tipografia della Gazzetta d'Italia, 1875 Google Scholar; and Galletti, Collezione Galileiana Esistente alla Torre del Gallo, Villa Galletti, Florence: Pineider, [1879]Google Scholar; del Balzo, Carlo, Il Mio Regalo di Nozze agli Sposi Young-Lady Lilly Mac-Swiney e Conte Paolo Galletti, Naples: R. Rinaldi & Sellito, 1877 Google Scholar; A.S., ‘La Torre del Gallo presso Firenze, proprietà del Conte Paolo Galletti’, Gazzetta del Popolo della Domenica (15 May 1887) 5(20)Google Scholar; and Da Prato, Cesare, La Torre al Gallo e il Suo Panorama, Florence: Le Monnier, 1891 Google Scholar; as well as in a number of fleeting articles in Italian and foreign periodicals; the only solid, extensive study is Nardi's: I wish to thank Dr Nardi for allowing me to read substantial excerpts from her thesis, which is still unpublished and will hopefully soon be made available to scholars in print.

33 Having been left without Galletti's precious support, Favaro gave up the idea of publishing a complete and illustrated edition of Galileo's iconography, which he had been contemplating ever since the publication of the last volume of the Edizione Nazionale. The task was partially undertaken in Fahie, John J., Memorials of Galileo Galilei, 1564–1642: Portraits and Paintings, Medals and Medallions, Busts and Statues, Monuments and Mural Inscriptions, Leamington and London: The Courier Press, 1929 Google Scholar, and was eventually completed by Federico Tognoni in 2013, with OGA 1.

34 In the case of Viviani's De Maximis et Minimis, the imprimatur is requested on 18 March 1658 (stylo Florentino, that is, 1659), and granted on 19 April 1659: see Viviani, op. cit. (25), Book II, p. 156; in the case of De Locis Solidis, it was requested on 9 August 1673, and granted on 11 August 1673: see Viviani, op. cit. (21), p. 119; and in the case of Quinto Libro degli Elementi d'Euclide, it was requested on 14 August 1674, and granted on 30 September 1674: see Viviani, op. cit. (20), p. 152.

35 Favaro, op. cit. (27), pp. 465–466: ‘L'originale autografo delle medesime iscrizioni, colle correzioni della censura e coi permessi di stampa, pervenne fino a noi e costituisce uno dei più begli ornamenti della Collezione Galileiana con tanto amore adunata nella Torre del Gallo dall'attuale proprietario di essa Conte Paolo Galletti. Dalla cortesia di questo distinto gentiluomo … avemmo copia del prezioso documento col permesso di valercene, permesso del quale approfittiamo assai di buon grado’.

36 Moorat, Samuel A.J., Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 2 vols., London: The Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1962–1973, vol. 2(2), p. 1093 Google Scholar. The mistake is easily explained: Favaro was certainly well acquainted with Viviani's handwriting, but he never saw the original manuscript (as Galletti only provided him with a copy, possibly in Galletti's own handwriting); and both Moorat in his catalogue (including thousands of manuscripts), and John Wellcome at the time of the purchase, were hardly acquainted with Viviani's handwriting.

37 Numbers refer to the footnotes in the critical apparatus. The expressions as ‘W ante corr.’ and ‘W post corr.’, which do not appear in the apparatus, merely indicate the state of the text of manuscript W prior to, or after, correction. By contrast, the abbreviations W^a.corr. and W^p.corr. , which do appear in the apparatus, indicate the text of W prior to and after the corrections by the copyist.

38 See Dain, Alphonse, Les manuscrits, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949, pp. 44–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 See Favaro, op. cit. (27), p. 467, n. 3.

40 See Favaro, op. cit. (27), p. 470, n. 1.

41 This is a mistake, of course: he should have written ‘bonos mores’ instead of ‘bonis moribus’. Possibly, the inquisitor was thinking of the idiomatic phrase ‘bonis moribus contrarium’.

42 Error due to the attraction of the preceding quo.

43 Three statues adorn Michelangelo's funeral monument, in the Santa Croce Basilica: the personifications of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture; by contrast, only two personifications are to be found in Galileo's monument, namely Astronomy and Geometry. The two monuments, opposite to one another, should have mirrored one another, or anyway present a number of similarities; however, the Church hierarchies did not allow Galileo to have the personification of Philosophy guard his bones too. Galileo had explicitly asked to be appointed Primary Mathematician and Philosopher of the Grand Duke of Tuscany (see Galileo to Belisario Vinta, 7 May 1610, in OG 10, no 307, p. 353), and had the personifications of Geometry (i.e. mathematical astronomy) and Natural Philosophy (i.e. physical astronomy) equally represented on the title page of The Assayer. In fact, he repeatedly distanced himself from ‘pure astronomers’ (puri astronomi), merely providing mathematical models in order to save phenomena, and identified himself with ‘philosophical astronomers’ (astronomi filosofi), who – in the footsteps of Copernicus – aimed at providing an actual description of the structure of the universe (see Galilei, Galileo, Istoria e Dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari e loro Accidenti, Rome: Giacomo Mascardi, 1613 Google Scholar; in OG 5, pp. 72–149, 102; English translation by Reeves, Eileen and Van Helden, Albert, in Galilei, Galileo and Scheiner, Christoph, On Sunspots, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010, p. 95 Google Scholar). On this issue see Gattei, Stefano, ‘“Per desiderio del vero e delle sue cause”: Galileo astronomo filosofo’, Testo (2010), NS 31, pp. 17–27 Google Scholar.

44 Lezioni Accademiche d'Evangelista Torricelli, Florence: Jacopo Guiducci & Santi Franchi, 1715 Google Scholar; Petri Gassendi Opera Omnia, 6 vols., Florence: Giovanni Gaetano Tartini & Santi Franchi, 1727 Google Scholar; Opere di Galileo Galilei: Nuova Edizione coll'Aggiunta di Varj Trattati dell'Istesso Autore non più Dati alle Stampe, 3 vols., Florence: Giovanni Gaetano Tartini & Santi Franchi, 1718 Google Scholar. The 1718 edition of Galileo's collected works still lacked the Dialogue, which had been listed in the 1634 edition of the Index librorum prohibitorum, published in Rome. The Dialogue was first reprinted as vol. 4 of the 1744 edition of Galileo's collected works ( Opere di Galileo Galilei Divise in Quattro Tomi, In Questa Nuova Edizione Accresciute di Molte Cose Inedite, 4 vols., Padua: Stamperia del Seminario & Giovanni Manfrè, 1744 Google Scholar): this reproduces the 1632 text, with the exception of the marginal postils stating that the Earth truly moves (that were either removed or corrected), and is prefaced, as a precaution, by the condemnation of Galileo, his abjuration, and an essay by Father Augustin Calmet. The Dialogue was not removed from the Index until 1835 (after the general prohibition of works on heliocentrism had been retired in 1758, and works advocating the Copernican theory had been permitted in print in 1822).

45 On the image of Galileo through time, and on the impact Viviani's work had on it, see Segre, Michael, In the Wake of Galileo, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991 Google Scholar, especially Chapters 1–3.

46 ante A. praem. INSCRIPTIONES | quæ leguntur | IN FRONTE ÆDIUM A DEO DATARUM | vincentii viviani | Florentiæ extructarum in Via Amoris, quæque sunt in spatiis notatis his characteribus A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. LM.

47 a V] A W.

48 incædis W] incedis recte LM.

49 humile V LM] umile W.

50 Benignissimos W] Serenissimos LM.

51 Galliæ W] Galliæ, et Navarræ LM.

52 perlege V LM] per lege W.

53 Tellus W] Terras LM.

54 C. Galilæus — cuncta Deo in mg. V LM] C. | Galilæus Lyncæus Ætatis Annorum | IIL. quem | Astra, Mare, ac Tellus complessum mente profunda, | Par est in solo cernere cuncta Deo W.

55 de V DE LM] dem W.

56 docuit W LM] deb. docuerit.

57 peregit W LM] deb. peregerit.

58 arduum V LM] ardum W.

59 ita ut W] itaut LM.

60 causâ V causa LM] causam W.

61 post quod scr. et del. E W.

62 Lotaringiam W] Lotharingiam recte LM.

63 Qui V LM] Quid W.

64 post dum scr. et del. Matheseos W.

65 optici V LM] opticij W.

66 instrumenti V LM] instrumentis W.

67 Galilaei V Galilæi LM] Galilaeo W.

68 Aetera W] Æthera recte LM.

69 centrum V LM] Centrum W.

70 proinde W] etiam LM.

71 Coelorum W] Cælorum LM.

72 creatos W] creatas recte LM.

73 Anni W^p.corr. LM] Anno W^a.corr. .

74 obseruationes V LM] osseruationes W.

75 Mediceorum Procerum V] mediceorum procerum W.

76 motus aspectu V LM] motus, aspectus W.

77 ita ut W] itaut LM.

78 Geographia W] Geograhia (sic) LM.

79 Idrographia W LM] deb. Hydrographia.

80 prenunciandos W] prænunciandos recte LM.

81 praemiis V præmiis LM] praemis W.

82 problema W] probleblema (sic) LM.

83 ephemeridas V Ephemeridas LM] effemeridas W.

84 post proprios scr. et del. Oty W.

85 propriumque V LM] propiumque W.

86 Orologium W] Horologium recte LM.

87 Catholico V LM] Catolico W.

88 Regi W^p.corr. LM] Regi W^a.corr. .

89 Hollandiæ V LM] Hollandiæ, et W.

90 Haeroicâ W] hæroicâ LM deb. heroicâ.

91 secretioria W] secretiora recte LM.

92 Microscopij W] Microscopii ope recte LM.

93 duplici V LM] duplice W.

94 post dono scr. et del. M W.

95 Posteris V LM] posteris W.

96 infinitam in infinita corr. et denuo in infinitam corr. V.

97 post tum scr. et del. in W.

98 missilium V LM] Missilium W.

99 se ipsa W] om. LM.

100 triumphabit V LM] triumphauit W.

101 animum V LM] Animum W.

102 post ob scr. et del. aureas (?) W.

103 textatum W] testatum recte LM.

104 Cosmi I. V] Cosmi primi W FERDIN. I. recte LM.

105 II. V LM] secundi W.

106 II. V LM] secundi W.

107 genethliacae V LM] genetliacae W.

108 Ciuilis V LM] ciuilis W.

109 uitæ V LM] uitæ sanctitatem redolentis W.

110 eligere curauerit alia manu W^p.corr. LM] eligerit W^a.corr. .

111 Nonnullas W] Nonnulla recte LM.

112 abditis, V LM] abditis, ac Deo coaeuis W.

113 deprompserit V LM] depromerit W.

114 post Quod scr. et del. Hin W.

115 Maleficia V LM] maleficia W.

116 exsoluenda V] essoluenda W exolvenda LM.

117 post acquisita scr. et del. prose W.

118 reicienda W] reiicienda LM.

119 post alieno scr. et del. sol W.

120 mærentibus W] merentibus recte LM.

121 post Genitoribus scr. et del. et W.

122 maximis cum in mg. add. W.

123 III. V LM] tertio W.

124 incoparabili W] incomparabili recte LM.

125 is V LM] his W.

126 fere s. l. corr. ex quinque W.

127 Nauarræ V LM] Nauarra W.

128 augustæ V LM] auguste W.

129 prepetua W] perpetua recte LM.

130 Prothoplasmate W] Protoplasmate recte LM.

131 celebri W^p.corr. LM] celebris W^a.corr. .

132 II: V LM] secundo W.

133 Galilaei W^p.corr. Galilæi LM] Galilaeo W^a.corr. .

134 perfectoremque s. l. add. W.

135 Patricium W] Patritium LM.

136 uirtuti W LM] deb. uirtute.

137 Antogonistarum W] Antagonistarum recte LM.

138 Patricio W] Patritio LM.

139 1564= W] 1563 recte LM.

140 Februari W] Februarii recte LM.

141 post die scr. et del. uic W.

142 ottaua W] octaua recte LM.

143 post Annus, scr. et del. ora W.

144 et semis V LM] semis W.

145 læthalis W^p.corr. LM] lætalis W^a.corr. deb. letalis.

146 conscriptis W] conscripti perperam LM.

147 preclare V] precabo (?) W præclare recte LM.

148 lætharis W] lætaris recte LM.

149 enim W^sl LM] uero W.

150 abditis V LM] additis W.

151 animum V LM] Animum W.

152 amantissimo W LM] deb. amantissime.

153 cum W] (quum LM.

154 aes V LM] æx W.

155 proprium V LM] propium W.

156 occultè V LM] obcultè W.

157 edidisset W] edidisset) LM.

158 Præsidiis V præsidiis LM] Præsidibus W.

159 post suo scr. et del. Anno a Christo W.

160 post Nato scr. et del. in fine lineae MDCXL W.

161 Christo Nato MDCXLII. W] Christi Incar. MDCXLI. LM.

162 Ianuari W] Ianuarii recte LM.

163 post quarta scr. et del. ns W.

164 astarunt W] adstarunt recte LM.

165 Paroecie W] Parœciæ recte LM.

166 Mensæ V LM] Mense W.

167 memoriam hanc W] memoranda hæc LM.

168 conspectam W] conspecta recte LM.

169 Cognatis, Amicis V] cognatis, amicis W LM.

170 auditam W] audita recte LM.

171 Cultore V LM] cultorem W.

172 post munificentissimo add. In Diaglyptico Phrenoschemate G | Este Duces, ô si qua via est. Virgil. Æneid. lib. VI. | In Diaglyptico Phrenoschemate H | In Sole, quis credat? retectas | Arte tua, Galilæe, labes. urb. viii. p.m. LM.

173 Imprimatur Thomas — Celsitudinis Auditor W L] om. M.

174 Imprimatur — Generalis manu Thomae de Gherardesca W || Generalis W] Generalis Flor. L.

175 De mandato — Florentiæ manu Lucii Augustini Cecchini W.

176 tipis W] typis recte L.

177 Ego frater Antonius — feci manu Antonii Francisci Cioppi W || f(eci) W] om. L.

178 Attenta — Florentiae manu Lucii Augustini Cecchini W.

179 ante Imprimatur scr. et del. Si Stampi Fili manu Philippi Bonarrota W.

180 Ph. Bonarota W] Philippus Bonarrota L.

181 Imprimatur — Auditor manu Philippi Bonarrota W.

182 Louis XIV (1638–1643), also known as Louis the Great (Louis le Grand) or the Sun King (le Roi-Soleil), who was crowned on 14 May 1643 (his mother, Anne of Austria, was regent for him 1643–1651). He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given), hence Viviani's pun in the first line. Viviani appeals to the same pun twice in the first few pages of De Locis Solidis: ‘amplas ædes a se inscriptas A DEO DATAS comparavit instauravit ornavit’, and ‘in admirationem A DEO DATO Numini suo Munificentissimo’ (ff. ✠ 4r and 5r). And again in Grati Animi Monumenta: ‘in Fronte Ædium A DEO DATARUM’ (see Viviani, op. cit. (21), ff. ✠ 4r and 5r, and 1702, title page).

183 Viviani's house is in via Sant'Antonino 11, formerly via dell'Amore (‘Street of Love’) 13, in Florence. By appealing to this high-flown expression, Viviani seems oblivious of the comic and sarcastic connotation that ‘via dell'Amore’ had for Florence's citizens: indeed, via dell'Amore is the location in which Machiavelli set La Mandragola (The Mandrake): ‘Quella via, che è colà in quel canto fitta, / è la via dello Amore, / dove chi casca non si rizza mai’ (‘That alley, at that corner there, / is named Street of Love / where he who falls does not rise again’); see Niccolò Machiavelli, Mandragola, [Florence: s.l.], 1524; critical edition in Stoppelli, Pasquale, La Mandragola: Storia e Filologia. Con l'Edizione Critica del Testo secondo il Laurenziano Redi 129, Rome: Bulzoni, 2005, p. 173 Google Scholar (‘Prologo’, 15–17).

184 In his Narratio Prima, Joachim Rheticus, too, refers to Copernicus by calling him ‘D. Praeceptor meus’ (see Georg J. Rheticus, De Libris Revolutionum … Nicolai Copernici … Narratio Prima, [Gdańsk: s.e., 1540], f. Aijr, and passim).

185 Galileo became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei – founded in Rome by Prince Federico Cesi (1585–1630), Francesco Stelluti (1577–1653), Anastasio De Filiis (1577–1608) and Johannes van Heeck (1574–1616), in 1603 – on 25 April 1611: see OG 19, p. 265. Both Galileo's On Sunspots (op. cit. (43)) and The Assayer (Il Saggiatore, Rome: Giacomo Mascardi, 1623; in OG 6, pp. 209–372; English translation by Stillman Drake, The Assayer, in Drake, Stillman and O'Malley, Charles D. (eds.), The Controversy on the Comets of 1618, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960, pp. 151–336 CrossRefGoogle Scholar) were printed in Rome and published under the auspices of the Academy, whose symbol appears prominently on their title pages. Galileo's affiliation also appears on the title pages of the Dialogue ( Dialogo sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo Tolemaico, e Copernicano, Florence: Giovanni Battista Landini, 1632 Google Scholar; in OG 7, pp. 23–489; English translation by Drake, Stillman, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems Ptolemaic and Copernican, 2nd edn, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967 Google Scholar) and Two New Sciences (Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno à Due Nuoue Scienze attenenti alla Mecanica & i Mouimenti Locali, Leiden: Elsevier, 1638; in OG 8, pp. 41–318 Google Scholar; English translation by Drake, Stillman, Two New Sciences: Including Centers of Gravity & Force of Percussion, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974 Google Scholar). The so-called ‘first’ Academy (1603–1630) is the oldest and one of the most illustrious of modern learned scientific societies; the word ‘Lincei’ refers to lynxes, fabled for their acuteness of vision. See also Viviani in OG 19, p. 612.

186 That is, the Copernican system. Philolaus of Croton (c.470–c.385 BC) was the first to suggest displacing the Earth from the centre of the cosmos and making it a planet, setting it in motion around a central fire. The disguised reference to Copernicus (whose De Revolutionibus was suspended donec corrigatur in 1616) and to the ebb and flow of the sea clearly point to Galileo's Dialogue, banned by the Inquisition in 1633, and listed in the Index of forbidden books in 1634. This is the only implicit reference to Galileo's Dialogue and his defence of the Copernican hypothesis; most interestingly, in the Racconto Istorico Viviani briefly mentions Galileo's magnum opus as a dialogue between two people, Filippo Salviati e Giovanni Francesco Sagredo, avoiding even a mention of the third character, Simplicius (in whose words Pope Urban VIII read a mockery of his own arguments).

187 Christina of Lorraine (1565–1637), the daughter of Charles III, Duke of Lorraine, and Claude of Valois, second daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine de’ Medici. She was the wife of Ferdinand I de’ Medici (1549–1609; brother of Francesco, 1541–1587), the mother of Cosimo II de’ Medici (1590–1621), and the grandmother of Ferdinand II de’ Medici (1610–1670), all Grand Dukes of Tuscany. When Cosimo II died, leaving his ten-year-old son Ferdinand as Grand Duke, Christina and her daughter-in-law, Maria Maddalena of Austria, acted as regents until the boy came of age. Together, they aligned Tuscany with the papacy and redoubled the Tuscan clergy; upon the death of the last Duke of Urbino, instead of claiming the duchy for Ferdinand, they permitted it to be annexed by Pope Urban VIII. To Christina, Galileo addressed one of his most famous Copernican works, the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, originally written in 1611 and circulated in manuscript in 1615 (it was eventually published only as Galilei, Galileo, Lettera … Scritta alla Granduchessa di Toscana, Florence: [s.e.], 1710 Google Scholar; in OG 5, pp. 309–348; English translation by Finocchiaro, Maurice A., ‘Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina’, in Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989, pp. 87–118 Google Scholar). In the letter, Galileo offers a carefully considered summary of his opinions on the proper relation of science to religion: the Holy Scripture cannot err, but it has to be properly understood, going beyond a purely literal reading of the text. Nature and Scripture are both dictated by God, and cannot contradict each other, and when an apparent contradiction surfaces, between sensory experiences and necessary demonstrations, on the one hand, and textual interpretations, on the other, we should review the latter.

188 See Galilei, Galileo, Sidereus Nuncius, Venice: Tommaso Baglioni, 1610 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; in OG 3.1, pp. 53–96; English translation by Van Helden, Albert, Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989 Google Scholar. See also Viviani in OG 19, pp. 609–610. Libration is a perceived oscillating motion of the Moon relative to the Earth, caused by actual changes in its physical distance from our planet, and due to the Moon's elliptical orbit around Earth. The phenomenon is manifested as a slow rocking back and forth of the Moon as viewed from Earth, permitting an observer to see slightly different halves of the surface at different times.

189 See Galileo, op. cit. (43). See also Viviani in OG 19, pp. 611 and 613–614.

190 Here (with the term aemulari) Viviani implicitly refers the anagram with which Galileo announced the discovery of the phases of Venus to the Grand Duke's ambassador to Rudolph II, in Prague, 11 December 1610: see his letter to Giuliano de’ Medici on 11 December 1610 (in OG 10, no 435, p. 483). Once decoded, three weeks later (letter to Giuliano de’ Medici, 1 January 1611, in OG 11, no 451, p. 12) it read: Cynthiae figuras aemulatur mater amorum; that is, ‘the mother of love (i.e. Venus) imitates the faces of Cynthia (i.e. the Moon)’. The discovery of the phases of Venus implied that Venus orbited the Sun, a fatal blow for the Aristotelian–Ptolemaic picture of the universe. Galileo appealed to another anagram to communicate his discovery of the shape of Saturn to Johannes Kepler: see Galileo to Giuliano de’ Medici in OG 10, no 384* (23 August 1610), p. 426; and Kepler, Johannes, Narratio de Observatis a Se Quatuor Iovis Satellitibus Erronibus, Frankfurt: Zacharias Palthenius, 1611 Google Scholar, f. *3v. See also Viviani in OG 19, pp. 611–612. Viviani enjoyed anagrams, too: on 4 April 1692 he published his famous mathematical challenge, ‘Ænigma Geometricvm de Miro Opificio testudinis Quadrabilis Hemisphæricæ’, under the name of ‘D. Pio Lisci Posillo Geometra’; that is, ‘Postremo Galilaei Discipulo’; see also Gal. 70, f. 11^ar and Gal. 179, ff. 1r–2v (where he engages in several anagrams); Gal. 183, f. 17r, where he offers different anagrams of ‘Ultimo scolare di Galileo’, the title he chose for himself; and Gal. 243, f. 199r, where he comes up with ‘L'umido e gelato Carlo Lilles’ (‘The wet and cold Carlo Lilles’) as a transposition of ‘L'ultimo scolare del Galileo’.

191 See Galileo's letter to Giuliano de’ Medici, 1 January 1611, in OG 11, no 451, pp. 11–12; and his third Letter on sunspots, in Galileo, op. cit. (43), pp. 258–264; see also Viviani in OG 19, p. 612.

192 See Galileo's 30 July 1610 letter to Belisario Vinta, the Grand Duke's Secretary of State (in OG 10, no 427, p. 410), where he describes Saturn with the help of a diagram, showing three circles (a bigger central one, with two smaller ones on each side). A similar diagram is also in Galileo's 13 November 1610 letter to Giuliano de’ Medici (in OG 10, no 427, p. 474), where he also reveals the meaning of the anagram about Saturn: Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi (‘I have observed the highest of the planets three-formed’), which had driven Kepler mad. See also Galileo's third Letter on sunspots, in OG 19, pp. 234–239.

193 See Galileo, op. cit. (187).

194 See Psalms 18:22 (= KJV 19:1): ‘caeli enarrant gloriam Dei et opera manuum eius adnuntiat firmamentum’ (‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handywork’).

195 The idea of the Sun, at the centre of the universe, giving motion to the planets, can be found in Copernicus, Rheticus, and Kepler. In the Third Day of the Dialogue, Salviati says that fixed stars are suns: ‘le stelle fisse, che sono tanti Soli, conforme al nostro Sole godono una perpetua quiete’ (‘fixed stars, which are many suns, agree with our Sun in enjoying perpetual rest’): Galileo, op. cit. (185), p. 327. What is surprising is Viviani's ascribing to Galileo the idea (daringly close to Giordano Bruno's, although no reference is made to possible inhabitants) of fixed stars with their own planetary systems; that is, with planets and possibly satellites orbiting them: there is no trace of this in Galileo's works. Perhaps this is the sort of thing about which Galileo talked with Viviani (and other Galileisti). Viviani also highlights that fixed stars revolve around their own axis like the Sun: see OG 4, p. 164.

196 The date, without further specification, is computed according to the Florentine style, i.e. as if the year began on March 1 (ab Incarnatione). The discovery took place in January, so Viviani wrote 1609; according to our calendar, it was 9 January 1610.

197 Theories, tables and ephemerides: these were the three standard genres of astronomical works in the Renaissance and early modern times; they belonged to distinct genres, although they often happened to be different parts of the same work. Theoretical works included Ptolemy's Almagest, Copernicus's De Revolutionibus, Tycho's De Mundi Aetherei Recentioribus Phaenomenis, or Kepler's Astronomia Nova: they dealt with cosmological theories. Astronomical tables were designed to facilitate the computation of the positions of the Sun, the Moon and the planets relative to the fixed stars, lunar phases, eclipses and calendric information (Ptolemy's Almagest and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus, for instance, included astronomical tables, too); when independently published, they often included explanations of astronomical instruments: most important were the Toledan Tables, completed around the year 1080 by a group of Arabic astronomers in Toledo; the Alfonsine Tables (first published in 1483), named after Alfonso X of Castile, who supported their creation; the Prutenic Tables, compiled by Erasmus Reinhold on the basis of Books 2–6 of Copernicus's De revolutionibus, and published in 1551; and Kepler's Rudolphine Tables, published in 1627, using the observational data gathered by Tycho over four decades. Finally, ephemerides (literally, ‘calendars’) tabulated the positions of naturally occurring astronomical objects in the sky at regular intervals of date or time.

198 See Viviani's recollections in his letter to Leopoldo de’ Medici, 20 August 1659 (in OG 19, pp. 648–659); Viviani's notes in Gal. 248, ff. 87r–v, 88r–89r, and 101r–v; and his Racconto Istorico as published by Favaro in OG 19, p. 603. See also Huygens's remarks at the beginning of his Horologium Oscillatorium, siue De Motu Pendulorum ad Horologia Aptato Demonstrationes Geometricæ, Paris: François Muguet, 1673, p. 3 Google Scholar; as well as his 1673 exchange with Leopoldo, as published in Fabroni, op. cit. (20), vol. 1, nos 90–91, pp. 222–225. On the whole issue see Favaro, Antonio, Nuovi Studi Galileiani, Venice: Antonelli, 1891, pp. 389–418 Google Scholar.

199 Philip III of Spain (1578–1621), who reigned from 13 September 1598.

200 Almost as soon as he discovered Jupiter's satellites, Galileo tried to compile tables in order to be able to predict their situations, relations and eclipses, thereby determining the longitude of the place of observation at any hour of the night (a ready method of finding longitudes at sea had long been an object of search by all the maritime powers of Europe). In July 1612, Belisario Vinta started a correspondence on this subject with the representative of the Spanish court, Orso d'Elci; the correspondence went on for a few months (Galileo wrote a letter on 7 September, too), but stopped in October. The negotiations were resumed in June 1616 and protracted until December 1620 (also including Galileo's design for the celatone, in 1617), with several exchanges between Orso d'Elci, Curzio Picchena and Giuliano de’ Medici, but once again led nowhere. The issue was finally taken up again in May 1630, but failed and any plans were eventually given up in October 1632, after several exchanges between Esaù Del Borgo and Andrea Cioli. New negotiations were started with representatives of the States General of Holland in August 1636, through the good offices of Galileo's friend Elia Diodati in Paris (Galileo knew about the prize established by the Holland Provinces for a solution of the problem of longitude, already in October 1627, from a letter of Alfonso Antonini; at the time, however, he was interested in the negotiations with the Spanish court, whose third phase he resumed in 1630). These new negotiations dragged on for a while, but were interrupted by the sudden death of Martin van den Hove (Hortensius), in August 1636, and were eventually suspended in April 1640, also due to Galileo's health conditions. On the whole issue see Viviani's Racconto Istorico, in OG 19, pp. 614–615, 618–621, as well as his recollections in the letter to Prince Leopoldo, ibid., pp. 650–657. See also Favaro, op. cit. (197), pp. 101–148 (Spain) and 289–338 (Holland).

201 See Viviani in OG 19, pp. 614–615, 618–621.

202 The Italian mathematician and astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625–1712), who became a French subject in 1673. In 1671 he was appointed director of the Paris Observatory; he determined the rotation periods of Mars and Jupiter, and was the first to discover the four moons of Saturn (1671, 1672 and 1684), which he initially named Sidera Lodoicea (‘Louis’ Stars’), just as Galileo had named Jupiter's moons Medicea Sidera – cuius regio, eius sidera, one might say. Cassini also made successful measurements of longitude by Galileo's method, using eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter as a clock.

203 See Galileo, The Assayer, op. cit. (185); Guiducci, Mario, Discorso delle Comete, Florence: Pietro Cecconcelli, 1619 Google Scholar; in OG 6, pp. 39–105; English translation by Stillman Drake, in Drake, Stillman and O'Malley, Charles D., eds., The Controversy on the Comets of 1618, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960, pp. 21–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Viviani in OG 19, pp. 615–616.

204 As Nelli correctly remarked (see Nelli, op. cit. (11), vol. 2, p. 861), here Viviani is actually referring to King Sigismund III Vasa (1566–1632), who was crowned on 27 December 1587. Possibly Viviani confused King Sigismund with his son John II Casimir (1609–1702), king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, who reigned from 19 January 1649 to 29 September 1669.

205 See Galileo's youthful ‘Archimedean’ writings, now collected in OG 1: Theoremata Circa Centrum Gravitatis Solidorum (pp. 187–208), La Bilancetta (pp. 215–220), Tavola delle Proporzioni delle Gravità in specie de i Metalli e delle Gioie pesate in Aria e in Aqqua (pp. 221–228), and Postille ai Libri De Sphaera et Cylindro di Archimede (pp. 229–242). See also Viviani in OG 19, p. 605.

206 See the works collected in OG 4, especially Galilei, Galileo, Discorso intorno alle Cose che Stanno in su l'Acqua o che in Quella si Muovono, Florence: Cosimo Giunti, 1612 Google Scholar; in OG 4, pp. 58–140 (English translation of the second edition (1612) by Drake, Stillman, in Cause, Experiment, and Science: A Galilean Dialogue, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981 Google Scholar); OG 4 also includes several other works related to it, or critically engaged with it. See also Viviani in OG 19, pp. 612–613.

207 See the draft for the Sixth Day of Galileo's Two New Sciences: op. cit. (185), pp. 281–306; as well as the section entitled ‘Of the Force of Percussion’, in OG 2, pp. 188–190 (see also Galilei, Galileo, Le Mecaniche (ed. Gatto, Romano), Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002, pp. 20–21 Google Scholar, 76–77 (English translation in Galilei, Galileo, On Motion, and On Mechanics (ed. and tr. Drabkin, Israel E. and Drake, Stillman), Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960, pp. 179–182 Google Scholar).

208 See Galileo's Two New Sciences, op. cit. (185). See also the works collected in OG 2, as well as Viviani in OG 19, pp. 606–607, 621–622, 625.

209 The rather convoluted structure of E is as follows: ‘The very last disciple of so great a man’ (i.e. Viviani) ‘first publicly set up’ ‘this bronze bust’ ‘To Galileo Galilei’ ‘For … For … For … Finally, for’ (Viviani is here talking about himself, listing the reasons why he is dedicating the bust).

210 The word inquam (‘I say’) resumes the text of D, which starts with a dedication to Galileo, too.

211 In the printed version (see Viviani, op. cit. (21), p. 124; as well as Viviani, op. cit. (17), p. 4) ‘Cosimo I’ is corrected into ‘Ferdinand I’. Indeed, Cosimo I was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1537 to 1574, whereas Ferdinand I, the predecessor of Cosimo II, from 1589 to 1609.

212 That is, Vincenzo Viviani himself. We find this epithet also in the title pages of Viviani, op. cit. (20); Viviani, op. cit. (21); and Viviani, Formazione, e Misura di Tutti i Cieli, Florence: Piero Matini, 1692 Google Scholar; as well as in his will: Viviani, op. cit. (12), p. 3. In the letter to ‘Noble Beginner Geometers’ (‘Nobili Geometri Principianti’) of Viviani, op. cit. (20), f. *5r, he says, ‘FORSE alcuno vi sarà che m'attribuirà a soverchia ambizione il palesarmi in fronte di quest'Opera per ultimo Discepolo del Galileo; ma però molti più saranno quei, che me n'invidieranno. Il fatto si è che, per mia grande ventura, io son l'ultimo suo Discepolo, perchè egli mi fu continuo Maestro per gli ultimi tre anni di sua Vita, e di quanti ci trovammo presenti all'ultimo suo respiro, (che oltre a due Sacerdoti, v'interuennero il Torricelli, il Dottor Vincenzio Galilei suo figliuolo, e gli altri di sua Casa) io solo, (benchè l'ultimo, nell'essermene approfittato) sono a tutti sopravvissuto, e quasi anche rimasto l'ultimo di quanti più intimamente lo praticarono’ (‘There might be someone who will blame my self-description as the last pupil of Galileo, on the title page of this work, on excessive yearning; but many more will be those who will crave for it. As a matter of fact, I was very fortunate to be his very last pupil, as he was my teacher continuously, throughout the last three years of his life; and of those who were present when he breathed his last (besides two priests, Torricelli, Doctor Vincenzo Galilei his son, and other relatives of his) I alone – although the least to take advantage from this – have outlived them all, and am nearly the last of those who assiduously frequented him’). Indeed, all other pupils of Galileo died shortly after him, or at any rate before 1674, when Viviani first used the epithet: Benedetto Castelli in 1643; Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger and Mario Guiducci in 1646; Bonaventura Cavalieri, Vincenzo Renieri and Evangelista Torricelli in 1647; Clemente Settimi probably in the late 1640s or early 1650s; Braccio Manetti in 1652; Giovanni Battista Rinuccini in 1653; Pier Francesco Rinuccini in 1657; Antonio Santini in 1662; Famiano Michelini in 1666; Andrea Arrighetti in 1672. Galileo's son, Vincenzo, died in 1649, and his sister Livia in 1659; Galileo's other daughter, Virginia, had already died in 1634. Galileo outlived some of his pupils, too: Niccolò Aggiunti died in 1635, Niccolò Arrighetti in 1639, Dino Peri in 1640, and Iacopo Soldani in 1641. No doubt, of all of them Viviani was the most devoted, and spent his entire life in the effort to have Galileo's works and correspondence published, as well as his memory celebrated: see Favaro, op. cit. (19), pp. 1097–1130.

213 Inevitably, the pun – aes, ‘bronze’, and aer, ‘air’ – is lost in the translation.

214 Viviani is appealing to the literary topos of the wise person's good use of wealth. It is a recurrent topic in ancient philosophy and literature: see, for example, Seneca, De Vita Beata, 21–26 (esp. 23, 1–3).

215 Ferdinand II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1621 to 1670.

216 Cosimo III de’ Medici, son of Ferdinand II, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1670 to 1723.

217 Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre from 1643 to 1715.

218 The bronze bust of Galileo was cast by Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652–1725) from a terracotta model, made by Giovanni Battista Caccini (1556–1613) on behalf of Grand Duke Cosimo II: see Viviani's letter to Foggini, 7 December 1691, in Gal. 159, f. 256r, as well as Nelli, op. cit. (11), vol. 2, pp. 855, 871. Foggini is also the author of the bas-reliefs in the scagliola cartouches on the two sides of Galileo's bust, above the entrance of the palace: see Lorenzo Bellini's letter to Viviani, 8 February 1693, in Gal. 257, f. 120r.

219 Cosimo II de’ Medici, son of Ferdinand I de’ Medici and Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1609 to 1621.

220 Minerval is a satirical word to refer to the fee paid by pupils for their instruction: see Varro, Rerum Rusticarum Libri, III 2.18, and Juvenal, Saturae, X 116. Here it is a learned reference to the gift, or homage, paid by Viviani to his preceptor, Galileo.

221 Viviani was appointed primary mathematician of the Grand Duke in 1666; apparently, he was told about the future appointment when he was only sixteen years old, in 1638: see Viviani's letter to Abbott Salviati, 5 April 1697, in Fabroni, op. cit. (20), vol. 2, no 2, p. 6.

222 Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). In fact, Michelangelo died on 18 February 1564, in Rome, and was buried in the church of Santi Apostoli: see Eseqvie del Divino Michelagnolo Buonarroti, Florence: Giunti, 1564 Google Scholar, A2v. His body was later moved to Florence by his nephew, Leonardo Buonarroti, on 11 March; he was buried in Santa Croce the next day: see Ticciati, Girolamo, ‘Supplemento alla Vita di Michelagnolo Buonarroti’, in Condivi, Ascanio, Vita di Michelagnolo Buonarroti, 2nd edn, Florence: Gaetano Albizzini, 1746, pp. 59–63 Google Scholar, 62. Galileo's remains were eventually moved to their present location, directly across from the tomb of Michelangelo, in 1737, on the same day (12 March) on which Michelangelo was buried: see Giovanni Camillo Piombanti's Instrumento Notarile, in the public records of the city of Florence (Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Notarile Moderno, Prot. 25439, 12 March 1737). In the various versions we have of the Racconto Istorico, which he kept revising throughout his last years, and was published only posthumously, Viviani offers two dates for Galileo's birth: 19 February 1564 (in OG 19, p. 599) and 15 February 1564 (in Viviani, op. cit. (6), p. 397, where he also refers to Michelangelo). On the actual date of Galileo's birth (15 February 1564) see Favaro, Antonio, Miscellanea Galileiana Inedita: Studi e Ricerche, Venice: Giuseppe Antonelli, 1887, pp. 9–17 Google Scholar; and Favaro, ‘Sulla Veridicità del “Racconto Istorico della Vita di Galileo” dettato da Vincenzo Viviani’, Archivio Storico Italiano (1915) 73, 1, pp. 323–380 Google Scholar, 329–334 (on p. 334 Viviani's wilful error is described as a peccatuzzo, a ‘peccadillo’).

223 See Viviani in OG 19, p. 627.

224 In 1645 Ianus Nicius Erythraeus (Giovanni Vittorio de’ Rossi, 1577–1647) claimed that Galileo was the illegitimate son of Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati: see his Pinacotheca Imaginum, Illustrium, Doctrinæ vel Ingenii Laude, Virorum, Cologne: Cornelium ab Egmondt, 1643, p. 279 Google Scholar. See Bernardo Benvenuti's letter to Viviani, 9 January 1695, in Gal. 11, f. 172r: ‘Il Sig^r: Domenico Soderini mi ha finalm.^e mandato di Pisa la fede autentica del Matrimonio del Padre del nostro diuino. Ne trasmetto a SS. Ill.^ma l'istessa originale, essendomi riseruata la copia, e mi rallegro che cosi resti scoperta la uerità, ad onta dell'imposture di quel mal Bacchettone di Nicio Eritreo’ (‘Domenico Soderini has finally sent me, from Pisa, the official record of the wedding of the father of our divine Galileo. I herewith include, for Your Most Illustrious Lordship, the original record, of which I keep a copy for myself; and I rejoice that, with this, truth is uncovered, for the shame of that Pharisee of Nicius Erythraeus’ libel’). See also Gal. 11, ff. 174r–179r; and Salvini, op. cit. (6), pp. 433–434.

225 Vincenzo Galilei (1520–1591), author of Dialogo della Musica Antica et della Moderna, Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1581 Google Scholar (2nd edn, Florence: Filippo Giunti, 1602).

226 Giulia Ammannati (1538–1620); she married Vincenzo Galilei in Pisa, on 5 July 1562. See OG 19, pp. 17–18.

227 In the Florentine style, the year should be stated as 1563 (as both the printed versions, L and M, report): in Florence, the year was thought as beginning with Christ's incarnation, nine month before Christmas (Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March).

228 See the household notebooks of Lionardo Buonarroti (Michelangelo's nephew), in Florence, Casa Buonarroti, Archivio Buonarroti, vol. 38: Debitori, Creditori e Ricordi. Cod. segnato B, c. cxiiii: ‘1563 [i.e. 1564]. I record that today, 18 February, Friday, at 23.30, Michelangelo, son of Ludovico, son of Lionardo Buonarroti Simoni, passed away. He was 88 years, 11 months and 14 days old. His body was deposited at Santi Apostoli, in Rome, on Saturday, at 7pm; and it remained in Rome until the following 2 March, after which it was moved to Florence by Simone, son of Bernardo, a carrier. It was put in San Pietro Maggiore, where it remained for two days; on 22 February, the painters and sculptors of the Florentine academies carried the body to Santa Croce, where it was put in a walled depository so as to preserve it while a sepulchre was prepared. I, Lionardo Buonarroti, went to Rome on 19 February 1564, and got there on 24 February. I found the above-mentioned Michelangelo dead, and sent his body to Florence, as said above: I remained in Rome until 6 May 1564, when I left for Florence; I got there on 12 February’ (‘An. 1563. Ricordo come oggi questo di xviij di febraio in uenerdi a ore 23 ² passo di questa presente uita Michelangelo di Ludouico di Lionardo Buonarroti Simoni quale mori in roma auente anni .88. messi 11. dj 14. fu meso in deposito in santi aposto<li> il sabato alli 19 detto<.> in roma stetteui infino alli .2. di marzo prossimo dipoi si fece portare affire<n>ze per le mani di simone di bernardo uetturale. ariuo in fire<n>ze alli 20 di marzo detto e deposito in santo piero magiore doue stette giorni due dipoi alli 22. fu portato in santa croce dalli aca[me]demici di pittori e scultori fiorentini doue si fece uno deposito murato per saluarl[l]o per farli uno sepulcro. Io Lionardo Buonaroti andai a roma alli 19 di febraio 1564 et ariuai alli 24 detto<.> trouai il sudetto michelangelo morto e lo mandai affire<n>ze come di sopra si dice e vi stei fino alli 6 di magio 1564 et mi parti detto di<.> ariuai affire<n>ze alli 12 detto’). See also ibid., c. xxxxvi, as well as Gal. 11, ff. 169r–171r.

229 See Giorgio Vasari, La Vita di Michelangelo nelle Redazioni del 1550 e del 1568 (ed. and annotated by Paola Barocchi), 5 vols., Milan and Naples: R. Ricciardi, 1962, vol. 1, p. 116: ‘And so on 17 February 1563, at 11pm, Florentine style (1564, in the Roman style) [Michelangelo] breathed his last, and passed away’. On the birth dates of Michelangelo and Galileo, see also Wallace, William E., ‘Matters of life and death: Galileo in the afterlife of Michelangelo’, Source (1998) 17(3), pp. 20–24 Google Scholar. In the Racconto Istorico, written earlier than the text for the inscriptions on the facade of his palace, Viviani chose a different ‘parallel life’, placing Galileo side by side with another eminent Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci: see OG 19, p. 624, as well as Salvini, op. cit. (6), p. 393. In the Preface to the Racconto Istorico (written when Viviani was considering to turn the text from a lengthy letter into a fully fledged biography) he adds a parallel with Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the New World: see OG 19, p. 600 n. 1. On this see Battistini, Andrea, ‘“Cedat Columbus” e “Vicisti Galilaee!”: due eploratori a confronto nell'immaginario barocco’, Annali d'Italianistica (1992) 10, pp. 116–132 Google Scholar.

230 See Viviani's Racconto Istorico, in OG 19, especially pp. 617–618, 621–624.

231 See also Viviani in OG 19, p. 620; and Salvini, op. cit. (6), p. 442.

232 To strengthen the parallel between Michelangelo and Galileo, Viviani does not refrain from using similar expressions: Viviani's Lenta tandem correptus febre is a clear loan from Vasari's ‘in fine della vita sua … amalatosi Michelagnolo di una lenta febbre’ (Vasari, op. cit. (229), vol. 1, p. 106). See also Viviani, op. cit. (6), p. 423, and in OG 19, p. 623.

233 Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644), elected Pope Urban VIII in 1623. A friend and early supporter of Galileo, he was the dedicatee of The Assayer.

234 This corresponds to our modern calendar.

235 Esaù Martellini (1580–1650), the owner of the Villa Il Gioiello, in Pian de’ Giullari, Arcetri, where Galileo spent his last years. Galileo rented it on 22 September 1631 (see OG 20, Supplementi, no. XLbis (b), pp. 587–588), so that he could live closer to his daughter Virginia (Sister Maria Celeste, 1600–1634), who was in the nearby Convent of San Matteo; see Virginia's letter to her father, 12 August 1631, in OG 14, p. 288. Two centuries before Galileo, a distant relative of his (Galileo Galilei, of the Bonaiuti family) lived in the same area; a well-known Florentine physician, he was buried in Santa Croce, and his picture appears, in bas-relief, on the gravestone of the Galilei family, in the central nave of the basilica, between the current funeral monuments of Galileo and Michelangelo.

236 ‘Imo octo’, Nelli remarks (op. cit. (11), vol. 2, p. 866); see also Nelli, op. cit. (28), p. 15: ‘immo novem tantum’); Albèri, in turn, corrects Nelli: ‘Imo decem’ (Albèri in Le Opere di Galileo Galilei, op. cit. (26), vol. 15, p. 380). In fact, whereas Galileo did live in Arcetri from September 1631 to January 1642 (that is, for a little over ten years), Viviani is not talking about the time Galileo actually lived in the estate of Esaù Martellini, but the time he spent ‘occupying himself with the sciences’ (scientijs uacauerat). Most likely, moreover, Viviani was not specifically referring to Galileo's last residence (Villa Il Gioiello) in Arcetri but used it to refer, more generally, to the time Galileo spent in Florence and its surroundings, practising and writing about science. Indeed, during the years he spent in Padua (early December 1592–early September 1611) Galileo often returned to Florence for the summer, living either in one of the summer residences of the Grand Duke (such as the Medici villas at Pratolino or La Ferdinanda in Artimino), or with his sister Virginia (in the neighbourhood of the Church of the Carmine). And from the time he took up his position as the primary mathematician and philosopher of the Grand Duke (save for his journeys, of course, especially those to Rome), he spent ‘over thirty years’ in or near Florence, as Viviani says, working on a number of scientific issues: first, in a house he rented on the south shore of the river Arno; then (from 15 August 1617) at the Villa L'Ombrellino, in Bellosguardo; and finally (from 9 September 1631) in the Villa Il Gioiello in Arcetri (in 1638 he was granted to move temporarily to his house in Costa San Giorgio, in Florence, next to his son Vincenzo's). He also spent time at the Medici Villas La Petraia and in Marignolle, on the outskirts of Florence; at the so-called Villa Michelangelo, in Settignano, as a guest of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger; and he spent long and fruitful periods at Filippo Salviati's Villa Le Selve in Lastra a Signa. In Florence Galileo published On Floating Bodies, in 1612, after extensive discussions documented in several letters; see also the 1625 correspondence on hydraulics in OG 13, pp. 291–294. In Florence, he observed the moon, Jupiter's satellites, lunar eclipses, ‘tricorporeal’ Saturn, the phases of Venus, and sunspots; he also engaged in long negotiations with representatives of the Spanish Court about using the period of Jupiter's satellites in order to calculate longitudes: see, for example, Galileo's letters to Christopher Clavius and Benedetto Castelli, 30 December 1610 (in OG 10, nos 446–447, pp. 499–505); to Gallanzone Gallanzoni, 16 July 1611 (in OG 11, no 555, pp. 141–155); to Christoph Grienberger, 1 September 1611 (in OG 11, no 576, pp. 178–203); to Maffeo Barberini, later to become Pope Urban VIII, 2 June 1612 (in OG 11, no 684, pp. 304–311); and to Pedro de Castro, Francisco de Sandoval and Orso d'Elci, 13 November 1616 (in OG 12, nos 1233–1235, pp. 289–295). In Bellosguardo, Galileo worked on the microscope, on his reply to Francesco Ingoli, and on his theory of tides and other parts of the Dialogue, as well as making several telescopic observations: see, for example, the calculations recorded in OG 3, pp. 473, 701–702; and Galileo's letters to Federico Cesi, 23 September 1624 (in OG 13, no 1665, pp. 208–209) and to Benedetto Castelli, 2 August 1627 (in OG 13, no 1832, pp. 370–371). In Bellosguardo, Galileo worked on fluid mechanics, too, and offered suggestions for the design of the facade of the cathedral of Florence: see, for example, Galileo's report on the river Bisenzio (1631), in OG 6, pp. 627–647; and his letter to Andrea Cioli, 7 March 1631 (in OG 14, no 2115, pp. 215–218). During his frequent stays at Salviati's Villa Le Selve, Galileo conceived and wrote the first and third letter on sunspots (see OG 5, pp. 94–113, 186–239; Galileo dedicated Letters on Sunspots to his good friend Filippo Salviati, who is one of the interlocutors of his Dialogue and Two New Sciences), and made many telescopic observations of sunspots and Jupiter's satellites, as well as performing several other scientific activities (such as the study of the centre of gravity of solids): see, for example, Galileo's letter to Federico Cesi, 5 January 1613 (in OG 11, no 827, pp. 459–461); and the many observations recorded in OG 3, pp. 446, 448, 452–453. Finally, in Arcetri, Galileo worked for several years on Two New Sciences, as well as performing many astronomical observations (discovering the librations of the moon, for example: see Galileo to Alfonso Antonini, 20 February 1638, in OG 17, no 3684, pp. 291–297), responding to objections, and discussing at length with Benedetto Castelli about geometrical issues. He also spent considerable time on negotiations about his solution to the problem of longitude with representatives of the United Provinces of Holland, and engaged in exchanges, equally friendly and critical, with Fortunio Liceti. See, for example, Galileo's letters to Alfonso Antonini, 20 February 1638 (in OG 17, no 3684, pp. 291–297); to Giovanni Battista Baliani, 1 August 1638 (in OG 18, no 3897, pp. 75–79); and to Pierre de Carcavi, 5 June 1637 (in OG 17, no 3494, pp. 88–93); and those he received from Bonaventura Cavalieri, 22 July 1634 (in OG 16, no 2968, p. 113), and Benedetto Castelli, 12 December 1637 (in OG 17, no 3618, pp. 233–234) and 19 August 1639 (in OG 18, no 3905, pp. 85–86).

237 Vincenzo Galilei (1606–1649), third-born son of Galileo and Marina Gamba (1570–1612), after Virginia and Livia, and the only one he recognized; he graduated in law at the University of Pisa, on 5 June 1628: see OG 19, no 27c, pp. 427–430.

238 Sestilia Bocchineri (d. 1669), who married Vincenzo Galilei on 28 January 1629.

239 Evangelista Torricelli (1608–1647), from Faenza.

240 See Viviani's letter to Abbott Salviati, 5 April 1697, in Fabroni, op. cit. (20), vol. 2, no 2, pp. 6–7.

241 The printed version and the actual inscriptions also offer two other short texts, which appear in the two scagliola cartouches on either side of Galileo's bust. The cartouche on the left presents a bas-relief of a man looking at Jupiter's satellites with the telescope, on the stern of a ship (a reference to Galileo's telescopic discoveries, published in Sidereus Nuncius, and to their possible applications in the determination of longitude); the text reads: ‘Este Duces, ô si qua via est. Virgil. Æneid. lib. VI’ (‘Be my guides, if any way there be. Vergil, Aeneid, VI 194’). The second cartouche, on the right of the bust above the entrance, represents a man observing sunspots with a telescope, a man watching the (parabolic) course of a cannonball, and a beam breaking under its own weight; the text reads (with obvious references to Galileo's On Sunspots and Two New Sciences): ‘In Sole, quis credat? retectas / Arte tua, Galilæe, labes. urb. viii. p.m.’ (‘Spots revealed on the Sun, who would believe that? Thanks to your science, Galileo. Urban VIII, Pope’); the source is the ‘Adulatio perniciosa’, a poem Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (later to become Pope Urban VIII, in 1623), an early admirer of Galileo, wrote in celebration of his telescopic discoveries: see Barberini, Maffeo, Poemata, Paris: Antoine Estienne, 1620, pp. 46–49 Google Scholar (the quotation is from p. 47, lines 21–22); Cardinal Barberini sent Galileo the poem on 28 August 1620, attached to a letter expressing his profound admiration and consideration for Galileo's work: see OG 13, no 1479, pp. 48–49. We also have a few letters Cardinal Barberini and Galileo exchanged in June 1612, praising the discovery of sunspots. In the printed version, these two quotes are introduced, respectively, by ‘In Diaglyptico Phrenoschemate G’ (‘In the carved emblem G’) and ‘In Diaglyptico Phrenoschemate H’ (‘In the carved emblem H’). The adjective diaglypticus is loan from the Greek διάγλυπτος, ‘carved’. For the translation of phrenoschema, see Donati, Alessandro, Ars Poetica, Rome: Guglielmo Facciotti, 1631, pp. 378–388 Google Scholar (Book 3, Chapter XXXII: ‘Figurata Epigrammata, vulgò Impresiæ’); and Kircher, Athanasius, Œdipvs Ægyptiacus: Hoc Est Universalis Hieroglyphicae Veterum Doctrinae Temporum Iniuria Abolitae Instavratio, 3 vols., Rome: Vitale Mascardi, 1652–1654, vol. 2(1), pp. 7–8 Google Scholar (Chapter II: ‘De Emblemate, & Impresia, siue Phrenoschemate’). The two bas-reliefs, designed by Foggini, are also cast in a bronze medal, c.1680: on one side, Galileo's profile; on the other, besides the symbolic images in the second cartouche, a representation of a pendulum and of free fall, as well as of Jupiter's satellites, the phases of the Moon and Venus, and a comet. On the side with Galileo's profile, we read the inscription: ‘GALILEVS LYNCEVS’ (‘Galileo, Lyncean’); on the opposite side, the inscriptions: ‘NATVRAMQVE NOVAT’ (‘Renovator of Nature’) and ‘MEMORIÆ OPTIMI PRÆCEPTORIS VINC. VIVIANIVS’ (‘To the memory of the Greatest of Preceptors, from Vincenzo Viviani’). See OGA 1, M4, pp. 520–521.

242 Tommaso Bonaventura (1654–1721), member of the noble Florentine family of Della Gherardesca. After graduating in utroque iure at the University of Pisa, in 1679, he was appointed metropolitan canon of Florence, later to become Dean of the Chapter and Vicar General (on 5 October 1700). In 1691 he was appointed auditor of the Tribunal of the Apostolic Nunciature. In 1703 he became Bishop of Fiesole, and one year later Archbishop of Florence, following the sudden death of Leone Strozzi.

243 Filippo Buonarroti (1661–1733). A learned intellectual and archaeologist, great-great-grandson of Michelangelo's brother, he was the son of Leonardo Buonarroti and Ginevra Martellini, daughter of Esaù Martellini, the owner of Villa Il Gioiello, Galileo's house in Arcetri. See Anton Francesco Gori, ‘Notizie Storiche ed Annotazioni’, in Condivi, op. cit. (222), pp. 87–124, 95–99; Gori (op. cit., p. 95) describes Esaù (not to be confused with his son, Esaù, brother of Ginevra) as ‘one of the most renowned pupils of Galileo’.